Jennifer Levin
Hi everyone and welcome to Untethered: Healing the Pain from a Sudden Death. I am Dr. Jennifer Levin, and I specialize in traumatic death and helping individuals through the struggles, pain, trauma, and chaos of an unexpected death.
Today’s podcast features Meghan Riordan Jarvis who is a clinical psychotherapist who specializes in grief and loss using a trauma informed approach. Meghan is also an author, podcaster, and advocate for change for grief in the workplace. In our conversation today Meghan shares how she discovered her calling to work with clients who have experienced trauma, grief, and loss and some of the approaches she uses with her clients. She also explains the model she has developed with her colleague to provide individuals who are grieving with a daily practice to help with their grief. During our time together, Meghan and I also discuss our shared interest in shifting how the corporate work environment addresses grief in the workplace.
Meghan, thank you so much for joining us today. Why don't you start off and tell us a little bit about yourself?
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
Thank you so much for having me. I am really thrilled to be here. Well, I'll start that I, you know, I think one of the things that women in particular often do is talk about the words that are associated with their name, you know, that come after their name. So, by profession, I'm a psychotherapist, I'm a trauma informed therapist, and I specialize in grief and loss. And I've been doing that for two decades, just about 20 years. I live in the DC area, but I still say I'm from Boston, because that was where I was born. And where I did all my early years, actually Cape Cod, specifically. And I'm one of five, I'm one of six. I have five brothers and sisters. So three brothers and two sisters, I have everything you could possibly want. So an older brother, older sister, younger brother, younger sister, I have it all, could write a book about each one of those things. I'm a writer and a podcaster. And I've got three kids and a chocolate lab. And I despise olives. I just made that sound like a dating profile. But that's a little bit about me.
Jennifer Levin
Black and green? All olives?
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
I hate all olives. I can't stand the texture. And also there is a sourness of olives that makes me so miserable, like the sweet and sour together. Not, not a single one. And people will say, well, there's just a little olive in this bread, but you won't taste it. I will. I will taste it.
I will taste it and I will not eat your olive bread.
Jennifer Levin
Never thought I've been talking about that on a great podcast.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
And I feel like it's a way to distinguish it's like a birthmark, it's very important.
Jennifer Levin
We could have a whole podcast. Anyone who knows me knows we can have a whole podcast episode on all the things I don't eat.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
Yes, let's do that!
Jennifer Levin
Okay. What led you into the field of grief therapy and specifically into working with individuals who have experienced the sudden or unexpected death of a loved one?
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
You know, it's a great question. And what I'll say about it is the way that I answer it now is different than the way that I answered it when I was choosing to do, you know, grief therapy, which I think I would have, I think I could say now I didn't even know I was choosing it at the time. So I went into therapy because I had gone through a terrible, what I felt to be a really terrible breakup. I think it was probably an average breakup. I think it was just, you know, the relationship didn't work out. The guy wasn't that great. What I knew when I was in the sort of misery of that, of having been broken up with, was that my reaction seemed outsize compared to what I had seen other people go through. I just really felt like I was not going to be able to live without this human being. Even though I kind of had this meta understanding that like he was just normal. He was just like, not the world's greatest guy. He was just normal. And I went into therapy after sort of exhausting my friends goodwill, you know, I think that I think they gave me like six months. And then they were like, we're real tired of this story. And when I got into therapy, I really, you know, I said to the therapist, like I'm here to talk about, you know, my bad breakup. And she was like, yes, that is what we're going to talk about. And also, we're going to talk about, that, you know, your makeup and your build and your family and who you come from. And I was like, none of those things are a problem. But what I learned in that therapy was that that my family had had an experience, my whole town had had an experience of a 16 year old who was really beloved to all of us drowning. While we were all on the beach, we didn't realize that this had happened because you don't watch 16 year olds, you don't keep an eye on a 16 year old. And the impact was just this shock through our entire community. And it was a summer community and then, you know, in the fall I went an hour and a half to another town where I went to school. So pretty naturally it was the it was the mid 80s, late 80s. There was just no conversation past the funeral, there was zero conversation. And what happens to kids I now know because I learned this from this therapist is that, you know, that leaves indelible tracks inside your system. I mean, you know inside your brain pathways. And when kids go unsupported with grief and loss, they kind of intellectually only have one possibility of explaining it, which is like, it's who they are. So how they fit how they feel become who they are. So when I went into therapy, when I, you know, I pretty quickly was like, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. I also kind of had a pension and a passion for it. Like I understood it, I read a lot of books, it was a game changer for me. And I went to social work school, and I came out the other side, and I was like, I'm opening a door. And when I open that door, anyone can come in. But the thing is about that it's like art or cooking, you kind of get the customers that match what you're good at. So what I had coming in was really complex childhood loss, partnered with some kind of acute traumatic event in the moment. And so again, I don't think I could have told you in the moment that that's what I was doing, or that's what my specialty was going to become or even why I was doing it. But I deeply understood the pain that people were coming in with. And they were having the experience of like, I feel crazy out there in the world. Like, I know that my reaction doesn't make sense. So that inner childhood, early trauma work, became something that I was really interested in. And again, sort of quickly able to help not everybody, I'm sure there's you know, people out there that are like she was a garbage therapist, I don't know why I paid her money, but, but I really felt like I was able to quickly partner with people kind of like, Oh, these are your symptoms, I understand these symptoms. Let me explain sort of the threads of where they go back to. And one of the things about sudden loss in particular. And my friend Mary Frances O'Connor writes about this in The Grieving Brain so beautifully. Are you about to hold up her book, because every time I mentioned it, like, hold up her book, I'm like, I know. It's like our Bible. And she writes really beautifully about how essentially like this, this is not her image, this is mine. But when my dad died of cancer, he got a diagnosis. And we were able to prepare for over the course of a year, which a little little bit like sipping cups of grief every week, every day, right? When you go through, so that your body can integrate that much water, and then your body can take that in and it doesn't have to dysregulate you, it's still uncomfortable, it's still sad, it's still all the things. But when my mother died suddenly, that was like being, you know, waterboarded with a gallon of water choked down into my system, because my my system very quickly had to learn she is no longer here. Whereas with my dad, I got a year to kind of adjust to that and actually participate in it with him. And the dysregulation to the system, the physical symptoms that people come in with, where they have seen multiple doctors, it's been going on for years. And we have just not done a really good job of threading that back to these are grief related symptoms.
Jennifer Levin
I absolutely love that analogy of being able to sip little bits of grief, you know, many losses, and what you can integrate in just I mean, it's still painful. Yeah, that's right. Because cups of grief are...
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
It's still a loss, right? Like, like grief is the is the reaction that our body has to loss, but it's the way you experienced the loss, that then sort of drives those symptoms. And what Mary Frances really teaches us I didn't really finish that thought is that our body is trying to learn it. We're trying to learn the world without our person. So both how you how you hear that how you take in that information, who that person, is the nature of their death, you know, was it a homicide or suicide? It sort of ups the ante in the complexity of each one of those losses.
Jennifer Levin
It's an excellent book. It's on my website that I'll make sure and put it in the notes for today's podcast.
Tell me about some of the approaches or techniques that you find most helpful working with clients who've experienced a sudden or unexpected death. I had Michelle Post on, I think about a year ago and she talked about using Doctor Worden's motto when she works with clients, and I don't know, if you have a particular approach you use or you're eclectic or integrative, but share that.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
Well, so what I think is really important, and one of the things that I talk about a lot is being able to distinguish between grief that resolves on its own, a terrible thing that you've gone through your system needs some time to adapt, and it begins to do that. And in my clients, I would see that kind of like within three months, and when I say begins to adapt, I mean, you're starting to sleep a little bit better, you don't have terrible dreams, your digestive tract is still online, we're looking at the 12 systems of the body, right? So all your endocrine system and your you know, renal system, all of those things can be impacted by this, you know, trauma that happens. What I'm always looking for is are they becoming traumatized? And trauma, right, the trauma is the bad thing that happened. traumatized is the meaning that your system begins to make inside your body, and your thought process and you know, your spiritual center. So most of the clients that come to see me are traumatized, don't know that. But they're but their world is reflecting that, they're more isolated, they still have extreme physical symptoms, their relationships are in trouble, their workers are in trouble. And they they kind of don't know what to do. So what I talk about, and just so I can say this, I have a memoir coming out called the End Of The Hour, the entire reason that I wrote that book was to be able to help people distinguish between those two features. My story is one of being traumatized instantly. And I describe it really specifically with all the symptoms that people get, it is not something to be ashamed of, if you could out intellectualize and out skill it I mean, I'm the last person that should have been traumatized. I've been working in the field for 20 years, I have two master's degrees, so much training. But the reality is, it lands the way that it lands, and the energy does what it does. And if you have early childhood trauma, you are much more susceptible to a new event in your adult life running back down that old trackwork. So I don't use grief theory, like I'm studying them, we could talk about them all day long I do, I will talk about the dual process model to folks, which is you're kind of spending in early grief, most of your time oriented towards grieving. And maybe the pendulum swings a little bit. And then you're oriented a little bit more towards what they call restoration. And you know that I love that model. I also really love the model of continuing bonds, which is this idea that you are kind of translating a relationship with a living human being into a relationship with them where you are holding the living part. And they are still influencing you with what you know to be the relationship as it continues to exist. So sometimes that's with a memory. But often it's with active energy, like you know how your mom would react to this. But when people come in to see me, I use treatments. And I feel like that's a really important thing to say, because one of the things that's confusing about therapy is that we walk in, the person has a bunch of letters after their name, they don't really tell us what they're going to do or what they're trained in. And we can ask them. But it's a bit like asking a chef, like, how do you make that like if you don't know what an emotion is, that's not going to help you to hear about it right? The treatments that I use are EMDR that is one of my primary treatments. EMDR is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. I mean, do we have to have that those initials for what that is so bad. But it basically means that you pull up a memory and an optic memory so something that you physically remember, although it works with other memories that you can see in your mind. And you allow your body to feel some of the distress of that experience that you had. And then we stimulate the body through the optic nerve or tapping so that you process that and it moves across the brain. So the way that I imagine it, it's like it's a stain on the shirt. And instead we rinse it out. So there's a light color across the whole shirt now, that and it's it's easier and less disruptive for the brain to have it that way. So that's EMDR. I also use IFS Dick Schwartz's internal family systems, which again, this is not Dick's language, this is mine. If you imagine that you have an entire bus, full of parts of you that like to drive, there's the like, regular weekly driver. And then there's all the other parts that sometimes drive and so you might be a normal, you know, nine o'clock wake up, go to work kind of person, but on a Saturday, you like to do more exercise, and you'd like to be more spontaneous, so you get a different sort of part of you. And in trauma work, we use a lot of imagination, we use the ability to imagine a different outcome. And even though it doesn't actually happen, the system kind of doesn't know that it doesn't really understand time. And so we're able to use your imagination to expand what these parts are able to do for us. So those are my two primary treatments. I also really love brain spotting, but you asked about a model and I'll tell you that. My colleague, Julianne Manske Rollefson and I have created a model, which is called the mentor model, which is designed to help people create a daily grief practice. You know, one thing one thing I get as a writer is like, Oh, well, when do you write and how do you write? What is your tool? And what I know when writers are asking me that is just like, give me a template to compare myself to, give me an idea of how does a writer end up writing a book. If I said to you I get up at five o'clock in the morning, immediately, you might be like, I'm not doing that. So this lady's template doesn't work for me, the mentor method is just categories of things that we know are important for most grievers. So, so the M stands for having some kind of mindfulness, which is in clinical terms is almost like a little bit of metta. It's like some awareness of yourself as you are growing your capacity to grieve. And then the second one, I won't go through all of them, but the second one is about energy. So it's about teaching people to not just compare themselves to their past energy before they had a loss, but actually to be tracking what the energy feels like, during the day, every three hours, there's some neuroscience around three hours, and then how to how to augment it, you know, some people go into a really acute depression when they are grieving. And so telling them to take a bubble bath is not wise. And so what you know, we use these like one off like self care techniques, but if you are already having a hard time getting out of bed, it makes much more sense to tell you to take a brisk walk with a friend. But if someone has been cleaning their bathroom for the for the last 14 hours, absolutely bubble bath, lavender sachet, let's do it. So part of what we're doing is we're taking in this in this model, is we're sort of taking the wisdom that we know from Grievers all of the trauma education that we have, and trying to give you something just to try. Even if you said I hated those ideas, this is what I did instead, that's great. The way that you figured out what you wanted was by trying things that didn't work. And a lot of what grief is, is novelty, you have never lost, you have never experienced this loss before. And you have to invent a new way forward. And it is pretty brutal for most people. And so the mentor method is just try these things. Here's what they all kind of cluster, this is what people have told us generally work, probably all of these things are not going to work for you. But imagine if after the six weeks of doing it, you have like just a little it's, you know, it's a little bit like a nutrition counseling, or when you go to a trainer, you know, the trainer knows things that are good for you. But if you have a bad shoulder or you hate, you know, step aerobics, they have to come up with something that's bespoke. That's usually what we're doing is trying to come up with something. And what I will say about those things is often creativity is in there, music and movement. And for a lot of adults, they've kind of put that stuff behind or they do it a little bit. But they don't talk about it a lot. They sort of minimize it. It's not very important. It's not part of my job. But in grief work, we discover that that stuff is like, you know, it's oxygen.
Jennifer Levin
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for explaining that. That sounds like a fantastic model.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
Yeah, we're excited. We are piloting it with a couple of companies right now. And then there's going to be, you know, like a workbook that people can use.
Jennifer Levin
Oh, great. So speaking of companies, you and I both share a passion for changing the culture around grief, especially in the workplace. So do you want to share some of the work that you're doing in this area?
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
Yeah, you know, so I think one of the things that grief shows us almost immediately is how poor the core education around grief and loss is that we have a lot of opportunity to be educated in a lot of things. Many of them like trigonometry, you never ever use again for your whole life. But every single one of us will grieve at some point. And most every time I give a talk, every time I give a talk, I'm like, please raise your hand if you've had grief, training, grief, you know, class, anything. And it's rare that I get a third even when I'm talking to clinicians. So training in in the workplace, honestly, for me, and people who know me will laugh because this is how I am about everything where I'm sort of like, well, how practical is that? Like, how effective is that going to be? Training in the workplace, to me is just like practical and effective. The workplace is absolutely impacted. We don't have great data, like the last time we did an actual study on how grief in 2000. Yeah, 2003 was the last time that yeah, that's insane. But during the pandemic, we did see a whole lot of people doing all kinds of crazy stuff, trying to get their workers come back into the workplace, trying to cajole them with Taco Tuesdays getting really frustrated. And my attitude about that is you are missing the whole boat, a million Americans died, everybody went home in a, you know, emergency crisis and learned how to do their work, over Zoom. 9 million people were left grieving from those immediate deaths. And there's tons of non death loss. Every company that I go in and talk to every C suite team is immediately able to identify contracts that they no longer have ways of working, you know, that members of their teams, office spaces, projected projects that they had been moving towards. I mean, there's a small nonprofit that I work, they lost a project, because the city let go of the project that they've been working on for 21 years 21 year's worth of data, and the city was like, Yeah, we can't do it anymore, because we can't get in there. And we can't have like a year's worth of no data. So just forget it. I mean, those kinds of losses people are, you're just supposed to, like put up with that on a Tuesday. And so what I have what I have really, I was like rocking back and forth at night, like God, if we don't help people at we're gonna have so much addiction. Because what do we do when we don't when we don't know how to process our feelings, we dissociate from them. I mean, I'm not I'm not convinced that we won't still have lots of addiction, but I have been stepping into companies, you know, sort of convincing them to let us come in saying like, look, you talk about racism in your company, you talk about bullying in your company, you talk about sexism in your company, you talk about health in your company, you have grief in your company, all the time, every day, there's somebody in there. And what we know is grievers very quietly suffer at work. And then they leave, because they tell us this. And if we already have all this attrition, that's a problem. Can't we support them? And what I will say is I have had, I've been so lucky to work with companies who are really enthusiastic to have those conversations, and they have been generous and have brought their own examples. So they're teaching me. You know, I haven't been in an office space in a long time, although my colleague has, just, you know, what is it like to be in there? And what do you guys need support with but at a bare minimum, what we're doing is teaching them a mentor method, we're just teaching each human individual in that room. We're teaching them what we know to be the best wisdom that we have about grief. So if I teach Joe in front of me, like maybe it will impact his workplace probably in some way it will, but certainly it will impact his human life. And, you know, we give a lot of facts we give a lot of data we explain you know, fight flight and freeze things that people don't if you're not in the therapy world, you don't sit around thinking about that. And if folks learn one fact that then they can transfer down and say no, that's normal. This lady this grief, lady told me that's normal. You don't need to worry about it. We may be able to offer support and shift the culture a little bit so to me going into companies is like a no brainer. It's the only, it's the place where we have people's undivided attention. And they are already doing some learning every year anyway.
Jennifer Levin
They spend so much time.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
So much time, so much time. And what's really tricky, and I bet you find this also, is that like, they have a mindset, like, Oh, we're not paying people enough. I mean, I just sat with a giant company that was like, alright, we're, we're just gonna have to throw more money at this problem. And I just thought, like, how's that going for you? Like, nevermind, like, it's not working. It's not working, because your people don't trust you because you shut down and two entire offices. 25,000 people, you didn't talk about it the next day, told people they were lucky to be here that all of that breaks, trust it breaks. And I do find that when I say hey, listen, from an emotional standpoint. Like, if we're talking about emotional fluency, you have some cleanup here to do. You can't just storm in and do this and say it's the best thing for the company and storm out. People won't feel okay about that. Yeah.
Jennifer Levin
So much work to be done in this area. So glad that it's something that you are working on.
I'm trying to I'm trying.
It's a big project. And I know you have an article that came out in MIT. And we will post that as well in our Facebook group, but it just talked about needing a cultural shift. And, and those types of things are a revolution and evolution.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
I keep thinking about Oprah keeps doing or she's on her second or third one of these like masterclasses, you know, she did one on menopause. And I'm like, yeah, actually, she has enough of a voice that she was able to really shift the conversation so that people are like, no, no, you can take you can use a hormone patch, like they told us in the early 90s you can't, you can actually just like go to your doctor. So I imagine a lot of people were like, Doctor, I need to come in. God, wouldn't it be amazing if she did one of those on grief and loss? And was just like, no, no five stages, five stages? Yeah, it's really physical. More than a year, like if we just said the basics, it would be amazing?
Jennifer Levin
Yeah. I just don't happen to have her on speed dial.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
I don't either. Oddly shockingly, but who knows? Maybe maybe someone who's listening does and they will they will get to her and say, Hey, you sure use your giant platform to help make this big culture shift? Wouldn't that be the best? Yes.
Jennifer Levin
So you have so much going on in your life, this big family that you mentioned, your husband, three busy children, your therapy clients, you share that you have your book coming out. I know you actually have multiple books coming out. And as grief therapists, we talk about how important self care is for our clients. And so I am so curious, how do you incorporate self care into your life? And what type of activities nourish you and replenish you? Because I know it's not eating olives.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
No, it's not eating olives. I love this question. And I hate this question. Because I feel like, I feel like as therapists, we're supposed to have an answer to this, which is like, this is what I do. And you know, I wake up in the morning, and I take a mud bath. And then I do you know, I staged my house, and I and then I meditate. And what I would say is I'm kind of a binger about self care. So I will push on things like right now is a really nutso time. You know, every day, I get to the end of the day, and they're like four or five things that I said to somebody at some point, I'll get it to you at the end of the day, and I'm not turning that in. They're not getting that. And that's new for me like I don't normally run a show that has that much demand. So that's new and I'm learning to navigate it. So I think what I would say to you, my biggest piece of self care is my my assistant/business partner, whose name is Julianne, who I just mentioned. She is concrete help, she reminds me of when I had a nanny when my kids were in school that having someone who understands how important it all is to you. You don't have to have that conversation you don't have to explain why we need this by four o'clock on Tuesday. Like you just say we need it at four o'clock on Tuesday. And you know, Julianne is whip smart. And she's constantly looking out for me. So you know, both my parents have died, I have an older sister who I adore, she's not in this field. And to me, Julianne is not only rooting for me, so she's someone that I can call and be like, Oh, my God, this great thing happened. And then she's thrilled. But she is also someone who I can say, as I did, oh my God, I'm in Memphis, I'm supposed to be giving a talk in a couple of hours and there are literally no rental cars in the like, there's no physical cars in this airport. Even though I have a reservation, it was like a Seinfeld episode. And her response was, let me figure out how I can try to help you. And I just know in that moment, I was gonna flip out, I was gonna panic that I was gonna be late, I'd flown all the way here to give this keynote. And I called her and she was like, let me see how I can help you. So I think my theme about self care is less about meditation. Although I do meditate most days, less about journal entry, and more about having created a wider net of people who are invested in the work that I'm doing care about my family and my life, and are really good at helping, like really functional, not one of those people where you're like, forget it, I'll do it myself. And Julian's not the only person. But you know, I pay her and, and we're committed to sort of working on projects together. And she is one of the few that I feel like she will, she would really extend on account of my asking.
Jennifer Levin
I really love, number one, that honesty in your answer. I also sometimes am a binger with it, where I struggle on a daily basis. And I think friends and family have gotten frustrated with me. Because this type of work is very demanding. And you really, you give a lot to be able to do it. And I am also very fortunate. Those of people who know me, I have to call her an assistant is not the right word. But I have Sandy, who is beyond amazing and is invested in my work add me as a person and she is
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
It's game changer. It's like when people say my partner and listen, my husband is the most hard suffering. Incredible person and my kids. I mean, my daughter does the laundry in her house, one of my kids does some of the cooking like everybody pitches in and helps. But there is an absence of feeling. My mom used to do this thing where she just like, immediately cared. Like, you could be like, Mom, I found a pair of purple jeans and she would go oh my god, that is amazing. You wouldn't no explanation why you needed purple jeans. No. And I that is a thing that I have continued to need in my life. So there are other parts of self care, you know, I do exercise. I am not the world's greatest eater. I don't mean I eat junk food. I mean, I probably don't eat enough most of the time. That's been an ongoing struggle since my mom died. My central nervous system and the digestive tract have not really regulated back in a way that feels like the old me. But I do like, you know, this past weekend, I could just sort of feel that I was tipping from and I'm focusing too much on work and I'm feeling frustrated by the things that I can't get done. And I just let it all go. And we went on a you know, went on a two hour walk with our chocolate lab and watched movies with my kids. soccer games, watch sports, because I wasn't gonna get it all done. And it was all there for me Monday morning anyway, so I tend to do it like that. I think I tend to just let it you know, let it, I'm doing it sort of in a binging way an altogether way.
Jennifer Levin
Good for you. Yeah, it's definitely a moving target.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
I love that moving target is exactly correct. And, and I can feel some time well I can feel most times when I'm like, Oh, I overdid this. So it's almost like the pendulum swing where like, Oh okay, well then let me try to come back the other side, if I can.
Jennifer Levin
What are some of the practices I mean, I think when clients are, you know, right after a sudden and unexpected death, self care, like going back to that is oxygen. Because you're in a totally different state. Fortunately, I don't know where you are personally, but I am not grieving a sudden and unexpected death and but at that moment, self care plays a whole different role.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
And yeah, you know, I try to frame that with clients, what I say is like you were just kind of knocked overboard in the water. And it you know, there are times where like, you can see a shoreline and other times where you can't and so I don't even pose it as self care. What I say is like, what does it take to keep you swimming? And there is some neuroscience, I mentioned it a minute ago that like our emotions shift significantly in three hour patterns. And so being able to say to somebody, just plan the next three hours. So keeping your expectations small, and in small bites. So when people have just kind of gone over in the water, what I say is, try not to plan more than three hours from this moment and three, you know, three hours, now you can make three, you can make new plans for the next three hours. But if at seven in the morning, you're promising to be at a dinner at seven o'clock at night, there's a really good chance you're not going to make it. And you don't need to feel like you're disappointing people or letting yourself down or not able to do something, just say, Can I check in with you at noon to see how I'm doing? Or can I check in with you at three to see how I'm doing? I also think it's really important. And this comes from polyvagal theory that we have kind of like, established identified the way Mr. Rogers used to say, look for the helpers. Like it least three people who you do not have to have an explanation, they are going to drop what they're doing to respond with a text, show up if you need them. And I often hear back from people, I don't have those three people.
Jennifer Levin
I know, I was gonna say I had so many people that I work with, who would say right away, I don't have that.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
So what I will say is everything about grieving is hard. And when you are already a person who feels like you're a couple of people short on your team, the isolation and the loneliness and grief is really terrible. But it's also an opportunity. And so I have real examples where I have pushed clients to say who who smiles at you during the day. Oh, okay. Your doorman. Tell your doorman that your mother just died. Ask your doorman if you can text him if something really terrible happens. You don't need him to come get you but just because you don't want to be in the feeling alone. You want your doorman to know. And I literally had I had a client who moved to New York right before COVID. Both of her parents died. And she was just, you know, beside herself at all times as anyone would be. And she didn't know anybody. So she did. She had her doorman, this lovely couple who dry cleaned her clothes until they ended up closing their shop and her dog walker. Those were the three people. She also had friends that she could text but she wanted people who were like close by that felt like community. So when people say to me, I don't have anyone I can text. I'm not trying to minimize that. I know that is the way that it feels. But grief is really the most universal experience that we have. So you could pick up a phone and call a church rectory, a synagogue and ask to talk to the pastoral care and put them on your, you might have to work for it. But it is possible. I'm I am one of people's texts. I'm you know, as a therapist, I'm I'm often part of that core group.
Jennifer Levin
I'm right there with you. Yeah. Let me ask. I asked this final question to everybody within the context of the interview, of course. But what advice as a therapist do you have for somebody who's just experienced a sudden unexpected loss and beginning that long journey? What's the very kind of, you just closing a first session, what are those parting words that you're gonna give?
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
My friend Jessica Faith Kantrowitz has a beautiful platform. She has some books. One is called the Dark Night. She's mostly talking to people about depression, but she has a tagline that says it will not always feel this way.
Jennifer Levin
Actually, I use that line. I don't know if it's something I have on mine, in terms of, anyway yes.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
So I just use that a lot. Which I say is I know you can't feel anything other than this. And when we are saturated with that much feeling, it feels like it's always going to be like this But I've been doing this for a million years, I've been through it myself a couple of times. And most of us survive. And our brain and our body, learn how to carry it. It will always be hard. You will never not grieve. But the way that it feels right now, which is how is it possible that the Earth tilts on its axis still? It won't always feel this way. And just like, You know what, it seems like a non sequitur. But I have a lot of I have had a lot of patients who have suffered miscarriages. And what they'll say is like, I don't even know anybody who has had a miscarriage. And I say, Well, just ask. And then all of a sudden, it's like, Oh, my God, Megan, I know five people, my mother had a miscarriage. The it there used to be a culture that where we didn't talk about it. And when you and I are talking about a cultural change in grief and loss, say, everyone understanding corporations, individuals, you know how many people you do, because this happens to you. They come in, and they're like, well, it's been three months, and I'm still grieving. I don't know what's wrong with me. Like, what's wrong with you is, no one told you that the three month mark that people came up with is not based in anything other than maybe our desire to be over something in three months. But that is, you know, it, that is not a real. God, I lost, I lost a piece of jewelry a couple of months ago, and I'm not over that, that over having lost a piece of jewelry in three months. Can you imagine the idea that we would be over the loss of our dog or the loss of our marriage or the loss of our parent or the loss of our child? I mean, it doesn't even make any logical sense. But what I also say is it's it's not grounded in any theory.
Jennifer Levin
Megan, thank you so much. You had just such an eloquent way of explaining things in easy terms, great analogies, and just wonderful words of wisdom and advice. Thank you so much for your time today.
Meghan Riordan Jarvis
Oh, I was just really lovely to be here. Lovely to talk to you again. Thank you so much.
Jennifer Levin
Such a pleasure.
It was such pleasure to spend time with Meghan during this interview. I was captivated while listening to Meghan reflect on the impact of the incident that occurred when her community experienced the loss of the young 16-year-old boy and how she processed the event, her initial experiences in therapy, and her desire to help others engage in a similar therapeutic process. I could hear the passion and calling in her voice as she spoke, and she described her early experiences that led to the work she does today.
Meghan is so gifted in her ability to explain different concepts in grief. I loved how she described anticipatory grief using the example of consuming small cups water that we can slowly absorb compared to grief that comes with a sudden or traumatic loss as a form of water boarding or trying to consume enormous amounts of water that the body is unable to absorb. Meghan also had a beautiful and easy to understand way of describing EMDR in her analogy of removing stains and referred to other theoretical models often used to guide grief therapy in a manner that was easy to understand. I am excited to learn more about the Mentor model that she has developed and shared with us today.
I also admired Meghan’s transparency about how she approaches self-care and her decision to care for herself by getting someone to assist and help her in work and organization. Meghan’s choice is such a good reminder that self-care comes in many shapes and sizes and is unique for everyone.
Her recommendation to break or block time into 3-hour increments is an extremely helpful suggestion for those of you living in the aftermath of a sudden or unexpected death. Trauma leaves the mind and body so overwhelmed, and I agree with her sentiment that three-hour increments may prevent time blocks from feeling too stressful and instead along you to think in small, bite size ways of managing yourself and your time. Three-hour increments are a safe and manageable way to structure your day or engage in future planning when you are feeling overwhelmed by the pain or grief after the sudden or unexpected death of a loved one.
I am so thankful to Meghan for her time and sharing her insights in this interview. Meghan’s first book, The End of an Hour, her personal memoir, was just released yesterday and is available now, and her second book, Can Anyone Tell Me: Essential Questions About Grief and Loss will be released Oct 2024. We will have information about first book in our Facebook group, Talking About the Podcast Untethered with Dr. Levin along with a reference to the book, the Grieving Brain which Meghan also mentioned during our interview.
Thank you so much for joining today’s episode of Untethered Healing the Pain After a Sudden Death. Our next podcast will be on Wednesday, 29th Heather Renfroe shares the first year of her healing journey after the traumatic death of her son, Adam, by suicide. Heather discusses the dramatic changes that occurred in both her and her grief since the death of her son, the different ways she coped with his loss, and how she found her voice in the midst of her pain.
To learn more about hope and guidance after sudden or unexpected death please visit therapyheals.com and sign up for my monthly newsletter Guidance in Grief at www.therapyheals.com. Bye for now.
