How To Heal Grief from Death | with Suzanne Jabour

Michael: Suzanne Jabour. Welcome to the podcast, my friend. How are you today?

Suzanne: I'm very well, thank you so much for having me.

Michael: Excited to have you I'm looking forward to this conversation because we're going to go to a place that most people do not normally go and we are going to talk about loss and grief and death. Before we do that, however, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.

Suzanne: Yeah. And first of all, I want to say to anyone who's thinking, Oh my God, do I want to listen to this episode? We really are going to talk about it in a way that hopefully is inspiring and empowering and has you leaving with some skills and some insights and some information you maybe didn't have before, because as you say, we don't talk about it enough. I ended up here. I've, I realized more and more on the heels of many losses. Someone pointed out to me the other day that I've really, as an adoptee, been a grief expert since I was born because my first loss was my birth mother. And I hadn't really thought about it that way before. And that was so impactful to me to really think about all of the losses that I had experienced throughout my life. And how, in a weird kind of way, they've all led me here. I really arrived here after my most recent loss, which was the death of my son, Ben. He was 22, and he died unexpectedly. He had a terminal case of depression and anxiety. And died in September of 2020. And that Lost death of a child was just for me next level. I had lost, my dad died when I was about 32. My mom, when I was in, it's 10 years this year for my mom. So I was 47. So, it wasn't like that was my first loss of someone close to me. I had experienced grief after both of my parents, but there was nothing about those losses that prepared me for this one in that, I think as parents, people say to me all the time. Oh, I can't even imagine what you're going through. And I know what that means is they won't allow themselves. To imagine what I'm going through, but for those that can imagine it, it really is exactly as horrifying and disorienting and, discombobulating as you think it would be. And those early days of just, sheer horror, really, it's just horror and then what you do. Because for me, I was very clear very early that story that we hear, which is completely false and made up about parents who've lost a child who never recover, quote-unquote recover, which isn't something we're aspiring to do from our grief anyway, but, they never recover. They're never the same. They shrivel up and, are never productive or happy or joyful or anything. I knew that was not going to be my story. That didn't respect me, it didn't respect Ben. It didn't respect my daughter. And I knew that wasn't going to be it. So if I wasn't going to buy into the story that I was being told was now my story, I had to write my own and I had to figure out, okay, if it's not that, then what, if I'm not going to allow myself to be in despair for the rest of my life. Then what? And how? And who? And all of the things? And how do I get there? And what happened for me, which was so empowering and powerful, is that I got just the knowing. Just a download dropped in and I just knew that the path for me was about being conscious and curious. And it resonates so much with how you speak about your experiences too. It's that sense of not turning away of it. That was what the conscious was about conscious of what the reality was conscious of all of the emotions accepting of it all, mostly the bad and the ugly, but the good as well. And the curiosity was about, if not that, then what, how do I, the early curiosity really was about when I'm sobbing so hard that I can't breathe, how do I breathe? What do I know? What's in my toolbox? Who could I access? Like, how do I figure this out? How do I just breathe? And that really became our rule as a, my, for my daughter and I was okay, we can do one hard thing a day, bless Glenn and Doyle, we can all do hard things. So we would plan we'll do one hard thing. And then the rest of the day, our job is just to breathe. That's where we started. We have to figure out how. In this post apocalyptic nightmare that is now our life, do we just breathe?

Michael: Yeah, and I want to go deep later as we converse into the practicality of it, because I think there's a lot there. And we live in a very strange world and society where death is all around us, but we never talk about it. And it's funny, because I say this kind of in a crass way, but sometimes I'll be at a restaurant with someone, and maybe they're having a bad moment or bad day, and they share something with me, and I look at them, and I go, you know you're sitting on top of like thousands of dead bodies right now, right? And I say that because it, it's like humanizing the reality of the world that we're in. And it's I don't know what you're complaining about with so much frequency because you're alive. The reason I have the benefit of being able to say this, which I do look at it as a benefit, and It's a little bit of a gift in a weird way was I experienced death for the first time when I was five years old my uncle was drinking and driving New Year's Eve died, closed casket, I'll leave it at that. Shortly after that experience, another death in the family my three childhood best friends were murdered. My mother died of an overdose. My grandmother died of dementia. All of this happened before I was 23 years old. And so it was like, I experienced this tremendous amount of death at such a young age. I think it did two things for me. One is it made me a little bit fearless. And I say that because I was like, And I still believe this to be true today. I'm like I'm going to die. So I might as well go for it. And two, it made me really value the moments that I have with humans, especially now, maybe not so much in my twenties when I was a little bit crazy, but especially now I'm like, Oh my God, this moment is so important. And so I'm wondering when you look back at some of these experiences that you had, especially growing up, filling this massive loss and grief of your own. Your mother and father, which obviously I resonate with deeply. What was it like for you to navigate the moment? And I want to go back to this cause I think it's really important. Those initial moments of finding out about the loss of someone.

Suzanne: It's so interesting. I think it's different every time. I don't think that I know it's different every time and it's different for every griever and so much of it has to do with the circumstances. So, my dad had cancer. He had a very short battle with cancer because they found it towards the very end. So, we got the opportunity to say everything we had to say. And there was no, there was no baggage left. There was nothing left unsaid. My mom, so, I had seen him the day he died. I had a lovely visit with him. It had been his birthday the day before. It was my daughter's birthday the day after they had blown out candles on a cake, like we had the moments. And I think you're so right in saying that we get these chances in our life to really shift our perspective. And when he got sick was really one of them for me, because I was, In my early thirties, I had an infant and a toddler. I wasn't ready to lose my dad. I wasn't ready for them to lose their grandfather. And so, it really shifted thinking about what's actually important and what really matters and what's worthy of complaining about. I'm with you. I have so little patience for people who are complaining about stuff. That's like first world pains at best and really self-indulgent at worst. When my mom died, it was a little bit different because she was intubated and in a medically induced coma by the time it got to her. So, I didn't get that chance to say goodbye and say all the things, but we had learned from my dad, 15 years before that, that we needed to say, I love you every time we saw each other. And we needed to make sure that as much as possible in fun and dysfunctional relationships, we were keeping the street clean, right? We were keeping that relationship as clean as we could. So, there wasn't any baggage. With Ben, I had, he'd struggled with mental illness for a long time. For at least a decade. And so, I was very clear as his parent that my role in his world was to be his safe place to land. And I was not interested in arguing with him about how clean his room was, whether he had brushed his teeth, if his clothes were put away, all the stuff that people argue about with their kids. I didn't care about any of that. I knew because the world was a really hard place for him that I was supposed to be his safe place to land. And so, I had really done that intentionally for a long time. And so even though when he died, it felt set in. And I literally received that middle of the night phone call from the police. I knew I had done everything and I knew he loved me, I knew he knew I loved him. And I'd been so intentional about our relationship and I think it's, I think of it so often I was at a store, not that long ago standing in line and a mother and a teenage daughter in front of me and the mother was upset with something the daughter had done. Just going on and on, and it was all I could do and I probably should have pulled her aside and just said to her, if that was the last conversation you had with your child would you be happy about it, because we just never know. And so, if we can come from that place of love and acceptance and thinking, wow, if this is the last interaction I had with someone, would I be okay with that? And that's not to say we never get angry with each other or we don't have harsh words or we don't, say things we regret. Sometimes we do, we're all human, but if we're aware of that and we're going back and making amends and making reparations, then I think it helps in those early moments to know that there's no regret there. Like for me, I really didn't go down that rabbit hole of what if shoulda, coulda, woulda there is no piece there. I saw that path very clearly. I saw that fork in the road after Ben died. And I thought I can go down that path and there is no peace for me there. So I'm just going to ignore that path. Cause I know I did everything I knew how to do. Every support we could find for him, every way I could support him, every way we could surround him with good people, I did everything. And he had a disease that I couldn't fix.

Michael: Yeah, and you can't, and that's why I, and I've shared this publicly on obviously, but like having attempted my own life twice, once when I was 14 and then once when I was 25, like I get it, like I get it and it's dark. And I look at my life now heading towards 40, like it would never happen. There's been a lot of work between that moment. Now, almost 15 years ago and today and to today, but I sit across from people every single day and I see the struggle, the hurt, the pain and while it may seem that people always say Oh, it's so selfish when people do things of this nature, I'm like, Yeah, to you, it's selfish, but you don't understand human suffering at the level of the person who is suffering the moment. And again, it's not that I like can justify it. I just get it. And you go, fuck man, this is really hard. And for some people, that piece, that thing that, that we are all seeking is unattainable. Like I recognize that. And that's a really hard thing to come to terms with. And I think about also being exposed to mental illness at such a young age witnessing my mother's journey with bipolar and schizophrenia, my grandmother's journey with dementia, many people around me. A lot of this, I think probably as the results of drugs. You witnessed this and you see so many people who suffer and ultimately, It's an out, it's the end of suffering. And I think about like sometimes in the journey, how I would take a step back and ask myself what could I have done about this? And ultimately the answer, the further down the rabbit hole I would go each time was there's nothing I can do. And the difficulty in the not doing anything means that you have to let go. And so I'm wondering. When you get that call in the middle of the night, you are now facing this new reality. Is there a reconciliation process with yourself?

Suzanne: I, yes, because I think as humans, we're programmed to be reflective and to be learning and to be, I am anyway, that's how I'm wired and that's how I operate. And I think we're designed that way. We deny it some, but that's how we're designed. And so there absolutely was. They're absolutely. And I saw that path, as I said, so clearly in the road where I could have gone down, what if I had, done something different, said something different, who knows. And I remember having a conversation with my daughter about a couple of things that had happened just before Ben died and said to her. I don't know, was that, did that mean for him that we were safe? Did that mean for him something that we'll never understand? And the reality is he had a disease. That culturally we're not very well equipped to help navigate. I didn't cause it, I couldn't control it. They couldn't cure it. And I think you're exactly right. If I, before Ben even struggled with mental illness, I used to always say, if we relabeled mental illness, cancer. We'd be having entirely different conversations about it. We'd be throwing a telethon. We'd be saying, fight cancer. I'm with you. Like we use all this kind of battle metaphors around cancer. He had a mental illness and ultimately he was suffering. And so for me, I really got to that place quickly where I thought I get it. Like I don't struggle with depression. I had anxiety for the first time, after he died and I could really see in those earliest days of my grief. Which is the closest I expect to get to what depression might feel like, that if you believed that was never going to change, that it was unchangeable, it would be impossible to continue in that way. As a grieving mom, I knew that depth of despair was temporary, that it would not be that terrible forever. But if I thought that it was going to be that terrible forever, I get it. He was suffering. So when I think of it from that perspective as a mom, I would give just about anything to have him still be here and to have things be different. But the reality is he was suffering and he's no longer suffering. So for me, there was a lot of peace in that. Because if we can get out of our way around our stigmas around mental illness and our, all our thoughts about whatever we think about it and accept it as a disease, which is why I choose to say he died of depression and anxiety because that's the reality.

Michael: Yeah. And what's so interesting too, is this is where it's very difficult. This is where I get up in arms a lot. And this is where I even get in trouble sometimes. But you look at the world that we live in the United States and North America specifically. Every single day, all and hear advertisements for mental health medication and Newsweek published this article two years ago about the fact that placebos were 60 percent more effective than most prescription medications for depression and anxiety. That tells you a lot. about the reality of the world that we live in.

Suzanne: And the meds are terrible.

Michael: They're well, and they're beyond, and that's so crazy. I was watching. I was watching UFC fight prelim the other night and on the commercial during the break, I don't know the name of the drug, but it goes, and if you're allergic to this drug, don't stop it. And if, or if you're allergic to this drug, stop taking it. And if you have suicidal thoughts, stop taking it. And it's a drug for depression. And I'm like, that's one of the side effects.

Suzanne: How can a drug for depression have a side effect of suicidal ideation?

Michael: Yeah, now I'm not a pharmacist and I don't know, I'll leave it at that. But I will say this is that the solution isn't always what people think it is. And sometimes they're unfortunately, isn't a solution, and you think about that, and I know that there's a lot of people because grief is a part of this daily life that we live, where especially if you lose someone close of a partner, a spouse, a child, a best friend, people will always go down that path of, why didn't I call them more? Why didn't I do this more? Why didn't I do that more? And I'm wondering, what would you say to people who feel like at some capacity that those losses are not only their fault, but that they should feel guilty about it?

Suzanne: So what I would say has to do a little bit with the amount of time that's lapsed since that happened. If you're in the very earliest days, I'm not here to challenge how you're making sense of the nonsensical. Cause we all need to make sense of the nonsensical, however we can. I will tell you, there is no peace there. There is no peace down that path of what if I had, I should have, I could have, I would have. If you're a little bit further away from the loss, then what I would encourage you to do is play that shoulda, coulda, woulda game all the way to the end. So my daughter and I were away for the weekend when Ben died. What if we had stayed home? I can't stay home forever. I can't babysit him forever. He's a grown man. He's going to go out in the world. He's going to live a full life. When you play that game all the way to the end, you can see, and again, this is after those first days where you're just trying to survive. You can see that there really was nothing you could do. And most of us, I absolutely firmly believe are doing the best we know how in any given moment. And if we can accept that about ourselves, then we can see that, there's nothing we could have done. And ultimately the other thing to remember is thinking that way is coming from our ego. Cause frankly, we're just not that powerful. I don't have the power. To fix what was bothering Ben fix. What was ailing him? I don't have that power. And so if we can accept that we don't have that much power and really look at, I was on a call with a group of grieving. It was a group of brief parents actually. And there was another woman who had lost her daughter to a mental illness. And the facilitator said, she had gone for the weekend. Her daughter had reached out that she was struggling. They lived in different cities. She'd gone to visit her for the weekend and then come home and felt really guilty because her daughter died the following week. And what if I had stayed? Okay. But realistically, could you stay? No, because you have a job, you have commitments, you have other things. Like, we just don't have the power. And if we play that all the way to the end. What we're wishing we could have done is probably not possible.

Michael: Definitely not possible. And also it's like the rumination of the what if will destroy you. And I experienced that firsthand. My best friend, when he got murdered, I immediately went to this place in my head where I was just like, dude, why didn't you just pick up the phone? Why did you not just return the call tech? Why don't you just go kick his door in and tell him to stop doing drugs and hanging out with these guys. And it haunted me for a good period of time, like a lot, like it really interfered with my fucking life. And then one day I realized I was like, you don't get to decide what people do. And it was just like such an aha moment to me because It was really a coming to a reconciliation with reality. And I love people are not going to like that. You said it, but I love the fact that you said it's because of your ego. Like you think that you got to control the world? Like you're greater than the sum total of another person and their choices. You're not the same way. Like you don't get to control. If somebody leaves you in a relationship or you get fired from a job or you win the lottery, like whatever that thing is, like you. Seemingly have no control over almost anything in life except the way that you choose to react I want to go a little bit deeper into understanding grief, because I feel like we live in a space in time now where people just don't have any tools, no coping mechanisms, no healthy way to understand this. It's not talked about, you no longer see the flags on caskets when soldiers come home, you no longer see funeral processions, you no longer really see people talking about it. And rarely, if you do, I think most people don't even know how to handle that. So, I think a great place to start where I think we should go would be to define grief. Can you define what that actually means?

Suzanne: Grief to me is a healthy response to loss of all kinds. It's that simple. It's healthy, it's normal. I share my story because I want people to understand that what's happening to them is normal. So much for me, even though I had grieved before, besides my parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents and colleagues and friends and all the things. I still didn't know enough about how grief really worked in order to be able to do it properly. Properly is not the right word because there really isn't a right way, but to do it in a way that for me felt healthy because there definitely are healthier ways and less healthy ways. So part of my mission is really to talk about it and to share with people what really happens. And that whatever is happening, even if you've never heard about it before, it's likely happened to many people who just didn't say anything and it's normal. So, I think the biggest for me this time around, the biggest thing that surprised me was the brain fog. And that's something that I hadn't experienced before the same way. And I think it's partly because, when my dad died, I had little kids. I didn't have time for my brain to lose itself, and this time I really, I honestly thought, Michael, that, Ben has died. I've lost my son, I am no longer the person I was before I got that phone call. I was very clear that there was the curtain across and the person who had existed before the phone call was not the same person as existed afterwards. And now somehow I have instant onset brain disease of some sort because my brain just did not work to the point that, we talk about confusion. We talk about the inability to concentrate muscle memory things like. I talk about showering. If you think about showering, you have a system. We all have a different one. I do shampoo and then conditioner. I leave the conditioner in, wash the body, rinse, all the things. We have a system, the way that we do it. Those early days, I would stand in the shower thinking to myself, okay, there's water hitting my head and I'm in the bathroom. So I must be in the shower. What on earth do I do here? I just had no capacity to do normal, everyday functional human things. My daughter tells a hilarious story. We had an idea one day that we should be able to feed ourselves, which if you're struggling to feed yourself, very normal, we struggled to feed ourselves for a very long time, cooking and shopping and all that is really difficult. The grocery store is a huge place of triggers and activators. And so we decided we should make a grilled cheese sandwich, it took us 45 minutes. Now in our defense, if you think about it, a grilled cheese sandwich actually has a lot of steps. You have to get out the bread and the mayo and the cheese and you have to put it all together and find a pot, find a frying pan, all the things. But for it to take us 45 minutes to do something that is your kind of, for many people, your go to easy comfort food, I'm tired, I could do that in my sleep. That's what the brain fog is about. And it really impacts our ability to read, I couldn't read. I still really struggle with dense reading, fiction or nonfiction. I'm reading a lot of fluffy things. My reading grade, I don't know what my, I have two university degrees. My reading level is pretty high. I'm an English major, but to think of the things I used to be able to read and comprehend and remember, that ability is not back yet. And I'm three years and a bit out. It impacts our reading. It impacts our memory. It impacts our ability to follow directions. So that sense that I have to do A and then B and then C and then D, which is part of why I think cooking was hard for me. I couldn't hold the thread. So, I would get from the, I would get to the first step and then think, Oh, shoot, I don't, what am I supposed to be doing next? I don't know. I don't remember. That's a very common one that people don't talk about because it makes us feel like there's something wrong with us. It makes us feel weak and all the things that we're conditioned to not want to share with people that we're feeling confused, disoriented. And really once I wrapped my head around that being a real thing and started to do some reading and some research and some learning about it.

What the brain's doing is really magnificent. And it means that we're confused and we have a foggy brain for about the first three to five years. So much longer than we expect. There's all kinds of physical symptoms that happen, pain, tingling, indigestion, increased appetite, decreased appetite, sleeplessness, oversleeping, like all of that physical stuff. And I think one of the things that's really important for people to understand is it's just exhausting. Grief is exhausting for a long time. And if you're grieving someone and you're also like the executor of the estate, for example, or you're having to deal with some of the administrative things, that's just an additional thing that makes it even more exhausting.

Michael: Which, which is so interesting because it, I've always thought about this, like death is a business in the United States. And I remember the first time I went to my, I'll never forget this. The first time I went to my uncle's the first time, the only time I went to my uncle's funeral when I was five we were, I was like, coat telling my grandmother around the funeral home with her sister, which it was her sister's kid and going into the office with her and them, like signing the paperwork and talking about money and not having money for it. And right, ‘cause this is very common. Like, I know people have taken out loans to have funerals, it's fucking crazy. And I just remember being like, Oh, this is a business. So, it's no wonder people are so exhausted all the time in the beginning of dealing with this. And also it's your body's autonomic response to stress, to put you into fight or flight, to put you into survival mode and the amount of time that you're in that survival mode can go in a multitude of different ways. You go look at, for instance, a person that comes to mind is Wim Hof. Now, Wim Hof is famously known for his breathing modalities, climbing Mount Everest in his underwear crazy, unbelievable human things, like getting injected with E. Coli and forcing it out of his body, it's wild. All of this stemmed from the suicide of his wife, all of it. And you look at that and you go, sometimes the brain goes so deeply into fight or flight that you now become a new person. And this is what's so interesting because people will say I'm different since that happened, I don't understand it or this or that. And it's actually entirely reasonable. Because you've suffered pain, even some of the clients that I've coached over the years, they've had massive losses and they're like what do I do? And I'm like you live and we figure out how to get you into that place. And this is one of the things that you do, and I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about the work that you do now. And I, the why feels obvious, but I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about your work, but also the why behind it.

Suzanne: Yeah. And I love what you're saying. And I love that there's now like a name for post traumatic growth. It's actually a thing that is possible and they're studying and I think you're exactly right. I don't think we're supposed to be the same person. Because if you've gone through something like that kind of a rupture in your life, and it can be the death of someone, it could be an estrangement, it could be a divorce, a separation, it could be all kinds of different things. Those really big ruptures, I think are supposed to change us. And if they don't, then I think we've missed something. And I don't say that to buy into that, everything happens for a reason. I think that's malarkey. I think things happen to us. And then, as you've said, we get to choose how we respond to them. And one of the things I chose was growth. I knew I was shattered to pieces. I literally could see myself. I have such a clear vision of, those big chunky puzzle pieces from Survivor that they used to make those big 3d puzzles. It's usually a tree of some sort. I could envision myself walking with my arms full of big chunky puzzle pieces, like beyond capacity. There was no way I could pick up another one. And there were still pieces of me on the ground. And I had to decide in that moment, what pieces I kept and what pieces I left behind. And get okay with that. I couldn't carry them all. And some of them like people pleasing overly taking care of other people. Some of them, I was happy to leave behind. It was like, I have no capacity for that. I don't care if I get it back. I can take a step away from that. And some of it, I really had to be thoughtful about, okay, do I put down something I'm holding to pick up something else, and trying to figure all of that out while, in the nightmarish focus, post-apocalyptic nightmare really just took a lot of that conscious, curious growth mindset. And so, part of what I do, if I'm working with individual grievers is help them find that path. It's going to be different for everyone. It's that one baby step at a time, one little decision. We're making decisions all day, every day. If we can make them with some intentionality, with some purpose, then we can rebuild ourselves. We can create the life that we're living next. And I was really grateful to realize early on that, there was a life here to be lived and it was mine. And the fact that Ben was no longer living, his didn't mean, and was never intended to mean that I should stop living mine. So that's the work that I do with individual grievers and the place that I love to spend the most of my time really is on the big picture culture shift, because as you identified for us so brilliantly. We're living in a culture where we don't want to talk about grief or death or loss, we want to ignore it completely, we would like for it to happen privately behind closed doors, quickly preferably, we don't want anything to do with it. And the reality is, if we understand that grief is a response to loss of all kinds. We're grieving to various degrees all the time. Not always ones that leave us shattered in pieces on the ground. But there's always something that's going on that is creating loss of identity, loss of security, loss of a job, a business, there's losses of all sorts, big and small. So, if that's true, then we need to very quickly get better at understanding it and supporting each other through it. So, what I love to do is talk as we've done today about how exactly grief shows up. And I love to do that in workplaces because the average leave in the US right now is just over five days. And that's restricted by your relationship to the person, whatever the parameters are in your company. Grief experts suggest that we actually need about 20 days off. So, most of us are not going to get anywhere near that. We're back at work when we're still in the acute phase, and we don't even know which way is up and we can barely breathe. And we're supposed to show up like nothing happened, and workplaces in general mirror. The gap in our society, there's a gap there of understanding of knowledge of skills of support structures of policies that would allow grievers to come back to the workplace and be fully supported. And that helps them to reintegrate more quickly. And it really shifts the culture of the company to one of really deep compassion and support. The reason I think it's so important for us to do that in the workplace is because grievers are suffering. And no employer that I've ever talked to yet actually wants their employees to be suffering. And that's not what we want for our valued team members that grievers are suffering. Grievers are leaving. Grievers are withdrawing. They're going on leaves, it's all not good. Companies for the most part, genuinely care. They genuinely want to be taking care of their people. And there's been such a culture shift since COVID where employees have really forced employers to take a look at some of those cultural things. And it's really shifted what we're prepared to put up with at work. I think the millennials are leading the charge. And those of us that are older than them are gratefully following in that they are demanding to be supported at work, to be seen, heard, and valued. And When they're not, they just leave. They have none of that sense of, in our, in my generation, and I suspect yours too, like we had that sense. Oh my gosh, if you didn't have a year at a place on your resume, it was a big black mark. Now they'll leave after two weeks. They don't even finish the orientation. They're like, no, not for me. Oh, they go. So, workplaces also give us that opportunity to have people that already have shared agreements. They already have a way of operating that we can leverage. With knowledge and understanding and skills to really shift how we support each other. So that's what I love doing. I love talking to business leaders. I love going into businesses and, looking at their culture, looking at leadership, compassion. We have to start there looking at, what's your culture around vulnerability and honesty about what's really going on. Are we all pretending, or is this a place where most people feel safe to be themselves? There's all kinds of shifts we can make so that then we can start to have these awkward, messy conversations about grief and loss, which stay awkward and messy because we're not having them. And if we started to have them, then we can build the skills so that they get, we get better and better at it. We learn from each other, right? There's a big gap in our knowledge because we're not learning from each other and we can close all of that up. We can create equity in what people are offered. We can level the playing field of understanding. We can make all of those shifts in a workplace.

Michael: Yeah, and I think we need to and there's what feels like a really important top down approach that needs to take place in order for that to manifest. And I was thinking, this is lost on me and I apologize. I can't remember. But there was a congressman or a senator recently whose wife had died like that morning and was doing a press conference. Like he was doing a talk to the press the same afternoon, and he was just like, guys, my wife just died, but I need to do this real quick, and it's what world are we living in where someone feels like they're obligated to that, and I know one of the big things that you talk about is like giving people permission to grieve. And I see a moment like that. And I saw comments on this on social where people like he's so brave and I'm like, he probably doesn't even know what's happening right now, and he'll look back on that and five years and he'll be like, what in the hell was I thinking?

Suzanne: You will have no recollection of what he said.

Michael: That's exactly right. You're in such a fight or flight mode right there. So triggered your body's doing what the body does to survive. And. You think about that and it's if the leaders of our country, let alone the leaders of our companies don't understand it for themselves, like how in the world can you understand it at like a base level and because you talk about this idea about the Permission to grieve, like from not only just the individual perspective and how you give yourself that, but how from leadership perspectives do we implement, I run a company, I've got 40 people who work under me. What does that look like on both sides of the equation?

Suzanne: Yeah. I think because of where we're at right now, culturally as grievers, we really need to give that permission to ourselves, ‘cause we're not going to get it from friends, family, social bosses. We're not, we're just not going to get it yet. When we look at wanting to do that in an organization, you're right. It absolutely starts top down because that vulnerability and honesty about emotions, which is the other piece that for most of us, we're conditioned to deny, ignore, bottle up, especially the bad ones, which is a whole different paradigm problem. If leadership isn't modeling that level of honesty and vulnerability, nobody in the organization is going to, it's as simple as that. No one will be more vulnerable than the leader because it's not safe. So we need to be really consciously creating safe spaces where acknowledging emotions. I'm not talking about therapy sessions around the boardroom table. I'm not talking about the boss being the therapist. I'm talking about acknowledging and naming emotions. That has to start with leadership. So here's a great example. We're talking about losses of all kinds. We've launched a product. It didn't go the way we wanted. We've called the team together to have that debrief pivot, restructure, rebrand, whatever the meeting is about for what we do next. What if at the start of that meeting, the leader said something like we worked really hard. I did, you did, I know we all did our best and this still didn't go the way we want it. And I have a whole lot of feelings about that. And then name some of them. I'm feeling frustrated. I'm feeling disappointed. I'm feeling sad. Just name them. If you're feeling some of those too, I'd be happy for us to do a popcorn of who wants to name one of them out loud. And if nobody does, that's okay. But I want you to know that I expect you're going to have some feelings about how this went and that's okay. And then we pivot to what went wrong. How do we fix it? All the things that we need to do as business people to keep our business running. But if we could create that space. For that very short, very simple conversation. We're allowing people to see that naming what's real is accepted here. And it's valued here because the leadership is doing it. And that's how we start to shift the culture. And if we can practice, I think part of what happens when we define grief so narrowly as only being about the loss of a person is we lose out on so many opportunities to practice, right? Because I think back to my early days, I was a grieving mom, grieving out loud. I am not a good first assignment. If you are uncomfortable with emotions, if you are uncomfortable with grief, if you don't know what to say or do, I am not a place to start. I'm sure I was terrifying, but if we start with this product launch didn't go well. And let's look at the grief we're feeling because of that, we did a restructure. There's grief that comes out of that, we moved offices. There's grief linked to that. There's grief happening in our businesses all the time. And if we can start to name it as such we're looking at the foundations of maybe the stress and burnout that we're talking about, we name it as grief, we share what emotions are coming up for us, we let it go and we move on the magic of naming emotions is just naming them starts to move them keeps them flowing and what we want is to let them keep flowing.

Michael: Yeah, we don't want to get stuck.

Suzanne: And we get stuck when we deny.

Michael: Yeah, you do get stuck when you deny and I've seen this in my own career. I've been leading people since 18 years old. I had 52 people under me as a teenager. And so trust me when I say I've made 18. Every mistake in every capacity that you could possibly humanly imagine. And the one that I've had to get better at over the years is giving people space to be emotional, because here's what's interesting. Even as the trauma coach and the host of this podcast and the author and all those things, for me, business is business. And that's just how I've always looked at it. And I had a mentor once tell me the only emotion that belongs in business is celebration. And to some extent I agree with that, right? This is why that's why I'm contacting them to some extent. I agree with that. Because you need to be resilient in business. You need to be hard nosed in business. You need to be able to walk in and get the shit done in business. However, businesses involve humans. And the thing that I've had to learn how to be really, really good at, which was not something I was good at when I started, but something that I've learned to do over time is to create spaces for anyone on my team to come to me with the reality of life. And I'm really good at it now, but there was not always a time that I was, you could come to me and you'd be like, Hey, this thing happened. I'm in grief. I'd be like, cool. Good luck.

Suzanne: At the meeting at two. Yeah.

Michael: We have, where's my email with the reports. But that's how I thought about business. And then now I look at it just the other day. I won't name them, but a team member messaged me about something really crazy happening in their life. And I said, go handle it. Take as much time as you need. And I have an unlimited PTO policy in my company. And I do that because life is going to life, like at the end of the day and it happens for me, I'm on the backside of being so sick, I couldn't get out of bed for five days. And so, I'm doing emails in bed and shit, but I can't have calls. I can't do podcasts. And it made me think about something that you said, which I think is really important that people overlook is that. You said from a scientific and research perspective, we need 20 days to grieve. And I, it kills me the idea that you could have one of the most traumatic losses in your life and expect to be functional a week later. But I apply the same idea ideal to you just got a breakup or a divorce, or you went through this or went through that. My last breakup took me out of the game for months, like it really messed me up. And it's like that person's still alive. I'm still alive. We had to pack up things and move separate. And this was fucking almost four years ago. But you look at that and the thing that comes to mind for me, it's imagine what happens if somebody dies. And that's such a great point that you made talking about this 20 days. What I'm going to go into this permission a little bit deeper and the reason why is because what I attempted to do when I've suffered losses or grief or whatever, however we are defining it, nose down deeper into work, more gym, more work, more gym, more work.

Suzanne: And how'd that work out for you, Michael?

Michael: I made a lot more money and I got in better shape. But here's the downside, I was an emotional recluse, I get stuck, I get lost. My friends are like breaking my door down, dude. What's going on? And so I'm wondering, you talked about this idea, people need to first give themselves permission. I don't think you and I have effectively gone into that yet. What does that look like? Because as a leader, I don't know if you don't tell me.

Suzanne: Right. And I think that's part of the permission, right? Part of the permission is to know, to give yourself permission to not do what you did, to not just numb it with whatever, there's a million ways we can numb it. And we need to do some numbing to survive, right? It's okay to be in freeze mode. That's all right. But what we need permission for is to feel all the emotions. to share what's true for us. One of the most interesting things about grief is it's a unique experience for everyone is this universal thing that's happens, that's unique. Every time the one commonality for everyone is that grief needs to be witnessed. We need to be seen and understood for what is happening to us and what we're experiencing. And in a culture where we don't have permission to grieve at all, we need to find witnesses, we need to find people that we can share our truth with, that we can talk about what's happening to us, that we can talk about our loved one, that we can talk about where we're struggling, where we're doing okay, we need places where we can be witnessed. And that's one of the things that we can do in the workplace by giving permission for showing up in the state you're in to be okay. And yes, I understand the drive that we need to be in business, but as you said, our business is done by humans and we know that if they're really struggling and if they're having to deny a huge part of what's true for them in order to be calm and collected at work, they're not functioning the way we need them to be in their job duties. So if we can create a space where they can come to their direct report, if that's appropriate to a senior leader to someone in the organization, who's the designated safe person, I don't care how you do it, but there needs to be somewhere where people can come and speak what's true for them and be supported. So whether that looks like they go to flex time or they go to a hybrid model of work and home and at the office you provide meals for them, you provide a shared calendar so they don't have to worry about what meetings are. There's a million things we can do that are cost neutral or very low cost that really make a difference in how we support people, but it all has to start with them understanding that coming to work. As their whole selves with their emotions, with what's true for them is acceptable. And that's where that leadership modeling and that explicit giving of permission is really important because we're all operating from that place where we've had mentors say, yeah, the only emotion that's allowed here is celebration. Like we just look at what's good. And, I'm old enough that I first came into the workplace when leave yourself at the door was the very normal understanding of how the workplace operated. Like you just, you were, we went to workshops where you talked about how you could write down everything that was bugging you in your personal life and leave it outside the door and then go into the office. We were so disconnected from ourselves and our reality. It was really not healthy, and we see that now, we know better. So now we get to do better. And the next step, really, is to create a space where it's explicitly permitted for you to bring your whole self. For you to bring what's true for you. And get supported. Because as you are struggling, as you are grieving, even in those very acute days when you're back a week after your person has died. You can still be productive and most people really want to be at work, right? We need to be financially. Most people can't afford to take an extended unpaid leave. And that's mostly what's being offered. If you need more than the, however many days, most people can't afford that. And the other thing is the workplace often is a really great respite. It's a respite place from our grief because we get to show up, we know what our tasks are, we know how to do them for the most part. It's really tough, if you're in a new job, it's really hard. So, you need to extra support those people. But if we're in a job we've been doing for a while, we have a comfort level with our duties. We can do them with a little bit of ease and it's a place where we get to feel connected to that normal world that for the most part feels like it's proceeding away without us. So we get to touch normal, we get to test reintegration, right? We get to test and practice. What does a conversation in the coffee room work like now? Like for me, and I know for so many grievers in those early days, we really don't even know how to talk to people anymore because my reality is so different. From what everyone else is talking about, that it's really hard to make that connection. So work can be a really great place for everybody, right? The griever and the support people to practice all of those things. And it's only going to work. With intense compassion from everyone, with some knowledge, with some skills base, we have to learn the skills that we don't have because we've grown up in a culture that wants to ignore grief now, right? As you said, it's so interesting. We don't see hearses in the road anymore. We don't see funeral processions going to the cemetery. We don't see grief. We're not laying someone out in the parlor. It's now a living room and we watch TV there, we don't do death the way that we used to. So there's even less opportunity for us to talk about it.

Michael: Yeah, which is less opportunity and more awkwardness. And the thing that keeps coming to mind as you're talking about this is, Okay, it's hard to make the connection, it's hard to find the support, it's hard to show up as yourself in the workplace, let alone in friendships or reality. And you look at this and you go is so my first thought is it is so awkward to sit and have to be in the space with someone. I'm being very selfish in this moment because I want to create context about the way people think. And you sit and you go, I don't want to have to deal with your problem. And then on the other side of it, I'm like, Oh my God, I'm a problem. These people probably think I'm helpless and I can't do anything. And every five seconds, Pam keeps coming up to me and are you okay? Can I help you? Pam didn't give a shit about me two weeks ago. Pam doesn't give a fuck about why is she over here all the time. And so I'm wondering is I'm right.

Suzanne: And so it's that's brilliant. That's exactly it.

Michael: And so how in the world do we support each other on both sides of this conversation in this space?

Suzanne: The first thing we have to do is admit that we don't know. We don't know. We don't know what to say. We don't know what to do. We all feel awkward, we feel tons of fear. And we have to approach it from a no shame, no blame place, right? We don't know any of those things because no one ever taught us. And then we're supposed to somehow respond to someone's most catastrophic moment with an empty toolbox. So we need to fix that. We need to let go of all of that. We need to feel the fear and do it anyway, right? This is, these are all immense acts of courageousness, right? This is takes courage. And if we're having conversations as an organization, right? If I come in and then we're having meetings where we're talking about, how does grief really work? Where are we creating grief in our workplace? We're opening up those conversations. We're all sharing how awkward we feel. I'm there to say, yes, this feels uncomfortable. I'm a professional, I am living, breathing, talking this 24 seven and I feel uncomfortable and it's okay, we're learning a new skill. It's supposed to feel weird, right? If you think back to the first time you drove a car, I remember it vividly because my mom had a standard and she decided I should drive home from taking my paper test where I got my learners and we live somewhere very hilly, I will never forget it. It was awkward because I didn't know what I was doing. And then I got better, I learned, I practiced. We need to create opportunities to express how uncomfortable we are, learn new skills, practice them. That's how we get better at things. And we go, huh, I don't really know how to do that. I wish I knew how to do it better because that's the other thing I hear from people all the time. They want to do better, they want most of all to do no harm, but they don't know how to do that. So let's talk about it. Let's create a culture where we have those conversations and it's okay to say, I don't know my, I don't know, reflects our cultural. I don't know. None of us know. Let's find out together. And the other thing that's super helpful is to have a policy. If you have a return to work policy for people who are injured, where you talk about what accommodations can be made, what supports can be offered, all the different things, what their integration reintegration schedule might look like, we need something like that for grief, because what that allows us then is a structure for this awkward conversation. So, the supervisor or the direct report can pull out the policy and say let's look at this together. And then we have a framework for that conversation. So we're not trying to make it up as we go along. We're not feeling scared, we're going to say or do the wrong thing, and let's be honest. We're going to say and do the wrong thing because we're learning. So go back, make amends, apologize. We will all be fine, but we have to try, we have to do it.

Michael: Yeah. And Pam respect my space. I already told you, I'm fine.

Suzanne: And that's, and I just, thank you for reminding me. Cause I did want to talk about Pam and what I hear from business leaders and you could probably resonate with this as someone who's like celebrations only what business leaders tell me is they don't want a lot of drama. So when I start to talk to them, they're like, Oh, it's going to be very dramatic. And what I have to tell you is it actually reduces the drama because if before that person comes back, you've had a conversation with them about what they want that return to look like. And then you've talked to their team members to say, you know what? They just want to be left alone for the first week. And then could you come and, share what you have to say with them or please everyone come the first day. Cause they'd rather get it over with. You can have told everybody for them so they don't have to keep telling and saying the most awful thing that they have to say over and over again. You can give them permission that when they feel overwhelmed, they get up and they go for a walk. They get up and they go to a quiet space. Nobody needs to be sitting, crying at their desk. We don't need to be crying in the bathroom. We know grief is overwhelming. The emotions are really big. Sometimes we cry. So from there, how do we as a group want to deal with that? Do we want people to be crying in the bathroom? No, of course not. Nobody wants that. So, do we have a quiet room? I know in COVID, one of the big hospital systems in the States set up serenity rooms for the nurses. And I thought it was so brilliant. We do it for preschoolers and kindergartners, right? Go to the quiet corner, sort yourself out, calm yourself down and then come back. But as adults, somehow we're just supposed to skip that part. And we're just supposed to be fine all the time. It's not how we work. So create a quiet corner equivalent, right? When you feel overwhelmed at your desk. Yes. Fire me a text. Take your phone with you. I'll know if I don't see you at your desk. You're off for a quick walk and you'll be back. If I need you in an emergency, I can phone you. There's no drama to that. The person just gets up and takes care of themselves. Pam doesn't have to come and be like, are you okay? What's going on? Tell me about it. They don't have to because nothing is visible. We're all taking care of ourselves because we're grown ups.

Michael: Yeah. And I'll tell you this as a leader and from a leadership perspective, I don't want people to feel like that there is shame in their emotions and this is, here's where it gets difficult. Cause I want to go into this too. We. Statistically, we spend more time at work, whether you're a W2 employee or a founder like me, we spend more time at work than we do in any other environment. And you said something that I think is so important in that we reduce the drama. On the front side by having the conversation because you're removing the elephant in the room and that to me is so unbelievably important because I want my people to be successful and the more that they are, the more that I am. And that's a win for me all day long. That's the same reason why, with this podcast, the more we can have conversations like this and somebody right now, and I'm going to tell you this from a leadership perspective, someone right now is listening to this conversation. Statistically knowing the thousands of people listening to this, they have had a death in their life recently. And their boss is treating them like crap and expecting them to show up and do what they were doing after a week off. With all the expectations, all of the money, all of the stress, all of the, what do I do with the will? Do we even have a will there's medical bills? We got to do it, and that person listening to this right now, I'm going to tell you something that you need to hear. You need to leave that job. If they are not giving you the space that you need to walk down this path, because. There is absolutely no way if dealing with the worst thing that's ever happened to you, you're not getting the support that you need. And let me preface this as well. It's not my job as a leader, go to therapy, get a coach, go to a group grief group, go and do whatever you, that is not my job here. My job is to make sure that you are good and supported in the space in which you are under my supervision, ‘cause you're like a toddler to me, Lord knows I got to make sure you're good. But outside of that, I'm being silly. But it is true, right? But in that moment, like that is the only thing I'm responsible for. But you have to be responsible for yourself first. And if there's not a space where you feel the support that you need, I'd highly contemplate you considering another path.

Suzanne: And that's what happens, right? Lots of them leave. Yes. And we don't want that. That's so expensive. We don't want people to leave.

Michael: It's unbelievably expensive, but here's the thing, going back to this, a lot of us being about personal responsibility, everybody at the individual level needs to become responsible for having this conversation for knowing what they need for going and doing the work and getting the support, bringing it up, because I'll tell you right now. The vast majority of people listening to this are probably not in a leadership role, but they have to be the ones like, Hey, I, we don't have this policy. And Bill had this thing that happened a year ago. And remember, we didn't really know what to do. Like you need to share this conversation in this episode with the people in the leadership roles and wherever you are in your life. That said, Suzanne, this has been an amazing conversation. I love this. Just, I could go down this path all day long, just from the leadership and business perspective, but it's a human conversation that we're having for those who want to learn more from you before I ask you my last question how can they reach out to you and find you?

Suzanne: So the best place to find me is on my website, which is suzannejabour.com. And I actually have a special thing because I know people who listen to podcasts, Love Finding Great Podcasts. So if you go to suzannejabour.com/podcasts, I will send you an email with 10 of my favorite, most recent episodes. So, you can listen to some more, listen from different perspectives, every host, we ended up talking about something different. And then if you already know that you need to work with me and you want to reach out, there's a link on my website. You can get onto my calendar and we can figure out how I can best serve you and your organization.

Michael: Great. And guys, remember go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com for that and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend. What does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Suzanne: To me, to be unbroken means knowing that kernel of who you are, which is a kernel of love is unbreakable and the rest of it, I think of as that Japanese pottery, it's called Kintsugi where they take the broken pieces of the pottery and they glue them back together with gold. The kernel of you is unbreakable and the rest of it, you put back together slightly different, more beautiful than it was before.

Michael: I love that. And yes, we all are. And I think, and I would like to believe there's a little bit of gold inside of all of us. My friend, thank you so much for being here. Unbroken Nation, thank you guys for listening. Please subscribe to the podcast. Remember that when you share this episode, you're helping other people transform their trauma to triumph breakdowns to breakthroughs and to become the hero of their own story.

And until next time,

my friends be unbroken.

I'll see you.