This is the transcript of a podcast episode. You can listen to the episode here. Text has been edited for clarity.
Katharine: Hello and welcome to the empathetic workplace podcast. I’m Katharine Manning, author of the book, The Empathetic Workplace: Five steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job. Today’s episode features Meghan Reardon Jarvis. Meghan is a therapist who specializes in trauma and grief, and after talking with her, I now think she has a subspecialty in joy. It’s Christmas week, and I wanted to share this episode with you now because for a lot of people, Christmas has each of those in equal measure. I think she’ll have some words to help get you through and also to help those around you who are feeling those things as well.
In addition, Meghan is a mom and she has wonderful advice on parenting through these challenging times. She and her husband did an incredible thing: When the quarantines went in place, they loaded up the car with their three kids and everyone’s various remote work needs and they went on a road trip to visit the national parks. I’ve been following along the amazing places they’ve been on Facebook through her blog, Grief is my Side Hustle. I really loved talking with Meghan and I’m so glad to share this conversation with you.
Meghan, it’s so good to have you. Thank you for doing this.
Meghan: [00:01:13] Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here.
Katharine: So where did you grow up?
Meghan: So I grew up in Massachusetts. My early years were sort of in a farm area on the North shore and then my parents migrated to Cape Cod where they spent 35 years.
Katharine: And where do you live now?
Meghan: Now I live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, not all that far from you. And we have been there in the DC area since I came down after my first graduate program in ‘96.
Katharine: What was your very first job?
Meghan: Oh, my gosh, I was a babysitter. That’s probably the answer. The one that I just thought of as like a real job was I was like 12. And I worked as a cashier. It’ll [00:02:00] tiny little like shop in my town that sold newspapers and coffee, but I was fired for not being able to make change.
Katharine: How did you even get a job at 12 working in a store?
Meghan: I didn’t look 12. I mean, I was the middle child of a big family and at 12 I probably looked 15 or 16 and I don’t think the guy asked me. It was one of those places where it was like donuts and coffee and they just needed people and it did not work out well. It wasn’t good.
Katharine: I wanted to ask you what your job is now using only three verbs.
Meghan: Holding space, validating with compassion, and providing hope.
Katharine: Beautiful. Gorgeous. Thank you. All right. And then just something fun. What is something that has made you happy lately? Whether it is just a TV show or a book, or like some activity that you’ve started.
Meghan: The thing that is making me daily happy is that my husband raided our collection of a thousand CDs, and so every time we get in the car, there’s like an old school throwback CD favorite. I can’t describe how much joy that is bringing me, and I would highly recommend it. It is joy all the time.
Katharine: That is such a great idea. I love that. How did you get into this line of work? Why did you become a therapist focused on trauma?
Meghan: So one of the reasons I am a trauma therapist is that there was an early childhood trauma in my life. Someone who was considered like a cousin to my family, drowned in this really small town on Cape Cod.
But the system, the system that I grew up in had a lot of silent and a lot of quiet and a lot of non-explanation around. Sort of how do you move forward? I was really not okay. I was in second grade going into third grade and I just didn’t know what to do with all the feelings. And so I was constantly cuing outward to other people, like, what are, what are other people doing?
What are, you know, are they okay? And unfortunately for my mom, she got really terrible PTSD and, um, she just really could not be available to help with other people’s emotions. And so I developed like lots of kids, you know, if you have an alcoholic parent and abusive parent and mentally ill parent or someone who’s physically ill, you’re really likely to develop emotional anxiety, which is sort of the, trying to anticipate how things are going to go.
And so I really think that that sort of started the looking to other people to understand how much of my feeling was okay to have how much of my feeling and the unfortunate thing for kids is if you don’t have an adult to help you kind of interpret how you are, what ends up happening, because we don’t have the intellect to do anything else is you believe that how you are is a problem, that it is, instead of a thing that you’re feeling, it is who you are. And who you are is not okay because no one else is feeling that way. No one else is doing those things. You know, my neuro-biological setup is to sort of cue to other people, see how they’re doing, and that can kind of lead to the road of co-dependency and as an adult, as I’ve come to learn that and understand that I really had to sort of learn to refocus and have it be that I’m the leading lady in my movie. And that just because somebody else on the side gets, you know, a burnt bagel, I don’t need to worry about that. And that’s true. And it’s true in parenting as well, you know, and that’s really difficult because parenting is codependent, right? I mean, it’s literally co-defendant, but if my kid has a really bad day because of a bad play date with somebody else, I have to be really careful not to let that energy come in on my day.
So it’s a constant kind of work in progress. It’s probably easier to do as a clinician when I know I’m in my clinician hours than it is to do otherwise, but it’s relevant to all of the interactions that we have.
Katharine: [00:06:07] Talk a little bit more about parenting kids, and it doesn’t have to be necessarily personal relationship with your personal kids, but do you have advice for parents? A lot of kids are struggling right now. Kids are scared about COVID, about politics, about wildfires, all kinds of things. Do you have some advice for parents and teachers? People who love kids?
Meghan: We have this thing in therapy that we call it corrective experience, which basically means like with another generation, you’re able to show up for them in a way that nobody was able to show up for you.
And so what my kids and I talk about with COVID is, I don’t have a template to help them that’s based on my childhood. We had this whole conversation about like HIV, because that was the closest that I could really bring, but it’s of course nothing the same. Cause you weren’t going to catch HIV by going into 7/11 without a mask on.
So, you know, I just talked to them honestly, as honestly as I can, I’m like this scares me, this scares daddy. We don’t really know either. We’re trying to trust scientists, you know, to understand what to do, but also just like anything difficult that happens, we don’t want this to be the overarching theme of our lives.
Most of us, you know, we lost a lot of stuff, graduations and bat mitzvah and favorite homeroom classrooms. I mean, we don’t need to delineate the degree to which we lost things, but we do need to validate it. Right? So anything that kids want to come to me and tell me that they are heartbroken about, I’m not playing soccer this year, I’m not seeing these friends, I don’t say, Oh, but. Oh, but is a minimizer. Oh, but is, Don’t have those feelings. So I just say, tell me what that feels like. Is that the worst? [00:08:00] You tell me? What does that feel like? You tell me, and then we just sit and I do the exact same thing that we just talked about.
Like, yeah, so you’re worried maybe won’t have a place on your team next year. I get that. That makes total sense to me. That phrase, that makes total sense to me–first of all, I don’t say it unless it’s true, but I say it a lot to my kids. The other phrase that I use with them at night is, it’s so silly and sometimes my husband says to me is, How are your feelings? Is there anything above a five I should know about? I think, you know, just the short, quick, how are your feelings, any important feelings I should know about? And sometimes they’ll say, yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it now. Most of the time they come to me once they’re above a five, because they kind of know our drill about things.
You know, I’ve shared with them early on in COVID, I have a lot of clients who live alone. And so all the stuff that we need, like the physical attachment stuff the, just validation, you know, a [00:09:00] client told me this story a long time ago, and it has stuck with me forever. She was having a great day. I said, why are you having a great day? And she told a story about a really nice exchange with the person that gave her coffee, and then they also gave her a free danish. And then somebody, when she was walking across Dupont Circle said she liked her skirt. She was wearing an amazing skirt. And then she had a nice exchange with the security guy in her building. And then she came up and she saw me and we don’t get any of that right now. We don’t get any of that validation that you matter on the planet and that you’re a good person and that I like you. And I’m happy about your skirt.
So particularly for people who don’t have other people in their homes, what I have been saying is we got to really make joy, like an active–and joy to me. I have a slightly different definition than the dictionary, but joy is about in the moment, short, spontaneous, physical sensations of letting go. So it’s like dancing and jumping on a trampoline and you know, it’s something physical in your body. Laughing. We need that. Joy is a little bit more about being available, you know, with the energy that you have to augment the moment so that you release some of the tension that you’ve been carrying.
Katharine: [00:10:22] So it sounds like things like the music, right?
Meghan: Yeah. And so, and I have been working on this with clients for a long time.
There’s always an edge. Your kids are having a squirt gun fight in the line and you’re working and you kind of want to go out there. Joy is going out there, you know, joy is this part of us that comes in and knocks and you either open the door or you don’t. So you don’t necessarily plan for it, but most people know when it knocks.
Sometimes my work is about helping them hear the knock. Like the other day we saw on the side of the road, a big Creamery, it was like Creamery. And it was like, we now have ice cream. It was nine o’clock in the morning. And I was like, who wants ice cream for breakfast? Like, if you ask them, they will tell you that that changed the whole energy of their day.
And that’s what joy can do. Joy can just change the whole energy of your day. And so for me, the part that I would say is a different definition is the spontaneous component. I am listening for when it’s right there. And I lean into it whenever I can, which might be turning the volume of the music up. I don’t have a problem finding it because there was so much time period in my life where it just wasn’t available to my entire family, that it’s the corrective experience I’m always looking for. The thing that I have told my clients who live alone is Amazon sells a pack of two disco balls. They’re literally like a disco ball that you put in a regular lamp. They spin when you turn them on. And they project disco. And like, I challenge a person to be able to sit there, neutrally in a room where there is a disco ball.
Katharine: [00:12:03] Okay. Will you talk a little bit about your trip? What made you do it and what you’re doing?
Meghan: Yeah, I mean, I will tell you honestly, so, you know, my mom died suddenly about a year ago in August. And it was completely and totally just debilitating to me, just took me out, took my knees out from underneath me.
And this is true of grievers. They often have a fantasy project in their mind that opens up in order, I think, to sort of offer a different part of imagination and hope and suddenly they decided they want to go back to ballet dancing, and they never did that before. But it seems to be true in grief.
And mine was, I wanted to go to the national parks. So we came home. My husband is a really good planner. Friends gave me all kinds of books. And I mean, I really, I wanted to go all over the world, but again, I have three kids and a business and a dog. So I was like, we could do the national parks. So we planned one trip with my sister who lives in Seattle to go to Glacier.
And then another trip that was going to be the Grand Canyon and a couple of the parks that were close by to the Grand Canyon. So that was a spring break trip, which got canceled right at the beginning of March when COVID started. And then a summer trip, which we waited a little bit longer, but canceled.
And I have really been having a hard–during the day, I do well when we get to 7:30, 8:00 at night, which is probably related to me being tired. My mind starts to offer me all of the terribles, the terribles at sundown. And I know the antidote to those terribles, which I can’t do anything about. I can’t change the things that I feel afraid of. I can’t make the COVID virus go away. I have a really hard time with 99.9% of what happens politically. And I don’t exactly rock back and forth in the corner, but I, you know, I have to show up for myself. I have to figure out a way to help manage the real fear.
And it’s not, it’s not a ghost under your bed fear, you know, it’s real. And so I took what I know to be true, which is augment the possibility for joy and have things to look forward to. So, you know, what was really interesting was, and we did this while we were up in Cape Cod cleaning out my mom’s house is that the kids really sort of almost like simultaneously started having a conversation about how sad they were, that we didn’t get to do those trips.
And I was like, yeah. Okay. But people are dying. And my middle guy on the computer, like we could drive this far. We could drive this far. And so they came up with a PowerPoint presentation, complete with like soundtrack and, you know, it was amazing. I mean, I gave them a map of the United States and I sort of knew what they were doing, and then they were like, we have a presentation and at the end it flashed like, are you in? And their trip, I want you to know, ended in Kansas at the largest ball of twine. And I was like, we can take a trip. It’s not going to end in Kansas at the largest twine. And then once we cracked open the possibility for the hope of doing something really different, right. And when I say I was having a hard time, what I was having a hard time with was trying to do normal at 38%. If I’m sitting in my house and it’s Thursday at 4:30, my son would know he was supposed to be at soccer practice. And actually his soccer practice is happening, but because we have a little guy with asthma in the house, I don’t feel like it’s okay to extend our world.
So not only would his soccer practice be happening, but his soccer practice would be happening and he wouldn’t be going. What I said to my husband, over and over again, is we need to yield to the idea that our life cannot happen as it did and make something else. And so in the falling away was the trip and it was so easy to pick out the national parks and it’s been extraordinary.
I mean, it’s also the interesting thing and that I keep writing about is I feel like the worst of our country has come out through the past four years of politics. It’s pretty amazing to hold that physically in your body and stand at the rim of the Grand Canyon. It’s really hard to take in the majesty of the country and not also love it. And that I didn’t plan for that was not intentional. That was just the, you know, the dichotomy of the experience is our country is breathtaking and inexplicable and also, you know, heartbreaking and really disappointing.
Katharine: [00:16:44] Absolutely. I know Cory Booker has a quote where he says anything you love will break your heart. And he said, and America will break your heart.
Meghan: So it’s like a breaking heart and falling in love again, you know, I think some of this stuff is, it’s fused, it’s fused with the idea of like the hopefulness and the joy and also the grief and the loss. But I know for myself that I, that there would have been something energetically dishonest about trying to scotch tape together the way we used to live.
I feel better about coming back and trying to figure it out from there. You know, I keep thinking about like, my kids just have backpacks because it was like what we could fit in the car. And I keep thinking about all the clothes I have in my closet. What are they doing there? I mean, I don’t need them. I’ve been wearing the same six pairs of pants and still manage my one worktop. But I, so I think it might, I think it might be a bit of a game changer for everybody and we’ll just have to see, so I try with their fears and they do really have them. I mean, I threw my back out when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
And so that in it that invited a lot of discussion about what she represented. And it’s scary to think that there wouldn’t be an advocate in the highest court in the land who believed all of those things. So I don’t say, Oh, but it’ll be fine. I just sit with the like, and I know it’s really scary, but I also make sure that the energy that we’re sitting in isn’t scary.
But we’re doing stuff, you know, in our SUV with our soundtrack on going somewhere beautiful and exciting that we’ve researched. You know, there’s a lot of fear about kids’ education right now. And I think that fear is so real, particularly for people whose kids are really challenged by education. But I also have worked with clients who had cancer and missed two years of school and are fine, or didn’t even make it into school or were pulled out of streamline regular ed. So I also, there’s something about also being a trauma therapist where I’m like, you have no idea what people can go through and still go on to live these extraordinary lives. That also sort of gives me a little bit of like perspective of it may be all more okay than we think. And if it isn’t okay, we probably have a lot of agency to help ourselves in the not okay. Which is what I think we’re doing now.
Katharine: [00:19:14] So Meghan, one of the things that you were so helpful on when I was writing the book is you gave me this really valuable insight on, how do you handle the situation when you are talking to somebody who is very, very upset, angry, or frustrated or sad. And you know, that the thing that they are upset about is not true. It’s like a false premise. And I think the inclination is you want to just say like, Oh wait, stop, stop. Let me just tell you you’re wrong. And you think that that will then solve it and they’ll be like, Oh, thank you for clearing that up for me. But it never works.
Meghan: No. And part of the reason for that, which we talked about has to do with the sort of bio physicality of your body at that moment. Right? So once you’re jacked up, you are not a great listener and that’s the amygdala and this little walnut size in the back of your brain, it actually enlarges. And so when it enlarges and you are agitated, angry, afraid, you know, all that stuff, it stops the flow of oxygen, literally, to your frontal lobe, which is way up here.
So like there’s no communication from here to here. And so your critical thinking, your ability to critically think or take in information is really limited. And this is true whether we’re talking about like a colleague who’s coming to tell you that someone had done something to them at work or your five-year-old who’s coming to tell you that something was super unfair.
It sort of doesn’t matter that if you can look at someone’s body, And what I always think is, are they above a five? If they’re above a five, then we need to go, you know, into the lifeboats, we can’t go to the manual. We got to get in the lifeboats. And so what happens if you are the person that is receiving this energy, so you have to help cool the energy down.
And there’s a couple of techniques for that, which are super simple and they have nothing to do with what we’re afraid of, which is if I listen to them, I’m going to validate the bad thing that they think. You don’t do that, you listen to them so that then you can provide the information of clarity of thinking, right, or just challenge the fact. And then the way that I always imagined this, I don’t know why, is when you see a dog that wants to sit down. It walks around in a circle a few times and then it puts itself down. So that’s what I think about with the energy is, How are we going to help them to walk around? I’ll give an example.
If someone comes and says, you know, I’m so upset, Larry’s been doing this for weeks now. He’s been undermining me by sending these emails to other people. It’s because he really wants to steal this account for me, and he’s always been like this since I met him. And you know that’s not what Larry is doing. Larry is doing exactly what you told him to do. Larry didn’t want to do it. You made him do it. And so what you wanted to do is jump in and say, “No, that’s not what Larry’s doing.” It won’t work. So what we do instead is we say, just tell me more. And you take one little nugget of what they said and you just validate that.
“So, so Larry is sending some emails and you were really upset about that.” “Yeah, because you know, we had a talk about this at lunch and I told him I didn’t want to do.” Okay. So you just pick the next phrase, “You talked about it at lunch. “Yeah. We talked about it at lunch. He said he wasn’t going to do it anymore.” “Oh, so he said he wasn’t going to do it anymore.” And eventually like a dog, their energy when they feel heard. You’ll get to the, “Is there more,” and there will be no more. Now what they might also say is, “Also my wife isn’t speaking to me.” It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to jump into the tangents of what this energy is, you just say, “Oh, and also you’re having a hard time with your wife.”
And when I describe it to people, they’re like, I’m not going to do that. They’re going to think I’m copying them. But when people are above a five, they don’t even notice that they’re doing it. They just take it as a permission to keep talking. There’s a really small percentage of people who will talk forever.
And we can talk about how you manage that. But for most people there’s so much relief at being heard. There is so much relief because really what they want is their emotional intensity to be validated. The way that I used to use this, I worked in a high school and there were staff members there who really weren’t much older than the kids themselves. Iit had some training, but not a ton of training, but all meant really well. I supervise this social work staff, so I would walk past and see interactions or hear words, or sometimes not really know what was going on, but lots of times just sort of be like, Oh, they can’t do that. So I would pull the staff member and say like, “Hey, tell me about that interaction with that kid.”
And I would just validate. “Oh, okay. So he came in angry and you know, you were really trying to calm him down.” And then when we get all the way to the end and the dog is sitting on the rug, I would say, “Hey, so, you know, your tone of voice concerned me. Everything that you just said made sense, but your tone of voice concerned me.” I need to get my piece in there when we get all the way to the end. What you say is, “It makes complete sense that this is the way that this feels to you. And I don’t want to even take that from you. You’re allowed to be super mad about this. This is frustrating and really difficult.” And if you use the word “and”—”but” is, you shouldn’t feel that way. “And” is, here’s information you don’t know. I’m not trying to take away your emotional experience, but I am trying to let you know the piece of information that you believe got you really jacked up, it’s not accurate. And I think that’s really important because what people want to do is just change the information: “No, that’s not what’s happening.” And what some people can do is then they just add you to the list of people who are part of the scam of bad things, because they don’t feel listened to or heard. Does that make sense?
Katharine: [00:25:10] Yeah. You know, when you see kids arguing, like did not, did too, did not, did too. We’re just going to get in this loop and pass the ball back and forth, unless something pulls us out of it.
Meghan: That’s right. And it’s not going to be you saying, “Let me be the judge.”
Katharine: Talk a little bit more. You said that when people are at a five–you have like your own scale that you’re using it internally.
Meghan: Yeah. I mean, so in trauma work, you’d never step into a situation if you’re not okay, you’re going to make it worse. And so the thing that I do is, just feel inside your body how activated you are. I use my body to figure out how activated somebody else is. If I’m sitting here working on my computer and I’m having a good day and in comes someone, I can feel that they’re bringing me a nine because I was at a three.
And so I just use zero to ten because it’s so simple for me. And that doesn’t mean I can’t go to 11 or 12 because I can, so I just am like, where are they at? And five is this sort of break point of like, Can I try? ‘Cause it feels like it will be faster and it is. Can I try just saying “No, no, actually he didn’t do that. That came from a memo from up above,” and sometimes I will send that out as a quick shot. Like, “I think you might have your information wrong.” And then I check in. If it’s over a five, it’s not going to work, I have to go into it all. And the other reason that’s really important to get them there is if we don’t get them to calm down what can happen for me, because I’m really empathetic, is now I am covered in their seven. And now, instead of going back to work, I have to like, go take a walk around. I might have to go talk to somebody else about how that guy always comes in and dumps all his stuff all over my body, and then I’m dumping it on them. So if I can’t get us to here, then both of us are impacted by what happened to them.
And that doesn’t happen for everybody. There are some people for whom they’re able to keep their energy a little bit more distant from someone else’s. And we learn a lot about that as therapists. I just have a really strong physical response. And so I’m constantly regulating myself. I’m constantly doing that and I can do that. If a colleague comes in and they’re really worked up and it gets my startle response going, the thing that I use immediately is to take some deep breaths. That sounds so corny and simple and like, we read it in Oprah, but there’s a lot of bio-science about why taking a deep breath actually calms you down. I mean, the most basic of which is taking a deep breath activates your heart and will literally slow your heart rate down. And if you’re, if you do it with techniques, like there’s some techniques like box breathing, you know, that also gives your mind something to concentrate on. So it interrupts the chaotic thinking of it. In my office, it is not uncommon for someone to come in and have so much to say that I will say, I’m getting activated. Can we slow it down? Let’s take a couple of breaths and that’s a totally fair thing to ask someone. I want, I really want to hear you. My energy is getting like totally activated. Can we just take a couple of deep breaths together?
So then I’m like ready to take it in. Breathing is one. Going into the body and just saying, “When I bring up the idea of the memo that you got, where do you feel it in your body?” And so for trauma therapists, the body is a map and we know that anxiety tends to be up here and then the lower back, you tend to hold things like grief.
And so then you just say, can you just go and focus on that energy and send it some compassion and let it know it’s going to be listened to, let it know we’re going to hear everything it has to say. And that’s another technique of just focusing in the body and you can do that as an HR person. You can just say, “Where is it? Where are you feeling all this tension?” So those are two quick techniques. When you’re asking the questions, where in the body, if you need someone–if they just say, “Oh, it’s in my chest” and you need them to deepen it a little bit, you just say like, “what color is it? What does it feel like it’s made out of? How big is it? Does it move? Does it shift change? If it was wearing a sign, what would it want you to know? What would it say if it was going to do an activity, what would it do?” And all of that is interrupting the stuff that’s going on in the brain and just sort of giving the body a chance to regulate. And that honestly is really important. It’s really important.
Katharine: [00:29:35] The benefits of this approach in the workplace, and also what are some of the things that people should be watching out for?
Meghan: Well, okay, so let me say this. So the risk that you run, particularly in a workplace, if you do not actively validate somebody, there’s a whole bunch of models of therapy out there that talk about, you know, using active listening, which is what we’re doing, like nodding our heads and making eye contact with you, and I mentioned it’s difficult over zoom because there’s a lot of neurobiology about how do you look at someone else’s face, where it gets distracted by your own earrings. But using active listening as a skill is, is the beginning of validation, using your words and saying, “I get it. This is what you’ve said.” And then being able to say, “It makes sense to me, right? It makes sense to me.” When you’re working with your partner, “it makes sense to me,” and then adding some empathy makes some sense like, and “You must’ve felt so alone when I didn’t pick you up for dinner.” In the workplace, there’s often room for empathy. It’s often not necessary. And the issue with empathy is that you do have to kind of go down to your own personal reserves and your own emotional experience to pull up empathy. The challenge is for some people who are up over a five, they won’t come down without empathy. There’s some nuance in that.
And the danger is if they don’t settle–and you’ll kind of know that if they walk out and they’re still frustrated–is that they can, you know, people tend to get louder when they are in pain and they feel like they are not heard. What I would say is any time a time is up, the day is over, we have to go to a meeting, you just say, “You know, look, can we just put this in a parking lot? I want you to think about this and you tell me the five most important parts, three most important points that you really want me to know. And let’s start here again tomorrow morning,” or “Let’s start here again at 3:30.” Because for some people, the staying up in the energy amps up the energy. If you and I sit and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, I’m not going to calm down, but for some people, if they go, they take a walk, they have a cup of coffee, they call their mom and they come back, they may be able to offer you, “I think what I’m really upset about is, you know, I thought Larry was my friend.”
We have to be able to know the difference between, I’m using my skills and things are getting better, and I’m using my skills and they’re not getting better. It is not your job in a work environment to make everything better. It’s a reasonable thing to say to somebody, “Is there someone else that you may be able to call like your therapist or your mother,” but I wouldn’t recommend saying those two words, “who could really listen to this with you so that when we meet again at three, you can get real clarity on how you think I can be helpful to you?” And here’s the empathy, “because it must really stink to feel like no one is listening and I’m really trying.” So that’s the danger when you don’t give someone energetically what they need, is that it can make things worse.
Katharine: [00:32:36] So kind of acknowledging that.
Meghan: Yeah. I mean, validation and active listening is not enough sometimes. And just because it isn’t enough doesn’t mean you then have to become a skilled therapist. You know, you’re allowed to use the outside resource. You’re allowed to say, “This must be so frustrating for you because you’re really trying hard to convey how you feel and I am not getting it. What if we separate? What if you tried writing it? Let’s come back together tomorrow. And if that doesn’t work, here are next steps.”
Katharine: [00:33:09] And also tell me about your blog, about Grief is My Side Hustle?
Meghan: So just after my mom died in August and my dad had died of cancer two years prior–my dad’s death was more predictable, you know, in grief work, we know that there’s a different energy around an illness, someone dying in an expected way. You actually get to sort of participate more. You have more agency in the losing of someone. My mom died in her sleep overnight after a really short illness. And it was completely shocking. By the time I got to Christmas, I had a lot of PTSD that I had treatment for. And by PTSD, I mean a lot of images of her death, but at Christmas, one of the hallmarks of grief is that you feel really alone and it’s because you are alone. It’s not because people don’t love you. And it’s not because people there aren’t good, online forums or books to read, it’s because everyone grieves their loss alone because it is yours alone to lose.
And it was a really hard time, not because of the holiday actually, because I was staying with my in-laws, who I love, who I deeply love, but are English. And they’re still in that 1980s of like, don’t talk about it. And that really felt ao hard, it was so hard to not have someone saying, “How are you doing? How are you feeling? How are you?” And so I started, I just started writing little snippets. The way that the blog started literally was I looked down at my feet and I had two different athletic socks on with a little Underarmour, one in pink and one in green or something. And I looked down and I remembered this moment when I had taken my mom to the hospital the week before, because she had some stomach pain. I knew she’d be freezing, so I brought socks and a sweater, and I managed, the sweater made it into my bag, but the socks might not have, but I had already offered her socks. So first she said, no, I don’t need a sweater and socks, which I knew, then she said, okay, I’ll take them. I’m freezing. And I had offered her the socks, but I didn’t have any socks.
So I took them off my feet and put them on her feet. And it was just this moment that like, I’m really grateful. It feels very like almost biblical, of like the washing of the feet. Like I’m so grateful for this tiny little moment. And she did what my mom did, which was sort of like, “Can I ask you a question?”
And I said, “Yeah.” And I thought she was going to say something really loving and amazing. And she was like, “Did you take these socks off your own feet?” And then she said, “Why don’t people care that their socks don’t match anymore? These are two different colors.” I mean, it was just so beautifully my mom. And so here I am standing in the bathroom two days before Christmas or right after Christmas, and I see I have two different socks on. And so I had this overwhelming moment of grief and I just wrote a tiny little story. I think this is what happens on the internet and I never put stuff on the internet, I had such a small little footprint, but I put it out on my personal Facebook page and I have like, you know, at the time I had like 45 friends, but everybody wrote back with like, Oh, this is my story. Or I know what you’re talking about, or Christmas is really hard. And then I kept doing it. And so now it’s a blog, it’s a blog of, you know, probably, um, I don’t know, there’s a lot of posts cause I, I write small things often. Um, it’s about my dad’s death. It’s about my mom’s death and some of it is honestly about what I know as a trauma therapist about how to recover. Um, I think there are a lot of good books out there on grief, a woman named Hope Edelman, just put out one called After Grief, which I think is the best book I’ve ever read.
Um, I don’t think it’s perfect. It’s I mean, that’s so arrogant of me to say, but, only because there’s some language in there that’s a little confusing. I wish she had used a couple of different words, but boy, is it really good? I just think like, it can never, ever hurt. If we, if a hundred thousand other people, every single day got online and talked about grief, all that would do is give us all more permission to talk about grief. And I have some pet projects in the works about, I’d love for there to be some college level curriculum, just of the 10 things that are true in most experiences with grief. So that both you’ll be prepared when you’re a griever, but also, so you know how to show up.
There’s so much pain for grievers around how people show up for them. Honestly, I just think it’s about a lack of understanding of how to show up. So a lot of that is in the blog and I’m now sort of pulling it and trying to organize it and put it into a book form so that people can, you know, don’t have to wade through when I’m really just talking about like grocery shopping. Cause there, you know, there’s some blog entries that are not that deep and then a bunch that are more sort of on the instructional end, but to that end, I think when you’re in deep grief, really, you just have to find your own narrative about the story of what happened and the story of what it means to you ultimately, and I’m not there yet because it’s still sort of, I’m still in the process.
I think the better terms for grief would be fresh grief when it happens and then sort of the integrating the fact that it exists and then assimilating, which is more like, I don’t have to, you know, I know that it exists, and then how is it going to inform my life going forward? And I, I still have some fresh grief that comes up mostly. I’m just sort of integrating, and I don’t have a solid narrative on what I believe happened and what its meaning is for me. But I think the writing is therapeutic and sort of helping me get there. I mean, my mother would be, she wouldn’t even know what to do with herself. She hated the internet. She hated when people told their stories on the internet. What the impact for her is that now I have like a blog and personal stories of having trauma and PTSD. I don’t know what you would do. She would not be able to handle it. She would need a strong cup of tea.
Katharine: [00:39:12] All right. Where do people find it?
Meghan: It’s www.griefismysidehustle.com. And I’m on Instagram, under my name, Meghan Reardon Jarvis. And I link it there. It’s usually once a week. Sometimes it’s more than that, in the travels it’s been less than that, but my hope is there’ll be a compilation of the more salient descriptions and essays sometime in the future.
Katharine: Meghan, thank you so much. This has been so wonderful talking to you and I am so grateful that you shared your time. Thank you for the work that you are doing in the world and the way that you are in the world. I am so grateful for you.
Meghan: Thank you. Thanks for having me and I’m really excited about your book and I am really excited about your podcast and the work, and I’m going to be looking forward to being a follower and consumer of your great work. So thank you.
Katharine: Again, this is Katharine Manning. If you want to explore these topics further, don’t forget to pre-order a copy of my book, The Empathetic Workplace: Five Steps to a Compassionate, Calm, and Confident Response to Trauma on the Job. Special thanks to Celina Porcaro for her help with today’s episode.
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