[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, I'm honoured to be joined by award winning writer and podcaster Clarissa Moll alongside her daughter Fiona. Clarissa has co authored the soon to be released book Hurt, Help, Hope, which marks a significant milestone as the first traditionally published, Gospel infused guide to adolescent grief for 20 years in the USA.
I was honoured to be sent a copy of the book to read before the publishing date, and I can tell you it's a deeply moving and powerful resource. In this episode, we'll dive into Clarissa's own story, including the loss of a husband in a tragic hiking accident back in 2019, and how that experience has shaped her work in guiding others through grief.
Clarissa's journey, her deep insights, and her unique approach to grief, particularly with teens, will surely offer both comfort and inspiration.
My name is John Littlefair and welcome to this very special episode of never just a dog.
Clarissa, so great to be able to sit down and chat with you. And I love your book that you wrote with your daughter, Fiona.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much. Yeah, it was a lot of fun to write with her and she's a great person and a great writer and a great partner in that task.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: Even though it was written as a real conversation about teen grief, I found it so relevant to me.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: I'm glad. I'm glad. Yeah. It's amazing that it doesn't matter how old you were when you experienced your first loss.
There's a sort of inner child that always needs tending. And sometimes going back a few years or many years to resources that are actually designed for younger people can touch the heart of that inner child and offer the kind of encouragement that's needed.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: I definitely want to dive more into your book, but firstly, what do you love doing on weekends when you're not writing?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I just came back from surfing with my kids here in Boston. The water is about 64 degrees right now, Fahrenheit, which I don't know what that translates to, to celsius, but I will tell you that it's very warm in the Atlantic Ocean right now, and so it's actually the warmest part of the season. And so we try to get out there and surf every weekend, but it's a thing that we discovered in the last few years that we enjoyed doing together. And when my late husband and I were raising toddlers, he had a good friend who said to him, as your kids get older, look for something that you enjoy doing together that will create a bond as everybody grows up and leaves the nest. And I feel like surfing is one of those things that we have lately discovered that we all enjoy. We all love being in the water. And sometimes just sitting out in the water waiting for a wave gives us opportunity to chat and connect in ways that I think we might not be as intentional to do if we were just at home. I did a little bit of it back in college, but that's been an awfully long time ago. And when we moved so close to the ocean, I said, hey, you know what? This is our chance. Let's try it out, guys. And so all of them love it. And Fiona, who is now in the midwest, going to college, so she's landlocked now. She even says, I can't wait to get home and get to the ocean and go surfing again. So I think we've caught the bug. Just even the sound of the ocean is good. We just enjoy that place at any time of year. I think it's good for the soul.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Tell me about how you met Rob.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: We met at the singles table at a wedding. You know, back in the olden times, when people used to do that sort of thing, they'd have a wedding, and they'd stick all the single people at one table in a corner, and that was us. We were sitting together. We struck up a conversation, discovered that we liked the same kind of music, had known the same people in college. We went to the same undergraduate institution together. And it was just a good connection from the very beginning. I told him when we were first getting to know each other that I was not interested in a boyfriend. I was interested in marrying a best friend someday. And so even after we were engaged, I was pretty adamant that I would introduce him as my best friend or as my friend Rob, because I was a little bit skittish about romance. But I was convinced that friendship was the basis for good, stable, long lasting relationships. And, you know, over 17 years, he became my best friend. And I think that's, in large part why losing him has been so significant, because it feels like I've lost a part of myself.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: And I understand that you and Rob had such an amazing shared love of music.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Well, we listen to a lot of music together, but we didn't go to a lot of concerts because we were poor, new graduates, and concerts were expensive. But in our later years, we used to go to one concert a year, and it was the same artist, and we would go to see him every time he came to town. And it was a special kind of like an anniversary date that we would do every year. It wasn't on our wedding anniversary, but it was a time to connect. We always had music going on in the house. My children are musicians, so it is a language of the heart. And I think for people who are grieving in particular, it can be a place to find yourself, whether or not the music has any words at all.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: I want to ask you about your co author and daughter, Fiona. What was she like as a young child?
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Hmm. Fiona has always been a very serious child.
She was a serious child interested in nature.
She was a serious reader, a voracious reader. She was serious about dogs. She trained dogs for a while and trained our family pet, and that was a special season in her life. She has always been a deep thinker, and she holds her cards close to the chest, but is a deep well. And so it has been a joy to watch her grow from her little girlhood into a young woman, and especially in these last few years, to see how loss has shaped her in a way that, while incredibly painful and something a parent would never wish for their child to have to endure has.
It has turned her into gold. So she has emerged as a beautiful person through that loss. And I think because of that loss, she carries that with her, and it is a beautiful part of who she is.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: I understand that your family would travel extensively together. Was Rob always working, even on these trips?
[00:07:20] Speaker B: He was a hard, hard worker, and when we traveled on the road, he would work a lot of the days. He could telecommute. And so I would take the kids from the campsite, and we would take day hikes or do activities, and Rob would faithfully sit there with his laptop and get his work done.
And his work largely enabled us to be able to travel extensively with our children. We had a 24 foot trailer camper, and we would tow that behind our suv and traveled a lot of miles, tens of thousands of miles together in that camper over the course of a couple of years. And in all of that, Rob was always working. And so on every trip, I always wanted him to take a moment for himself that was truly for him, where he'd put the laptop away and he would go and do something spectacular. And so on this trip in 2019, we determined that there would be a day where he would go with a good friend of his, a hiking partner, and they would take a backcountry hike together along a beautiful ridgeline in Mount Rainier National Park.
Rob was conscientious. He was cautious.
He never did anything that he thought would risk him not coming home to us. And so when he didn't return from the trail that day, I got nervous.
But as you do, you tamp down your fears, assume that everything's actually okay, that you're overreacting. And I truly tried to believe those things until two police chaplains arrived at our campsite to deliver the news that Rob had fallen to his death and that he wasn't coming home.
And certainly, as the chaplains delivered that news to me, to my children, it was earth shattering. Sudden loss is the immediate rending of the reality that you have known, and there's no going back. It feels like a dream. It feels like a night nightmare. It feels like shock, like numbness.
All of those feelings are a very normal part of receiving news that just feels too big to hear. And, you know, that shock lasted for a long time in our family as we tried to process the reality that daddy wasn't going to walk through the door at dinner time, that I would go to sleep in my bed, and there would be no one to roll over next to you to warm me up on a cold night. That realization took a really long time, both for our bodies, our minds, our spirits.
I've come to realize that that numbness is kind of a mercy. I think in the beginning, we can't bear the reality of all that losing our person will entail. And so that numbness, I have realized, is a great gentleness, a divine gentleness that we receive. Because if I could have realized all of the ways that I would lose him, I'm not sure I could have taken another breath. And so that numbness carried us along as we slowly began to digest the news in all of the different dimensions of our life.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: And after the numbness wears off, was this when the pain of losing Rob really set in?
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like having a tooth worked on. You know, you come home from the dentist, and you feel kind of puffy in your mouth, and you can't feel anything. It feels funny to drink or to chew or to swallow, and then slowly it eases away. And, you know, wise doctors will tell you, take some medication before the numbness wears off so that you're eased into the ache that will come after. And, of course, we know in surgery, in dentistry, in medicine, that ache is in the process of healing. But, of course, with grief, it's a little bit different, because, actually, it's a lot of bit different, because in grief, we don't heal. There is no closure to that wound. However long we live, we will feel the ache of the loss of our person. Of course, it's not going to feel exactly the same each day is different. Our lives will grow around that loss over time, but there will still be a rawness that I think surprises us sometimes as the days and the years go by, we think we're over it, and then we discover, oh, no, the sorrow is still there. And realizing that over time has given me a lot of self compassion that I think I wouldn't have had before.
I would have tried to race through that sharp pain that had come when the numbness of Rob's death wore off. I would have tried to beat it, to surmount it, to get rid of it. And now I've kind of relaxed into it, I think realizing that it comes in waves, it comes in cycles, and that sometimes, like the water that I enjoy with my children when we surf, sometimes you just have to duck your head under and let the wave roll over you. And when you stand up, you'll be able to take another deep breath. And I find that life with grief is very much like that.
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Clarissa, if. Okay, I want to bundle a few questions together.
Did you and Rob ever talk about death? How important has your relationship with God been alongside your journey?
And did you ever feel, at times, that you were, in a sense, losing faith?
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Those are all really good questions, John. I think the first, if I could address that preventative piece, because I think for a lot of us, we think that there is no way to face grief, that it's something that will be one day dropped in our lapse, and we'll just have to cope with whatever skills we have. And the amazing thing was that a decade before my husband died, he wrote a little book called the Art of living fully into the life to come, which was all about re envisioning how we as a society, thought about dying. And Rob believed that if we talked about these things in advance, when death seemed very far away, that it actually was a preventative course of action. So that when we encountered death, when we encountered loss and grief, we had some skills. And I will say that even though nothing can prepare you for the weight of grief, things can prepare you to face a loved one's end. Talking about their wishes with them, talking about end of life decisions, about funeral arrangements, all of these things that so many people shy away from. These things actually are preventative medicine. So that when grief arrives and drops its suitcases down at your front door, and that visitor is one you cannot turn away, you know what to do next. And I'm so grateful that Rob and I had those kind of preventative conversations, because while I was in shock after his death, I knew what to do. We had talked about his funeral arrangements. We had talked about what to do with his body, what to do with our kids, what to do with finances. We had had all of these conversations in our thirties, and they were ongoing conversations, but they allowed me to mitigate some of the deep confusion and pain and anger, frustration, interpersonal conflict that I know comes to a lot of folks when they meet with death for the first time in the death of a loved one. And as I think about that preventative care, I can't help but think that my relationship with God was a part of that, too.
I am a follower of Jesus unashamedly, and I have found Jesus to be the very best companion in sorrow. The hebrew scriptures describe Jesus as someone who is deeply acquainted with grief. And the hebrew translation, there is a good friend. And I think, wow. So many times in my loss, I have felt like no one understands. No one understands what it is to be a young widow with four young children to raise. No one understands what it is to explain to a seven year old what cremation is or where her dad is. No one understands what it is to walk my daughter across the stage to receive her diploma and know that her dad's not there to celebrate it with her. And grief can be like that. It can be so very isolating. And so when I think about the isolation of grief, I have discovered in Jesus, in my faith, this companion, someone who has felt all of human sorrow, who has carried sorrow, who is acquainted with sorrow and promises to be that good shepherd who carries his lambs when they can't walk on their own, who promises to offer comfort and help and wisdom. And I support. There is no human friend I have met who is as good as Jesus has been to me. One of the reasons why I like to talk about my faith when I talk about grief, because death, if you are a person who does not espouse any faith at all, or is a person of deep faith in a particular religious tradition, the entrance of death into your life shakes you at the very existential foundations of your being. It makes you ask questions you never may have asked before, questions about the afterlife, about God, about what exists and who's in control, if anything.
And I think for a lot of people in contemporary grief support, there is a sense of, let's concentrate on the material. Let's make sure you're eating and you're sleeping and you're figuring out how to get back to work. And all of these things are very, very important. That's why we emphasize them with teenagers, because they are the bedrock and foundation of healthy grieving. But grieving isn't just the physical and the practical and the emotional. There is a spiritual, a soul level dimension to losing someone that we love.
And whether you would call yourself a Muslim or a Christian, whether you are jewish or agnostic, there is something about death that reaches deep into an immaterial part of who we are. And I think I feel like talking about my own faith experience, I hope invites other people to explore some of those questions that perhaps there are those in their life who would kind of turn a questionable eye to and say, let's get down to business. Let's think about reality. And one thing that we know, whether you have sat with someone who is dying and watched them take their final breath, whether you have watched the casket be lowered into the ground, you know that the veil is very thin there, that there is something deeply spiritual and soul level about what is happening. And I love the opportunity to welcome teenagers into those questions, because teenagers are amazing people. You know, they have one leg in childhood, one leg in adulthood, and they are asking good, deep questions. And I think we undersell them a bit sometimes. We know the hormonal rollercoaster of the adolescent years, and yet. And yet teenagers are such wise people.
And so that's why I feel like the opportunity to not only equip them with practical support, help them to figure out how to navigate school and holidays and those kinds of things, is really important. Opening up the conversation to those deeper questions, the things that aren't so easy to answer. I find that teenagers really welcome that kind of honest conversation.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: And speaking of honest conversation, tell me about the beginning of the writing journey with your daughter. Was it simply saying, let's sit down and write a book together?
[00:20:27] Speaker B: Well, I knew that I wanted to write a book for teenagers. I wanted to write a book that invited them not only to ask the hard questions that perhaps they weren't asking the adults in our lives, but also engage at that spiritual level with some of the questions that death and loss can prompt. And I also know that teenagers don't like talking to their parents. They don't like hearing advice from adults in their lives. And I understand this very well, being the parent of many teenagers. And so when I endeavored to write a book, I thought, I can't write this by myself. I need the street cred of a teenager who is going to edit me strongly, who is going to speak her own words of wisdom, who is going to see things from a very different perspective. And so I couldn't think of a better co author than Fiona. She has been a delight to work with, and she's also really wise. I asked her at one point. I said, you know, we want to make sure that this is, is written in a tone that is appropriate for teenagers. And she said, don't worry, mom. I'll make sure it's not cheesy. So she's been a very good guide.
[00:21:49] Speaker A: That's not cheesy. Hey, was there a moment with editing when you maybe laid some words down and said, hey, Fiona, what do you think? Did she ever say, you can't write that, or you can't write.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Oh, definitely, yes.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Was it?
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:22:02] Speaker A: They're good editors, aren't they?
[00:22:03] Speaker B: They are. They are.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: And were you thinking, I'm cool, mum, like, look at this prose, and she's gotten nah out?
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Yes. There were a couple of pop culture references that she said were very passe, so we, we made sure to cut those out.
[00:22:20] Speaker A: Pop culture in what way?
[00:22:22] Speaker B: Well, I, you know, I might refer to a musician that no one listens to anymore or a tv show that's not relevant. She was very good at keeping me up to date, but we went through so many iterations of writing that book together, and that's the fun part that it really was this collaborative work where I'm writing words, she's writing words, I'm editing her, she's editing me. It's a.
It is an honor, but it's also very tempering for me as a writer. I've been a writer for a very long time. I'm used to the red pen, but very different. When your daughter is holding the red pen and she's only 1819 years old, it is the first, at least here in the United States, the first traditionally published book in 20 years that offers practical bereavement support for teenagers, along with this spiritual dimension, a very intentional spiritual perspective.
And we did want to fill that gap because we believed that it was an important conversation for teenagers to have, one that really honored their wisdom and the level of their understanding as adolescents. And I will say there are many wonderful resources for teenagers, but many of them are written for parents or caregivers. And I would love it if we have parents and coaches and caregivers who are reading this book over their teenagers shoulders. But we wanted something that a teenager could receive, could slip under their pillow at night, could dog ear, could highlight, could go back to and reference over time. That was a book that they genuinely felt was written for them.
And I believe that's the kind of resource that we've produced.
If you are someone who likes to read from COVID to cover, you can do that. But we also know that teens hunt and pick for information.
They're the generation that has gone to TikTok looking for content. And so we wrote it in a style of question and answer so that if you want to poke around and you've got a particular question, you could just read that section and grab the wisdom that you need kind of a grab and go sort of experience for them. And we hope we can't be exhaustive. There's no way to answer all of the questions that teenagers might have. But we talked to a lot of teenagers. We talked to adults who interface regularly with teenagers, school chaplains and youth workers and therapists and hospice volunteers to make sure that the questions that we were including were the kind of questions that teens regularly said they wanted answers to. And so that's the kind of resource we hope to build.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: It's amazing, your book, and thank you for that, is that it's such a non linear book, and that's what I love about it. Because grief is nonlinear.
[00:25:27] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. And research tells us that children, that teenagers do something called regriving. It's a yemenite, normal part of their developmental process. As they begin to understand complexity, as they begin to understand the future better, to conceptualize, they will start to have new experiences of their loss that may feel just as raw or more raw than the moment where they first learned of their person's death. And so for teenagers, as they are developmentally growing and changing, they're hitting a lot of milestones. And at each of these milestones, whether it is the beginning of menstruation or a graduation or prom, any of those kind of physical or social milestones can trigger grief in a way that is very powerful. And so you may have read the section on what to do with your body, and you may be eating well and exercising well, and all of a sudden, prom comes around or graduation arrives, and you're just a mess. You can't eat, you can't sleep, and you wonder, what's wrong with me? And herd help. Hope says there's nothing wrong. Your body is just processing loss. So let's go back to those very elemental kinds of rhythms, healthy eating, healthy rest, healthy movement, to get you back on track as your body and your heart and your mind process how grief is intersecting with this particular milestone in your life. So I love that you say that you went back, because that's something that I hope that our readers will regularly do. They'll pick around and then they'll head back to another section when they find they need it again.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: Interesting question for you.
What comes to mind when I mention the saying breaking bread?
[00:27:26] Speaker B: Two things come to mind. First, how Jesus broke bread with his disciples on the night before he died and shared a meal with them. But I also think about the little boy who was summoned by Jesus to share his lunch. Were told in the gospels that there were many people who were hungry and the disciples of Jesus couldnt figure out how to feed them all. And so a little boy submitted his brown baggy lunch to the Lord Jesus. And Jesus broke the bread and he blessed it and he multiplied it so that no one was hungry. Those are the two things I think of when you say that phrase.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: And speaking of breaking bread, can you firstly describe what a whoopie pie is and what is the significance for you and your family?
[00:28:21] Speaker B: So whoopi pie is a traditional New England dessert. And it is a cake like cookie. And there's a top and there's a bottom. And sandwiched in between is a vanilla cream. Now, the traditional whoopie pie is a chocolate cake, cake like cookie. It's about the size of a muffin top. So it's a nice good size, it fits in your hand well. And the first year after Rob died, I determined that we would have one day that was isolated in the week that when I picked the kids up from school, we would head over to a little general store that made their own whoopie pies. And we called it whoopie pie Thursday. And we used to sing about it in the car. And it was a way of celebrating that we had made it through another week. Friday was almost here and we had survived, and we survived on whoopie pies for about a year, that first year, just celebrating every single week that we had made it. And I think that sometimes we expect that our victories should be very big after we lose someone that we love and we expect that we should be doing better. We look at people around us, we compare ourselves to others, we compare ourselves to the expectations that others might have of us, and we look in the mirror and we say, why can't I get it together? Why does it feel like this is all just so hard? And I like the whoopie pie because it fits just right in my hand and it's sweet and it's good. And it reminds me that sometimes our victories are just that small. They are so small that you could almost just hold them in your hands, that they are a moment, that they are an hour or a day or an instance, a circumstance.
And that sweetness, even if it doesn't last forever, it still counts. It still matters. And in grief, we take those little wins. And I think those little wins are always worth celebrating.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: That is the breaking bread moment in the book.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: For me, it is the very best kind of breaking bread.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Talking about nourishment, probably not so sweet as a whoopie pie. Is the brat diet the way that you listed that out? It was so simple. And I didn't just cut straight to the applesauce part. So just explain a little bit about the brat diet.
[00:30:57] Speaker B: Well, we know that a healthy diethouse includes proteins and grains and dairy and vegetables. But if you have ever lost a loved one and you have received meals from folks who are very well meaning in your community, you know that sometimes it's really hard to eat what's been placed before you, that someone could show up on your doorstep with the most delicious looking salad. But when you begin to eat, your stomach hurts and you're just torn up inside and you say, oh, you know, I'm going to have to pass. And I think for a lot of us, we translate our distaste for food, our dislike for food, into a kind of emotional response. I'm not being grateful to this person who provided me this lovely casserole or this dinner, when in reality, our guts and our brains are really connected. And when your brain is working really, really hard to process your loss, your gut's going to feel it, too. And you may not have the kind of appetite that you had before. You may have a very delicate stomach for a very long time. And while the brat diet is something that I wouldn't recommend as a new form of eating, it's something that our family uses after a child's had a fever and is coming out of having the flu. I used it during morning sickness when I was pregnant with my children. And those bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast can be some real comfort food when your tummy is not feeling well. And, you know, I always encourage folks to eat what tastes good. Try to keep a regular rhythms to your eating, but to be gentle with yourself that there are foods that are associated with comfort, foods that may be hard to eat because your loved one used to prepare them for you. It's amazing how food is love. It symbolizes love for so many of us, and so we can treat ourselves with that kind of gentleness. If you're a person who wants their carrots and celery in early grief. I applaud you. It's wonderful. And you'll get to that normal eating again. It will return. Those normal rhythms will return. But in the deepest and darkest moments of your loss, it's okay to be gentle on your body with what's on your plate as well.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: There's only so many casseroles you can eat as well.
[00:33:32] Speaker B: That is so true.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Remind you if someone dropped one on my doorstep now, not that I'm in grief, I'd be very happy.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: I agree. Anytime someone wants to make me dinner, I am very grateful.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Big question.
Tell me about your dog.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. Oh, she's the. Well, we have two now, so I'll have to tell you about both of them. Our first dog, her name is Shalan. She is named for a beautiful fjord like lake in eastern Washington state up in the Pacific Northwest. And Shalan came to us when she was a year and a half old. She was astray from the streets of LA. So she's a Los Angeles girl at heart. She likes the city. She likes to travel and be in the car.
She's a little bourgeois. And Shalan was the dog that.
The dog that my daughter.
She was the dog that my daughter Fiona trained. They competed in showmanship and obedience for many years together. And it was amazing. After Rob died, she's a scruffy little thing, just a mutt.
She lay down beside the bed where we were staying, and she didn't get up for a few days unless someone would pick her up and take her out to the bathroom. She didn't want to eat or move around at all. She could sense the kind of loss that we had experienced.
And I'm so grateful for her kindness in that way, that she was gentle with us when we needed gentleness. She has traveled every mile that we have taken as a family. She goes on the plane with us. She rides in the car. She is now turning twelve years old. So she's an old soul. And when we were ready to start a new chapter in our family's life after Rob's death, it was about.
It was about two years after he died. I said, I know that Shalan won't be with us forever, and I'd like to get a second dog now. We named her Belladonna Baggins, after one of the characters in the Lord of the Rings.
And she is another.
[00:35:54] Speaker A: Say that again. Say her name one more time.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Her name is Belladonna Baggins. Belladonna Baggins mall.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: And how does that go in the dog park? When you have to call for her.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Well, we refer to her as Belladonna.
She likes her full name, but she is in every way different. If Shalan is Shaggy, Belladonna is slender and athletic. If Shalan is laid back, Belladonna is.
She is vivacious and full of personality. And she symbolizes for us the new beginnings that really weren't just a possibility after Rob died, but were a probability if we would seek them out.
In so many ways, Shalan connects us to what was. She's the dog that knew Rob, that we had in all of those family pictures, all the Christmas pictures. She's the dog that Rob would run with when he ran around the neighborhood. And Bell is a dog he never knew.
And yet she is so precious to us as well. I can't imagine our family without both of them. And it feels like the perfect picture of what your life looks like after loss, that you have these parts of you that are a treasure that you can't imagine living without, because they connect you in love to your person. And yet life draws us forward, and we really have to resist it if we want to resist that siren call of new life, because there is so much life left to live. And so that dog that bounds around the backyard, that will chase a squirrel along the fence, she's a great reminder that in the lives we build after loss, we need both of those things. We need those things that anchor us to the love of the past and also remind us that there's so much life left to live for.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: And I believe Fiona has now moved away to college.
How did this affect you personally?
[00:37:59] Speaker B: I'm happy for her. I think it was very painful to see our family changing again.
Loss changed us once. And there was a part of me that even though I wouldn't have. Even though I wouldn't have said it to you, my heart longed for nothing to ever change again. That here we had endured the very worst loss and maybe we could just somehow freeze time. That, yes, I knew my children were growing up. Yes, I knew that the milestones ahead of them were important and natural and right. But there was a part of me that said, no more. No more change. I'm done with change. And, you know, I've realized in the years since Rob's death, that tight grip on life is one I don't want to have. I want to live life with open hands. And that means coming to reckon with all of the thousand little losses that are a part of being human. The goodbyes to friends who move away, the ending of a job with the beginning of a new one, and yet my daughter leaving for college. So it's a process of grieving. But there's also so much gratitude for the new life that I see her beginning and the continued connection that we maintain even though our lives have changed.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: And what she's studying at college, she's.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Studying biology, so she is hoping to work in environmental sciences and wildlife conservation. She loves the outdoors. She's a proficient outdoors woman, and I can see her out working with animals or in nature with trees.
She really connects to spiritually when she is in nature. And she has a science and math brain, so I think she'll be very successful in that work.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: Clarissa, this has been an incredible conversation, and I have one last question for you.
I'd love for you to pull back the curtain and share with me where you are now and your life. Working as a creative well, I think.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: That it is an honor to be able to connect with people who are hurting.
We make relationships in good times, but it's really the tough stuff that shows us what those relationships are worth. And so I count my work as a creative to be a great honor. It's also a deep responsibility to walk beside someone who is suffering, whose life I cannot change.
I just can bear witness to that. And while that is an honor, it's a great responsibility, too. And so I think about those things in the context of my own story. It's allowed me a way to tap into the reality of what I have lived for, but to see it within a greater purpose. Now, sure, when I'm alone and I have moments of deep grief, it is very powerful to relive those hours and days. But there's also a grace that time offers, that some of the sharp edges are worn down by the sands of time, that the memories begin to soften in some ways. And I think that with time and with engagement, that doesn't just happen by chance. That happens as we turn with honesty to our grief, as we look for ways actively to integrate our loss into the person that we're becoming, as we do the hard work that often grief requires. And that work may simply be getting out of bed and putting our feet to the floor. It's not necessarily deep emotional engagement every day. Sometimes it's just surviving. But as we do those things, I do believe that our grief becomes for us something that is transformed, that it becomes something that's not just about me anymore. Fiona says it so much better than I do.
She has said to me many times that she never believed how much her own experience of grief would equip her to love and serve and care for others. And sometimes that's just in witnessing their own sorrows. And I think when you can come to see your own loss, the uniqueness of it within the universality of the human experience, it's a way to survive and thrive as a creator, that you see that your story is just one of many heartbreaking, precious stories that make up the human tapestry.
And in that, it is both a responsibility to steward your story well. But it's also an honor to be able to share it, to be able to mirror back to people their own experiences, to let them know they're not alone, to let them know how loved, how cherished they are, how forgiven they are. You know, forgiveness is one of those pieces of grief that's rarely talked about but so, so vital to our journey. So as a creative, even though sometimes there are moments where it's very tender, I'm able to see it within that context. And, and that context gives me a lot of good perspective.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Clarissa's new book, which she co authored with her daughter Fiona, called Hurt Help Hope, releases on October 8. I've included a link in the show notes below. You can pre order your copy. It's a must read for anyone navigating grief, especially with teens.
If you'd like to get in touch with me directly, you can send me an email. The address is
[email protected] dot au thanks again for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with anyone you think might benefit. And thank you again for listening to this very special episode of never just a dog.
