Episode 137

Episode 137 Transcript:

If there is one experience that every parent can connect with their child on, it is the experience of grief and loss. You know, we have not really touched upon this subject at all, much at all in the hundred-some-odd episodes we've had. But it's such an important topic that we see so many parents going through, whether it's through divorce, whether it's through moving, whether it's through the loss or death of a loved person or a loved pet.

Even if it's something like a loss of a friend that a kid might be going through, there's so many things that kids are experiencing and parents are experiencing with them as they grieve the loss of these things. And that's why we wanted to bring on our guest today, Chris King. He's a counselor that we know well, who he is very close to and has experienced a lot of grief in his life. And you're going to be very touched by his story and the grief that he

is endured. know I was as I heard the details of what he's been through and how he has faced that and grown from it. And so, man, this is a podcast that you're going to want to be ready to be acquainted with some of your own grief, but also be ready to be equipped to help your kids through their grief too, because it's such a pivotal part of parenting that we just can't avoid. It's going to be part of the process of raising little human beings. before we dive into the podcast though, take a moment to stop.

review, comment on the podcast. This really helps so many other people have access to it and for us to kind of rise in the rankings so people can find us. And so we'd love to hear how maybe this conversation on helps you better help your kids through the grief. So sit back, take a moment to listen to Chris's story and then come away equipped to help those you love. 

Hello and welcome to the Art of Raising Humans. I'm Kyle. Hi, I'm Sara. And today we want to talk about a subject that we've never really touched upon before, Sara. Right, and it's an important one to touch on. Yeah, it's a subject that we see a lot in helping families and helping kids, but we really have never delved into it per se. And I thought when I got to meet our guest today, I thought, he's the guy I want to really discuss this topic, okay? Yeah.

because something that we do that's really important to us, and we always start with this parent first approach, where it's really not about fixing the kids' problems or kids' behavior, but it's really the parent understanding themselves better and what they're going through, and through that process, they can then help the kid. And so the sudden- of the put the mask on your own face, get the oxygen in the airplane, and then help your child. We gotta take care of ourselves, and then we're better equipped to take care of our children.

And so, so today we wanted to talk about the subject of grief and, grief could take on many, many forms. Grief can be happening in many, many circumstances, but we're going to dive into that today with a professional counselor who we, we love to get professional counselors on here because we were in that field. We love it. We love meeting people who get to spend a lot of time with other human beings and help them through a lot of things. So we want to welcome you. Welcome to the podcast, Chris King. 

Yeah, yeah, let's go. 

And so Chris King, you're a licensed professional counselor here in Tulsa. And so if you could just tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do. 

Sure. So, my name is Chris King. I'm LPC here in Tulsa. I've got a private practice in a group of about, I think we've got around 20 folks serving people in the surrounding areas. I'm a generalist. I work with adolescents and adults and do marital work and parenting work. But mainly most of my energy in the last five years has been just pouring into my team of people trying to help our therapists do.

better with our clients. Our mission is providing healing and growth through relational mental health therapy. so, you know, we, our competency, we might not always be a hundred percent the best, but we will care the most. That's kind of our vibe. Like, and if we can't, if we're not the, if we can't do it for you, we will help find that person. And that's what we're going to hang our hat on is we've got, we're, strong relationally and trauma informed, you know, all that stuff. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Yes, yes. 

so also super pumped to be talking about grief because it was the topic. I'm sure you guys were super fired up. It was going to be high on the fun scale. was going to be one of the more fun, like the super energizing fun, sessions and on the pod in the season. And, I just appreciate that for you guys. 

Yeah.

Yeah, exciting. Yes. Yes. Well, maybe that's why it's taken us so long to approach the subject. Wow, this is going to be right. Maybe the avoidance of that topic in particular. But you know, Chris, we're seeing so many kids and families going through griefs of all types, right? Whether it's the grief of moving from one school to another, right? 

Right. 

marriage breaking up and kids going through divorce, you know, I'm actually seeing Chris a lot of grief of teenagers who are in high school, and they the friendships are just so hard. And navigating those friends that in the social media and the ways in which they feel like they're being left out or, or pushed aside or picked on or bullied or whatever, right. And it's just so, so many teenagers just crying in my office about their inability to make these deep friendships. 

Yeah. 

that they wish they could make. And so I'd really love for you to talk about first, like, how do you see grief? How do you approach it? What's your kind of framework by which when somebody comes in with it, how do you begin helping somebody? 

Yeah. 

Well, I think that a definition of grief that's really workable is simple and to the point. And if we could start here, there's a lot that we can do with it that can be helpful for ourselves and for others. And that's this, that all grief is is just the acknowledgement of loss. That's all it is. Grief is the truth. So. 

Hmm. 

And when we look at people and we say to ourselves, gosh, I'm not sure that they've grieved a loss, it's almost always indicative of the fact that they're living in maybe a distracted way or they're being super busy or they're not acknowledging their loss. And so if we can start there by just telling the truth about it, then it's orienting. It's a place we can go.

It provides us with helpers a bit of a foundational place to be like, yeah, that's the truth. I don't know that I can make your life better, but I can be here with you. so I think that's a good place to start. It's just like, what is it? It's the acknowledgement of loss. I'm telling the truth. I have lost this situation, this context, this person, this pet, right? 

Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Cause, I think sometimes we have ideas of what grief is or what, maybe should be griefed. I thinking it should be, yeah. What should be griefed what shouldn't be griefed. And, maybe sometimes we just miss it and don't see that this is a situation for grief or that someone would grieve and maybe that can even be different for different people.

I might grieve something that maybe he wouldn't, you know, and it can look a lot of different ways. so I'd love to hear your, your thoughts on, that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he was resistant to say, this isn't, I, I've heard that before Chris. So like this, that's not grief. Like I'm not grieving this. Like, no, I think it is a loss. Like it is a grief. So how do you run into that? Well, what do you do with that? 

Yeah.

Yeah, right?

Well, I think I might start by just sort of talking a little bit about my own context. I, my life is more framed up by grief than I like to admit. And now that I'm in my fifties, like that's a thing that I can look back on my life and understand. So I was raised a, a, an only child of a single mom and who my dad was absent from the time that I was a baby and would poke his head in every two or three years. 

Hmm. 

And so my, in ACT, call it a schema. I had a schema that developed, which was about abandonment and loss. And so I got really great at creating relational spaces because out of the gap that I experienced myself. So, but the truth of my experience when I was a kid was that I experienced loss and there was a hole that I was trying to fill. Not weird, like, like that's what everybody does at some level. 

Yeah. 

The grief that I experienced in my life was compounded though, whenever I was 25, whenever my single mom to me, the only child died. so, it's funny, when I was in grad school, I asked my assessment prof, I thought maybe I was going through a depression and he said, how long ago did your mom die? And like a year ago, and he's like, I don't think it's depression, I think it's grief. And I asked him, I said, well, maybe I should get tested for that. 

Wow. 

maybe some antidepressants might be great. I don't know. And I've not done that before. And he said, let's try this first. He said, let's try doing some aerobic exercise for 60 minutes a day, six days a week for the next three days, for the next three weeks. Tell me how you're feeling. So I did that like half as much as he asked. I'm like, okay, it's grief. This is grief. My orientation, like the way I constructed my life got messed up. The way I see my life.  

And so the acknowledgement of that loss, which was bad news for me, right? didn't, I didn't want that loss. but what it did was the acknowledgement of it, like, like living in that truth, like created what we as outsiders would think would be kind of like a quote, healthy greeting process as in, you know, I thought a lot about my mom and that loss for the couple of years. And then there came a day where I didn't, and then I felt guilty. 

Yeah. 

But my life continued. There was a reorientation or a restructuring of things around my life. And part of that was due to the fact that I was willing to acknowledge the loss during that time. I did kind of hard things. I sat in it a bit. And so for me, it's a thing that I understand personally, I believe. And so whenever people come to visit me,

like the reality of loss in life, like everyone's gonna have it. Like there's no way around it unless, no, I mean, and so telling the truth about it, like people don't understand what's going wrong. And a word that goes hand in hand with grief is orientation. It's a word I use a lot. And as a, you know, like a backpacker and... 

You can't avoid it. Yeah. 

Like, I love the idea of orientation, of knowing where you are in relationship to other things. Like whenever we're looking at a map on our phones, like it's kind of useless if we don't see a blue dot, right? I'm here. And so knowing where I'm at, even if the news is bad, is beneficial. It's orienting. so that's what, grieving is really just that acknowledgement that like the structures around me, 

Yeah. 

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

be it relational structure or historical structure or the future that I wanted, like, or a person that I'm connected to, like that is now it's in question or it's gone and I don't know what to do about it. So, I see people every, sometimes every day that are in that experience of loss. 

So it's a nine, so I if it's ours or his or? 

seems strong, right? Can you tell? Hey, Chris, if you could for a moment there, we lost connection. So I'm not sure if it's on your side. It's OK. And so what we'll do is we'll just edit that out. But what you just stopped, it paused right when you talked about orientation and seeing that blue dot, right? 

I don't know. 

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Okay. 

Man, gosh, I hope our connection's, I'm showing that I'm tight, but you know how goes. Yeah. 

Yeah, I know. ours is looking good too, but I want to, yeah, who knows? Typically it's not, I mean, we even move our wifi router into here. So it's okay. So what we'll do is that was at about the nine minute mark. Okay. and so, so yeah, if we could, we'll let's pause for a second and then we'll come back in. Okay. 

Chris, I love that picture of the blue dot and the orientation. Like when you said that, I was like, okay, I get this. This is cool. Cause that would be so scary to kind of be in the woods. thinking, and I have a map, but I don't know where I'm at on that map. So kind of continued that thought about how you use that way of orientation, knowing where the blue dot is. How does that help the people when you're talking to them? 

Hmm. 

Right. 

Yeah, I mean, like the idea of orientation is foundational because we take for granted that we, the things around us, the people around us, the history around us, like that it gives us stability and safety. it's things are quote normal when things are as they should be. but we get disoriented whenever we might see all these things around us, these people, these places, these situations, and we don't know where we stand. Like that's the thing you guys deal with this a lot. Like whenever you. 

Yeah. 

You work with a child who's maybe not been raised with trauma, but like they've had inconsistent parents that don't give them a good notion of who they are as a human being. Well, they don't know where they fit. that's a chronic problem. so grieving loss is the same kind of thing. Like our structures, something has happened. There's been a traumatic event. It could be a move or it could be a loss of a person or of a pet. 

Hmm... Yeah. 

And so we have to reestablish where we are and it can't be done quickly and it's got to be done in an empathetic relationship. So that's the tricky part is being able to say, I can't fix it. Tell me more. Right. I'm going to join you in this recollection, this truth telling of what's been going on in your life. Tell me about the person that you've lost or tell me about the situation that you've lost. And then

short of trying to make it better, the idea of reorienting is a very helpful idea. And so we talk a lot about tethering to people, places, things, situations that in our life have been life-giving and have given us a sense of security and connection that are as possible even in the midst of this. so reorienting becomes sort of a both and truth-telling. Like on one hand, I... 

Hmm. 

I'm feeling terrible and I feel this sense of loss and I think about it every day. And so we actually want to acknowledge that. Like if it's grieving, we acknowledge loss. And on the other hand, and we want to stop short of saying like, look at the bright side, like that's not helpful, right? Right. But what can be helpful is to say in your life, is there a person place thing, situation, context that when you on a regular basis engage it, it has helped you feel more like yourself. 

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mm-hmm. 

And that might be like for me, it would be riding my bike. Like I go mountain biking. That's what I do. And if I experience a great loss, it will be helpful for me to continue to go mountain biking. And that doesn't make the loss hurt worse, but what it does is it reconnects me to my little kind of my dot on the map. Like, yeah, yeah, all right. All right. This is even in the midst of all this terrible stuff, like this is who I am and what I do. could be church. It could be a person. and so that. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Yeah. 

Yeah, yeah, like you said, or an activity. Yeah. I think sometimes as I was listening to you, what comes to my mind is I think some, I could see some people going, 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Maybe, maybe that is maybe I am grieving. Maybe I am feeling like I've lost my, my place. Sometimes it's really obvious that you should be grieving or in a place. And then sometimes I think it's less obvious. I think as a parent or when I work with parents, you look at your child, I mean, there's part of you that's going through that process and try and trying to realize where you are and how you are. then you, you know, you turn to your children and think, okay,

Where are they at? And one of the biggest things I would come across is especially as you know when you're dealing with multiple children or or like grief can look so different and I think it's really helpful to be have some awareness of maybe I think you know, what what can grief look like? What can it look like in me? What should I paying attention to? What should I maybe be paying attention to with my children? How do I know where they're at or if they're grieving or if they' 

Mm-hmm. 

Yeah.

Kyle And Sara Wester (15:17.7)

fine. Yeah. You know, those kinds of things. It's, a little, yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty about that. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. 

Yeah, yeah. So for me, one of the things, the cues that has been helpful to me is to think about, let's say if we're talking about our children, but we could apply this to any person. And that is to rewind back to when our children were toddlers and what would they do when things aren't right. So we can't, they don't have the language or the ability at that point developmentally to

to give us specifics, right? And so it's our job to just understand their cues. I mean, it's true for every person in the world. Like when I act out or I withdraw or I fight, flight, freeze, like something is not regulated in my system, be it emotionally or relationally. And so, and I can't know that about my child out of the gate, but what's the, and this is where you guys live every day. The mistake that I will make as a parent is to take their behavior at face value. 

Yeah. 

Like behavior always has a motive and it always has a meaning. And if I, as a parent can go slow enough, I got to go slow. I have to be in an observational space. I want to notice without attaching value, just kind of what my kiddo is going through. And that does several things. 

Mm-hmm. 

Yes. Yes. Yeah. 

usually a doorway to have a conversation to create some clarity. It also provides at the very least a soft space to where we're not creating conflict, you know, where I'm not been out of shape because they're acting out. mean, people can be experiencing grief when they're angry. People can be experiencing grief when they're withdrawing. And so the only way to know that it' 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

create the conditions for a trusting relationship and ask clarifying questions. And that won't come automatically. But I would say this, and it's tricky, right? Because as parents, it's probably not a great idea to try to be our kid's therapist, you know, like digging, like digging, digging all the time. But I do think that, like, that if we go slow and we're observational, we ask them questions like, hey, man, you know, can you help me understand what's going on? 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

I've noticed this. mean, how, you know, that situation with the move, I mean, we went through that in our family. We had one of our kids, he literally was grieving a move and we weren't paying attention. Like, so paying attention creates the opportunity to ask questions. Is it about some, is it about this thing that changed? Grief is always about change, you know, like could be catastrophic change generally, right? Cause I don't know where I fit now. 

Yeah, yep, Yep, yep. 

Yeah, yep. 

My life's turned upside down. So when you talk about the most heinous grief with like the loss of a child or something like that, like, I don't know about you guys, and I'm sure we've dealt with people that have lost children. I've dealt with several and it's hard to imagine living, like literally living beyond a loss like that. And yet, but yet our life continues to go on. so reorienting is what it's all about. 

Hmm. 

Yeah. 

And so I guess like knowing what's up with our kids, like it just requires paying attention and going slow. And we won't know that it's until we understand that there's a loss that hurts, a loss that is disorienting. And then once we figure that out, that's something we can talk about, you know, that's some comfort that we can provide. 

Yeah. Yeah. As you're talking Chris, though, I'm thinking, man, as a parent, one, it's hard for a parent to deal with their own grief. So they might be just making their life more busy or distracting themselves more with social media or technology or entertainment, whatever. And so then like, the steps I'm hearing you say is first of all, I have to be willing to identify and label and be truth, be honest about my own grief. Then I can slow down.

and then notice my kid and see how the grief is affecting them. And I think that that kind of to me would be the start is the parent first has to be willing to do that work and then to be able to sit there with them. Cause otherwise if they don't, I think what I would see parents doing is minimizing the grief the kids feeling or, you know, getting upset about the grief the kids showing. mean like, like we just had this interesting conversation just the other day with our kids about

some kind of family event that we do on a regular basis and we wanted to invite another person into that. My oldest daughter did and there was some anger about that, right? And like that's typically not like a value of our family isn't to be exclusive. It is to be inclusive. Like this person wants to come. It would just add, add to the moment. And so I was confused and I was actually kind of annoyed at the reaction I got. But when we slowed down, like you're talking about and really gave the moment some time to breathe, then our son was able to. 

Right. 

almost with tears in his eyes, talk about how we don't have that many more years with Abby. Abby's gonna be leaving in the next few years. And so how many more of these moments will we have as a family? And if we invite this other person, does that take away from that? Does it make it less what it was before? And I could really, as I let myself connect with that, it almost brought up the grief of me thinking about my daughter leaving in a few years too. And I'm like.  

100 % 

I'm like, dude, I choose not to think about that a daily basis. Why are you thinking about that? Don't bring that up, you know? But I could feel myself start tapping into a grief. I don't let myself really ponder that much, because I'm just like, I don't want to be thinking about her leaving. It's going to happen at some point. you know, and so I'm sure that I think that's the challenge that faces a lot of parents in doing the work you're talking about.  

It is, we don't want to do the hard thing. But also, and you guys understand this, I think it's a misnomer. It's a mistake for people to think that it's the job of therapists just to get people to explore their misery. That's not a goal. It can be a means to an end, but like we want to provide like opportunities for healing and growth. And so, you know, for the parents and not be in touch with their grief, I can't get away from the map metaphor. Like, I don't know if you guys have ever been lost and went in a circle. 

Mm-hmm. 

Yes.

Yeah. Yep. yeah. Yes. 

You're like, I thought we were going the right way. We lived in Northeast Pennsylvania for four years and all your roads are about mountains. And in Tulsa, I can be like, if I miss this turn, it's a square. I'll find my way back. I don't have to actually even look at a map. I'll figure it out. But I had that happen. I was in my 30s and I'm like, okay, if I take a left here and then a left here, it'll work out. And I ended up about 10 minutes later at the same corner.

I'm like, how, how is this a thing? It was like, it was dark and I couldn't see the sun. I, and I thought, yeah, it's all, it's just logical. But I was just lost as a goose, you know, I was a super lost. And I, I think that, you know, that highlights the need for operating in community. That highlights the need for those of us as parents and adults to, to pay attention to, to our own feelings when we're feeling lost and disconnected. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

I mean, all grief is, again, is the acknowledgement. It's saying like, I am here. Well, and I don't like what has happened. And this might be devastating. It might be life altering. It might be just really unpleasant, but I don't like it. But I am here. And when we can help people say, I am here, then we can do both. And like, all right, well, like there's going to come a time. It might be soon. It might be, it might take a little while for us to reconstruct a couple of things. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

And that's the job of a really great therapist is like they don't, care, they value the people in front of them so much that they don't feel a need to push anyone into anything. We were able to go at your pace. 

Yes, yeah, yeah. Well, the thing, the thing, Chris, I want our listeners to make sure they hear that you said. Sara asked this question about what might grief look like in each of our kids. And I want to make sure they heard that answer because I thought it was really, really helpful is I expected you to give an answer of like, well, it could look like this or this or this or this. But you talked about going back to when they were very little in that toddler stage and and how did they grieve then? 

Mm-hmm. 

100%. 

And like we all had those moments with our kids where they, you know, where it seemed like nothing to grieve, but it was like they couldn't get that toy they wanted or they couldn't have another cookie or in some way they were grieving this loss of something that was very important to them. Or even I'm thinking that Abby had like eight of these cloths that she always carried and their favorite kind of blanky type.

my gosh, and she lost so many of those. we got to like, we got to experience a lot of grief with her not knowing where those were. And then watching her at times when Sara said, hey, they stink, they're dirty. We need to wash these. And even her grief of the... She would literally sit in front of the dryer, just watching them dry, just to get them back. That's waiting. 

Right, so she's like, no! 

Right, because they gave her safety, they gave her orientation. 

Yes, it will go back to your word tethering it tethered her to who she was in her exit. even you know, Chris, don't know this, I'm sure every parent listening can relate to this, but she would even grieve the loss of the smell like she even though they were they smelled, they smelled bad. I want them to smell clean. has she's like, they're not the same. They're different now. 

Uh-huh. 

Hahaha.

Yeah, right? Not the same. Hey, think about it like this. What do you think a baby does when it's born? Like, is it possible that that baby is grieving? They are, because the ultimate orientation is in the womb. Everything is good. And now I'm going to be put out here into this world that I don't understand, and everything around me is different, and I don't know where I fit. And I get it that we' 

Yeah. 

Yeah.

Yeah. 

conscious of those thoughts at that point, but that is traumatic. That's what trauma is. It's an injury that changes my world. so then that's a different sense. A secure attachment is orientation and insecure avoidant attachment, et cetera, is being disoriented. And then you, in your limited capacity, start trying to find ways to get yourself be found. And many times we're wrong. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. 

Like orientation and grief are, they're inextricable. Like they work together like peanut butter and jelly. 

Yeah, that's good. I love that. That's really beautiful. As I think about, you know, just having to, you know, having worked with a lot of babies and having my own children and you can see that in them, you know, and clinging to what, what they, little bit, you know? 

Yeah. 

Yes. 

Right, and then as we raise kids, are helping them differentiate and create new orientation. And grief must happen because we're pulling away one thing and creating another thing over and over and over again. I mean, think about how as we age, and I don't know if you guys have been there, but one of the most difficult things in life is when families start to break apart because people are aging and dying.

Kyle And Sara Wester (26:56.6)

Yes. Yeah. 

And so the family tradition of how we all got together for about 30 years and did a thing like that's ending. And but there's no way around these things. so so the acknowledgement of grief, like while devastating and difficult, like it's it's like me getting a hip replacement, man, it's happening, dude. And it would be way better. It would be way better if I if I went to a doctor and talked about it than just said. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

gosh, I can't deal with this. Like actually it would be better if we did. 

Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's part of it's unavoidable. It's part of the human experience and we'll all go through, you know, over and over again, we'll have different losses and changes and you've kind of, you've started to share some of these, but are there some things that you can say, Hey, here, you know, the, go do these things for yourself, for your children. You know, you mentioned kind of finding ways to orient, but are, but how, if you were to say here, here's a good starting. 

Mm-hmm. 

Yeah. 

starting place for you to do with your children, what would you say? Yeah. 

Right, well, I I think that's something in at least in the therapy room that is going to be dependent upon the family. But it is a conversation that always needs to be had. the subtlety that's involved, like the art of it, is not viewing it as a way to get out of pain, but as a way to reestablish ourselves as ourselves. If that makes sense. 

Yep. 

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. 

So we can't, so when I say it's a both and, like I'm gonna say, we are here to tell the truth, we hate the loss of our grandfather. Like this is really hard and we all need to look out for each other during this time and be thankful for what, who he has been in our lives, et cetera, et cetera. And so we're going like, so it's on one hand doing this. And then on the other hand, 

Yeah. 

This is who we have been as a family and we do certain things. Guys, are the things that make you happy to be a part of this family? What are the things that when you do them normally or the people that you're with normally, and it could be like, it could be the blankie, right? It could be a tether, and I get tethering is probably not a word that's gonna work great with kids. Another metaphor could be, 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. 

if you needed a lifeboat in a very rough sea and you didn't know where to go, what would be a lifeboat that you would kind of hang on to until someone came? Because over time, like this is gonna get better over time, but like right now it's really hard. What are a couple of lifeboats? And they're gonna be different for every kid, because you might have your church kid, right? Like in your family, because a lot of families have like love church and then like other kids like don't love church. So, right, so like. 

Yeah. Mmm. Yeah. Yes, that's good. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. 

Yeah, Yeah, see you. 

Okay, it's my youth group or it's this friend or it's this thing. I think like inventorying those things and then as parents managing that just as a check-in, like if we think about our bodies and our lives, like exercise and diet are orienting spaces. Like when I'm doing these things, no matter what's going on around me, I tend to feel better. And so I think that's the conversation. And if you don't, people are not devoid of these things. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Like even people that experience trauma, little things need to be big things when it comes to reorientation, when it comes to tethering to safe spaces in our lives. And also the rules that we have in our families that might be based on other values. Like here's a good example. Like the internet can be problematic. And I know you guys probably have a lot of conversations on this podcast about the internet and how it works with kids. But when there's a big loss. 

Yeah. 

Yeah, yeah. 

and your kid's only, your kiddo's only friend is online, then we need to kind of create some structure within the envelope of guardrails and safety for that to continue. As long as it's safe. And so I think that that's a conversation. What works for us in continuing to move us towards the family that we are, the people that we want to be, and in an age-appropriate discussion. And then like just... 

Yeah. 

Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

make little lists and keep it fairly short. Like this week, if I did these two or three things, it doesn't fix the fact that I feel lost because because grandpa's gone. It doesn't fix anything. But what it does is it reminds me that I still have a life too. It's both end, both end. So that's how I do that. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah. Yeah. You know what's disappointing? What's disappointing about your answer, Chris, is partly when Sara asked that, I want you to give answers of how to make the pain go away or how to make, how to make it, how to shorten the amount of time you're going to grieve. Right. And I think a lot of parents listening are like, yeah, how do we do that? Yeah. Like I, I, understand. I understand being sad is important. I understand talking about, but I mean, how do we move through that faster? And what I heard you say, 

Come on, 100%. 

the stormy waters in the ocean and until the coast guard comes to get you, what's that thing that you can hold onto that will keep you afloat so you don't drown while you're in this disorienting space? And so you're like, well, let's find those things that help you feel like you, you know? So even when you're disoriented, there are things that you, so for lots of kids that might be drawing, you might be listening to music. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Go. 

It might be, know, but finding what are those things that you can do on a regular basis whenever you feel disoriented to come back to at least feel reoriented to who you are in the midst of this grief. But there's no certainty that bam, it's just gonna go away or all of sudden it's gonna all feel bad. 

No, and because, and what we're talking about in this pain is it's an organic thing. There's not a shortcut. And so literally the answer that I gave is the answer that you wanted. Like it just wasn't the answer that you wanted. You know what I mean? Like, and it is, it's what healing is. I mean, I talked about a hip replacement earlier, like that I've had that, like my hip was dying. So they had to like cut off part of my femur and stick a fake thing in there. Crazy, right? And it took time to heal. 

Yeah. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, yeah. 

It took much longer and it maybe didn't heal back 100 % than it did whenever I skinned my knee because I, you know, I'm doing whatever. And so, and so the organic nature of grief and loss, you know, like grief at losing my blankie is one thing. It might be really devastating, but I might be able to find another one, but grief and loss, losing a parent or a child or, or having a, these are all different things. so acknowledgement and then reorienting is. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. 

Yeah. 

actually creates a flow, emotional flow, a relational flow that creates healing, just kind of like plasma to the skin. Yeah, right? 

Yeah. 

Yeah, that's so good. That's so good. And the fact that we go through it, if we can accept that, that that's part of life, it's going to be so helpful to your kids. Like even once again, as you're talking, I'm thinking, man, I still grieve all the time as you're talking about getting the hip replacement. I've torn both my ACLs. And although I can do a lot of normal things, playing soccer again is kind of out of the picture. And so there's a grief in me that I never really got to play soccer with my kids. 

Mm-hmm. 

Yep. 

that I wanted to be able to like play a competitive as they got older and we could do that. But the last time I tried it, I just hurt my knee again. And it was like this. So there are times where I think, my little eight year old girl, she's never seen me play. I wish I could have seen that. And that will bubble up and there'll be a tendency to be like, just get over it, Kyle, just move past it. Like it's not happening. But instead the ability just to be, that's what I'm feeling is... 

Yeah. 

Right. 

even though I'm watching my daughter play and I'm enjoying it because it's a sport I love, I'm also kind of sad that I don't get to play with her and show her that and that she misses out on that. And so it is kind of the thing that also drives me though to then want to do regular exercise, to get my legs stronger so then I can do other things like climb a mountain with them or go on long hikes with them. then I'm like, okay, at least I can do that. I can still do these things. So I hope parents hear that.

the grief process can continually bubble up in different ways, you know, for the rest of your life about these dreams you had with your kids that may or may not be able to have. 

100 % and in the art of raising humans, see what I there? See what I did? Okay. In the art of raising humans, which do you think would be more human? To be sad about losing that or to just kind of work hard to ignore it? I mean, like tell the truth. And in that you're going to model that to your kids. And what's crazy about it is that our bodies, our emotions, our spirits, we've been kind of designed in a way to flush that stuff. 

Yeah, I love it. Love it. 

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Yeah. 

If we'll do it, if we'll do it. And when we live in avoidance and try to live in the dark, then like that stuff hangs around and we end up going in circles. So the way to move through the loss is to acknowledge it and then tether to safe spaces over and over and over again. And then it just kind of changes. mean, like I've been without my mom, who was my kind of my closest, like she just was an amazing person. And, but I've, I've been without her. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

for 30 years. And on year 29, I had a rough day and I went to the cemetery and I kind of did a thing. I acted like a grieving person. And this year on year 30, I'm pretty good. I felt a thing and it just kind of comes and goes, but it's real. So it's always better for me to tell the truth. 

Wow. 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I like that idea of the truth will set you free. And I also think of that picture, hope every parent can picture that. That's what has really inspired me in this, Chris, is that picture of when my kid is grieving, they just are looking at a map and don't have a blue dot. And so my job in that moment is as a parent to try to be that tethering thing. You know, like I can be that for them.

So I could sit with them in that grief and they go, yeah, okay. know who I am now. I know.

or we must have lost them. 

Ellie, you're distracting. Yeah, honey. Please go, honey. We're not finished. Huh? No, we just had him fall off. Honey, if you could let us focus on this, that'd be fantastic. So go back upstairs. OK.

Never had that. We just completely lost him. We haven't. Somehow his Wi-Fi completely dropped off. Can he just jump back in? we just keep recording? be able to. Yeah, I would think so too. Make sense. Just rejoin. have way to? Here we go. yeah. 

My back. OK. What I what I heard you say was, God, this connection's bad because I can see myself lagging. What I heard you say was my job as a parent is to reestablish the blue dots. We could go before that, but I'm lagging. So I hope we hope this works. 

Yeah, you're back. It's okay. Yeah, hey, we'll work. Yeah, Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Yes, Yeah, you're good. Yeah, well, so what we'll do is let's wrap it up, right? Because that's kind of my closing thought that I hope parents hear is that okay, so we'll pause for second. 

Man, it's not. 

And so Chris, I really want to thank you. I was not working to that. Not the connection's still not good. 

Not right now. I'm waiting for me to... You guys are fuzzy and I'm waiting for me to get live. 

Yeah, you can. Yeah, it's you. Okay.

Okay. Is there a way you want to connect more to like your hotspot or something like that? Or would that work? 

Now we can't even hear him. Yeah. He's frozen in a cool space though. I know. He's back in it. Yeah. We'll get in. We just got to wrap it That's good though. No, but it great. We got that ending right there and then we'll get in. 

So it was at the nine minute mark around there and then right here at the end about the 38th minute. Yeah. Both those.

And it's fine if they just have to cut it out of seemingly good spot. Jump us right back in. It's fine if it's audio wise. You won't notice that much. Just be visual. was such a good conversation. my gosh. You need good. Like he makes me, makes me want to grieve. know. Like tear up a couple of times. Tear up about your knees. didn't hear it all about his mom dying.

Yeah. man.

just keep thinking about Leslie, Nehemiah. 

If you can jump in one more time. we could just make sure it's in the show notes. If you can't get back in, we could just verbally say, here's how you can connect. You know, we'll have all the ways that you can connect with. 

was a way to pause it. 

You can mark, right? This is what we need to be doing. yeah. Okay. Okay. and then that creates a clip. Okay. Well, it doesn't, it just, it just creates. Yeah. Yeah. puts like a highlight even to market for Chad. Yeah. But yeah, when someone says something really good, we can hit that little thing. Okay. We got our first referral from the messy family podcast. 

Awesome because even though Jordan has recommended this to the people that's the first one he'  

What does that mean? We're not able to display this camera, Mike. What should I do? Restart the browser, free some art. that's what he needs to do. He ran out of storage on his. That's what the problem with our, that's why I had to get this new computer. Cause we were just like always bumping up against the end of our storage. Okay. So I don't know if he can get back on.

He could try making sure he has nothing else open, just Riverside. 

see he's actually there it's just there' 

So I'll tell them that real quick. And it may still not work. Yeah. 

he's going to a different browser. 

No, really glad we did this because this is really pertinent to a lot of my clients. I love that. Yes. Chris, can you hear us? Yes. Okay. You're there. 

Did it work? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if, I think we're still a little unstable, but. 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, here's what we do. We're going to wrap it up here. Okay. did you, what we noticed, the little thing it said was your memory was too, it was too full on your end. it couldn't, so that's why I was suggesting that's happened to us before. We just had to close out all of the, all the files just so, okay. So here, here's, we'll wrap it up. Okay. So Chad, I'm talking to my guy who does this stuff. So Chad, here we go. turn off your thing. Okay. it's because it's her.

Okay, okay, so here we go. Okay, one, two, three. Chris, man, this conversation has been so helpful. mean, know Sara and I are gonna take so much from it, not only personally with our kids, but also with the families we help through grief. shoot, lost it.

never had this happen. This is good though. I like what this is like, right? Yeah, I'm grateful it's happening at the He's going to try Safari last time, but it wants him to use Chrome, right? Yeah. I don't even know how it'll work on Safari. I'm not saying it can't. I just don't know if that'll be an option. 

But worst case, we just get on and everyone, we lost him. We're just going to wrap it up here. Here's how you find him. know, people will understand that you all have computers. 

They me message, that Etsy sticker I got, so it's not sticking to my bottle, man. Super annoying. Yeah, so I'm like, like my Yosemite one, keeps like peeling off. Never had that one before, yeah.

I put a two-star review on it and said, it's not sticking to my bottle. Because I like the vinyl ones better. I know. The kind that we got this time, it just like a true sticker. And we would need to look for vinyl stickers because they make such a difference there. Yeah. You feel like the ones I got weren't vinyl?

Yeah. You know, like I'll show you the difference. You can feel it on them. They're never going to last as long as the vinyl ones. No, I didn't even think to, remember realizing that sometime we bought them a while ago, but I just never had any sticker. I've never, I know some say that, you know, but they're also like to me, like they're showing all those hard ways people are using. I using it hard way? So no sticker I've had has ever come off. You know, so I just was like, I've always just looked for the best sticker. know? Yeah. 

Yeah, I guess if Abby texts me, it'll always come through. I have a set to, I just need to tell her. I mean, I had sent her the text. Unless she's like, yeah. Yes. Back again. Okay. Real quick. I'm Chris. I'm dealing with grief right now about, okay. So, so here we go. So this is the 47 minute mark. Okay. So, 

I think we're good. 

Hahaha! 

Okay, we'll start Chad. We'll do it in one, two, three. So Chris, I wanna tell you, I mean, we're learning so much in this conversation about grief that I know not only will we take for our personal life, but also with our kids and then even with the families we're working with, because I'm really just stuck. You're right, that orientation picture.

I'm stuck on the map and I don't know where I am. I'm disoriented. I need the blue dot. And so I love that idea that maybe we could help our kids. You don't need to be the blue dot, but you just help your kids find that blue dot. And you can say like, like, like you being there with them and saying, I see where you're at. And the kid goes, cool. I'm not lost in the storm alone. have a life raft. have, yeah, that's so. 

Right. 

That's right. 

That's right. Think about in your life what it's like any time that you've been found or known. Like it's life altering. 

Yeah. Yeah. Well, even like you've been lost in a store and then it like your parents found you all of a sudden as a kid, right? Okay. So, so if you could, Chris, how could people connect with you, find out more about you, the work you're doing, please, please point them towards your direction. 

That's right. 

you can find us on the web at Chris King counseling.com. and, we've got all the socials we're out there, Chris King counseling group, Facebook, Instagram, all that stuff. And, we're here in Tulsa and we do work in Arkansas as well. We just want to help. That's what we're here for. Our team is great. And we're excited to be, to be a part of the community. 

Well, and plug your podcast too. I had the luxury of being a guest on your podcast recently. So we had to tell them about your podcast. 

yeah. 

Yeah, podcast stuck in my head with Chris King, Alison Myers, and we've been doing an Enneagram series of late. We've got a couple of seasons in. Our goal is to have fun in the conversation and to put out something that's helpful, super loose and awesome. It's really great. We have a great time doing it. It's awesome. It's on Spotify and on iTunes and just look us up stuck in my head. 

Yes. Yes. Nice. That's great.

Yeah.

Awesome, awesome. Well, good. We're so glad to have you as a guest, Chris. Thank you for making the time. And I hope every family will take a moment to check out that podcast, check out the space, really take a moment to check in with your own grief and how you can help your kid be able to move through theirs as well and experience it in a healthy way. So thank you for being our guest. Thank you. 

You guys, yeah, you guys are awesome. Love the work you do. Looking forward to doing it again. Thanks.