Coping With Loss

and Isolation

Ep. 235 with Krista St-Germain

“A broken heart syndrome is a real symptom that people have of grief, where their heart actually aches.”

Krista St-Germain

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Bio

Krista St-Germain is a Master Certified Life Coach, grief expert, widow, mom and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast. When her husband was killed by a drunk driver in 2016, Krista’s life was completely flipped upside down. And while it would have been easy to believe her best days were behind her, thankfully Krista discovered Life Coaching and Post Traumatic Growth and was able to move forward and create a future she could get excited about. Now she coaches and teaches other widows so they can love life again, too.

Shownotes

Join Lesley Logan in this powerful episode with Krista St-Germain as they delve into a poignant journey of grief transformation. Discover Krista’s profound insights on supporting individuals in mourning and embracing self-care amidst the isolating nature of grief.

If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co. Or leave a comment below!

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In this episode you will learn about:

  • Krista’s profound journey through grief after losing her husband.
  • How to find solace in cognitive coaching tools.
  • The isolating nature of grief.
  • Discover steps for moving forward and toward healing.
  • How to navigate well-intentioned but unhelpful responses to grief.

Episode References/Links:

Transcript
Krista St-Germain: So I’m standing there on the side of the road texting my daughter who was 12 at the time to tell her that we would be late. And a car that we later found out the driver had meth and alcohol in his system. It’s five 5.30 on a Sunday. It’s well lit, hazard lights are on, right? but he did not see us, he did not break. And he just crashed right into the back of Hugo’s car and trapped him in between his car and my car. And so it felt like this perfect future and amazing life that I had was just, like, ripped.

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INTRODUCTION

Lesley Logan
Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I’m Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I’ve trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it’s the antidote to fear. Each week, my guests will bring Bold, Executable, Intrinsic and Targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It’s a practice, not a perfect. Let’s get started.

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Lesley Logan
All right, Be It babes. Okay, so I have been really thinking about different types of guests, I wanted to bring on this show to talk about different topics. We talk a lot about your goals and your health and all about like helping you like, Be It Till You See It. And then there are moments in our life that are unplanned. And some of those moments that are unplanned are not just like, oh, you know, like, my internet went down today, and I couldn’t do the work I wanted to do or my kid got sick, and I couldn’t do the wreck one issue, some of those things actually involve loss, and grief. And as a recovering perfectionist and overachiever, I can see perfectionists, overachievers struggling with going towards their goals and working with grief. And so when I was, when I found today’s guest, her name is Krista St-Germain, I was so excited, which is a weird way to feel about this topic. But I was so excited to bring her on to the podcast because she is the only person that can talk to you about grief in the way that she does. And I am, I really can’t wait for you to listen to this episode because those of you who are in some acute kind of grief right now, I really hope this validates you and gives you a lot of permission. Those of you who are around people who are grieving right now, I hope that this helps you see things from a different perspective. We also talked about how you could say. She also mentioned after we were done, that she has a quiz on her website. That way, if you are going through grief, and you’re unsure which episodes to listen to on our podcast, you can take a quiz, and it will tell you so our team will have all of those links below. I hope this is an episode that you save, that you keep that you can share the link to other people who are working with this and also her podcast specifically. Because there is, we have a lot of work to do around this topic. I believe in our world, we too often think okay, just give them a couple of weeks, and then they’ll be fine and, you know, the people that they lost are in a better place and all these things and it’s like we can do better, we can do better and not in a perfectionist way but just in an honest human way. And a lot of the things she talks about are really important in all areas of your life. And you know how we do one thing is how we do everything and so whether you’re not going through any part of a grief process right now. I hope you do listen to this because I hope you hear those things that we keep saying when it comes to other parts of your life that will help you here because if you can actually practice those when you’re not in a grief, you’re not in a grieving stage, or grieving place I should say rather than stage, I think you’re gonna have a better muscle for it. So anyways, I’m just gonna let Krista to take it away because she is just wonderful. And here is Krista St-Germain.

All right, Be it Babes, I have. I guess I’ve been really excited to bring on not because the topic is very exciting, but because it’s actually like something that we can all guarantee we’re going to have to go through. That will go through, and we have to learn. We need to learn how to work with it so that we can continue to be the amazing people we are in this world. Krista St Germain Can you tell everyone who you are and what you’re up to these days?

Krista St-Germain 6:03
Absolutely. And I’m always excited when somebody is willing to talk about grief because it’s never an exciting topic, but it is so valuable. So yeah, I’m Krista St. Germain. I am a master certified coach. I’m a widow. I’m a mom, I host a podcast called The Widowed Mom Podcast. And when I was 40, my husband died. I didn’t come by this work, because it was something I really wanted to do. I just kind of got hurled into it. But it was my second marriage. First one kind of went down in flames. Second one was like the redemption story, write proof that you know you can be treated like you want to be treated and happiness is possible. And so I felt like I was really on a big high at that point in my life. And my husband and I had gone on a trip we driven separately wasn’t too far away from where we lived. And we were almost home and I had a flat tire pulled over on the side of the interstate, he pulled up behind me. And even though we had triple A, but he was like that stubborn. I’ll just do it. We can get home faster, you know, and so I just I let him but cars really whizzing by. So I’m standing there on the side of the road texting my daughter who was 12 at the time to tell her that we would be late. And a car that we later found out the driver had meth and alcohol in his system. It’s five 5.30 on a Sunday. It’s well lit, hazard lights are on, right? but he did not see us, he did not break. And he just crashed right into the back of Hugo’s car and trapped him in between his car and my car. And so it felt like this perfect future and amazing life that I had was just, like, ripped. …(Lesley: Oh my god). Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And what I found really quickly was that I didn’t know anything about grief. Right? And what I did know wasn’t actually that helpful was kind of inaccurate. And so when I got myself back to a place where I was like functioning again, I kind of ran out of resources. You know? Therapy was great in the beginning, but you kind of reach a point where you’re back to functioning and people are telling you, Oh, you’re so strong. And you you’re doing so great. And you’re like, I don’t really think this is what great feels like like this is not what I want, right? So fast forward, long story, right? I did a bunch of my own research, I found cognitive coaching tools. I learned about post traumatic growth, I learned how to support my nervous system. I just did a whole bunch of work. And when I kind of got to a place where I was feeling good, I decided, all right, I don’t want people to go through what I went through and not be able to find what they need because we live in a culture that is just so grief illiterate. So that’s why I do what I do.

Lesley Logan 8:31
Yeah, oh my goodness. I cannot not imagine losing your loved one, actually in the same place that you are and having no ability to help that. So I’m so sorry you went through that. But also like, I agree, like when we lose someone, everyone’s like, Oh, time, time is really good. And time and it’s like, is it? And so how interesting. I mean, like, I imagine this took a lot of time to go through all those trainings. Are you going back to school? Were you like reading books? What kind of prompted this?

Krista St-Germain 9:12
I read so many grief books. Yeah, I mean, I just started looking for resources, right? for me early in grief, you know? a lot of us have this kind of grief fog experience where your grief affects your whole body. So your hormones are out of whack. You’re not sleeping well. Your processing ability is just so limited, right? And so it was really frustrating to me as someone who has always read self help, always. I couldn’t read and retain anything like I would just read it and it would just not stay in my brain. So it took me a while for that to subside enough where I actually could start reading and learning but yeah, I just started reading about grief and reading different grief theories. The only grief theory I had heard about was the five stages. I didn’t know there were other grief theories, right?

Lesley Logan 9:55
I know, I’ve only heard the five stages and yeah, and I can’t repeat them. So I think there’s anger in there.

Krista St-Germain 10:02
Somewhere I think we deny and then some said, Yeah, we’re angry. And some Yeah, we bargain. Yeah. And that’s, that’s that’s been my experience is that most people are exactly where I was, which is, that is the only grief theory they ever heard. And unfortunately, you know, even that work has just been really misused and misunderstood. And so we walk around trying to, you know, put square pegs in round holes and compare ourselves to what we think grief is supposed to be like, when that’s actually not what it usually is like, and yeah, so…

Lesley Logan 10:33
And also, like, and also you are a mom, you know? So like, there’s, like, handling the grief, and also your child is also grieving, because you also, were not the same mother anymore. So I’m sure that that’s another compounding layer. I want to know, like, how are you able to start to, first of all integrate into your life and then take on the role of like teaching this to others? Because that is a whole, I mean, I know that once we like learn things, you can learn it more if you teach it, but like, how did you come around, saying, I’m going to share this with others, because it means like, telling your story over and over again. And, and then being there for others.

Krista St-Germain 11:14
Yeah, it actually took me a while, I kind of went through, I realized pretty quickly after he died, that what I was doing for a living was not feeding my soul. Like, it was making me a good living. And, but it wasn’t a wasn’t something I felt passionate about. And so I kind of already decided that I wanted to do something else. And I didn’t exactly know what that would be. But my therapist was, she was like, You should become a therapist. You can come and you can work for me. And when I retire, you can buy my practice, and I will help you get into MFT school and all the things, right? She had it like totally planned out.

Lesley Logan 11:25
Like, I got your I gotta for you like, oh, look at this.

Krista St-Germain 11:53
Yeah, you should just be a therapist. And you know how I mean, I’m sure you’re the same way where people who end up in these kinds of professions, we naturally are people that other people come to anyway, right? So it made sense to me. So actually enrolled in a marriage and family therapy program. And simultaneously, I decided to enroll in a life coaching program. And the conclusion that I came to eventually was, I don’t want to be a therapist. Coaching feels scarier to me, and it’s much less known to me, right? and I don’t see the path and people are probably going to think I’m crazy, but it’s what’s actually helping me. And so I’m not going to be there. So I didn’t I enrolled, I was ready, I was waiting, it almost started. And then I pulled the plug on that. And I decided to become a coach. But at that point in time, I still was not planning to do grief work, because I just hadn’t done enough of my own. I imagined I would be sad all the time I imagined it would, you know, be just too much too heavy. But as I went through more of my own work, and then certification, and then all the practicum and more coaching at a certain point I went, you know, it just really doesn’t make any sense to do anything else. Like, this is where I’m uniquely qualified. To help someone and so… (Yeah, like, Yeah, okay. So yeah)

Lesley Logan 13:13
That’s such a, like, that’s such a, I love that you’re like, it was the scariest thing. You’re like, oh, my gosh, because we always talk about, like, you know, on this podcast, we’re always like, you know, if, like fear, like action is the antidote to fear. And like, really, the things that scare us are really the place that’s like, kind of a flashlight of like, where we’re supposed to be, where the work is that we’ve got to do. It’s like that thing over there that you’re like, ooh, close the door. I don’t want to see that.

Krista St-Germain 13:38
Yeah, and listen, I live in Kansas. Okay, so we’re not super progressive around here in terms of, you know, life coaching, what even is that? And also I was in an engineering job. I mean, I was in a job surrounded by I was a project manager for an engineering department. So everyone in my orbit was logical. Right? And, by the way, my late husband was an engineer who worked at that same company, and I could hear his voice, which was logical, which was, don’t do it. Don’t walk away from this money. You know, that’s too big of a risk. Like, that’s not a smart idea. So yeah, there was nobody understood what I wanted to do, or why I wanted to do it. It didn’t make sense to anyone. Nobody really, honestly, could imagine me being successful doing that, because they just didn’t know what it was. So there was a ton of fear.

Lesley Logan 14:25
Yeah, yeah, that’s, it’s a lot when like our family or people like in our life, who cannot see it the way we are seeing it, and it’s not that we need to see it. I don’t know that I needed anyone in my family to see what I was doing. It’s like, yeah, go get it. I just needed them to like not tell me what they’re afraid of (…)

Krista St-Germain 14:46
Yeah, yeah. You have to be really careful with who you surround yourself with. I think.

Lesley Logan 14:51
Well, is that the same when in the grief process? I mean, I know I know some of the listeners right now. Just because our coaching program I know some of them are in in grief, like recent loss of family members, is even who you surround yourself with a thing you should consider when you’re going through a grief process.

Krista St-Germain 15:13
Yeah, I mean, there’s, you know, there’s still probably people you’re going to be interacting with that maybe aren’t as supportive as you’d like them to be. So I think we need to kind of figure out, how do we still work with those people and maintain them in our lives, assuming that we want them. But also grief can be really, really isolating. And because it’s something our culture doesn’t talk about a lot. And because we just kind of, I think, all walk around with this assumption that feelings are problems and like, we should deal with them on our own. And, you know, we have a lot of misinformation about grief and time healing and all that stuff, right? So so that it just tends to make us want to isolate more and more and more. So even if you don’t have anybody in your immediate environment, who can relate, I guarantee you, you can find somebody on the internet, right? You can find someone who’s gone through something that’s similar to what you’ve gone through. So that at least you don’t feel like you’re the only one at least you have some place you can go to talk or maybe just express what has happened without feeling the need to explain yourself. I love technology for that reason, right? There’s grief groups for everything. And you just want to be careful that, you know, at a certain point, something like that can be it’s exactly what you need. And then sometimes it can turn into something that holds you back. And you kind of have to know where that line is for you.

Lesley Logan 16:29
Yeah, I am sure that like it’s different for everybody. Do you think that there’s like any signs that like, maybe you might be leaning on to that as a crutch too much is like, Are there any things to pay attention to?

Krista St-Germain 16:41
I think what it is, for most of the people that I see, it’s not so much that they are leaning on to it, it’s that they start to realize that it’s no longer serving them, and I hate to make rules about this, you know, over generalizations I don’t like but for many of us in the early days, it’s just so good to be able to talk about what happened and express it without feeling like we’re dumping it on someone. Right? And so people who understand we can just tell the story and make peace with the story. And there it is, and they can, can be there in that way. But then at a certain point, most of us reach a place where we’re kind of tired of telling the story. Right? Telling the story becomes limiting. And so then that’s at the point where a group, if really, it’s just a bunch of telling the story might start to not be in service to where we want to go next. Because maybe now we want to start focusing on telling a different story. Right? whenever we want to start focusing on creating the next story, the next chapter. Yeah, you know, not every group is ready for that.

Lesley Logan 17:48
Yeah, you know, actually, as you’re saying that there’s like, kind of, I think that happens in different areas of life, not just in grief. But like, when people know you as a certain person and as a certain job and you’re like, you’ve moved on, I like like, maybe you were vegan, and I’m like, Oh, you’re the vegan and not you’re not, you’re a vegetarian now or something like that. And it’s like, you kind of I know that I’m like making a very general, like, what does it mean to food and grief. But I think in life, we can end up with people who can hold us back and try to keep us at an old story that we’re trying to move on from and so anytime that’s happening, it’s a good time to go, Is this is this situation serving me? And like, Where’s the group of people that I can be, I can tell the new story with?

Krista St-Germain 18:31
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s great when you can go somewhere and go, Oh, I’m not crazy. It’s not me. This is grief, this is normal. Other people are experiencing this too. And then when it becomes Oh, my god, is this all there is like, are we going to be depressed for the rest of our lives? Are we going to be crying every day? Because a lot of these people are still, that’s where they are. That’s happened to me, right? And I was like, Okay, I’m not going to be one of those, you know, stories were 10 years later, I’m still just pining my time and waiting, you know, to die so that we can be together like, that’s not going to be my life.

Lesley Logan 19:05
Yeah. So what happens? So okay, what is a, since we have, we all know what the five are, but we don’t really know the order anymore. And people just know that it exists. And we will look at it when it’s time for us to go through it. But like, what, what have you, what have you found like, if someone’s going through some grief right now, aside from finding a group, what is some something that they can do for themselves to keep moving forward?

Krista St-Germain 19:29
Yeah. And just a note on what you’ve just said, typically, I think it’s important, like you don’t ever have to pay attention to the five stages of grief, honestly, that work was initially about hospice patients. It was about people who are coming to terms with their own mortality, not people who were grieving the loss of someone else. And then that work was applied to grief and grieving but it was originally about death and dying. So, it went from being an anecdotal, useful conversation starter in a time where no nobody was talking about death, right, at that time, to being something that people have tried to force themselves to fit into. So, I just want to say like, you know, you ever have to learn that.

Lesley Logan 20:11
You guys can skip ahead on that chapter.

Krista St-Germain 20:14
All the feelings are okay, there is no end to grief, right? Grief is a natural human response to a perceived loss. We don’t get over it, we don’t get to the end of it. Right? We adjust to it, we incorporate it into our lives, we integrate. Right? That’s the idea. But I could go, I could go on a soapbox there. So like, what do you do in the beginning? I think you let yourself be a hot mess, and honestly, just have so much compassion, right? Because it really is a full body experience, there really is no part of, if the loss was significant to you, there really is no part of your life that probably isn’t being touched. And it’s okay, if things feel completely off, right? Your hormones will be off, you might not be sleeping well, you might be totally numb. You might be foggy brained, your heart might actually hurt, right? A broken heart syndrome is a real symptom that people have of grief, where their heart actually aches. And so none of that is reflective of anything that you have done wrong, it doesn’t mean anything about the future for you, right? It’s just grief impacts people differently. And so the more compassion we can have for ourselves in that experience, and the more we can kind of focus on the basics of self care, like basics, right? Did we eat today? Like, there were days where I could eat nothing more than a smoothie, and I only ate it if my family brought it to me. Right? Did I shower recently? Like some of those basic things are to be celebrated? It is it really truly get back to basics, how much water, can I drink some water, can I get more rest? And I know that’s not easy to do, especially when you have kids or you have a job or you have, you know, things that you feel like are demanding and pulling on your time. Also, to, as much as I don’t like that the idea of time heals. I used it, I used to be vehemently against it. And every time someone said it to me, I’d be like, no time sits there, time does nothing, right? But what I have learned is that it really is a lot more nuanced than that. We don’t want to depend only on time healing, because if we think that time is what heals, then sometimes what we do is we swing way over in the opposite direction, and we just kind of grip tightly to the steering wheel, right, and like, hold on for dear life and wait for time to pass. And we don’t acknowledge how we’re actually feeling and we don’t let ourselves think about the loss. And then for women or women in particular, it seems to be we have this idea of you know, the one year mark, somehow miracles will happen, like the clouds will part and the angels will sing and all the sudden we won’t be in grief anymore. And if you’ve gripped your way through the whole first year, then usually It’s so disappointing to get past that first year and realize, oh, actually, just because I got through those first milestones doesn’t mean I still don’t have some feelings to, you know, be with and some thoughts to look at. But also, time does need to pass in terms of what our brain is doing, as we’re grieving, right? And if it was a significant relationship, especially a partner at one, we have to understand that our brain is like a prediction machine. Right? So, it’s constantly like when you think about your husband, you you know, when you’re going to see him next, you kind of know where he is, right? If you were to wake up in the middle of the night, assuming you sleep in the same bed and you reach over and he’s not there. That would be weird. Because your brain has had him there so many times that it expects him to be there. And so when he, when your brain expects and that and reality doesn’t match the expectation, that’s when we have the longing or the yearning, or that weirdness of like, I know they died, but also it feels like they should be here. You know, I know they died, but also, the garage door just went up and I thought that it would be them. And you kind of feel like you’re a little crazy. So the brain has to have enough exposures to their absence to stop predicting that they will be there. And now that part does take time. Yeah, right time does have to pass.

Lesley Logan 24:29
It is interesting. It’s a combination of like you have to be taking care of yourself. And time has to pass, right? So that and I you said it earlier and I don’t want to use it so eloquently, but like, like we don’t get over grief. I think people are expecting like it somehow someday I’m just over it. It’s just gonna happen. It’s just gonna be gone and I just don’t. I think that’s a terrible expectation to put on.

Krista St-Germain 25:00
We use language like grief journey, you know? And of course, when you think there are stages to something, don’t you think that then there’s an end resolution? Yeah, of course. So of course, we think it’s going to be over. But we can’t go back and undo the loss, which means we’re always going to have thoughts and feelings about it. So really, what we want to do is move from kind of unintentional thoughts and feelings, to integrating it into our lives intentionally. So that we’re thinking about that loss in a way that doesn’t hold us back from the life that we want. But we might still always choose to be sad about it. Like, we don’t have to be grateful that it happened. But we want to go from unintentional to intentional.

Lesley Logan 25:39
Yeah, I think. I think all of that just makes me feel like you just take the pressure off. And I feel like the perfectionists and overachievers, what’s hard is that they want to be able to handle grief, some perfect way, there must be a way I must do this. And then also, I should be able to show up for my job and for my family and keep everything going, while grieving and I imagined that there is a space where it is possible to show up for life and move the needle forward. At some point, but not in the beginning.

Krista St-Germain 26:13
I mean, yeah, it’s different for everyone. Some people I am blown away by how they can just like go straight back to work and kind of jump right back in. So I don’t ever want to put rules around it. But yeah, it’s gonna take what it takes for you. And judging yourself doesn’t make it take less time. It doesn’t make it any easier, right? Cuz compassion and kindness and self care are really important.

Lesley Logan 26:40
Yeah, y’all keep hearing about that self care stuff. We can you talk about it around here. Just so you know.

Krista St-Germain 26:46
Almost like it’s important.

Lesley Logan 26:49
Yeah, so, Krista, you’ve been doing this for I don’t know how long you’ve been doing this, now. What are you hoping to do next? Like, where are you hoping you take your message and your mission?

Krista St-Germain 27:02
If I could just wave a magic wand, then as soon as someone’s spouse died or partner died, they would just be given The Widowed Mom podcast, they would like be given the resources that I have. So I realize, you know, there’s 11 million widows. So that’s probably a big stretch. But honestly, that’s what I would like is to be able to reach people earlier in more acute grief. So that they have an easier time and so that they suffer less. And, you know, yeah, that’s why that’s why I love coming on podcasts like this and talking about it. Oh, it’s because now somebody’s gonna know. Yeah, somebody’s gonna be like, Oh, I know, someone who just, you know, had that experience, or somebody’s gonna take something from today. And then later, it’s something they’re gonna go through grief, and then they’re going to be more prepared for it.

Lesley Logan 27:45
Yeah. So okay, on the other side of it, not the other side of grief. But the other person, people around someone going in grief are the people who maybe are not like that, that loss of that person is terrible for them. But it’s not their partner. It’s not their mom. It’s not their, but so they but they love their best friend or they love who their coworker. And wow, we don’t know what to say to these people. Like, we have no idea. Like, I’ll see someone post their dog died. And I’m like, I like tear face. Like, what do I say right now?

Krista St-Germain 28:18
I don’t think it’s the party emoji. I don’t think that’s the one.

Lesley Logan 28:23
You know, and so like, you see, like, sometimes I see people write something like, I guess that’s nice, too. But like, what? And obviously everyone is different. But is there like some things we should avoid? Or some things we can consider? Or like, like, maybe like, say that’s like, opens the door? Because I feel like you know, I remember as a kid, I heard people say, Oh, bring someone who lost somebody toilet paper, because they need essentials. Like don’t bring them food. Everyone’s bringing them food. Bring them paper towels. Like, really? I’m gonna show up at the house with like, six rolls of paper towels.

Krista St-Germain 29:01
I had somebody, bless her, she just went and bought all my kids school supplies. Because it was the first of August and school was about to start and our kids went to the same school and she just handled it. Oh, she didn’t even ask. She just showed up with school supplies. So yeah, I think I think it first of all, we just need to cut ourselves a break. We’re not going to say exactly the quote unquote, right thing, we probably will stick our foots in our mouths. Sometimes, you know, we will say something this round. And then I look back at all the cringy things that I said before I had had my own grief experience. And I’m like, oh god, why did I say those things? But you know, we’re doing the best we can, we just need to be the kind to ourselves about it. I think what are the things that most people usually end up not receiving well, when they are in grief, are the things that are indicative of the other person’s discomfort with emotion. So you know, when somebody’s again, we’re all socialized to kind of think that feelings are problems, and we don’t really have the capacity to allow negative emotion. So of course, it makes sense that then when we’re around someone else who has a lot of quote unquote negative emotion, I don’t even believe, you know, air quotes, right? Then, of course, we want them to feel better, because we don’t know how to feel. We don’t know how to feel good unless they feel better. And that’s the root of a lot of the minimizing things that we say, Oh, they’re in a better place. Oh, at least they’re no longer suffering. Oh, I know, I heard you’re young, you’ll find someone else. Right? Just focus on your blessings. Just be grateful for what you had. It’s those kinds of things that people say not because they don’t love you, and they don’t care. But because they don’t know how to deal with your negative emotion. They think it’s a problem, and they’re trying to make it go away from the best place. So to me, it’s like, this sucks. And I love you. I am so sorry. This sucks, right? We don’t even try to make it better with words because words don’t make it better. We just like, let someone feel how they feel and and witness it. That’s what people want is to be seen.

Lesley Logan 31:03
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that’s an all things, isn’t it? Like I have a girlfriend who she’s about to go back to work by the time this is out she’s been back at work after having a baby. And she got to be home for almost six months with them and all the stuff and, and I checked in. I said, Hey, how is like the first day with the nanny, and she’s like, this is so hard. And I was like, I’m so sorry this sucks. Sucks.

Krista St-Germain 31:28
And somebody else in her life is probably like, don’t be sad. It’s okay. Yeah, you’re gonna be fine.

Lesley Logan 31:33
Yeah, yeah. And I was just like, I mean, it’s, she’s allowed for it to be hard. It’s fine. And I think that, like, I thank you for highlighting that. And thank you for sharing, like, you know, we’re all gonna put our friend mad, we are going to say the wrong thing because of wherever we are in our life when it’s going on. Like, I think we all need to cut ourselves some slack. But I do love that you share that story about someone just buying school supplies, I think like, you know, we can just be thoughtful about something like it can be, oh, they have school supplies. It can be if they have a dog, get the dog food, hire a dog walker, like just for a day like just think about like, what could be helpful and then just do it. If it if it gets, the door gets shut and the dog walkers face like, oh, well, that sucked $25 out the door, but probably not. Yeah, they’ll be like, Oh, that’s so nice. Oh, guys, I’m gonna walk my dog.

Krista St-Germain 32:29
Yeah, I mean, acts of service. And in, you know, it’s easy to say, let me know if I can help. Let me know if there’s something I can do. But when your whole world just feels like it exploded. You honestly, you don’t know what you need. It’s very difficult to articulate it sometimes. Because it’s like, you’re just grappling with this weird nightmare that you’re living. You know, so yeah, it’s totally okay to make an offer. And maybe it’ll land and maybe it won’t, but you know, sometimes better to not ask what they need. They might not know.

Lesley Logan 32:59
Yeah, yeah. Oh my god, this is so helpful. There is, there’s like, I can’t I can’t think of the name right now. And I don’t want to say the wrong one. But I’ll put it in the show notes if I remember it. But it was a company that I heard where she creates these boxes, and they’re like, they’re there when something goes wrong in someone’s life. And you can just send this box and it’s got like, Beth bubbles and it’s got like, a checklist of like, drink three glasses of water and she put it together because her brother had died by suicide. And she had to go through this whole thing and she was like, Well what about other people who are going through this? How can we help them and so she’s got these different boxes and you can go on when someone is going through something they didn’t go Oh, like they even have on for kids were going to college like that’s its own transition. (So it’s like here’s like to find out what timer.) Yeah, I want to say it’s Brody box, or Broglie box. We’ll put it up, we’ll put in the show notes and I’ll send it to because it’d be so cool by the way just for you. There should be there could be a kit for you. Yeah, for people going through grief and you could be your podcasts can be in there. I’m just coming up with ideas to help people because I love what you’re saying and I did not, you know, my parents listen to this, so, guys, I love you. But it’s not like I grew up in, none of them none of us did, grew up in a life and a household where like when grief happened you just like you talked about it. No, it was like the funeral happen It was super fast everyone like brought all this food and then everyone cleaned up and everyone went home. Yeah, I’m like okay, we are not there anymore. And we don’t really like especially in the states we do not really handle it well which is why y’all I’m working on trying to find a death doula to come in here because I think that that work is really interesting. And how they’re, how when people know someone’s passing, how they’re able to allow for people to visit and be with the body before it goes away. So anyways, all this stuff has been very fascinating. Krista, your work is so wonderful. We’re gonna take a brief break and find out where people can find you, follow you, listen to your podcast. All right, where do you like to hang out? Where can people get to work with you, connect with you? Listen to your pod?

Krista St-Germain 35:15
Yeah, The Widowed Mom podcast probably the best place. You know, if you want to learn more about grief, if post traumatic growth is interesting to you, even if you’re not a widowed mom, for sure, take a listen. Also send other people my way. It reminded me too earlier, you were asking about what we say I did record an episode called For Those Who Love Us, which is a great one to listen to if somebody wants to learn more about how to support someone that’s going through grief, that’s a good episode. And then everything else can be found at coachingwithkrista.com K R I S T A all my social contacts and everything are there.

Lesley Logan 35:47
Wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay, before I let you go, you’ve given us some excellent stuff, though. However, bold, executable, intrinsic, targets steps people can take to be it till they see it. What do you have for us?

Krista St-Germain 35:58
This was hard for me because I have lots of ideas. And so I’m just gonna go with one. And so I’m a big fan of tapping, Emotional Freedom Technique. So thankfully, I had tapping in my pocket before my husband died, I already knew how to do it. And I knew how and I had used it with my children when they were very little. And they were 12 and nine when he died. So they had to use it for a number of years. But I love tapping because it creates calm in the nervous system. And it allows us to let feelings flow through. It’s great for grief grenades, right, any sort of triggering situation where our nervous system is responding as though we are unsafe. So, for me, the sound of metal crashing, CPR scenes, sirens, right? things like that tapping helped me in the moment when my nervous system was just tripping out. And then it also helped me to work with someone who could help me go back and neutralize those triggers. So that when I remembered them or encountered them in my environment, my nervous system stopped thinking I was in danger, right? So I am a big proponent of that. You can just go to YouTube and learn all about tapping, right? You don’t have to pay anyone to teach it to you. Do you? Are you familiar with it?

Lesley Logan 37:08
I am. I’ve heard about it. Like I read a book once but like it is, I don’t have like as like I don’t have it memorized just

Krista St-Germain 37:15
You’re tapping on acupressure points, right? So you’re just tapping on acupressure points, and you’re acknowledging the truth, you always start on the side of the hand. And it’s like, even though I feel so sad, it’s okay for me to acknowledge the truth of how I feel, right? Even though I feel so sad. It’s okay for me to acknowledge the truth of how I feel. And so you start it three times, and then you just tap on the points. Like so sad. I feel so sad. Whatever it is that you’re trying to process. The Tapping Solution app is brilliant. I’m not affiliated with them, but I love their work. It’s great for beginners, anybody can download that, I pay for it, I pay for my daughter to have it. And I mean, even before grief, it saved many a bedtime nightmare with my children when they were young, right? And they just couldn’t calm themselves down. We would just tap with like, let it go. Let it go. Right and then amygdala, well, okay, I’m safe. Cortisol levels drop, you can just you can literally feel your body relax.

Lesley Logan 38:13
There’s so much I love about tapping because one, like trauma, and emotionally, the body through movement. So you’re moving, you’re just tapping. So you don’t have to actually do a workout at all, you can just tap. But also, you’re acknowledging something. And you’re saying like and that if you have a hard time, like feeling your feelings or like honoring what those feelings are, I think it’s a really good practice. I love that your kids are doing it. And so thank you for that. That’s I would love to know if anyone’s listening to this. If you use tapping already, or if you end up using it and needing this. Krista, I am so grateful for you and for you sharing your story. I hate that you went through what you went through. But I also am so grateful and I’m sure many people are because the work you’re doing is helping all of us get better at understanding our grief and allowing us to live with it instead of trying to like remove it and finish it and shove it in a box. So thank you for being you. Y’all, how are you going to use these tips what she told you in your life? Please tag Krista, tag the Be It pod, go listen to her podcast or share it with a friend especially one who’s going through something that might just be the thing that might be the best thing you can say is here’s the link and until next time, Be It Till You See It!

Lesley Logan
That’s all I’ve got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate this show and leave a review. And, follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over on IG at the @be_it_pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us help others to BE IT TILL YOU SEE IT. Have an awesome day!

Lesley Logan
‘Be It Till You See It’ is a production of the ‘Bloom Podcast Network’.

Brad Crowell
It’s written, filmed and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan and me, Brad Crowell.

Lesley Logan
It is produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.

Brad Crowell
Our theme music is by Ali at APEX Production Music. And our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.

Lesley Logan
Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Ximena Velasquez for our transcriptions.

Brad Crowell
Also to Angelina Herico for adding all the content to our website. And finally to Meridith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.

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