Susan, your host, is joined by Kara Bowman in today's episode. Kara is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has advanced certifications in Grief Counseling, Trauma Therapy, and Thanatology, which is the study of death and dying. She also volunteers with Hospice of Santa Cruz County and trains others to work with those in grief. She has written a book called Heartbreak to Hope: Poems of Support for Grief and Loss.

Key Takeaways:

• Kara shares her grief story.

• We need to honor each loss differently.

• We live in a culture that encourages people to hide negative emotions and overvalues positive feelings.

• People don't like to see us grieving.

• Kara shares a short poem she wrote:

Love

Take good care of your precious pain

Wrap your strong arms around it

hold it against your warm chest

Rock it gently, telling it softly that it is loved,

it is needed, it is important,

it makes perfect sense,

and love it, just as it is, in all of its agonizing beauty.

• Intensity creates posttraumatic growth.

• Grief never goes away, it just shifts shapes.

• Kara talks about her role as a counselor.

• Susan lost her father when she was a child, and grief was never addressed.

• Kara talks about how developmental trauma unfolds.

• You can ask a grieving person: What is it like for you right now?

• Kara talks about her inspiration to write her book of poems.

Your Life

What are you going to do with your house?

Now that the foundation has crumbled

Are you going to let it decay while time and weather carry it toward the grave?

or are you going to rebuild more magnificently a palace that wouldn't have been possible without the footprint of the one that came before?

• There is nothing wrong about grieving, nothing to fix; it is another aspect of love. Just sit there with grief.

Resources

Tendrilsofgrief.com

Email Susan: [email protected]

Meet Kara Bowman

Hope: Poems of Support for Grief and Loss, Kara Bowman.

Grief Poetry griefpoetry.com

Learn more about Kara