• Intro 00:00 – 02:14 How to connect and show you care for someone who has lost a loved one 02:14 – 09:01
• Breaking the taboo of talking about grief, loss, and death 09:01 – 13:30
• Relief after losing someone 13:30 – 16:55
• How to be there for someone who is grieving 16:55 – 24:15
• The myths and misconceptions about grief and loss 24:15 – 28:40
• Grief as an enriching experience 28:40 – 31:48
• Progressive illnesses can lead to more connection, meaning, and awe 31:48 – 35:50
• Learning from death by keeping it in view 35:50 – 42:25
• How Bridget’s view of death has changed over the last 10 years 42:25 – 45:08
• What Bridget thinks happens after we die 45:08 – 48:25
• Receiving signs and messages from those you’ve lost 48:25 – 50:00
• Staying connected with the person you’ve lost 50:00 – 52:15
• What many forget about the person who died: they had different roles for different people 52:15 – 55:58
• The IPS Academy 55:58 – 57:55
• The five stages of grief: are they helpful? 57:55 – 1:03:55
• Can you grieve ‘wrong’? 1:03:55 – 1:03:28
• Distraction is underrated while grieving 1:03:28 – 1:08:55
• If you are seeking answers about death, grief, loss, and dying 1:08:55 – 1:12:27
• Outro 1:12:27 – 1:14:13

The transcription is, for the most part, AI-transcribed and is currently 85% accurate. We are still weeding out some minor errors.

Jellis Vaes
Hey, welcome to another episode here on the podcast of Inner Path Seekers. I’m Jelis Vaes, and I’m your host. Now, in the past few episodes, we have dedicated a series of episodes on grief and loss. It’s a topic, grief and loss, that we learn nothing about, yet we’re all going to experience. I mean, we’re all going to lose someone. I dedicated this series of episodes on grief and loss to learn about this topic, but also if you just lost someone to help you go through this grieving process, to find some support, some insights, some way to cope and go through this. The past episodes, that’s where I talked to a few people who lost someone diving into their story, but also into the insights and lessons that they learned by losing someone. Now, within each of these series, I am also each I’m inviting a mental health professional on that topic that we’re covering. In this episode, I invited such a mental health professional, namely Bridget Sumser, who is a licensed clinical social worker, and she is specialized in palliative and end-of-life care. She has over more than a decade of experience. She has stood beside the bedside of hundreds and hundreds of people dying.

But she has also been there as a social worker with the families, helping them cope with the grief that they’re experiencing. Besides direct care, Bridget also trains health and social service professionals to integrate palliative principles into their work. She’s also the co-editor of Palliative Care, a guide for health social workers by Oxford University, and she practices with mental health, offering online palliative care support. She’s someone with a lot of knowledge on death, dying, grief, and loss. I really hope that this episode can be helpful and insightful to you. Without further ado, let’s dive into the episode with Bridget Sumser.

Jellis Vaes
Bridget.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
Welcome to the show.

Bridget Sumser
Happy to be here.

Jellis Vaes
I told you just a few minutes ago the reason why I wanted to have you here on the show. I’ve dedicated some episodes on loss and grief, and there’s three reasons why I wanted to do that on the podcast. I mean, the first one is just plain and simple, we’re all going to lose someone or even something, even our own health decline. The second one, I think we are not so great at talking about grief, I think, or it just seems like there’s not a lot of room. To do that. And then the third reason is that I lost my dad when I was four years old. So I find the topic very interesting myself. I’ve gained some insights on this topic through the years, but at the same time, I’m here while everyone is listening to these episodes, I’m also here to learn something about this topic. So that’s a long way of saying that I’m grateful for you for being here, actually.

Bridget Sumser
Can I ask what your dad’s name was?

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. It’s actually really weird to say his name because I don’t say it. His name is Werner.

Bridget Sumser
It’s a thing, right? I After someone dies, people… We have to be careful with the people and the wheeze, because there’s massive cultural difference here in variation in terms of a fluency with how grief is related and thought about and talked about. We can talk in some grand generalizations, and there’s infinite intricacies in terms of how individuals and different groups of people deal with this. But a really common experience after someone dies is that we stop hearing their names because people stop talking about them eventually. Or worry that if we say their name, even if by role, if I were to say your dad, that we just stop referencing them because we’re so worried about the feelings we’re going to induce for the other person. But that starts to fracture the connection to the person that’s died, which often we’re so hungry and need to maintain. That’s what we’re figuring out. In grieving, we’re figuring out, what is this relationship now? How do I stay connected to this person or to their memory or to their impact in my life? And when somebody stops saying their name or asking about them or asking about their name, it can just be so painful.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Actually, funny enough, I think people don’t want to talk about them because they don’t want to inflict pain on you. But I think by not talking about them, it’s actually causing more pain.

Bridget Sumser
Right. And the reality is for some people, on some days, they’re going to want to talk about that person, and on other days, they’re not going to want to talk about that person. Or talk about it or the loss. And so I I think part of what we are doing when we just stop talking about it is we’re avoiding the awkwardness or the discomfort of not knowing how it’s going to land. But that’s the thing with grief, which is we don’t know how it’s going to land. It can be different every day. It’s different week to week. It’s different year over year. For people who love somebody who is grieving or are connected to somebody who’s grieving, I think we have to build our comfort with the risk of not knowing how asking, how someone’s doing, how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking about in relationship to this loss. We have to get comfortable risking the fact that we don’t know how it’s going to be received by staying really connected to the intent that what we’re trying to communicate is, I want to know about this piece of your life. I don’t want you to be alone.

Bridget Sumser
I may not know what to say, but I don’t want you to be alone in it.

Jellis Vaes
Especially if the person has been gone for quite some years, then we tend to really forget about them. I mean, not forget about them, maybe personally, but forget asking to other people, like me, for example, right? Yeah. Like, Hey, how are you actually after so many years having lost your dad?

Bridget Sumser
Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
There’s definitely There’s a lot of muscles to build in this space, right?

Bridget Sumser
I wonder how it is for you, and hopefully this is okay to pot into, but even just the muscle of all of these years later, how do you talk about him to other people? Do you feel like you can? Is the invitation there? Do you have that comfort because you’ve lived much more of your life without him than you lived with him?

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. I I have two memories of him. That’s it. It’s something, right? It’s at least something. But yeah, I guess-Potentially a big something.

Bridget Sumser
Potentially a really big something to have those memories and in that way.

Jellis Vaes
That way. Yeah. In general, I’m quite okay talking about him. But whenever I do it, even now when you ask me to say his name, I was a little bit taken back, actually, by that.

Bridget Sumser
Your body moved back. I think it was unexpected, which it is for most people, but intentional on my part in that way, which is like, this is what we got to do. It’s like jump in of like, who was he? Can we bring his memory forward a little bit for this conversation since it’s so fundamental to what is bringing you here to wanting to talk about it? We don’t have to just glide over the fact that he he died when you were four. That’s like, okay, that’s just a fact that we’re not going to tend to when we’re thinking about this.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah.

Bridget Sumser
But I did just plow in, that’s for sure. I just dove in. Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
I was taken back, but actually, exactly not in a bad way. More surprised that you cared enough to ask his name.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
That’s so sad in a way.

Bridget Sumser
I do care. Other people do, too. We just don’t know what to do.

Jellis Vaes
Exactly. Yeah. And that’s why I said that I wanted to dedicate some episodes on this to potentially help some listening to ease a little bit of that awkwardness on this topic because there’s quite a lot of awkwardness.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah, ease the awkwardness by building comfort being awkward, right? Yeah. When I ask people that question, I get all sorts of responses of like, Oh, that’s my favorite question to, I don’t know how to relate to what you just asked, to I don’t like that. I don’t want to say that, right? There’s the whole range, but there’s how do we show It’s not the one another that we care. And it’s clunky. That doesn’t have to be perfect. The importance is the attempt, the extension.

Jellis Vaes
Exactly, right? Yeah.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
So maybe while we’re on that, for people listening, what could you say to them if they want to build that connection to someone who just lost a person? Are there some other ways besides knowing that it’s going to be uncomfortable and it’s going to be awkward? Is there some other things- Or it could be.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah. Yeah, or could be. I feel like we don’t want to… It’s such a tender territory. We don’t want to set ourselves up to assume it’s always It’s always going to be awkward and uncomfortable because that’s a hard thing to rally yourself towards, and also colors our expectations going in. But at least knowing, Yeah, this could be awkward. It might be uncomfortable. It could also be really lovely. True. And intimate and connective. Most people really want to know what to say.

Jellis Vaes
Exactly. They want the manual.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah, exactly. And so in that, we repeat the things that we’ve heard a lot. I’m so sorry for your loss. This must be so hard. Not bad things, but we just repeat these truisms. He’s in a better place. He’s not suffering anymore. He’s at peace. These comments are not benign. They’re really deep and rich in meaning and assumption.

Jellis Vaes
Are they helpful, though?

Bridget Sumser
I I’m sure there are grieving people that feel comforted by them. And I think there’s a lot of grieving people that feel like, What does that mean? Why is everybody telling me that? I don’t feel like this is peaceful. I don’t feel like he is at peace. I don’t know where he is, actually. So I think those blanket statements that we inherit while well-intended, we’re trying to say, I’m here and I feel about this, and I They want you to know that. They don’t usually invite actually an opportunity to learn about what’s happening for that person. And so I think there aren’t perfect things to say. I think there is intention and availability and interest and care that we can communicate a lot of different ways. Hey, my best friend’s mom She died in June. And in July, I saw her brother for the first time. And I said something to him. We had been hanging out for half a day, and I said something to him like, You know, Gavin, I haven’t even acknowledged that your mom died. And that was my alternative to, I’m so sorry your mom died. It’s not that the sorry is wrong.

Bridget Sumser
And some people are really comforted by that and would probably find it weird if it wasn’t said to them. But for me, with him, but for me in general, there are people who, especially after a long illness course, feel a lot of relief after their person has died. It doesn’t mean they don’t feel sad. It doesn’t mean that they don’t feel like they wish that they were still alive. But there’s also relief. And sorrow is not always the only or even the primary feeling.

Jellis Vaes
Wait, relief. Can you explain how… I mean, I can see why, but why would some feel relief from losing someone?

Bridget Sumser
If you’ve been a caregiver or care partner over a decade of a progressive illness, and you’ve watched your person change in these little bits or these little ways over time, and your life has also changed in these little and also big ways over time. And at the end, it really can feel like the dying is happening for a long time or the ending is happening for a long time. And a lot of people want to be or part of them, maybe most importantly, part of them really wants to be liberated from that time. They know it’s happening. They know their person is going to die. They’ve wrapped their heads around that, theoretically, and they are angsty to get to the other side. They can also simultaneously feel with as much honesty behind it, the hope that their person never dies. Grief is a very rich space of contradictions predictory feelings that are both very true at the same time. Sometimes people can feel relief because they’ve been waiting for a death and they’re not having to wait for it anymore. Or they saw how much their person’s life changed and they knew their person was not happy about those changes, and that process got to end.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. And the pain that they might be experiencing.

Bridget Sumser
The pain or the discomfort or the stress.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah.

Bridget Sumser
It’s a really common… Relief is a really common feeling people have that they really don’t feel comfortable talking about because it indicates, I I wanted them to die, which is not the same as some amount of relief that this very intense era is done. People feel guilty for having that feeling. They feel like, Oh, God, probably other people don’t think this way. So it’s a really common feeling that people usually feel very alone in.

Jellis Vaes
It’s like a feeling that you wouldn’t expect to feel, I guess, upon losing someone. But I guess it’s mostly from people, not suddenly when you lose someone, but more when there’s this long, prolonged process of the person slowly getting closer to death. That’s, I guess, where you can see that relief.

Bridget Sumser
In the instance of somebody dying tragically or unexpectedly. Relief is not a feeling there. That’s like a… That would be more relationship-specific. It has nothing to do with the actual dying and more about the nature of that relationship. So it’s certainly possible there, but it’s not a common trajectory in grief when someone dies unexpectedly, but more when you’ve been facing the end of life for a long time. Yeah, it can be a piece of it. So back to your question, I think the way that I relate to showing up for people who are grieving believing is trying to communicate to them, to acknowledge that it’s happened and to communicate my interest and my care and my desire to know what it’s like for them, to not And it does not lead with an assumption.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Like saying they’re in a better place while it might be helpful for some, it is leading with an assumption that the other person thinks that they are in a better place.

Bridget Sumser
That a better place is. Because if you lose It exists. Yeah, totally. There’s a lot of philosophical and spiritual assumptions in the idea of they’re in a better place.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Or I had someone on the show recently who lost his son, and people told him, I’m in a better place. But he was like, What? He’s supposed to be here with me. That’s not a better place where he’s now.

Bridget Sumser
Even in the instance where somebody’s child has a devastating progressive illness, the better place is here in my arms with my care on Earth in a body that I can feel and connect to it. That is the only okay place for my child. But that’s a hard thing to make contact with, right? We really have to… It’s vulnerable for us, too, to make contact with somebody else’s grief means we have to create some space for what’s happened in their life, right? To tolerate it, to let it know, to know that it’s true, that your child can die or that that person’s child can die. I was talking with a client this morning who is living with the loss of her partner, and she’s reading a book about loss, and she’s reading some of the reviews of the book. And some of the people reviewing the book were saying, this person is too involved with how they feel. The author of the book has lived through this devastating, massively devastating loss. Which book? It’s called Wave. And it’s a woman’s story of the basic instantaneous loss of her entire family during a tsunami. And so my client was telling me about her reaction to the reviewer saying, You’re selfish, you’re self-involved, wanting her to prove that she’s more Okay, right?

Bridget Sumser
That it needs to be more positive. And the soft spot in me when I think about those reviewers, when we reject how someone is doing or we judge it when they’re grieving, it’s usually an expression that making contact with what happened to them is just too hard for us. So he’s in a better place, I think, really can translate to the grieving person of like, I can’t touch this. It’s It’s too painful for me. I can’t even imagine how you’re surviving. It’s too painful for me. So I’m just skirt over to here, which is that like, okay, he’s at peace now.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah.

Bridget Sumser
There’s, of course, he’s at peace, or he’s home, or he’s in a better place, can really have deep religious significance and bring people comfort because there’s a shared understanding around a spiritual religious framework. When I say he’s at home now, that really translates. But when we just use these things as colloquiallyal, he’s at peace or he’s in a better place without the shared cultural understanding, it has the real opportunity to be a miss.

Jellis Vaes
I do think people sometimes also underestimate or overestimate Or assume that they have to say something. I think people underestimate sometimes just being present, just being there with a person, just physically. I know that my mom told me that the most helpful thing that someone did when she lost her partner, so my dad, was just a person who walked in and gave her a hug, and he didn’t even say anything. I think the silence of not saying anything even made it even… It showed the credit, not the credit, the enormousness of what actually happened. There is no good word for that, what happened to your partner.

Bridget Sumser
Totally. And then in this day and age where we are often communicating with one another over text or we are not in physical proximity to one another, words can do the same thing, which is like, I don’t have I don’t know what to say, or I don’t feel like I have the right words, but I want you to know that I’m here. You can text me anytime. I’m going to keep checking in with you. I’m going to keep checking in with you. A lot of people, when they’re grieving, get like, Please let me know if you need anything. But the grieving person is like, I don’t know, up from down. I have no appetite. I’m exhausted. I’ve got to keep getting my kids to school. I have no idea how to articulate to you what I need. What I need is for my husband to still be alive. So are you asking me, Can you bring dinner? I don’t know. Just bring dinner. The well-intended, Let me know if you need anything. It’s a beautiful sentiment. And often what people need is fewer questions and more doing, the dropping off of the meal or the checking in, even if you haven’t heard back from the person, or a note in the mail two months after someone’s died when you know it’s gotten a little bit more quiet and it feels like everybody else has moved on.

Jellis Vaes
Feeling like they’re still supportive, that you don’t have to constantly ask if they need to help, but just providing it to them.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah. Sometimes that can be awkward because then the person is having a really sad day and you show up with soup and they’re like, I don’t need this soup. It’s like, Okay, I’ll take it home. And I’ll see you next week because I’m not going to take this personally. This is not about my soup. This is about the fact that you’re reorienting to the world. So it takes some fortitude of, can continuing to show up and showing up again and continuing to show up and figuring out the ways we can show people that we’ve got their backs.

Jellis Vaes
Mostly when I have my interview with all my questions written out, I got my structure. But then when I start talking, it’s always completely flipped upside down, and that’s okay, right? I don’t expect to stick to a structure. Yeah, it’s all good. But let me actually go to one of the first questions that I had. I don’t want to suddenly drop this topic that we’re now talking about, but I’m pretty sure we’ll come back to it again. Yeah, we can flow. You also just mentioned it. You worked about a decade in palliative care. I’m curious because I can assume from all the years that you have heard quite some myths and misconceptions on the topic of grief, death, dying Lying, losing someone. If you had to dismantle some of those myths and misconceptions here once and for all on the show, which ones do you want to dismantle?

Bridget Sumser
We have a lot in our common language or framework when it comes to grieving and grief that loss is something we get over or we get through. It’s the get over in particular. I think for me, I just really am like, we don’t… Some of it is semantics, but really, we don’t get over these big fundamental losses. And to your point from the beginning, that’s not just deaths. That could be divorce, loss of a marriage. That could be loss of a home. It could be loss of a job or career. It’s loss of ability in our body or changing self-concept. Loss comes in myriad form for all of us over our lifetime. So I really think of grief as a process of reorientation to a world that often we were not expecting or planning for or hoping for. And that that’s a process that continues to evolve over time. The acuity or the intensity may get less over time, but not in a perfectly linear way. Because let’s say your mom died 15 years ago and you’ve gotten to a pretty comfortable place. You figured out how to live with that and how to relate to it and how to talk about it.

Bridget Sumser
But now you’re getting married and she’s not going to be there. And it gets louder again for a little bit. And then you settle into a new place, and then you have your first baby and it gets louder again. And then you settle into a new place. And then maybe your spouse’s mom dies and it gets louder again. And the loud isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just like we reorient to… It’s another moment of reorientation to the part of us that thought, Obviously, my mom was going to be there when I got married, and she was going to be there when my babies were born, and she would be there to support me. And even though I’ve had all of this time to adjust the fact that she’s not here, that’s still a loss. It’s a loss that she’s not here. So we adjust, but not in this linear way. And people want it to be a linear way. We want to know that this is the hardest it’s going to be, and it’s just going to get easier until it’s pretty okay, or it’s just going to get easier to the point I can say, I’m done grieving.

Bridget Sumser
People don’t really love when I say this, but we’re maybe not really ever done.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. If you just lost someone, that’s a hard thing to hear, right? It’s like, Oh, this is never going to end this pain. But I think, like you said, the acuteness of the pain that’s going to lessen.

Bridget Sumser
The pain changes. And the grief may not even be defined as being fundamentally painful at some point. It might be more nostalgic or filled with longing or filled with gratitude and a sense of connection. So I think that’s the other thing. If we could expand our thinking or correct misconception, grief is not only a horrible feeling or a horrible experience. It’s a really rich experience. It is so raw and can be so primal and so real and true that it can make things, it can bring incredible clarity. It can bring such precise appreciation and seeing for the green on the leaves. Maybe it starts to sound a little psychedelic, But it’s so real, and it’s so inarguable that it does bring a… It can bring just a…

Jellis Vaes
Some sense of awe?

Bridget Sumser
Yeah, I think there’s awe. I think there can be awe, or that we can hone our minds to think about awe in this space. But it’s just so honest. We spend a lot of time in our minds contemplating, worrying about things that have yet to happen. We are so busy, and grief is so physical and demanding and raw, and honest and real. And there’s something that is… I mean, A, it’s just very human, but there’s something really orienting about it in this process of reorienting. Yeah, But I think grief is not only bad. Grief is a very rich experience that can be filled with a deep feeling of appreciation for the person that’s died, and a missing, and a sadness that they’re gone, and an appreciation for the time that we had together, and a remembering of what they taught us, which then informs how we go out and live our lives. So it can be a really rich experience.

Jellis Vaes
They’re more than one color in that experience. Yeah.

Bridget Sumser
That’s hard to imagine and or remember when the painful part is so loud.

Jellis Vaes
So I heard two myths and misconceptions. So one, it’s a pellet of different feelings that can come up in thoughts. And then also that it’s not just going to be like, Oh, now I feel it, and now I’m never feeling it again.

Bridget Sumser
And we don’t get over it.

Jellis Vaes
We learn and we adapt, and we learn how to live in this new reality.

Bridget Sumser
And there’s not like, In two years, you’ll feel better. In one year, you’ll feel better. Painting that trajectory is I think it’s not like there aren’t landmarks. It’s not like we can’t think about it together. But there’s not just a universal. Five years from now, you’re going to be totally…

Jellis Vaes
Exactly.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
Are there any other myths or misconceptions that come up that you have heard often in the last, well, years?

Bridget Sumser
I think what doesn’t get enough attention. I think the ways in which serious illness, progressive illness, changing abilities in our body, facing the end of life, grieving. They’re very well known for being hard experiences. What we don’t talk about as much is how with the hard, they’re also very rich. And in that richness, there can be more connected more intimacy, a bigger sense of awe or beauty, right? That we don’t give a lot of time or create a lot of space for talking about everything that’s possible in this era and how we might be oriented towards more connection or more aliveness, even as our abilities are changing or our expectations around what life we live for, how long are changing. It’s not all bad. Not beautiful enriching things happen. And there’s plenty of people who I’ve talked to who really feel like their cancer diagnosis changed their life for the better. They’re not saying, If I could go back and choose not to have cancer, that I choose to have the cancer, but the cancer is here, and, Wow, I’m really not oriented to my life in the same way, and I like this way.

Jellis Vaes
Do you know how or why that can happen, that they say that?

Bridget Sumser
I think there’s probably many explanations, but I think that a major function there is mortality awareness. For the most part, many of us live with an awareness of our mortality way back here. Maybe we’re even sitting on our hand or it’s buried under a lot of sand, but we’re not thinking about our mortality. If we think about the state of the world today, this is an incredibly privileged position to not think about our mortality. But for the most part, every day, as we’re navigating our lives, we cope with being human by keeping our mortality awareness back here. And then things happen, and it comes out from behind or under and it maybe comes like this for a while. Yeah. And for some people, the benefit of mortality awareness is like, oh, my God. These days are not promised to me. How am I relating to my life? What husband do I want to be? What partner do I want to be? Is this job that seems so important? How important is it really? So when you’re faced with or forced to look at the fact that your life and how long it goes for is not entirely in your hands, and it could be much more fleeting than we’re usually comfortable relating to, then you’re like, wow, all of this striving professionally, I don’t care about that.

Bridget Sumser
Or I just care about it a little bit less than I thought, because what I really care about is walking my dog, continuing to tend to my garden, really paying attention to my kids when they come home from school. So I think mortality awareness is a big piece of putting in its place what is most important and staying connected to that and not distracted from it.

Jellis Vaes
How can someone who is not facing cancer or another progressive illness also come to put mortality and death more in their face instead of in the background or just even completely forgetting it? How can we do that?

Bridget Sumser
There’s lots of practices. I mean, whether that’s just reading about… There’s psychological frameworks for thinking about mortality awareness. There’s certainly spiritual frameworks and practices for thinking about it. But if we’re just thinking aligned with what we’re talking about today, so let’s say a friend’s child dies. Instead of saying, he’s at peace now, I could actually pause and make contact with the fact that their child died. Maybe it’s only first… Maybe I can only tolerate it for a second because I also have kids kids, and I just really don’t have the psychological scaffolding to tolerate that. It’s too threatening. And maybe a child dying is too extreme of an example because for a lot of people, that’s just a worst, worst, worst case scenario. But most of us don’t have to look far in our lives to see somebody that we know or that we care about that is suffering a loss. So can we We hold close to our hearts thinking about what that experience might be like for them and asking them about it and making ourselves available and vulnerable to learning about what it’s like for them versus relating to it in a way where we’re trying to make it okay or fix something.

Bridget Sumser
So that’s in a way to extend towards this world where it could happen to me, too.

Jellis Vaes
I I think we all intellectually know that we’re going to die. But the difference is when you actually can feel it, like it’s really going to happen. Because that’s where the real, I guess, lessons are hidden in the actual feeling the reality of death coming closer and closer. So what you shared of trying to really feel that, how it must be like to lose a child or your child. Yeah, that makes sense, actually.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah. And it’s tricky because it’s an imaginative, an empathetic imagining. And we don’t want to get confused that what we’re feeling in our empathy is actually the other person’s experience. We want to be mindful that our reaction or our projection of what that would be like is maybe very different from what it’s like for the person who’s going through it. But I think it’s one of the things that’s so humbling about being a person who spent a lot of time with people who are very ill or are facing their lives or dying or have died. And then the people trying to make sense of the world after that fact is like, it really just breaks down the protections we have, which is like, that could be me, that could be my husband, that could be my child. And it may be. And in some world, it will be. And I don’t know when. And that piece of uncertainty, to your point, we all on some level know that we’re going to die. But if We can make contact with the uncertainty that we don’t know when that will happen. We hope, many of us, hope that it’s as late in a good life as possible, but we don’t know.

Bridget Sumser
So a cancer diagnosis This diagnosis is like, No, you really don’t know when that is. But we can all be in touch with, We don’t know when that’s coming for us or for any of the people that we care about. And if we make… If we figure out the right ways for each of us to make contact with that. I think it’s really enriching for our lives.

Jellis Vaes
It’s just very uncomfortable for many, I think, to question like, Oh, maybe life might end sooner than I think. It’s a very uncomfortable question question to ask yourself and to even seek that feeling of that coming closer. But I think at the same time, there is a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of lessons that you can use by actually taking that confrontation up because it can help you. They often say, I think, what is it in Buddhism, that it can help you to live life better?

Bridget Sumser
Yeah, I mean, for a song, it’s really a call to this is what exists. All All of these things that we’re planning for decades down the road or years from now, this moment is what is real and true, and how do I want to relate to it? I think you started today by talking about how we’re not great at talking about this stuff. And part of what’s so important about conversations like these is, I don’t know that we’re really meant to contemplate this stuff in isolation because it is really scary and it is really threatening. And if we’re new to it, it’s really helpful to be near another person who’s thought about it a little bit and can say, Hey, it’s okay. You can survive this idea. It can become more tolerable. Okay, it’s not tolerable today. It doesn’t need to be tolerable today, but it is possible to evolve a relationship to our mortality and to this uncertainty that doesn’t feel so scary and is more familiar. But we need other people around us to do that. It could… Connection is protection in that way. We need each other in this conversation. To feel tethered to something when we’re contemplating our ceasing to exist on some level.

Jellis Vaes
I’m actually curious. When you started about a decade ago, doing the work that you’re doing today, how did you change? I don’t know. Your look on that, from the day that you started to where you are now today, how has it actually evolved? And changed?

Bridget Sumser
To death, specifically?

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, or death, grief, dying. My life. Yeah. Life. Add that to the list, too. You know how it relates to my life.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah. I guess just Very personally, when I started this work, I came to this work professionally because I had had several experiences in my personal life where people had died, and And in those experiences, I was very sad, but I wasn’t freaking out. I was looking around and everybody else seemed a little bit out of their minds. And I was just like, I had access to this okayness that I didn’t really understand. And so when I went to social work school, I thought, well, let’s go learn more about that okayness. And I really didn’t plan to go and work in palliative care. I planned to be a psychotherapist and just thought, if I get more comfortable with death anxiety, I’ll just be more useful to everybody. So let’s go explore that thing. And I ended up in a much more specialized path than I expected to. So But when I started in this work, I had a pretty… It was not well defined, but I think I had a pretty spiritual orientation to what happens after you die. I was pretty sure that something happened, that there was somewhere to go, that there just was more.

Bridget Sumser
And this is a thing that’s really continues to evolve and change for me. I went in really pretty sure that that was true. And then I spent many years after being really dipped in being with actively dying people, where I was like, I don’t think anything happens. I think you die, and it lights out. And that’s maybe a miraculous in its own right. I don’t know that I think anything happens. And I got even some moments of like, actually, I think nothing happens. I think it’s just that this is done when you die.

Jellis Vaes
Why did that change, actually, that belief?

Bridget Sumser
I think on some level because I was in this process of becoming familiar with the physiologic process of dying and the very body-based experience that it What it is to watch a body die and a person, what it is to be with somebody in the moment of their death and dying, where that was learning about that and Seeing it happen many times and building comfort or familiarity with that. I think I had a lot of just awe about that process that then I didn’t really need there to be more in some ways, or I just didn’t have the space to even be contemplating that there was something more. Potentially, I was filled up enough just in learning about the dying process. I think I got body science, medically oriented towards the process in some ways. So I just swung.

Jellis Vaes
Do you feel like that made death less special in some way?

Bridget Sumser
Yeah, it became very normal.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah, if you see it’s a lot. It was very everyday.

Bridget Sumser
It was very much something that I was exposed to on a very regular basis. And so it did just become profound in its mundaneness of like, oh, right. We all die, and a lot of people die every day. And somehow, obviously, my life is huge to me. It’s just there’s so much happening. There’s so much going on. And that’s true for all of us. And then one day that closes down. I don’t know. There’s just so much happening there for me. I just became less invested in the idea that something happened after you die. And now, many years later, I’m just like, well, I just actually have no idea. I don’t know if something happens. I don’t know if something doesn’t happen. What I do know is that bereaved people, people who live on in the face of someone else’s death have myriad experiences of feeling their person’s presence, seeing them, seeing the symbol of them in their lives, not feeling them at all. There’s so many experiences, and I feel forever curious about what that’s like for other people and what it’s like for me when in the position of griever. I don’t know.

Bridget Sumser
I guess I’ll see when I get there if there is something else or not.

Jellis Vaes
What do you make out of the signs or the things that the messages or things that they receive? What do you make out of that?

Bridget Sumser
I think it’s beautiful. I think it’s like a very dear client of mine died three weeks ago, and her daughter has been text messaging me pictures of purple flowers because Michelle’s favorite color was purple, and she was just known as this purple being in some ways. And so now it’s just everything that is purple is And it’s not just like, I see purple, and I don’t think for her family. It’s just like, I see purple, so I think of my mom. I think they really feel her in it. And it is a way for them to continue their relationship with her. And that is like, it’s magic. There’s also a piece for people who don’t have that, which is like, that’s also It’s also okay. I think it’s hard when people don’t have that sense of connection or they’re not getting signs or signals, they may really long for it because they’re hearing other people talk about that. And they’re like, well, where’s my person? Could they show up as a hummingbird in front of my computer screen out the window? But there’s other ways. If it’s not happening in that way, there’s other ways to figure out how to stay and be connected, too.

Jellis Vaes
What are some other ways?

Bridget Sumser
Continuing to talk about them. I think staying, reminding, a lot of remind, like reminding ourselves of the things that were important to them, the things they taught us, continuing to do those things, making their favorite meal, stopping for a minute longer when you’re on the hike that you did with them and you cross the foot path that they loved. I think those are always doing things in their honor, feeling like you’re continuing their legacy. Like, smelling your favorite shirt of them, even when it doesn’t smell like them anymore. There’s just these physical things that we can do to stay in.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Some months ago, my dad turned And what was it? 60? 65? I think 60, actually. Yeah. And we gathered with the whole family. And it was the first time ever that we did that. So it was actually very awkward. It was very awkward, but To have a birthday party for someone who died a long time ago. Yeah. But at the same time, the gesture of people from my family coming, even though that it was uncomfortable for them, that by itself, Even if they didn’t say or speak a lot about him that day, that by itself showed that they cared. And I think, yeah, celebrating a birthday. That’s beautiful.

Bridget Sumser
How did you all decide to do that?

Jellis Vaes
My mom took the initiative, right? Of like, Oh, it’s That’s when he’s turning 60, and I would like to do a birthday party for him. And so we talked about him.

Bridget Sumser
I love that she had that vision, and she made it happen, right?

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. And also for her, I guess, It made her maybe seen… Because we all realized again, Oh, yeah, she lost her partner, right? So I think it was pretty maybe important for her, too.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah. I think that that just reminds me of this other piece, which is maybe not a misunderstanding, but something that we don’t often… Sometimes we forget, which is when a person When a person dies, there are actually many people. Your dad was somebody’s spouse. He was a dad. He was a friend. He was maybe a sibling. He was someone’s child. And those are all unique losses. It’s not the same to lose your husband as it is to lose your dad as it is to lose your adult child. And sometimes when we’re talking to one another as if we’re having the the same experience because it was the same person. All of those people existed in one body. But the grief can feel so different that it can be hard to connect.

Jellis Vaes
That’s true.

Bridget Sumser
That’s very true. I have a client right now whose husband just died, and she’s having an impossible time connecting with her mother-in-law. And her mother-in-law was here heavily throughout my client’s husband’s illness and help take care of the grandkids. They’re really close-knet family. But now that they’re in this time of reorienting to the world without a husband, without a child, Their grief almost feels like oil and water. They’re having a really hard time finding one another because they’re so steeped in my husband is gone and my child is gone, and it’s hard to see each other.

Jellis Vaes
How can you navigate that? Because that’s an interesting insight that I think when you lost someone, even years later, that you don’t even think about that. It’s like, Oh, yeah, we had different relationships with that person.

Bridget Sumser
I think part of it is even having the intellectual framework that that’s true. I remember the first time that this occurred to me was when my grandfather was dying, and He was in the hospital. He had been in the hospital for a long time. So we’re in a tiny ICU room. And my grandmother’s on one side, his spouse of 60 years at that point, and then three of his adult children and me. And it’s like, we are all processing a very different thing. And you could see in that moment with the different levels of emotion and despair and quietness, that The husband and the dad and the grandfather were three very different people who are all dying in that moment. But if we don’t know to think about that, then when my aunt is having this really big emotional reaction, I’m just like, What is happening? He’s been sick for literally years and dying for months. How are you surprised? But I’m like, This is her dad. My grandfather, on At some level, I always felt lucky to have an alive grandfather. I expected him to die. He was supposed to die chronologically on some level.

Bridget Sumser
That’s very different than feeling like your dad is dying too early. So part I guess how we navigated is just remembering, Right, my dad is not your spouse. They exist in the same body, but those are two very different types of relationship.

Jellis Vaes
That’s a good insight. Yeah.

The IPS Academy
Hey, I’m just going to take a short moment to interrupt the conversation between Bridget and me. If you want to spend more one-on-one time with guests who have been here on the podcast, then take a look at The IPS Academy. It’s an academy that we have with various courses that have been, again, created with guests who have been here on the show. And I mean, this project, this platform, Inner Path Seekers, is about mental health. It’s about those who feel ready to take a step on their mental health journey. And the courses are a really great way to take steps further on your mental health journey. So have a look by going to theipsproject.com/academy or check the description. I will place the link there to find the academy and to see the courses that we have at the moment. More are being added. I’m currently working actually on one with a guest who has been here on the show a few times, which I’m very excited about to release soon. I spent about six months to eight months creating these courses. They are created with an animator, with an illustrator. There’s an exercise book.

The IPS Academy
I’m really aiming for quality over quantity with these courses to really… Yeah, that they really are of value when you buy them. There are free preview lessons. There is a 30-day money-back guarantee. I’m also trying to make them affordable so mental health is not excluded for the ones who just have a lot of money, but that it’s more accessible to everyone. Again, have a look by going to theipsproject.com/academy or check the link in the description to also go to the academy. All right, with that, let’s return back now to the conversation with Bridget.

Jellis Vaes
When someone just lost someone, it’s a very chaotic and messy thing to go through. And we often want some a manual sometimes, right? To know, I have to take step one, two, three, and then it gets better.

Jellis Vaes
And the most known manual is the one from the five stages of grief.

Jellis Vaes
So quickly, so everyone knows them. It’s denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

The IPS Academy
Now, from the years of experience that you’ve had around people who died or who are dying and people are grieving. Do you agree with that model?

Jellis Vaes
Is there some truth to it, or how does it actually look?

Bridget Sumser
I think that those are the common buckets of feelings that people feel in the experience of grief. But they don’t happen in a particular in a regular order, necessarily. And they don’t happen in a linear way. Back to our earlier points, you may cycle in and out of those feelings over time. I think in this spirit of wanting to know I’m progressing through this experience and it will end, a lot of people started to relate of like, I think I’m done with denial, and now I’m mad, and I think I’m done with mad, and now I’m… And on and on and on because we want to get to that end point.

Jellis Vaes
So you’re talking now about someone who is dying?

Bridget Sumser
Grieving.

Jellis Vaes
Oh, grieving. Okay. Yeah.

Bridget Sumser
Were you talking about in the reference to dying?

Jellis Vaes
No, not per se. Okay.

Bridget Sumser
So I think that the stages of grief are really helpful and really relevant because they describe really common emotional experiences in grieving. They’re just not so… It’s not so orderly. You may be having two of those feelings simultaneously. You may not have one for very long, or you might just touch in on that. It’s not a prescriptive stepwise process.

Jellis Vaes
It’s not like you have to check step one-off before you can go to step two. Yeah.

Bridget Sumser
In the immediate aftermath of someone When dying, I think there’s all sorts of feelings that happen. There’s a real physiologic, often real physiologic reality where people are exhausted. They don’t necessarily have a lot of appetite or they have a lot of appetite. They’re not sleeping well or they’re sleeping a lot. There’s just physiologic things that are very common in this immediate period. I do when I When somebody comes to me very, very early in a loss, it depends on the person and the loss and what the relationship was. But I don’t always think that right after someone dies is the time to start talking about it. It’s like it’s such a physical bodily thing, and the things that are so important are really base, like some routine, eating regular meals, drinking some water, moving body, staying connected to your spiritual or religious community if you have that. So any help I might provide somebody in that immediate period is just how to manage and relate to the most base parts of everyday life before any meaning making or even emotional exploration. And that stuff doesn’t get enough credit. Just what it is to be Be recouping from someone’s death and still eat, drink, get your kids to school.

Bridget Sumser
Realize you need to tap out from that because you’re not really able to do it in a way that feels feels okay or maybe even safe because you’re so tired or you’re so sad, and figuring out how to get the help you need to keep the life you have to keep going, going while you’re in that most acute adjustment.

Jellis Vaes
Wait, what would you suggest to someone if they just lost a person to get through the day?

Bridget Sumser
That it’s okay and enough to focus on really basic things. Sleep, food, water, some movement. The stuff that can feel really hard because people don’t necessarily have a lot of motivation, they don’t have a lot of appetite, or they’re so busy and overwhelmed because Because there’s this whole other part of how logistically, shutting down a life is very demanding. All of the bank stuff, and if there’s an estate, all of the will, that’s really busy and noisy. Are you planning a funeral or a memorial of life? Somebody can actually get through weeks of the immediate time after someone’s died and not sit down because there’s so much to do. And so even in that time, just being like, Okay, it’s really busy. You’re trying to show up for your kids. And can we make sure that you get five minutes a day where you call your best friend, that there’s some self-care Just of the body, even in that time. So you’re not more depleted.

Jellis Vaes
What would you actually say to someone who feels like their grief is too much or who feels It’s like they’re grieving wrong? Maybe there is something as grieving wrong. I don’t know.

Bridget Sumser
I don’t really think that there is.

Jellis Vaes
Or grieving unhealthy? Is there something like that?

Bridget Sumser
I think what I struggle with with the idea that people cope wrong or grieve wrong is more just like, to me, that feels like an indication that they don’t have the skills or the resources to do it differently, and they didn’t have them before. I’m a trained social worker, so I’m more oriented to focus on people’s strengths. And even if there is something that they’re doing that’s not really serving them, can we focus on what they are doing that is serving them and move more of their resource or their energy in that direction without creating any sense of shame or judgment that they’re doing something wrong? But it’s a really high stakes time to develop new coping mechanisms Yeah.

The IPS Academy
So you would focus on their strengths.

Jellis Vaes
So is there some a game plan? I’m not sure where to say that, but is there some a plan that you put together with the person who just lost someone?

Bridget Sumser
There could be. Yeah, definitely. There could be. I mean, I think that also it’s really It’s helpful to break things down into small chunks because when you’re in that, really… Somebody’s just died, and you’re like, you can’t imagine how you’re going to live without them. It’s not really that helpful to think that far out, because you’re not anticipating the ways that you’re going to adjust and adapt, and you’re going to build capacity, which overwhelmingly, most people do. Of course, there are some people that don’t, but overwhelmingly, most people do. But we don’t anticipate, usually, our own strengths particularly well in that moment. And so really just coming back to more bite-sized things. What are we doing today? What are we doing tomorrow? What’s on the docket for this week? We’ll check back in. We’ll make a new plan for next week. And those are all tools around, I’ve said this word ad nauseam today, but orientation to what is here and what is manageable. I think a coping mechanism in grief that that doesn’t get enough good press is distraction. We love to judge distraction because we are distracted in general, with technology and phones and computers, what they are.

Bridget Sumser
We are more distracted, probably, than we’ve ever been in some ways. And there’s room for discernment and judgment about that. But when it comes to grieving, it’s hard to look at it all the time. And if there’s something that gives you some respite, like when you go and exercise, you don’t think about it, or when you play solitaire on your phone, you get a moment where you’re not just only steeped in, My husband died, my husband died, my husband died, my husband died. It’s okay to do that. You need the break. And sometimes, plenty of people will report, nothing is distracting. I can’t do anything and not think about this, right? That certainly can be a moment for people. But if and when you get to the place where you can be distracted, it’s okay. It’s even a good thing to get just your nervous system to have a moment.

Jellis Vaes
Distraction can be then a safe zone.

Bridget Sumser
Just for your mind and your psyche to get a break, to touch in on the fact that something else is happening other than the fact that your person died. Also, this computer game still exists. Also, this soap opera is still on TV. Also, my knitting project is still here. If there’s anything accessible that just gets to turn down the volume a little bit, that’s not numbing it. It’s not sedating it. It’s just being able to look away for a second. Yeah.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. Extraction gets a bad rep. That’s true. But I think in this situation, it can be the best… It could be the best thing, actually, for you to do.

Bridget Sumser
It can be really useful.

Jellis Vaes
Let me ask you a last question out of the bazillion other questions that I have for the last question to round up this interview. If you could give a last message to someone listening who is seeking answers about death, grief, dying, loss? You could pick your which one, but is there some last message that you want to give to that person seeking answers on those topics?

Bridget Sumser
There are other people out there also seeking answers about these things. We’re out here thinking about this and feeling into it, and and learning how to talk about it. And it’s not something we have to do alone. And if you’re a person out there and you feel like you’re looking around your life and nobody else is looking and nobody else is willing to look, you may be the catalyst for your family or for your community to build awareness in this space. And that could be hard and uncomfortable or awkward. And also every single one of us experiences loss. Every single one of us has somebody die who we love, if not many people, and all of us will die. So this isn’t an argumentable thing that we share that cuts across all difference. It’s of service to ourselves and our families and our communities to make contact with this. It’s not comfortable. It can feel a little lonely until you find your people who will sit in it with you. But if you feel alone in it right now, there’s definitely people out here who are going to talk to you about it. And it’s a beautiful thing to be a person who can sit with other people in this.

Jellis Vaes
It’s true.

Bridget Sumser
Yeah. It’s such a gift, really.

Jellis Vaes
Yeah. I often think, at least out of my I experience doing something with the pain, like turning it into something more that could be meaning, that could be putting it into art. I often play piano and I use some of my pain often in songs that I create. I guess, or I at least feel like it’s important to do something with that pain, to have a space where you can let it also be.

Bridget Sumser
Creative practice and art is a beautiful channel for that. And so is the ability to stumble into a conversation with somebody in your office and just be like, I heard your mom died. Exactly. That’s doing something with the pain or the myriad feelings that exist around the reality that our lives are very uncertain.

Jellis Vaes
Bridget, you’re You’re such a warm and empathic person to talk to. I really enjoyed. That’s what I use when I care. I really enjoyed this conversation with you and the work that you’re doing, and for you to take some time out of your day to appear here on the show.

Bridget Sumser
Such an honor. And also an equally warm delight to be with you. So thank you.

Jellis Vaes
Thank you. That’s kind to hear.

Jellis Vaes
All right. And that concludes this episode with Brigitte Samser. I really hope that you gained something out of this episode to help you on your grieving journey. If you’re on one or if you I’m here to learn more about grief and loss, then I hope you gained some valuable insights. Now, do not forget that this is part of a series of episodes on grief and loss. So if you haven’t already checked the previous episodes, then do also take a look at them if you want to learn even more about grief and loss. Finally, I know this is boring to do, which is one of the challenging things with podcasts, but if you found some value in this episode, it would really help out a lot to spread this episode out more into the world. If you could take just a brief moment of your time to leave a rating or a review on the platform that you’re using right now to listen to this podcast. I know, again, that it’s boring, but it helps tremendously for this podcast to reach more people in this episode as well. In that sense, you’re also directly helping others who are seeking support, who are seeking answers and help on grief to find this episode.

Jellis Vaes
If you would take a moment to do that, thank you truly for doing that. With that, I hope that I get the chance to welcome you on another episode. Until then, this is Jellis Vaes signing off.

If you feel that you’ve gained some insights and lessons from this interview, and you are curious to see what else we offer at The IPS Project, check out The IPS Academy, where we offer online courses taught by guests here on the podcast.

What is also interesting to note is that all the courses are quite affordable, as we at The IPS Project do not want money to stand in the way of bettering one’s life. Each course has a few lessons to try for free, so you get a taste of what the course is like.

We have countless reviews from other students so you can see what others think, and there is a 30-day money-back guarantee if you end up not liking the course. Again, check them out at TheIPSProject.com/academy.