Kathy Koenig, M.S., is a Caregiver Coach, Consultant, Certified Grief Coach, and BREATHE Facilitator.  Kathy focuses on helping family caregivers navigate the process, planning for needs, adapting to changes, and transitioning as it ends. Kathy recognizes that grief is a part of caregiving for those who need care and those caring for them.  “I believe caregiving is filled with loss and joy simultaneously. However caregiving ends, with loss or recovery, we are changed.”

Kathy recognizes that grief is not only about death but also about the many kinds of loss we face throughout life. So often, we don’t realize how change is touched by different forms of grief, even those we choose. She loves exploring and helping people understand and normalize their experiences.  She firmly believes that there is no time limit on grief.

If you are interested in learning more or connecting with Kathy, please head over to her website: https://www.caregiverconnection.net

Show notes:
[00:00:13.850] - Pat Sheveland
Hi, everybody. I am just like super duper excited because I have someone who's near and dear to my heart with me and Kathy Koenig. Want you to know we've known each other for a really long time. Anyway, I just want to introduce to a quick introduction to Kathy before we just go into like a really cool conversation all about grief. Because we know that grief is not a dirty word and we really are passionate about helping people to explore and really understand and let this be a part of we know it's part of life. Death is a part of life. Loss is a part of life. So that's where we're at. So Kathy Koenig is a caregiver coach, a consultant, a certified grief coach, and a grief facilitator. She also is in her social work and counseling. She is certified in all of that. And she really focuses on helping family caregivers navigate the process, planning for needs, adapting to all the tremendous changes that go on and the transitioning as life ends. Kathy recognizes that grief is a part of caregiving for those who need care and also for those who are caring for them.

[00:01:25.550] - Pat Sheveland
And we're going to be talking a lot about that today. As Kathy says, I believe caregiving is filled with loss and joy. Simultaneously, however caregiving ends with loss or recovery, we are changed. Kathy recognizes that grief is not only about the death, but also about the many kinds of loss we face throughout life. Amen, sister. So often we don't realize how change is touched by different forms of grief, even those things that we choose in life. She loves to explore and helping people understand and normalize their experiences. And she firmly believes, as I do too, there is no time limit on grief. There is no timetable. It's not linear, and we'll talk all about that. So I'll have Kathy's information in the show notes here so you can reach out to her if you want to book a free consult, we'll have her website on there and all of that good stuff. But I just want to get into hello, Kathy. Let's get into this.

[00:02:21.160] - Kathy Koenig
Hey, Pat.

[00:02:22.220] - Pat Sheveland
This is so amazing. This is so much fun. So just to let everybody know, kathy and I go back for a few years now. She was one of our pioneering students in the Confident Grief Coach School, and we have stayed connected. We actually meet every week in a mastery and Mastermind kind of program where we talk all things grief and support one another. Because when we work in this space, the people who are supporting the people who are grieving and having that significant loss and the caregivers and all of that good stuff, we also need to make sure that we're staying centered and balanced and have our own support so that we can support others. So welcome.

[00:03:00.120] - Kathy Koenig
Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be with you as always.

[00:03:03.530] - Pat Sheveland
Whenever I know I missed our session last night, so I'm really excited that I get to see you. Was it last night or the night before? But anyway, so, Kathy, you have a long history, a storied career, a beautiful career. You've done a lot in your life, both through education and the work that you've done and all of that. So if you could just give us a little bit about what brought you to where you are today and really focusing on the caregivers. And that part of the grief journey.

[00:03:34.350] - Kathy Koenig
Yeah, it's like, I know where I am today, and I can chart some of that, but if I look to the roots of it, it probably goes back to my childhood. I came from a family of caregivers. Both of my grandmothers were exceptional caregivers and caregivers for me. I encountered grief really early in life. I lost my mother when I was ten. I was one of five children, and so we had a grandmother who lived with us for a bit. I actually stayed with my other grandparents quite a lot when my mom was sick and dying. But I observed people in my family, aunts, uncles, cousins, male and female, be caregivers for one another. So it was one of those things that was kind of seeded in there. And while I recognize it's not for everyone and it's not a natural talent, it's something I think I assumed pretty early on. And then in my work, I became a social worker in a hospital and just encountered, oh, my gosh, caregiving at many, many levels. Whether things were very intense or you had maybe months to work this is really old school, but months to work with people, to prepare for a chronic lifelong situation, and then became a psychotherapist and then eventually transitioned out of that into other things.

[00:04:53.710] - Kathy Koenig
When it came to being then a really designated caregiver for my father, which was a local experience, it was over time, it was a progressive thing, but in all of that, there were losses. There were the losses for me of seeing his vitality, of kind of knowing, and I anticipated things kind of declining. That was 25 years ago, and that was even in the midst of having a husband who was a physician, my sister in law who's a medical professional, people say, oh, no, he's going to be fine, going to be fine. It's like, yeah, no, I don't see that. And I was grateful for that because it helped me be present to him. And I think being present in caregiving can be wearing it gets exhausting at times. And when you're in the midst of it, it's really hard to kind of keep that engine going. Particularly, too, because I think we don't always know, and I don't think I recognized at the time. I wouldn't have called it grief in retrospect. Absolutely. Lots and lots of grief. Things over time watched the more intense, sort of obvious grief for my husband when we were then doing a short term caregiving situation for his sister in another part of the country.

[00:06:12.230] - Kathy Koenig
And that really led me into my work with caregivers more directly just because it was difficult. It was difficult to know how to access things. And that's, like, I'm skilled at this. I used to do it in my sleep. And I thought, if this is so hard for me, I need to make this somehow easier for caregivers. And so I really launched into more of a career working with family caregivers in all kinds of educational ways. But there was this piece that just came to me over time, and it arose at the time that then your work came into my world and into my vision that, oh, my gosh, there's a missing piece. Not only do we not really talk a lot about caregiving, but we really weren't and still aren't to my satisfaction talking about grief as a part of it. Right. And then, as things do, I came across a video of you online, and I thought, I need to know her, and then we connected, and then I entered Breathe and this very magical land of grief. Right.

[00:07:12.410] - Pat Sheveland
Wow. And I think you say, well, I don't know, way back in the day that this was where I was supposed to be going or whatever, but these things happen, and then I jump into it. I think most of us, probably the statistics, I don't have them, but those of us in the helping profession, definitely 75, 80, 85%, the majority of us have experienced something that, even at a very young age, that really propelled us to, okay, we want to go. And so you were immersed in that caregiving and a family of caregivers right. From the get go that was genetically in your DNA, probably, and then the experience of a significant loss of your mom at such a young age. And then you and I connect so well because you were part of my journey with my mom. She lived with me for eight years. We became a multi generational family. She died two years ago last month, but she was 96 and a half. And it was all those things like, yeah, as a nurse, I know what's going on. I understand all of that. But there were still things that I had difficulty kind of figuring out or I needed support.

[00:08:23.570] - Pat Sheveland
And if I needed support right. Like you said, my gosh, we need to be able to be there for the other caregivers. And I think that's where you and I have a very deep connection, because we do understand that. And I'm just so grateful that you're out there helping the people that don't have the resources that we may have from that perspective. So, yeah, it's absolutely a very cool thing that we're starting to talk more. So talk to me a little bit about because you are very passionate as I am about, we need to be talking about death. Share with us your thoughts and your passion behind that.

[00:09:00.110] - Kathy Koenig
It's funny because it's not that we enjoy death, but we really like the topic of grief and the richness of it. And I talk to people about the paradox of it, that sometimes it can be just deep pain and suffering and sometimes still at the same time, there can be relief mixed in there. And we think, what do I do with that? It's like, yes, it's both and it's everything. And it can be many things all in one day or over a span of time. I love that it's becoming such a mainstream topic. I think it is pandemic or no pandemic, I think that the world is ready to talk about grief and loss because it is everywhere. And as you said earlier, it's prompted by change. And for me, this is part of the Work with Caregiving. It's like it isn't just about a death and bereavement. It's so many other things. There are so many secondary losses that we never talk about. And that can be just the loss of the freedom of your time. It can be the isolation that you experience. I mean, I think all of us dealing with grief will hear from people that they're like, where did everybody go?

[00:10:19.110] - Kathy Koenig
Where did everybody go? And the pain of that, the pain of those losses of like, oh my gosh, I thought so and so would be here. I expected this and it didn't happen. And it becomes more lost. But it's that bit about also being able to be able to recognize the richness of the relationships. If people have we have lost them to death honoring the good parts and then the parts that are just part of everybody's humanness. And I think probably if I had a magic wand, I need actually many of them, but if I could pull one out today and say, here's something I would do with grief is I would also obliterate the guilt. That tends to just be so sticky.

[00:11:04.940] - Pat Sheveland
Yes. And I think we do that. And I like that you're bringing that up because you're bringing up one of those kind of stages, phases of grief. You probably know where I'm going to go with this. Guilt is a big thing, but you and I have also this passion about a lot of people will bring up the stages of grief. So talk to us a little bit about where did those stages of grief come from and how are they not applicable, really in what we're dealing with when we're really talking about this grief? What's the background? The Kubler Ross work and that type of thing, which is beautiful work. No one's throwing that out. There really is some really powerful stuff through that. But we know that it's gotten overused and abused and puts people in a box, right? And oh, and I'm not feeling this. So will you just talk a little bit about that and that rich history that we're trying to break the mold on?

[00:12:02.900] - Kathy Koenig
Yeah, and it was sort of in my own studies about grief that I really kind of did a little digging to get that history because I think I just assumed it like everyone else did. Like, there are these five stages, and in going back and understanding that that work, thank goodness it began to open up the door for us and it began to give us some language. But this was 1969, so it was a little while ago, two years ago, and it was a study done by Elizabeth Kubler, a Swiss physician with I don't know the exact number, but it was in the end of that was 200. And some dying patients, dying patients who were going through this process of these stages. And she was kind of working with that information, and she never really expected that this was going to be translatable to the bereaved. But I think because it's all we had, we glommed onto it. David Kessler added to that with a 6th stage. The 6th stage. And he had done work with Dr. Kubler Ross, and some of his work came out of his loss of his child and his own issues.

[00:13:14.530] - Kathy Koenig
And he added the 6th stage of meaning, which I think is useful and valuable. I think where the stages have value is often when we are in process, and it might be in process of change or loss. I think if we are in the process of maybe a divorce, which is a death, which is a grieving, we can go through those bargaining, denial, anger, to acceptance, whatever. But I think when there's an event that's happened so often, I would hear people say, like, when am I getting to acceptance? When am I going to get there? And it's like as if it was this destination and they were failing in some way and feeling guilt about that. I can't even do this right. It's like, oh, my gosh, we need to help relieve people of that and also relieve people of the sense that there's a time frame. And when I've talked to people, colleagues from different cultures, I also learned from them that in certain cultures, it's like, yeah, that one year TikTok you're done. Why is this person still bringing it up? It's been a year, right? But when you open it up for people and you give them the opportunity to broaden that and to be present to them, settle in, because here it comes.

[00:14:30.070] - Pat Sheveland
Which brings me to we had some questions that we kind of worked back and forth like, oh, what might we talk about? But this one came to me as I was thinking before we got on today, is you're this voracious reader and student. You're the eternal student, which we all should be when we're working in this space and helping others during their significant loss or their journey of loss, their caregiving, all of that. And you've turned us on to lots of books, but I think the grieving brain was one that really changed my whole thinking, because I've had so many clients come to me going, I'm doing something wrong? Am I crazy? Have I lost my mind? Because everybody thinks I need to be moving on. So can you just share a little bit about kind of that it resonated for you, too, and a little bit that goes on physiologically?

[00:15:25.210] - Kathy Koenig
Yeah, it's a lovely book. Thank you, Mary Francis O'Connor, for doing this research. It comes out of science research, and I can't quote the whole book, but I think sometimes when I have those conversations with people about like, why am I stuck? Why can't I get beyond this? And you explain to them, like, oh, okay, guess what? There's a part of our brain and hippocampus, and it looks like a little seahorse type structure deep in the brain, and it records things for us. It downloads.

[00:15:59.790] - Pat Sheveland
It's like our videographer or whatever. Right?

[00:16:03.090] - Kathy Koenig
Yeah, it's old tape, but it creates patterns. It recognizes patterns that we have in our lives. And she gives a great example that when I use it with people, they get it immediately. You can walk around your home or your apartment, wherever you live in the dark, and, you know, like the dining room tables there, I need to not bump into that, which is sometimes why it's disorienting to be in a hotel or someplace different. It's like, where where are things? Because they're not where they belong. Well, similarly, when we are grieving, that pattern has been sharply interfered with. And so I think I hear them. We want to pick up the phone and call them because that's what we did. A gentleman I worked with in a hospice situation, he'd gone to the nursing home every day to have lunch with his mother, and it was a month afterwards, and he was saying to me, I keep thinking I need to get up and go to have lunch with her. There was no lack of acceptance, but it was like the pattern was so deeply ingrained. And in fact, I happened to come across a video on Twitter last night of the actor Richard E. Grant, who's written a beautiful book about the death of his wife a little over a year ago. And he was sitting, and he's like, Where are you? Where are you? He knows that she's gone, but he's like, but where are you? I keep wondering, Where are you? And it was just such a lovely representation of that, because the brain recognizes close, and that close can be a physical closeness, or it can be we are close in relationship. It just recognizes the timing of things, and it takes time for the brain to repattern and will happen over time because it's repatterning itself. It's not a matter of like because sometimes you'll hear people talk about, like, I'm afraid I'm forgetting them, and it's like, okay, let's march that guilt back in. I shouldn't do that. But it's like what we're doing is we're folding in with grief. We integrate it, right? But there's a new repatterning, and that repatterning is also what gives us more energy to move forward in our own life.

[00:18:13.810] - Pat Sheveland
Yeah. And I love this whole repattering and that the grief is still going to be there. I mean, that's what she talks about. There's a difference between grief and grieving, the act of grieving, but the actual grief itself. And I was having dinner with a friend of mine that her husband, after very long chronic illness, died about a year and a half ago. And so we were just chatting, and she said, you know, my nephew who's lost his wife showed me this. And she just took a piece of paper and she put a dot, a little circle, little dot, like a period on that paper. And then she drew another circle around it and she said, he told me, that's me. That's my grief, that little dot. But more things are going to start surrounding it. And it's so much of what you were talking about. And for her, that resonated during that really acute phase, like, oh my gosh, am I always going to feel this way? It's like, here's the grief, and it's important. It's a part of us. It's a part in our heart, in our psyche, in our brain, all of that.

[00:19:10.910] - Pat Sheveland
But then all of a sudden, more experiences just start. And then more experiences just start. The grief doesn't change. It doesn't get bigger or smaller. It's there but for that particular loss. And then sometimes we have layering, right? We have that absolute layering effect.

[00:19:29.270] - Kathy Koenig
There's activation. One grief can reactivate something. We don't expect that. That's why it's kind of sneaky. It's like, where did that come from? I thought I dealt with like, oh, no. And I didn't expect this to activate this. Oh, my gosh. And we can feel like, here I go again. And we feel bad about ourselves. We're somehow supposed to just always be upright and erect and moving forward. And it's like, no. It brings us back. I don't know. Once again, showing my age, there used to be this kind of toy thing when I was a kid of like this blow up clown that was weighted, and it was like you punched it and it went down and went down. And at first, that clown could just really get flattened. I think what happens is that over time and whatever, we might get knocked back a little bit, but it's unusual for us to just get flattened again. Or if we go down, I think we bounce back. Particularly the more we can be acknowledged, the more we can acknowledge our grief, have our grief acknowledged. I think it's when we haven't talked about these things.

[00:20:34.090] - Kathy Koenig
And you and I have spoken about the generations that came before us that never talked about profound losses that somehow we would discover, like, so and so lost a child. When did that happen? How did we never hear about this? How did this never get spoken of? Things were never spoken of. And sometimes we only knew those adults in our lives that's just like, motoring along and we didn't know like, what they were carrying.

[00:20:58.680] - Pat Sheveland
Right?

[00:20:59.590] - Kathy Koenig
And there is no need for us to go forward with that kind of model, right?

[00:21:03.780] - Pat Sheveland
And that's where I kind of coined the phrase failed grief. After my mother and I started talking about the death of my brother, that happened. He was an infant, but long before I was born. But she didn't talk about him. No one ever said his word. For 60 years. 60 years, she kept that buried inside. And once I encouraged her and she felt safe that with me, she could share this, there was no one else that was going to stop her. All of it came and right to the detail of every moment that happened and she went boom. Right back to where she was 60 years ago as that young 28 year old, 26 year old woman. And everything that went on and all the anger and all the guilt and all the abandonment issues and all of those things because no one at that time would allow her to express herself. And she felt totally abandoned. But she also said, I think people thought I was strange. That was her way of I shouldn't be thinking these things. I shouldn't be acting this way. And that's why the failed grief. And it's not that the Griever has failed, it's that they were failed.

[00:22:13.050] - Pat Sheveland
They were failed because they didn't have the support and the connection and all the things that we are teaching people today. So the Breed model was part of that is like, here are some actionable things that we can actually help support people. You create new things and bring them into your caregiver groups and your one on ones with the caregivers and that type of thing. Which brings me to how do you integrate the Grieving with the caregiving? How do you kind of help bring that together? We've talked a lot about that, but just really like when if I come to you and I'm taking care of my mom and just watching her totally deteriorate, I'm frazzled, I'm burnt out knowing that death is going to come and grieving all those other pieces of our relationship. How do you connect those dots for your clients?

[00:23:06.230] - Kathy Koenig
It's going to sound simple. It's not. But at some level, it really is as simple as acknowledging like, wow, there's grief here. And not ever does anyone correct me, particularly when I can say, like, oh, that loss of what they used to be able to do. Or I think about a friend of mine whose mother is actively dying now and how hard that is for her. And in affirming the incredible caregiving she has offered for years and what she is offering in this moment and in this moment, I say your presence is enough. But the grief of knowing that this is an ending in the midst of her still being here, like that ambiguous grief, somebody is still here, but they're not. And also kind of talking to them about there's all these different kinds and layers of grief and when you can offer one or two or usually it doesn't take more than that examples, it resonates and it's like oh, and just honoring like it isn't just that you're doing this, it's also this other part that's happening. And once again, I think it goes to people being seen and being heard, being known in that way, in a way where it isn't whole other topic, but kind of covered up with what we now at least talk about, which is the kind of toxic positivity like hey, it's going to get better, just do it.

[00:24:30.310] - Kathy Koenig
Okay. But now I can't really talk about how angry I am or how sad I am or whatever.

[00:24:35.770] - Pat Sheveland
No, very much so. And I think you and I are getting to that age where we're starting to see people of our age group starting to die and friends and we see their family members then grappling with this serious illnesses and different things like that. I was just thinking, I just heard about someone who had died that was like my first love. And my husband is looking at me like, Why? And I said, well, wouldn't you feel sad and have feelings with your first girlfriend? And he's like, yeah, but that was so long ago. And I'm like, but all those memories and all those sweet times and that innocence and just knowing that he has a wife and children and grandchildren who are sitting in that space right now so deeply saddened because he is physically not here. That's what brings me that goes right to my heart is like because I know some of what they're feeling. But we all grieve differently and we all feel differently. I don't know if you have a significant loss. My loss is very different. And Mary Francis O'Connor talks a little bit about that and I know I had written that in my book a long time ago.

[00:25:53.440] - Pat Sheveland
For grief coaches is our grief is as unique as our fingerprints because our relationships with people are so different. Like my brother died and you were a part of my tribe and my community back then. My grief was really about the guy that when I was a six year old little girl and he was nine years older than me and taking care of me while my parents worked and just being there for me. And then as we got a little bit older where we actually became friends because I started maturing and everything. My brothers had a different kind of grief, especially the one that was 15 months younger, because they were best buddies and they had hung out together and all their friendships were my sister in law, of course, totally different. Each one of her children totally different. So we all had, like, these different and did it make anything? Did anybody have a greater grief than anybody else? No, but what do we do? He was my brother. He wasn't my husband, so my grief isn't right. And then you go into that comparison.

[00:26:50.570] - Kathy Koenig
Yeah, then we go into disenfranchised grief. There are all these different kinds of grief. And that's when we disenfranchise and say, Why are you upset? They were just your coworker. Oh, my gosh. They were my best friend, and I liked them better than anyone in my family. It was just a dog. Stop it. We need to stop that kind of stuff. Red and white stop sign and doing the languaging of just or using there's just certain languaging that is not helpful. And something I was reading the other day talked about, like and, you know, guilty is charged because I just work on getting better at this all the time. The more I become. That when somebody maybe has lost a parent and they're telling the story, and it's like, oh, yeah, I remember that happened to me, too, kind of stuff. And we do that not because we're thinking, like, get the attention off of you and back on me. It's because our grief wasn't witnessed, and we're wanting our grief to be witnessed. That's why we do that. And so if we can witness one another as we go along, we will be more skilled, really, at listening and being present.

[00:28:05.370] - Pat Sheveland
Present.

[00:28:06.730] - Kathy Koenig
I really love the work of Katherine Mannix, who is a British palliative care physician. And I'm currently reading through her book, Listen, and it's one of the skills and she's very honest in her experiences, too, when you haven't maybe done it as well. But just if there's a skill that I'm always working at, it's listening.

[00:28:30.490] - Pat Sheveland
Being present and listening.

[00:28:32.430] - Kathy Koenig
Because I think it's so often we feel like, I need to do something about this. I need to fix it, I need to whatever. Because my sitting here doesn't feel like enough. My listening doesn't feel like enough to me. And yet being present, particularly when so many other people might be around right at first, and then they're gone. And that happens a lot in caregiving. There's a diagnosis. There's something like, tell me what you need. Let me know what you need. In those moments, people don't know what they need, right? Not know what they need. So if there's something you know that they need, just step up and do it. Sometimes that's a risk. So you have to be a little bit careful about that. But if it's like dropping off a meal and. Maybe not right away because sometimes people get inundated. Sometimes it can be a small thing that you do for someone. But it's like don't abandon, stay connected. Even if and don't expect that reciprocity because the energy isn't there for it at that point in time. Like, well, yeah, well they're not calling. Well, they didn't call and tell me what they needed.

[00:29:30.300] - Kathy Koenig
Well, boy, when? Now. They don't know how to do that. Or if they did ask and they got like, no, I really can't do this. They're not going to ask again.

[00:29:39.770] - Pat Sheveland
I have a gal that I used to work with, she's a friend of mine. But whenever someone suffered a loss in her world, she would go out and she would buy all the paper products, like toilet paper and paper towels and if they weren't home, she would just leave it there with a note. But she really was it's like she didn't ask. She knew that there'd be lots of people just inundating and that type of thing. And what do you need? You need kleenex, you need toilet paper. People are at your house. And she would just do those sweet things, but it was just a gesture. And then sometimes just leave it there with a note. I'm here thinking about you because that's what people want. It's not necessarily always like, let me come in and clean your house. Hey, don't come in and clean my house. I don't want anybody in my house. I want to be cocooned in my own. I may not be on the phone with you. And we each grieve in our own. We have our patterns in our way. I don't want to be sitting chitchatting with anybody. There are a few handful of people I will talk to about it, but my design and who I am is, let me cocoon in and I may let one or two of you in.

[00:30:49.950] - Pat Sheveland
I may have those conversations, but otherwise, no. I'll come to you when it's time and it probably is not going to be in the midst of my deep grief. I'm one that just needs that where other people it's like they want to be. And we teach people that. Like, who is your crew? Who are the couple of people that you can lean into? Because that's part of it, right, is helping the person who is caregiving, helping the person who is in acute grief or all that stuff that we talked about, all these different kinds of grief, helping them to say, who are one or two people that you know, that you can lean into, that you feel safe with, that you feel safe, right?

[00:31:29.260] - Kathy Koenig
Because the other piece about that is that all the roles you were in before or all the relationships and the way you engaged may change and it may change rapidly, which can be very confusing not only for you, but for those around you. And so they're like, well, he or she is very different now. I remember a woman I didn't know very well in my neighborhood once and who had a grievous loss of her son. And we became actually closer after that because other people in the neighborhood with whom she had been closer were saying things like, well, when I want the old so and so back, when are you going to be better again? And she was stabbed by that stuff, and she was like, I can't ever be her again, and I can't measure up to that again. And I'm like, yeah, and it's not your job to do that. Or it was terribly sad, but I think sometimes we change so much and then others don't. We may not be acceptable.

[00:32:25.330] - Pat Sheveland
It's like that grieving brain. The other people are like, okay, everything my little videography and my brain is, you should be this way.

[00:32:33.120] - Kathy Koenig
Yeah. And so that becomes another layer of loss. It falls into the secondary loss category, and it becomes confusing because it can also I mean, you can have a whole lot of feelings going on with that whole lot of feelings, and many of them are uncomfortable and then we don't necessarily want to talk about them. But I think the more for me, there really isn't a feeling you can't tell me that I'm going to be horrified by for a long time. I've heard a lot of things. I've felt a lot of things myself. We're very human and it doesn't mean that we're going to have that feeling all the time or forever.

[00:33:12.890] - Pat Sheveland
Yeah. Working with grieving moms for all the years that I have been working with them, I don't know one that hasn't said to me, I don't want to be here, I would rather be dead. This is what I pray for, is that God takes me or something like that. I don't want to be here. And I don't view it as, okay, you're suicidal. It's like everything. Of course I can. Totally. And nothing you're going to say is going to shock me or make me think any less of you or hurry up and call the rescue people to come, because that's part of the grief and just not being and so I think that's important for people that are listening here, who are supporting the caregivers, supporting the grievers. Which brings me to, as I said, you have a voracious appetite for always learning and are there some podcasts or books that you would recommend that are easy reads, something but that would really resonate, or people that I know that you have some. So do you want to just give a few of them that you think might be really helpful for anybody who is either in the they need a little bit of help themselves and maybe they just want to read a little bit or that they're here to help other people.

[00:34:25.480] - Pat Sheveland
That really has been helpful for you. As far as that's maybe what I need to stop saying or, this would be really helpful for this person.

[00:34:33.670] - Kathy Koenig
Yeah. And I'm happy to give you, for show notes or whatever, the actual titles, because I don't title very accurately. But yeah, one of my favorite websites is WhatsYourGrief.com and WhatsYourGrief.com is two of the lead people on there are therapists from the Baltimore area who have, over a period of time, just curated an incredible amount of content. A lot of they've written the blog posts, it's been over a period of years because they've done a lot of this work in their therapy practices and decided, we need to make this bigger. And they touch on a number of different aspects of grief and a number of different kinds of grief. You've heard me mention disenfranchised, ambiguous. There are other forms. And so they talk about that. And that site is well designed in terms of, like, are you grieving? Are you supporting someone who's grieving? Are you a grief professional? And they have a grief professional community. I'm part of that good continuing education. They have a new book out, just released this fall called What's Your Grief? Fabulously organized and with great lists. So sometimes people want a list, kind of a checklist that's useful.

[00:35:54.390] - Kathy Koenig
So that's one another one. Another person is Megan Devine, and Megan is very well known in the grief community. She's written a book called it's okay if you're not okay. Sometimes I think when we're grieving, like, we don't have the bandwidth, I don't have the concentration and memory. That's always a really kind of good indicator for me. It's like I can't remember that page I just read. So she's created a companion workbook journal that I cannot tell you how many times I've recommended it and shown it to some of my clients, and virtually all of them have gone out and ordered this and find it. And I'm blocking on the exact title of it. I think it's how to carry what can't be carried or something like that. But it's a number of different prompts in this beautiful journal workbook, and I think everybody needs their own. So you can scribble and just I think you can turn to a page and go, yeah, that's what I need to do today.

[00:36:44.930] - Pat Sheveland
Perfect.

[00:36:45.760] - Kathy Koenig
And Well it's a good website. Modern Loss is another good website. And Modern Loss also published a book this last year, so there's more and more material kind of coming out. But I think sometimes once you just find one thing, you start pulling other threads. That's kind of what I've done. And there's a lot of good stuff out there. There are a lot of good people out there, and there are good seriously, I have to say, I know that some social media can just be awful, but grief Twitter? If you just go to Twitter, just stay away from everything else, just like, go into grief Twitter. And people can just bring me to my knees every day with stories, but with support. Loving, loving support.

[00:37:31.470] - Pat Sheveland
That's so beautiful. Thank you.

[00:37:33.380] - Kathy Koenig
I mean, that's just global. Really how I learned about the work of Dr. Mannix.

[00:37:38.090] - Pat Sheveland
Yeah. Send me the information. I'll get it into the show notes because I think there's all these resources and I'll put it on my website and I'm sure you have things on your website which there's two more things. We're getting near to our end time here for this special time together. I know we could talk grief all day and we'd have fun doing it. I mean, it's not like we're sobbing all the time. It's like we giggle a lot and laugh and get a little sarcastic at times and all that good stuff because that's life, right?

[00:38:12.110] - Kathy Koenig
Humor in it, too. Both caregiving and grieving. Allow the humor. Allow the humor. It's really important, and it's necessary. And that brings me to joy that sometimes we feel guilty if we start feeling joyful or we feel guilty if we're feeling joy and somebody close to us is feeling grief. I really believe it's important that when we can be in a space of joy and hold, that that's really important. Because if you are in this space of grief and you don't think there's anything to go back up to, and if it's like, oh, wait, there might be some joy up there, maybe I can go up to that surface again and touch into that. And so we hold it at the times when other people need us to hold it so that somebody else is holding it when we need it.

[00:38:56.840] - Pat Sheveland
Yeah, I love that. I love that. Absolutely. And we know that grief coexists. It coexists with joy. It coexists it's the other side of the coin of love. And it coexists with finding purpose. It coexists with all peace. It coexists with all of that when we allow it. And part of it is why I do these interviews is I like to introduce people to the folks out here who are just, like, passionate about helping. So that if you're feeling stuck if you're feeling stuck, you're a caregiver and you're feeling stuck if you're someone who's grieving and your partner or your child or whoever Kathy I mean, this is what she does. It's just like just exploring. You just heard from her. She has such an incredible she's got cred. She's got street cred. Not just from all of her educational opportunities and her ongoing learning and all of that, but she's got the lived experiences in several different ways. And I think that's what really brings the power for us to be helping to I go back to we want to provide accessible and transformative healing for grieving families throughout the world. Yeah, we want to be able to provide that in whatever space.

[00:40:06.980] - Pat Sheveland
So Kathy does that. So what I'd like you to do is number one, what's your website?

[00:40:11.760] - Kathy Koenig
www.CaregiverConnection.net. Sometimes connection is a mess to spell. So double check that.

[00:40:21.350] - Pat Sheveland
I'll have it in the show notes, but it is it's Caregiver Connection reach Me.

[00:40:25.670] - Kathy Koenig
Is that there's Connect With Me buttons on there that will send you and you can send a message directly to me. And it helps me to know just a little bit if you want to book a free consult.

[00:40:39.790] - Pat Sheveland
So we'll have all of that available to you. But she's the caregiver connection. CaregiverConnection.Net. And so, before we end, I like to ask if there was one golden nugget, one jewel that you would like people to walk away with, whether they are the breathed, they're in that anticipatory phase, or they're helping someone who is in that space of really journeying through that loss. What would that be?

[00:41:09.530] - Kathy Koenig
Hard to bring it down to one thing, but I think it is that this is part of the human experience, that we are all human. We will all have episodes, times of grief, some very different than others, but it is part of our lived human experience. We can integrate it. It's not something to get over or around or above or below and skate. It's part of us, and I think it enriches us when we allow it.

[00:41:35.580] - Pat Sheveland
Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:41:37.220] - Pat Sheveland
It binds us together as human beings, as a collective, and that's what we're all about. Well, thank you, my friend. This has been so beautiful. I just am very excited. And thank you, everybody else who has been listening. And again, if you're like, I could really use some support or I'm really curious about more information or, you know, Kathy is a wealth of knowledge on this. I just like to pick her brain. CaregiverConnection.net will have that available for you, and you can get with Kathy and get to know her more. You'll see her more with things that I do too. So that's always fun. All right, so thanks a lot and peace out everybody.
Contact us:
Cami Thelander: www.bearfootyogi.com
The Confident Grief Coach School: www.healingfamilygrief.com

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