Episode 82 - Sue Deagle
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Mel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Permission to be Human, the podcast. I'm your host Mel Findlater mother, coach, and curator of Permission to be Human, the company and community. If you're a mom, know a mom, or want to be a mom, and you crave getting out in the world to make a difference, then you're in the right place. This is a space for moms like you to connect with yourself, your purpose, and your big audacious dreams.
Because when you feel your best, you can better you, your family, and the wider world. Let's do this.
I feel so privileged to share with you this interview that I had with Sue Degal. She is such an amazing and incredible woman who is really rewriting. The way that we deal with loss and, and supporting people, all of us. To manage [00:01:00] how loss shows up in our life in terms of like, how do we. Deal with it. How do we allow ourselves to be human around it? And it's such a beautiful conversation about the loss in her life and her children's. And the lessons that she's learned through it and the growing that she has done as a human being, because of it. And it's simply incredible.
I don't want to tell you too much because I think the interview says it so much better. This is not a sad, sad interview. It is a beautiful interview with incredible woman who has. Such a powerful story and way of opening this conversation about loss, which is missing in our culture these days. So Sue describes herself as veterans.
C-suite exac mother widow rewriting the story of loss and vibrant lip living at the luminous, which is her sub stack. She brings loss in all of its forms, out of the [00:02:00] shadows, shining a light on the parts of the human experience we avoid at all costs, but are our greatest teachers for. Living a full expensive. Love filled life. I highly recommend giving yourself, the space to listen to this story.
And hear from Sue because. I won't be quite the same after having this conversation.
Mel: All right. Hi, Sue. Hi, Mel. I am so excited to have you here. I was just saying to you that so we met at the, at the Dew Lectures in Wales this summer, this amazingly quirky, I don't even know what to call it, event, conference, festival, all the combinated Combination of all together. I don't know. Yep. And you were one of the speakers there, uh, that I really remember the most, uh, because I remember smiling.
I remember crying. I remember laughing a bit, like, you know, and just really had me thinking [00:03:00] because of how real you were in getting up there. So thank you. for doing that. Thank you.
Sue: Thank you for that. Yeah, that's awesome.
Mel: Yeah, just showing up and sharing, sharing your story. And I'm so excited that you said yes today because the farther we can get that story and the message that you are putting out in the world, the better.
So I'm happy to be part of that journey as well. Great. Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah. So let's just, let's just start out by who, who are you? Who's Sue Deal?
Sue: Yeah. I love this. I love that question. And you know, the first thing that pops to mind is like, I feel like I'm a storyteller, right? And I feel like I wouldn't always have defined myself that way.
In fact, like, uh, if we rewind the tape, I spent the last 30 years of my life in corporate uh, being like, I affectionately call myself a corporate wonk. And I enjoyed that career and it was a good, rich, [00:04:00] rewarding career that allowed me to provide for my family and achieve my goals. But in the last, I would say like seven or eight years of my corporate career, and I've, I wrapped it up at the beginning of the year, more and more, I became a storyteller, even at leadership events or women's gatherings, or even with clients, or even with analysts or investors, I found myself Conveying even things about the company in a story because it's just so much more connecting that way and it's so much more lighthearted that way and in a business where you're top and bottom line growth and you know, you feel like you don't have a soul sometimes stories kind of bring the soul back because really what we're doing even in corporate America is community of people together trying to achieve a goal.
So I found, uh, I, when you asked that question, I was like, oh my gosh, no, now I'm like a full time storyteller, you know, in corporate America, I was a part time storyteller with other [00:05:00] obligations as well. But now I feel like I'm a full time storyteller and my. My real passion and why I kind of see myself that way now is like, I want to, uh, I want to change the conversation in our culture around loss.
So, we think that loss makes us smaller, uh, but in my estimation and my experience, loss actually, after a time of grieving or mourning, depending on the kind of loss, we actually expand. We become bigger. So, loss makes us contract. Rightly so for a bit, and then we expand out into a wiser, more compassionate version of ourselves, and it's really hard to have a conversation about loss without telling stories because the minute you kind of say loss, people are like, Oh, right, gotta go places to go people to see but if you're incorporating it into the story.
It helps people [00:06:00] understand the universality of loss, like, sort of in their gut. And so that's why I feel like I tend towards that definition of myself now.
Mel: Hmm, I love that so much. That's such a beautiful definition, and you're right, really ties into that message that you're getting across now, and that, like, you know, I don't know if I've ever read or listened to something about Lost Without Story, but if I did, it would be really boring, and it would just, like, I wouldn't listen anyways,
Sue: right?
It would feel so clinical, right? We don't, that's not, loss is a human emotion. It's a part of the human condition. And you know, if we want to like, think about all of the hero's journey stuff and the Joseph Campbell stuff about how he's, how we move through life. You know, that's all myth based and story based, so it just makes more sense to kind of communicate that way.
It's how we communicate, like, with our girlfriends over coffee anyway, or with our mom, or with our kids so much of the time, you know. Oh, I remember this time when we did this or that, you know, so it just feels more natural. [00:07:00]
Mel: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I'm curious, you know, listening to you say that, and me being able to see, like, the expressions on your face, When you first realize what your answer to that question was.
It seemed like it was almost a surprise. So my question is around, what's it like to now call yourself a storyteller?
Sue: Yeah. And you're spot on. The look on my face was like, Oh, it was like an epiphany. Oh, that's what I am now. Because I mean, you know, how it is. It's like, In North America, we are all like, what do you do for a living?
Like that's your intro story, right? And I, I don't really have an answer for that anymore. So when, you know, your question invites a more broad definition of who we are. And I think, Oh, that the storyteller just popped to my mind. And I think it surprises me because I'm, I'm not going to say I'm new to storytelling, but I'm new to defining myself that way, you know, our identities are, you know, [00:08:00] even when we're young, we're like, I'm the middle child.
I'm the quiet one. I'm the, you know, and then you become a corporate person or an entrepreneur or whomever, a mom, a dad, you define yourself that way. Because I've left a 30 year career this year, I'm still figuring out how to define myself. I know, like, I know in my gut exactly what I'm doing. I am on a mission to change this conversation around loss.
But how does that, how do I frame that? Like, what scaffolding does that live on top of? You know, I have, what's the skeleton underneath that? And it really is, I think, since you asked that question, and bing, the light bulb went off, it really is storytelling. So yeah, so for that.
Mel: Oh, beautiful. I love that. And I, I love, you know, where I imagine that will take you now to just like connect, uh, with that word.
And what an interesting phase of your life, right? Because your kids are how old now? They're 19 and 21. So a sophomore in college and a senior in college. And then you've just left the, like, [00:09:00] the corporate career, right? Yep. So, you know, you've got space, I imagine. Yes.
Sue: And that's the perfect word. I really want to emphasize that.
That is the word that comes up. I think we all think to ourselves, well, I'll have more time, right? And I think it's just because we're like a metric driven society. Oh, I'll have time. I'll have more time in my day. But it's actually not about time. It's about space. Space because space is like an amplification of time because you have more time, but you also have more freedom and more power and all of that adds up to space, space in your head to kind of think about like, you know, I'll find myself waking up in the morning and because they don't have to, like, I don't have my little people around anymore.
Like they're, they're off at college and I don't have a job to get up to. I could spend another 10 minutes. It's like staring at the ceiling, thinking about, Oh, you know, what am I going to do today? Am I going to do some writing about this? Or am I going to go see a [00:10:00] friend? Like it just opens up space to noodle on ideas more, which for me, like I live, I I'm a very happy person in solitude.
I love my human connection, but I also really love my solitude and having more space to In all of the best definitions of the word, I can feel it expand me and expand what I can put out to the world.
Mel: Mm hmm. Yeah, I love that. And I'm so envious of it. Yeah, I know! I was just thinking, oh my gosh! But, but in such a beautiful way, I actually look at it and going, okay, that, like, that's to come.
And not saying I don't ever get it, you know. I'm actually super intentional. We talk about it a ton on here. about how do you create that space, even temporarily, you know, in your morning and your day and your, your week or month you know, how do you create that space? But yeah, I, I am like, Oh, like I could have that more often.
That's really interesting. Yeah.
Sue: It does lie ahead. I think, let me, I would love [00:11:00] to say that to the listeners, you know, the people who are in the thick of the really great, but you know, time challenge times of raising young people. Like I would not have. Known that this was at the end, like whenever the empty nest came, it took me a while to adjust to that.
But now that I have adjusted to it again, it's like we, we change our narratives. We, we, we have the capability to change our narrative and our, my narrative on like, oh no, my is now gone, and how do I feel about that? I, I don't change it in a way, like I'm manipulating the truth. I'm just choosing to focus the light.
Uh, you know, my flashlight on the openness in the space I have rather than the thing that I've lost and that still remains right. I don't have, you know, I talked to my kids very frequently. You know, we have a lot of connection, but my life is what it is. So what are the juicy parts I can take from it? And to me, that's space.
[00:12:00] Yeah, beautiful.
Mel: So tell us a little bit about your journey that got you to where you are.
Sue: Yeah, I'd love to. Thank you. Thank you for that question. So I, uh, grew up in, like, rural western Pennsylvania, and, uh, I grew up in a steel country and a lot of hardworking blue collar kinds of folks and, and I kind of grew up with a mentality, a very independent mentality, but also of a, you have to provide for yourself mentality.
So, university and some working, and then I went to business school, and I met, I met my amazing husband at business school same as Mike, and that was in the mid 90s and we dated and got married and had our two kids and then. Completely unexpectedly in November of 2016, uh, I woke up in the middle of the night to find my husband, unresponsive ambulance came, took him to the hospital.
And by the time I got to the [00:13:00] hospital he was gone and it was such a shock because he was just, it was 50, he was 50 years old. I had no idea what he even passed away from. He was a doctor going guy. So, you know, he was all, all checked out and he just had a massive. Executive physical that had given him a clean bill of health.
Mel: Wow.
Sue: And so it was such a, like a tear in the universe. Like he just disappeared off the face of the earth, you know, with, with his passing away. And the kids at the time were 11 and 13. And, uh, you know, my first thought was like, was for them of course. Like, and, and the hardest conversation I hope to ever have had in my life is.
Is telling them the news, right? It pales in comparison to anything that's ever happened to me, but we have, uh, used this experience in our life. To realize how strong we are, right. That we, we've gone through some terribly [00:14:00] difficult times. It was like, so, so hard as you can imagine, but we year after year, you know, put every year behind us and expanded a little more and opened a little more and found amazing community and amazing people to fill the hole.
So I always say there's like a Mike shaped hole in my life and. A lot of people filled that hole. It'll never be fully filled, but it is amazing the different kinds of love you have that can come into your life to fill that hole. And the same for the children. So family and friends, people just looking out for us.
And over time I can, I could see the kids just building an attitude. Like, Oh, I've survived the worst, like I've been through the worst. So, you know, other things are really hard, but I've been through the worst thing. So we kind of over time built our resilience muscles and built that in respect and love for Mike, because there's nothing he [00:15:00] would want more than us to thrive.
And I think some people think, Oh, you know, their loved one passed away. And if they're doing so great, maybe they didn't love them. As much, but you know what? That is the sign of love that you work your way through your healing process, however long it takes. So you get to a point where you have reinvented your life, right?
That old life. It'll, it'll never be the same, but you can bring your life back. In a different direction in a different kind of great, and that's kind of where you find us today all these years later, it'll actually be eight years in November since Mike died and over the years, like maybe in the last few years, I kept feeling like I was living a life that people didn't expect me to live after loss.
Like, even all these years later, I'll still meet people from the old neighborhood and they'll be like, how are you? And I was like, wow, that's what society expects out of us that we, we never can recover. [00:16:00] We never can rebuild. We never can regenerate. I mean, we are, we are of a peace with nature, you know, and, and the way, uh, you know, when we think about the metaphors for that, you know, the butterfly.
Coming out of the cocoon, the forest fire and the green shoots afterwards. We are made to heal after the right amount of time for us and the right support from our community. And I just kept feeling like I was living a life of true vibrancy because when my world got broken, It allowed me to see the world in a different way.
It allowed me to see nature with way more detail, human relationships with way more heart, way more compassion. So that breaking actually opened me and it opened me to a way of living that is like so energized. And it's, people get a little confused. They're like, wait, okay. This like incredibly energetic person is motivated.
By a loss, but what I'm motivated [00:17:00] by is the transformation, the transformation that happens that I see in myself and I see in my kids. And I just can't sit around and not want that life for everyone who has gone through losses. It's, it's like, I feel like it's a light under a bushel, you know, that you that you don't know that that's possible.
And I want people to know it's possible. And not just for the loss of a spouse, because there's so many things we can lose, like, we don't want to think about it this way. But the human condition is filled with losses and things like our health, our youth, our identity, our friendships, and yes, a spouse by death or divorce, our parents eventually sort of in the natural order of things.
There are so many things that we lose, but we don't talk about loss. We've got no glossary, no nomenclature, nothing to kind of reference about loss, but it's this, it's like, The most common thing that happens to us, right? We know how to talk about love and [00:18:00] all of the other great things as part of the human condition, but we don't know as much how to talk about suffering and loss.
And I just want to change that. I want to give us words for it. I want to, I want us to be able to kind of zoom out and look at loss in all of its dimensions. It's universality, it's cyclicality, it's inevitability. So we, Aren't like every time we're, we are faced with a loss, shocked by it. I, whenever we have a loss, I just want us focused on the loss, but I also want us knowing that we are designed to come out the other side.
So in light of that I had the good fortune of going to the do the event where we saw each other two years ago. And I talked to people that I met there and I was like, Oh, I really want to change the conversation around loss. And they're like, that's amazing. You know, that sounds like a really cool mission.
Like, okay, what's the best way to do that? So I started writing a weekly newsletter on Substack. It's called the luminous because I'm shining a light. On a subject that we'd rather keep in the [00:19:00] dark, which is lost. So I have a great editor and co creator, Leona, who helps me. And every week we write about a topic about loss, but also just topics about vibrant living.
Like last week's post was about crying. So my, my dad just turned 80 and we had a big celebration for him and I could see him when he was opening his cards. Tearing up and having like, you know, a tear coming down and we're so crying averse in our culture that we're not even okay to cry for the happy moments.
So we kind of did a post about crying. There's, there's so much of dealing with loss. That's about letting your emotions flow through you. So that's what we write about every week at the luminous. And so we've just hit our a hundred week mark. Every week we've been putting out something and The great part about writing, as you know, Mel, is like, it helps you know what you think.
It helps you refine your thinking and refine your messaging. And it helped me, like, really think about how I want to [00:20:00] communicate this message. this framework around loss to help people move through it better. So that's kind of where you find me today, a newsletter writer a speaker, and just trying to kind of navigate what's next.
Where can I take my message for its most impact?
Mel: Yeah. Wow, that's firstly, it's amazing that you can sum that up in such a short period of time. That's quite impressive. I have to say,
Sue: well, you know, I laugh all the time because it's like those 30 years as a corporate wonk. I thought I wasn't really like, it feels like that would be such a dividing line in my life.
But you know what it gave me? It gave me the reps, the practice to communicate, even though that wasn't a corporate message. for this new time in my life, like to speak, to write all of that. I would say I can be thankful for my corporate practice to help me do this more practice of the heart where I'm headed now.
Yeah.
Mel: Yeah. It's brilliant. And it, [00:21:00] you know, I just, As I said earlier, I think it's such a, a beautiful and much needed thing. What you're doing is to, to really shine the light on this. And the thing that was coming to my mind, the word that was coming to my mind the whole time was fear, right? And I'm doing a lot of work around courage right now.
That's where we've got a courage club. It's very much about acts of courage, building up those and how we have this relationship with fear, but also how how we, how do I, I'm trying to like make the connection in my head that is like not fully forming into words right now. Yeah. But this, this, We're afraid of the fact that we couldn't handle loss.
That's what was coming into my mind. And with the courage that we're afraid that we can't handle whatever it is if we fail. Right? So, this fear, you know, because I was reflecting on my own responses to the story that you were [00:22:00] sharing and that I've heard the bits and pieces and that's what it is. It's this fear that what if I can't handle all of those emotions that need to go through my body.
Sue: This I love this question. This is, this is such an amazing question. So I have, uh, I have a set of books on my bookshelf that I, that I give out, you know, if I hear if someone has a loss or somebody that I care about, whatever kind of loss I package up a box of like my favorite books for courage building.
And like you said, so so I'm gonna run back here and grab mine. So the one line, it's already in a bin, just so everybody knows
it's ready to go. And so of course, like for me in my circumstance, a grief observed, which is C. S. Lewis, that's specific to grief, but one that is not specific to grief is keep moving by Maggie Smith.
I cannot recommend this book enough for anything that you need like a book, uh, [00:23:00] a boost of courage or the impetus for her writing. This book was, she went through a divorce and there are little snippets that she would put out on Instagram plus some additional like little paragraphs for courage boosting.
And it's, it's just such a lovely book. And then, uh, One other book that I really love is a book by Rachel Naomi Remen. And it's called Kitchen Table Wisdom Stories That Heal. And it is the most delightful book. She is a palliative care physician in her seventies with a chronic condition herself. And the stories she tells in here are amazing.
But to your specific question, one of my favorite books that addresses what you're talking about is a book called Consolations. The solace nourishment and underlying meaning of everyday words is by David White. He is a I think he, he I thought he lived on Vancouver Island or I can't remember where he is some, you know, somewhere on the West, but he's, he's a Irish [00:24:00] and English by birth.
And then, you know, has a great history and so in this book, he has, he just defines words right and. And one of the words that he uses is the word despair, because we are so worried that we will get into a despair, we will get to the bottom of the well and we will never be able to come back up. I think this directly speaks to that fear.
If I felt everything really bad, you know, if I go down there, will I be able to come back up? Will I ever be able to recover? And the way he describes despair in here is he says, despair is a place to be for a while. It's okay to be there for a while. It's actually a resting place when these, when bad things happen to you.
And then eventually you will find yourself Having had enough time in despair that it will fade. So, but he, he gives like, it's so inspiring his, [00:25:00] uh, and I, and I think we can probably even find it for your listeners and connect it to the episode, just the essay on despair, because that is such a, that is such a real fear of all of us, like how, Oh no.
But if I get there and I let that happen, rather than stealing myself against the fear, I'll never recover. And I just want to say, like, I grew up. And, you know, my parents were lovely. We had a wonderful upbringing, but I was always like, Oh, I'm not going to feel anything. Sad song on the radio. Let's turn that off.
Sad book. Not going to listen to that. So it's not like I had some super ton of experience with feeling things. My policy was always like, Nope, let's make that feeling go away. Like that would be the safest thing. I'm not going to feel the feeling. So for me, you. I came from that background and I have become a person, excuse me, who feels everything and if I can do it, I know other people can do it.
And that's just like my, [00:26:00] my just strong belief in the power of all of us to heal the power of our nature to move forward.
Mel: The power of our nature to move forward. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah, so I have plenty of questions, but actually the one that really sticks in my mind is just what was Mike like?
Sue: Oh my gosh, another question that I love.
So, in the first year or two after he died, people would sometimes I would see people and they wouldn't even. Like say anything about him and I would be like, this is so weird. Like, you know, my husband died. Like, we're not going to talk about that. And they, they were worried that they were maybe reminding me of him.
Like, as if I would have forgotten that he wasn't here anymore. And I was like, no, it is a gift to have. to be invited to talk about your loved one [00:27:00] who is not here anymore. It is such a gift. So the thing about Mike is like, he was just this incredibly handsome guy. Like when I, when I met him, I met him at grad school and I remember seeing him for the first time and thinking, holy heck, I mean, that guy is so handsome.
He must be a jerk. I'm going to stay away from him. Like that was literally the first thought that came to mind, because if you're that handsome, you're probably just toxic. And I came to realize later, he, you know, he just didn't view himself that way. And so he had this. sort of air about him, that he was kind of clueless about the impact that his like physical beauty had on other people.
And I feel about Mike, he lost his mom when he was 22. His mom had breast cancer and they were so, so close. And one of the things I'm most proud of is that we as a family were able to fill Mike's Mom shaped whole, right? That he, he had this tremendous loss and that [00:28:00] we were able to fill his heart back up again because he was such a lover and so caring and kind while at the same time being incredibly ambitious and driven and really wanting to provide for his family.
That was such a high priority for him. And at times he was silly. Like we, we loved like our silly dad making that on the weekends. And, uh, and he was very much he liked kept order in the house. Like he had a great aesthetic sense and he would like kind of do the decorating, but he wouldn't want anybody to know that because he felt like maybe that wasn't very masculine.
So people would come to the house and they would be like. Sue, this is so amazing. And you're a full time working mom and your house is so beautiful. And I would just say, yeah, Even though it wasn't me, it was like Mike who did everything. And that was good with Mike. Cause he didn't want to be kind of called out for that.
But he, like, he just created joy and beauty and care and devotion in our lives. [00:29:00] And I think even though he was only 50, when he died, he lived so much in 50 years. Because he could just get everything done. Like he was the guy on the conference call folding laundry at the same time. Like he just got everything done and took care of us in that way.
And then like on the funny end of that, he, he liked the house to be neat. So each of us in our showers that have like a glass door, we, we would have a squeegee, right? Cause daddy, like, you know, he liked things neat and we didn't believe that the showers need squeegeeing, but we loved him. And if that was important to him, we would squeegee.
And so, so right after he died, like in the few days after he died, when the kids and I were, you know, just trying to gather our thoughts, we would take little walks around the neighborhood just to blow off some steam. And my daughter turned to me and she's like. I didn't squeegee today. And I was like, I didn't squeegee today either.
I think we can throw out the squeegees. I think daddy would be like totally good with that. [00:30:00] And now even all these years later, that's like one of our jokes. Like, if we see a squeegee somewhere, we're like, Oh, thinking of daddy, there's a squeegee. Like, and we, he is part of our life. Like we think about him and talk about him and have Since the jump, like it wasn't something where like, let's try to forget this guy.
Now we integrate him into everything we do. Like we'll talk now. Oh, what would daddy think of a 19 year old? Kendall, my daughter versus an 11 year old. Oh, what do you think about all this? The boys stuff and how this, and I was like, Ooh, I don't know. That might've been a little explosive. I don't, I don't really know.
But we. Like he is part of who we are and we think about him and talk about him all the time. Like I was actually reading a really great book called life is hard by Kieran Satya. He's a philosopher and he's like, how can life, how can philosophy help life be easier, better, you know, more content. And, you know, he makes the point about losses is that when people die, they don't leave your [00:31:00] life.
Mike takes up such a space in our brain. He's so integrated into who we are. Yes. We don't have a day to day relationship with him. We don't, you know, he's not, we don't have a relationship with him. Like we wished we did, but we still have him in our lives. Like he's still part of our life in that intangible way.
And that doesn't make us sad, it actually makes us glad, like, oh no, we can remember him at these instances. We can make funny jokes about what he might think of something, and that keeps him alive in our hearts.
Mel: Beautiful. He sounds like an amazing, amazing person. He was a
Sue: gem, for sure.
Mel: And the, the question, humorously, you part answered it, but it was like, you know, you've talked about the Mike shaped hole and, and like, how do we fill this Mike shaped hole in our lives?
And I was like, how do you feel that Mike shaped cleaning hole in your life?
Mel: , like, is it clean stiLl
Sue: That's a great question [00:32:00] too. Let's see. It's, it's not as clean, I would say. But it's still, it's still pretty clean. Maybe we're 80%. Yeah, I would say when I look around my office, not very clean, but, uh, I think we've lowered our standards slightly.
Mel: Yeah. Yeah. Fair, fair. So, the next question that came to my mind is around what has helped you through these years get to the point? You know, if the people listening, and one of the things you talk about, so in your, your in the Luminist, the phrase at the top is shining light on death, grief, and loss to help us console better.
Suffer less and live more vibrant lives. And I think the, the spot that I immediately went to was console, right? And like, what does that look like? Because as you [00:33:00] say, you're walking down the street and people are like, I have no idea what to say to you. Yeah. Right. Do I ask the norm? Like, do I just, do we just ignore this?
Do we talk about it somewhere in between? Like, how does it, you know so I think, It'd be really, really helpful to understand what has helped you get to where you are, whether that's people or something completely different, actually.
Sue: Yeah. I think I love this question too, because like, to me, consoling, when you're not in the midst of a loss, It's good to practice your consoling skills, right?
Because then you're not, you're not so triggered, right? You are the one with the open heart to the person who's suffering. And you know, when we think about consoling, you know, I had a lot of, not a lot, but I had some people who would be like, No, you didn't come to the funeral because we figured you had a lot of people.
You always have to, you have to check your own mental Excuses. And I know that can sound kind of harsh, but like, we're here to, we're here to be here for the people who have had the hardship, right? And [00:34:00] sometimes we have to, you know man up to use a colloquial phrase there to, you know, to help people out.
And the things in the early days that helped me so much, and this kind of goes back to the storytelling, you know, that you kind of helped me excavate at the beginning. I got so many letters in the mail from Mike's colleagues or people he went to college with or swim on the William and Mary swim team with who were like, I remember Mike and they would tell me a story.
And that is the, and I have a giant plastic bin, you know, of all of these that will be the legacy, you know, for the kids as they get older or share it with their own kids or their partners. And so you Those stories about Mike again, giving us a whole new dimension to his life that we didn't experience like we had our Mike, they had a different Mike so that sharing of stories at the very beginning was so so helpful.
Sometimes just, uh, Being there for people, you know, the traditional like casserole and things I would have people say, [00:35:00] well, I'm bringing a casserole over and I would say, just put it on the front porch, because one of the things you have to be careful about is the person grieving the loss has to be grieving on their own time and say they've come to a point of like calmness in their day, and you show up on the front porch with your casserole and want to talk about their loss.
Like we have to honor their cyclicality of grieving and people were so great about that. They're like, yep. When I put it down, I'll text you. Right. And I'll hop right back in my car. So that generosity, even I think like if someone would make a casserole and it wasn't a casserole, the kids would eat. I didn't care because it was such a generous act.
It was a, I'm thinking about you act. And those are the acts that we need to think about. You don't have to have a grand. Uh, plan about what you're going to say because everybody is different on how they receive things, but acts of kindness and an act of kindness is not what can I do for you because your brain is not able to [00:36:00] produce what someone can do for you.
So even just a Starbucks coffee on the front porch is an act of kindness. So in those early days, it was more like those acts of kindness and that storytelling. And then over time. Like I said, it's like I spent a lot of time up in nature and that ability to see nature differently got me out of my monkey mind.
For the time that I needed to just to get a respite from that so I could see the world differently in nature. Then I started to see the world differently in people. And then I started a new job relatively soon after Mike died, my old job was ending and I needed to get a new job. And so when I started my new job, no one was like.
Wanting to talk to me about Mike because they didn't know my story now They knew my story because all you had to do was Google me to see it But they were very kind and they were just accepting me for what I was which was someone good at their job So again these little breaks that you can kind of give your brain like the way [00:37:00] that it unfolded for me To get to the vibrant living, you know, which is again, what we talk about in the luminous, it's just like over time, I just realized how the universe was on my side.
Like this terrible thing happened to us inexplicable. Like I will never know. And, and, and I didn't really have any anger. Like I knew Mike did everything he could to stay healthy. And in the end, what he had was a heart attack. And I just felt like that was the hand we were dealt in life. And any minute I spent being bitter and angry about it was a minute.
I wasn't spending modeling for the kids, how we move forward. So that was like a real conscious choice. It's like, I wanted the best life for them. I wanted it. And I know that's the best way to honor Mike. So that, you know, excavation of myself. And again, like another story thing was like, I would read memoirs.
I would read memoirs. And if you're reading a memoir, like the year of magical thinking or or even a grief [00:38:00] observed, you see by the end of these memoirs, The change in the writer and that gave me faith and hope that I would experience a change to was going to take time, however long that time was right for me, but that helped me so much so as opposed to kind of books like this.
Uh, which are also very helpful, like, you know, the three steps through grief or et cetera, stories were what resonated more for me because I'm like, okay, I'm not some Oxford Don in the 19 whatever 50s or 60s like C. S. Lewis, but I read his story and it completely resonates with me and at the end he gives me hopefulness.
So hopefulness, I think, is just that is such an antidote to our fear. And our uncertainty hopefulness. You don't know how it's going to turn out. And I think that perhaps is my biggest learning that I couldn't say definitely what the answer was going to be in the end. Were the kids going to be okay? [00:39:00] How were they going to be okay?
If we were going to have problems, what were those problems going to be? I just had to let it go and let it unfold, uh, into who we are today, which is a place I could not have possibly have pictured. But when we, When we have something in our lives that are fundament, that's fundamentally broken, it is an opportunity to look a new and that looking a new is like kind of transformed me from the person I was before.
Now I'm a feeling person. I'm a vulnerable person. I mean, now I'm like, because what have I got to lose? What have I got to lose about telling my story? I've only got something to gain, which is like giving people hope in their times of loss.
Mel: Amazing.
I'm curious. Whether you have any practices or ways that you enabled yourself to get into that, that way of thinking, right? [00:40:00] Because I can't imagine you just were able to do it every second of every day. No, for sure not. What kind of brought you back to that? That way. Yeah.
Sue: Yeah. So a couple of weeks before Mike died, I had gone to a meditation retreat.
I'd never meditated before. And there's a place in Western Massachusetts called Kripalu. It's like a retreat center. And I'd gone and taken this meditation class. I was like, okay, I'm going to start meditating. And then, you know, my life gets blown to smithereens. And I was like, well, I think this would be like a good time to be meditating.
Like I think I probably need this. So, you know, I started using one of the apps for that headspace, I think. And, and I gradually started meditating 20 minutes on most days. But what I want to say about meditation is For me, meditation, I don't finish meditating and feel like, Oh, the so calm and the birds are singing.
No, I don't feel that way at all at the end of meditation. But what [00:41:00] meditation enabled me to do is watch my thoughts. That is, that is what I've gotten from meditation. And in that watching of my thoughts, It gives me a beat to be like, is this really true? Like, is my life really, really going to be destroyed?
Are we never going to make it? And so that practice, that just getting into meditation for solely the purpose of making a little bit of space between me and my thoughts. I'm glad you're here. So I know this helped me say, No, I'm not defined by that thought. Like, of course your thoughts after a hardship are like all jumbled up and you know, catastrophizing all over the place.
But I had just enough space to be like, Is that really true? No, wait a second. Me and also in terms of practices, it is very good. People don't want to do this, but I really encourage it. Think about all the hard things you survived. Make a list, just maybe a five line list of [00:42:00] all the really tough things you've survived.
So, you know, I have many of those in my life. You know, my parents divorced. I, uh, had an accident where I broke my two front teeth, which was really like traumatic. When Connor was born, he had a lot of trouble. He had to be in the NICU for 10 days. So I'm like, Oh my gosh, look at what I have survived. Look at these really tough things I have survived in my life.
Did I do it like full of grace and, you know, movie star? No, I didn't, but it's like somehow I made it through those. So whatever I'm made of, My fortitude, it's in there and I know that even though this is the absolute worst thing that could happen to me, I've survived other things. I have some practice at surviving and when we can kind of zoom out and look at ourselves and say, yeah, okay, Oh no, that was a really hard time and I, and I made it through that.
What were the ways I made it? Oh, I spent a lot of time with my friends during that I did a lot of reading, I [00:43:00] exercised a lot, kept my body moving. Oh, I made it through. And if I can take pieces of that and make it through my toughest times, I know that I'm made of the stuff that can do that. So I think it's a lot of like observational practices about yourself.
And I think what I want to do with, with changing the conversation about loss is like, help us be observational before we so desperately need it. Like help us know we have the strength inside. Help us know that our experiences are universal. Help us find the right practice for us. Whether that's swimming laps, walking in the forest, or meditating, that gives us a little bit of space between us and our very real thoughts of, of fear and uncertainty.
Mel: And that's like the perfect round back to how we started, right? Because you just finished with space. Yeah. And that's the conversation starter that we had. Yeah. So you found practices that gave you the [00:44:00] space now. That's a great point. Perhaps did not feel like you had a lot of space in your life. You didn't have the luxury of waking up in the morning and having the 10 minutes to stare at the ceiling.
Right. That you found your way. To create that space to observe. That's
Sue: a great observation. That's, that's perfect. That's exactly right. You, you build those pockets in and that, you know, you so desperately need those. And it's so hard in a busy life. And my life was so, so busy. You know, when this happened, I was like, okay, now I'm the sole parent carrying the psychic.
Weight. And I would say like of all the, of course, it's incredibly difficult to lose the love of my life, but like carrying the psychic weight of the children alone, like without a partner, that was really hard. And that took me a lot of time, you know, that was constantly on my mind. How are these children doing right?
In addition to the job, in addition to like being now the sole provider in the house and this and that, I built a network of people to support me with the things that [00:45:00] I could, but nobody else can really carry the psychic weight of your children. And I think that that was such an important building those spaces in like we said, being up in the woods or swimming or all the things that I do to build that helps me bear that psychic weight.
Mel: I can't even imagine how heavy it was as someone you, you know, it's a, it's a weight, no matter what, as a mother, you will have, you will hold this weight, you're concerned about this or that or that, you're just holding your kids, right? And in all of your stories, that is, you know, of course, when we hear stories like this, we relate it to our lives.
Right. And I'm like, Oh, it would be, you know, really sad to lose my husband. And as soon as you started talking about the kids, I'm like, Oh, that, and I can, I could feel my eyes. Right. I can feel the tense. Totally. Right. Because, and because we're good moms, I
Sue: mean, we just, you know, it's such a, it's such a dichotomy and people criticize helicopter parents all the time, but those helicopter [00:46:00] parents are trying to help their child not suffer.
So I get it. You know, at the base of who they are. That's. Yeah. And, and I think now having like 21 year old, I'm, I give a lot less advice, even though I'm dying to give it, but I'm just like, no, like now is the time for them to kind of figure it out on their own. If they ask, I'll have an opinion, but, but yeah, and even, even I carry the psychic weight of them today, but now as they grow up and mature, it's a different load.
For
Mel: sure. Amazing. Okay, final question before we find out where we can look for you, etc. is a tip that you would like to give the listeners around just knowing who they are. It can be around anything you want, really. But of course the topic of the day tends to be loss. So maybe it's, you know, how do we, how do we live with loss?
And as you say, I can't remember the words exactly as you say, but kind of, you know, how do we flourish?
Sue: [00:47:00] Yeah, it's a great question. So I think the tip I would give the most is we have to be Accepting of what the human condition has to offer right in the human condition has to offer love and connection, community, beauty, so many wonderful things, but it also has some really tough things to offer suffering, hardship and loss.
And if we can hold all of those things, then when our troughs come, when we're spending more time and suffering and hardship and loss. We aren't doing something. That the Buddhists call the second arrow, which is like you're already suffering because of you've lost something and then you shoot yourself because you're like, Oh, I shouldn't be this upset or I should be more resilient, or I should be able to feel better sooner.
No second arrows no twisting the knife. And so the more we. accept the [00:48:00] ups and downs of the human condition. When our troughs happen, we let the trough happen without extra beating ourselves up. So I think that that's really, that's so important for us to be accepting of life as it is for us here on our time on earth.
Uh, that we take these ebbs and flows, like I always say, you know, when we're doing our victory laps, we don't really need anybody like, yeah, go or I'm standing on the top of the podium. We don't need advice or help them. You know, great. We want our people who love us to be admiring our accomplishment. But when we're in the troughs, those are the times we need people around us and building our community for that time.
And accepting in us when we have these hardships and accepting in our community and supporting them. I think that is what gives you vibrant living. And I never mean vibrant living to be like rainbows and unicorns all the time. Vibrant living is feeling everything. And then your highs are high and rich and your [00:49:00] lows are low, but you will find the other side.
Beautiful.
Mel: Permission to be human, right? Yes, exactly.
Sue: Back to your whole point now. Amazing.
Mel: Thank you so much. If people are listening and they're like, I really want to do a deep dive into this more. I want to, I agree. We need to get this message out there. Or they're just like, Oh, I just, Yeah, that hit my heart.
I want to go and look at it or I want to get in touch. Where would they go?
Sue: Yeah, so the perfect place to start is I, uh, my newsletter is on Substack. So if you just go to Substack and Google the word luminist, you'll find my newsletter there and you can subscribe. It's a free subscription and every Saturday, you'll just kind of get some life lessons, stories.
thoughts, me making fun of myself. In that weekly, uh, in that weekly missive. I'm also on LinkedIn. Uh, so you can just connect with me there. And I put like a tinier [00:50:00] little micro blog out on LinkedIn that relates to the post. And then last, my talk that Mel, uh, uh, saw whenever we were at do whales. In July will be on the do lectures website within the next week.
So if you want to just hear the talk itself just go to the do lectures website. You can Google that too. And it'll pop right up for you. And you'll see if you sort by most recent talks, you'll find my talk there.
Mel: Oh, that's very exciting. I will be watching them all again, I have to say. Yeah, me too. So amazing.
So good. And do you know what? I'm going to add an extra question that I thought of throughout this, because, you know, the message, the work that you're doing, the message you're trying to get out in the world is so important. What I'm curious of is how can I and the people who are listening support you in getting that message out further?
Sue: Yeah, thank you for asking that. It's, I'm sort of at this point in time where I After 100 weeks of writing the newsletter really refined my thinking and [00:51:00] I, you know, I have some solid ideas on that. I would love to speak like I'm, I like to write I love to write I love to clarify my thinking I love to work with my partner Leona on it but speaking just because I have so many reps is my corporate.
Wonk self speaking is what I love. So if anybody has an opportunity, uh, where this conversation would resonate, I would love to do a talk in front of any size audience, zoom live or anything. I think that's, there's an energy transmission. Mel, as you know, like when we were at do wells, like the energy from a live talk is so incredible, but even zoom talks are great.
So that's my, that's my true passion is like, I just want to talk to more people have these conversations. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us, Sue.
Mel: Thank you.
If you live on Vancouver Island, then listen up. This is for you. And if you don't, still listen up because [00:52:00] it may well eventually be for you. I have started The Courage Club. It is up and running right now with our founding members and it will be launching for real in January of 2025. And it is a space for women to meet new people local in their area you And try new things, build up that courage muscle, take fear along for the ride, and have some fun together.
And if that seems like something that you are craving, that space to get out and do things that you might not otherwise do on your own, but that you do want to do, then You can do it with the Courage Club. Now, courage shows up in many forms. Sure, there's the physical ones that we all think of, but there's also social and there's emotional courage, and there's so many ways that we can show it.
So you will have an opportunity to decide how you going to do your acts of [00:53:00] courage. Head on over to Permission to Be human.ca/the Courage Club and get your name on the waiting list so that you can hear all about it as and when it comes up.
That is it, folks. This has been Mel Findlater on Permission to Be Human, the podcast, and I am so glad that you have joined us here today and hope that you have taken away some tidbits that will help you go away, connect with your big audacious dream, and make that massive impact in the world that you are dying to make.
If you liked today's episode, please, please, please like it, share it. Think of one person. Think of one person that you think would also like it and send it on over to them. Let's get this out there and more moms feeling like themselves. Inspired, dreaming big, and out there being them. Please do head on over to [00:54:00] find me on Facebook with permission to be human or Instagram or you can even Off me an email and say hello.
Have permission to be human, always, at gmail. com. Say hello and let me know that you listened. What did you like about it? I would love to hear. If you didn't like it, I don't really want to know. Ha ha, just kidding, you can share that if you want. I would love to know, however, who you are. Let's connect.
Let's find out what you want more of. I want to hear from you and I want to make it what would be useful to you. As always, remember that you have permission to dream big, permission to feel big, and permission to be you. You have complete and full permission to be human.
For real, you [00:55:00] do.
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