My Dad Helps Sad People: Grief Recovery with Cole James E28

This might be one of the most powerful, helpful hours you've heard in a very long time. I'm interviewing Cole James, son of John James, who is the founder and co-author of The Grief Recovery Handbook.

It is the only evidence-based grief recovery program in the world. Do you know that grief and recovery aren't always put together? Most of us know how to build and gain in life. Very few of us know how to lose, how to process loss, and we all have loss.  And many of us have had more loss during this past year with COVID.

Cole James is the executive director of the Grief Recovery Institute.  The book Grief Recovery Handbook is printed in over 20 languages, because dealing with grief is not just a Western issue.

Whether you're looking to move past losses in life, or you're looking to get certified and help other people with loss, I believe you'll gain a whole lot of amazing information in this episode.

And, you can connect with Cole or one of their trainers if you reach out through  Griefrecoverymethod.com.

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Transcript

My Dad Helps Sad People

Lenora Turner:  Hi I'm Lenora your host of 3 Peas In A Pod, purpose, pathways, and perspectives. Today I have a fantastic interview for you. We could title this episode, My Dad Helps Sad People. This might be one of the most powerful, helpful hours you've heard in a very long time. I'm interviewing Cole James, son of John James, who is the founder and co- author of The Grief Recovery Handbook. It is the only evidence-based grief recovery program in the world. Do you know that grief and recovery aren't always put together? Most of us know how to build and gain in life. Very few of us know how to lose, how to process loss, and we all have loss.

[00:00:51] And many of us have had more loss during this past year with COVID. Cole James is executive director of the Grief Recovery Institute.  The book Grief Recovery Handbook is in over 20 languages.

[00:01:06] So, whether you're looking to move past losses in life, or you're looking to get certified and help other people with loss, I believe you'll gain a whole lot of amazing information in this episode. 

[00:01:19] And, you connect with Cole or one of their trainers if you reach out through www.griefrecoverymethod.com. And please subscribe to this podcast and rate the podcast.

[00:01:30] And thank you for listening.  Enjoy,  

[00:01:34] Welcome to this episode of the podcast. I am really pleased to have on this episode, Cole James. Cole, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:44] Cole James: Thank you for having me. Lenora. I'm excited to be here. 

[00:01:47] Lenora Turner: You are the executive director of an Institute that has very, it means a lot to me. It means a lot because of something I went through in my life and how I needed help with grief. So before we jump into any of those details or some of the stories we can tell and things we can talk about, can you tell everyone, you know, what you do, how you got into it, and really how your father started this effort 40 years ago.

[00:02:14] Cole James: Sure. Let's start with how my dad started. And then we can kind of go into how I got into this work, but essentially, in the late seventies, my father had a, and his wife had a son, and his son was only three days old in the hospital and his lungs didn't fully develop. And, , after three days his son took his last breath and he died.

[00:02:36] And my father was devastated by this event. He had grown up in an alcoholic, abusive home. He had served in Vietnam. He had lost a 26- year- old brother, brother out of the blue. He had had a lot of grief and loss in his life, but for some reason, this death of this baby boy and all of the hopes and dreams and expectations that ended that day were just debilitating for him. 

[00:03:02] And he was contemplating ending his life on the beach in Santa Monica, California. And during that kind of process, when he was deciding what he was going to do, he had a thought, which was, why is this loss seemingly so much different? Why does this loss feel so much different to me?

[00:03:21] He didn't have an answer at that time, but that kind of set him on a quest to go and find resources. And unfortunately, at the time the resources were let's paint the nursery back to white, let's pretend it didn't happen. Let's give them really hurtful advice. Like you guys are young, you and your wife can have other children, uh, and the list goes on you.

[00:03:42] And I unfortunately know a lot of these things that well-intentioned people say to us that are emotionally just not helpful at all, and oftentimes very hurtful. Right? And so he, he just didn't find any resources at the time. It was one of those words you just didn't talk about. And there was nobody had any kind of helpful information or tools to share with you.

[00:04:03] And he kind of just pieced together through research, through going to the library, through kind of just historical truth from humanity before he kind of cobbled together some stuff that helped him with his, with that loss of his son. , At the time though, he built houses. He had nothing to do with it.

[00:04:21] You know, he wasn't a mental health professional or anything in that field whatsoever, but he had found some stuff that helped him. People started sending him other grieving people and said, you should go talk to John. And so he would just share bits and pieces of little things that he found along the way that helped him deal with this loss.

[00:04:37] At a certain point, he said to himself that he should write a book and he self- published a book, uh, in a spare bedroom of his apartment. And that book did really well locally and pretty soon publishers were looking for you know, rights to it. And Harper Collins, , ended up being the publisher, a large publisher in New York.

[00:04:56] And so from that book, The Grief Recovery Handbook, you know, this beautiful organization has come into existence. And now we're a little over 40 years in. We've helped a lot of people. We've developed a lot of different services for people. And I'm proud to say we still use that book right, alongside all the people doing our work.

[00:05:15] And we have gone through some revisions of it, but, , it's still The Grief Recovery Handbook. And that system, that method in there, , to this day really still helps people. And we're now in 20 languages, which is really interesting because when he first wrote it, we thought this was in an English-speaking problem.

[00:05:31] Right. And then we discovered people coming from all over the place that could relate to it. And then we started opening offices in different countries. So anyway, we're really proud of the fact that we work with everyone from all the major religions, 20 languages. And we're working hard to get into more languages.

[00:05:50] This work is accessible because grief is, is primarily an overwhelmingly and emotional experience. We can help people from all different cultures, all different religions, , atheists, agnostics, it really doesn't matter because we just focused on the emotional work that people need to do around their grief.

[00:06:08] So anyway, that's a little bit about how he came into it, how he created the Grief Recovery Institute and I I kind of entered the picture obviously at my birth, but really, you know, , growing up, ,  in that household, it was interesting because he would kind of help people and talk to people around the coffee table.

[00:06:27] And you know, when I was six, seven years old, my concept of what my dad did is if you asked me, I would tell you he helps sad people. You know, that's kind of what I could wrap my, my dad helps out people. But I, I was taking it in and I was hearing him and I was hearing the advice he was giving. And I was also understanding I was in a lucky position where I could really understand that that tears should be as normal as laughter although in our society, that is not the case, you know, and, and sadness, we are equipped with sadness for a reason and that's okay and that doesn't need to be hidden or judged or fixed. And so I had a pretty unique perspective that way.

[00:07:03] Now society got ahold of me. And so I took bits and pieces where I could, but I still got a lot of the misinformation around grief that we do in society. And we, you know, we may or may not get into that, uh, during this interview. But, , anyway, I went on a completely different path and I was in the entertainment field in Los Angeles, California.

[00:07:22] I had been there for seven years. And I had seen success doing that. And I probably could have had, you know, fine career doing, doing that work, but I was getting older. And grief started entering the picture for me personally. Right. And at 21 I lost a dear friend to a drunk driving accident. And at 26 I lost a very close cousin to suicide.

[00:07:43] He took his life in a really tragic way that was very painful for me. I had had romantic breakups. I tore my ACL in my knee ending a lifeline lifelong dream to play major league baseball. And I was in a division one college at the time. So it wasn't just like a pipe dream that, you know, I was pursuing that.

[00:08:01] So that's, you know, death of that dream was another big grief event for me. I lost some animals and some, you know, just painful ways. Anyway, grief started accumulating and, then what really brought me to the grief recovery method and my father's work was the suicide of Blake, my cousin. And I just intuitively knew I called him and I said, , can I, can I come to one of the courses.

[00:08:24] And he said, of course. And I went and, , it was in Palm Springs, California, and it was a four -day course. And by the third day of that course, I just knew that I needed to dedicate my life to this work. And I saw my dad and his partner, Russell Friedman at the time. And, you know, they were getting older, and I didn't see where the transition would be.

[00:08:45] And I asked for a job and I put in my two weeks at this very large corporation, and I came on board 10 years ago and there's not a day that goes by that I'm not grateful to have the opportunity to help people and to kind of bring this method out there to the world. So, , that's a little bit about me and, , you know, and how I, I kind of came to be from going from, you know, my dad helps sad people to, Oh my, I really need to help get this out there to more people because it's that powerful.

[00:09:10] Lenora Turner: Yeah, no kidding. And thank you so much. I love hearing more of that story because you said so many things already. One is that grief is about a lot more than death. It can be about it's about loss period. Now I came to know about this book at a time where I knew some loss was coming, most likely. I had gone through, sadly, a divorce over eight years ago, and then over some years later, my children's father was, my children were hitting their early twenties and their father was fighting the battle against cancer.

[00:09:45] And he was there. He was told he had maybe three months to live one to three months. And then at the same time, my mother was battling cancer in her seventies. And we were like, Oh, Oh, because both of them were really tough diagnosis. , and one had been my, you know, my ex-husband had been battling for several years.

[00:10:08] And so I knew, sadly, what was probably coming, and I thought, God, help me, I don't know how to do this. I had learned some things about grief. Thank God. I got some good information when I had gone through the loss in divorce, , and other losses in, in life. , but that one, I went, Oh, Oh, I just, I know something's coming.

[00:10:30] And I like to have some kind of information, give me tools, please give me some help and I'll read or whatever. So I did some searching really just online and saw this book and, and liked what it said. As I looked at some reviews, grabbed it and went, Oh, thank God. This was so helpful. I actually bought several copies.

[00:10:46] You know, you're trying to get other people to read them and they're facing something. They're not in the mood to read a book. But still I could take some of the things right out of there and realize, Oh my gosh, a few things became my mantra, which one of them was, we don't do this alone. We don't do this alone.

[00:11:02] I saw, I read through some of the myths. I, I still use some of the comments that are in there, when I talk about grief to other people, , but when I was facing this again, I knew I needed tools because I knew that my kids were coming up against some really difficult things.

[00:11:16] And we were looking for ways to resolve anything in the relationship, all kinds of pieces and parts. But then another way that I've tried to get some information out is in the company that I also have done a lot of work with, I put together a podcast during the early months of this COVID pandemic and the shift that we went through actually globally at that corporation to being remote.

[00:11:40] And so many people are dealing with so many kinds of losses and changes, that I put together, honestly, just an internal 30-minute podcast called managing change. And I really just use the last 10 minutes to touch on I called it grief awareness, referenced your book, talked about a couple of things and shared a bit of my experience. And when actually recorded it, what was interesting is the person who's on the other line, which we were remotely recording. When I got done recording, we, you know, you just kinda click the end of record. And I said, so what do you think she was silent? And I was thinking you're still there. Right? She was emotional. She had some tears. She had just had the passing of a family member a couple of weeks before we happened to record this.

[00:12:25] And she was so grateful for hearing. So I thought, wow, I mean several people. We ended up doing some, uh, remote classroom sessions and I would always bring that piece up. And even though it was so short grief awareness, cause I want to say at least get some information. And that piece was one of the most powerful pieces in that 30 minutes.

[00:12:45] Cause I kind of clicked through boom, boom, boom, boom. About change. And a number of people were like, wow, this was authentic. This was so helpful. This is, thank you for this. So I want you to know that with know it or not, people are that are getting a hold of this, realize how powerful it is and how many people need to know.

[00:13:03] I kind of wish we could make everyone do something to be aware of this. Cause I, I realized that this came out of the book, we know how to gain things, we know how to increase, we know how to build. We want to be builders. Of course, we want to increase, but we don't know how to lose.

[00:13:20] And I remember saying on one of my calls that I'm kind of assuming that this was a U.S. Or a Western culture issue. And I had a couple of people from South America or from India say Lenora or this isn't just a U.S. Issue. This isn't Western. We relate to this too. I went, Oh, wow. So again, thank you for the work.

[00:13:42] I'm so glad you did. You saw what was really going on and took this on because it needs to continue. 

[00:13:48] Cole James: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And thank you for just talking about grief awareness. One of the things we offer is this our Grief Recovery Certification. So we have a lot of professional counselors and therapists and other professionals that work with grievers regularly and, and seek us out to, to learn these tools.

[00:14:05] And, you know, at the start of that training, what I tell them is that these four days even though you work with people and you work with sad people all the time, these four days will change the way you look at the world forever. Right? And you will see grief in places you've never seen grief before.

[00:14:19] And, , I just imagine everyone, , I'm kind of in this coworking space right now, and everyone that passes by, I just picture, uh, in an invisible backpack that they're wearing, and there's 10 to 15 losses in there. And unfortunately, no one showed them how to look at that, how to say goodbye, or even identify all the painful, unfinished, emotional business from these different losses. 

[00:14:42] And so we're just carrying it around. And the longer we go through life, unfortunately we keep stacking losses in this backpack and it weighs us down and it's life limiting and it reduces our ability to really have happiness and to have intimacy in our relationships. And it's, it can be very debilitating and, and very often it does not get identified as grief.

[00:15:04] We have a lot of terms around really what, what we see as unresolved grief. Right. And, and you touched on it. One of the definitions we use for grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change underlying change in a familiar pattern of behavior. And so grief is very often about change and like you've identified with COVID one day we were living life normally, and the next all lot changed.

[00:15:33] Right. And I, I have to wear this mask and I can't go anywhere and I'm quarantining, and my kids are very confused, and I'm confused. And I now don't see any of my coworkers and, and, you know, and my mom's sick in the hospital and now I can't even go in there and, you know, multiply by a hundred. And so unfortunately the whole world has, has massively changed and we know change is grief.

[00:15:59] And so, , it's one of those things where, you know, we're, we're always grieving something. Now, whether or not you're going to make the line that this is the most intense grief I've ever had. Probably not, but I can, I can actively feel when I am grieving because I'm just in tune with it. Right. So for instance, my wife and I and family, we moved from Oregon to Idaho in July, and we moved to our dream house and we got some, a little bit of property and everything we ever wanted.

[00:16:29] Right. But I know even though we're quote unquote going after our dream, it's conflicting feelings caused by the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior. So we were familiar with our old house. We were familiar with our old state and then we change. And although society would say, but Cole your, you know, this is your dream place, right.

[00:16:48] There's still grief there. And so that's just an example of, we're always grieving something. And if you're aware of it, you can do something about it versus just having that be another thing in your backpack. Right. And so that's what we try and help people with. And sometimes, unfortunately, People are very aware of what their grief is and it's overwhelming and it's painful.

[00:17:09] I mean, I can't imagine how overwhelming it was for you and your family to have your ex-husband dying of cancer and have your mother dying of cancer. I mean, it hurts my heart just imagining you in that circumstance. So obviously we work with people that are very clear on their grief, but we are all grieving almost all the time.

[00:17:26] Right? But most of us don't notice that and my whole kind of passion is to get it out there to the world that yes, grief is affecting your daily life and it is life limiting. And your quality of life could be at a much different level if you went and looked at that stuff, because it's very hard to be present if we're incomplete with the past, even if we're unaware of exactly how we are incomplete with the past or different past relationships, it's hard to be present for what is now, you know, so.

[00:17:58] Lenora Turner: Yeah. One of the, one of the comments too, in the book talks about how undealt with or unprocessed grief can be the root reason for quite a few addictions. People don't realize what is pulling them down, why they're hurting, why they're feeling so, like an analogy I've used is kind of like, well, we get lots of clouds in Seattle or I'm based in Seattle area.

[00:18:20] And, but we know that there's a blue sky. You take an airplane up, you know that, Oh, wow. It's sunny up there. How nice. But, if it's cloudy a lot and you don't get up above there, you start going, was it ever blue sky before? Is it always, is life always gray and cloudy? Life, not just weather, but you know, I think that's what grief can be if it kind of adds up and you get more and more events, small and large, and you don't know how to deal with them, especially if they were, when you were quite young or who knows.

[00:18:46] You can just feel like life is just sad. Hmm life and it's too hard. And instead of realizing, Oh my gosh, if you learn how to process these things, how to, um, let yourself everything from feel to understand some things take different steps. Uh, you can get to a great place again. You can find joy comes back.

[00:19:06] You go, Oh my gosh. Life can be wonderful again. There can be great hope for your future. So to me, that's, what's so powerful about this because people can feel like they're stuck or they just need a medicine and go, no, no, there's probably some amazing things you could learn and get aware of and get some support with and find breakthrough to some beautiful blue sky again. 

[00:19:26] Cole James: 100%. I couldn't agree more. One of the things we're actually developing right now, because we've had a lot of examples that we've had people that come to us and they have this imaginary dagger in their heart. That is the one loss that brought them to us. Right. And we, and we work and we, we share these tools with them.

[00:19:42] And quite often with people who are willing to go through the whole course, they have amazing life transforming work that that was done on that loss. We also have people that have a great experience and then want to work on other losses from their past, kind of what you're talking about. And so they start looking in their backpack for other losses and they end up doing, you know, our work on five or 10 different grief events in their life. 

[00:20:07] And those are the people that we really just see that really get to go live life at a hundred percent, whatever they want that to be for them. So we're developing stuff to where we have more people continue doing ongoing work because we can do so much better than just doing one loss and then moving on, right.

[00:20:27] Because it is grief as cumulative and cumulatively negative. It does add up. What happens is society is a pretty rough place for a grieving person. So. I'll give you an example, right? At the, at the last company I worked for, if I had a grief, uh, if I had a loss, I was expected three days later to be back to be the perfect employee, to be making all the right decisions.

[00:20:53] When the reality of it is the human experience. When I have grief, three days into it, I don't even know why I went into the kitchen. I, you know what I mean? I have, I have a reduced ability to concentrate. I don't have the energy I had before. What's the point, right? I mean, grief really puts us into what is the point of some of this ridiculous stuff I'm supposed to be going through every day.

[00:21:13] Right. But society does not want to hear that. Right. What do they want to hear when we, when they ask us how we're doing, they want to hear I'm fine. And just operate. Like, you're fine. Same with kids, right. Kids have a loss one day after the loss, be back at school, be an A student, if you don't, we're going to have some consequences for you.

[00:21:30] And so it's a really rough place for us as grievers in society. It's one of those things where we're taught to cover how we're really doing, because we, because we're judged, right. And we're minimized and we're criticized, or we're compared.

[00:21:44] Right. And it's like, Oh, I know how you feel, I had this loss too. Right. And so we started going underground with our grief and we don't really want to talk about it anymore. So pretty soon after that, we kind of convince ourselves that this new, we were living a life at a hundred percent. We have the loss.

[00:22:02] We tell everyone we're fine. Cause that's what we're taught to tell them. And then we're living life at 70%, but we convince ourselves, well, I guess this is my new hundred percent. Right. And then we have another loss, unfortunately, because a lot of the time, like what you touched on losses come in pairs or threes, I don't know why, but it's like, mom's dying, ex-husband’s dying.

[00:22:23] Right? There's like a lot of loss all in one time. So now we're living loss at 50% of what life was before. We convince ourselves, I guess this is our new normal, which we don't agree with that term. But anyway, we convince ourselves this 50% is our new hundred percent. And you, and I know people like that where grief absolutely just debilitated them.

[00:22:44] And they are just, you know, just kind of like shuffling through life when it doesn't have to be that way, you know? Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how many calls I get on where people they feel bad because they smiled or they feel like they're betraying the memory of that loved one just by having a joyous moment.

[00:23:03] Right. And, that's why, that's why we're so passionate at the Institute. We don't want people doing that a month in five years, in 10 years in, I can't smile because that would dishonor my son and I'm supposed to be miserable forever. Right? Like however, society got that into us we battle every day to kind of help people, give them more options.

[00:23:22] Right. Cause grief does. It robs us of choice.  And what I mean by that is we harden our hearts, and we start putting on armor to not be hurt again. Right. Because we don't because we're scared of being hurt. So this happens obviously very much in romantic breakups relationships like that, but also you wouldn't think of it, but like in pet loss, a lot of the time when people lose pets, they don't end up getting another pet because they're so scared of feeling that again, versus knowing, you know, what I have tools and no matter what I know I'm going to know how to work my way through this.

[00:23:56] So I can still live open and free and still have opportunities and make choices where, you know, a lot of us, unfortunately, with grief, we don't, we don't have choice. My grandmother, she was, my grandfather had an affair and they, and they divorced back in the day when you had to hide divorce and you can't talk about divorce, right.

[00:24:14] And this heartbreak was so great for her. She divorced in her late thirties and never dated another person again. Because of grief. Right? So when I say grief robs many people of choice. She was scared to open her heart to another person. Right. And this unresolved grief and it breaks my heart just talking about it.

[00:24:35] Cause I obviously knew her for a long time, but just the thought of her being so scared to open her heart again, because of that pain, she didn't have that choice to ever date again. Right. Or be intimate with somebody again. And so that's just an example of where it could go if we don't help people

[00:24:50] Lenora Turner: Yeah. And I think it's so many different factors like you said. Some of it is the pace of life. We tend to think we always have to be at, so we don't slow down enough and realize it needs to be dealt with. Sometimes people have, they haven't faced something so maybe as devastating, and they have no idea what that level of pain is like and so they just don't relate to it. 

[00:25:09] Others. I know for me, I found out, Oh, a long time ago is like Lenora you're afraid of your own pain. And you're afraid of other people's pain. I didn't know what to do with it. It made me uncomfortable. I wanted you to be okay. In some cases, it's in a sense, a good intention with huge lack of knowledge is wanting someone, I need you to be okay. 

[00:25:29] Like kids with their parents. They want their parents to be okay cause that's her security. But we have a lot of beliefs and I know grief will happen. Losses will happen. But it's what we think about it. What we've kind of limited ourselves with, like, like you said, early on tears should be as easy to have as laughter.

[00:25:47] Now, are you going to have as many as the other will hopefully have more laughter than tears by far. But I remember when I heard and it was a line in the movie, like, uh, Courage Under Fire. It there's a scene where I think it's, um, Meg Ryan makes a comment about tears and it, I caught something from that movie, knowing that it's not about weakness, it's a human need.

[00:26:11] It's a human chemical response. And I actually have a high respect for tears. My mantra when I went through divorce was, I'm going to cry when I need to cry. I'm going to talk when I need to talk. Because I realized it was part of the process. Sometimes I'd say to my kids, you know, I need to go cry for a while; I'll be back. 

[00:26:28] And I refuse to not talk about it. , I didn't want to always talk about it, but I also, wasn't going to pretend everybody was fine and not address it. Even though at the time I had fairly limited skills on how to do it. And then back to when I came across this book, their father did pass away two days after Christmas in 2017.

[00:26:49] And then my mother passed away Easter Sunday on the next year, 2018. Yeah. , it was actually both, uh, We are so much to be grateful for in what we were able to do in talk and at least know things were coming and how many conversations. And obviously it was a different relationship for me than with those years past. I was more focused on what my children were losing.

[00:27:12] Um, at the same time after that, I grieved in new levels I didn't know I'd grieve because there was no, I had, didn't have to have an extra wall up because of, of dynamics after, post you know, divorce or something. And then I'll share this one piece just so people can relate maybe, the last short time of, uh, my children's father was in a hospice facility.

[00:27:37] That was amazing, amazing people. And he passed away. Um, Couple months later, I get a call from my brother. We'd been sharing some care with my mom at home, and it got to the point where we needed there needed to be a change for the additional support. And my brother said, Oh, Hey, they're taking mom to this facility.

[00:27:57] And I was like, you're kidding me. I know where it is. It was the same place. And I was like, Oh God, please don't let it be the same room I got there and it's the room next door. And so two weeks later, uh, she passed away in the room next to where he had passed away three months prior. And so you, you just, in fact, I remember walking in and it happened to be the same nurse was on duty.

[00:28:22] When I got there, she was amazing. And it took her a minute cause they deal with different people. And then she recognized me and she was like, Oh, I'm so sorry to see you back here. Same thing. The nurse, the same doctor happened to be on duty and uh, I made reference and they both remembered my children.

[00:28:38] Who were in a different space, having to make a decision I no longer could be in charge of, um, and she, they looked at me and when, when she put two and two together, again, same thing. The look in her eyes was, Oh, I knew she understood how I hurt. And she's like, I'm so sorry, which was great because they understand more about, they didn't have to fix me, but the fact that they could just acknowledge me and see me was a big deal.

[00:29:05] Can we talk a little bit about some of the myths that you've mentioned of what we do? Cause grief is not bad. Loss happens and you can, it can be a process to be greatly respected and you can come out of to great joy again. But some of the myths of, like you said, we need to be fine or just someone says, just be strong at or do it alone.

[00:29:25] Those were huge for me. My mantra became to my kids. They wouldn't read the book. They were just too, just not wasn't the time. But I began to just say, well, I can use the principles and I'd say, you guys let's talk or we don't do this alone. We do this together. Can you bring up a couple of those myths?

[00:29:43] Cole James: I love that. Well, first of all, let me just say this Lenora. I can't hear that whole story and not offer you a hug over Zoom right now. I thank you so much for sharing that out from your heart. That that is very courageous for you to do. And I heard all of that. Okay. Now, so I want to give you a hug because that's what I do.

[00:29:59] I've been trained to give hugs. So just wanted to say that, um, Woo yeah, I can't imagine what that was like for you, but I appreciate you sharing. So, , yeah, , so one, one piece of the, The Grief Recovery Handbook. And again, this is one of those things where we didn't know it at the time, but we could fly to any continent basically on the planet and start talking about these myths about grief.

[00:30:22] And people will be nodding. Right? Now different cultures will be nodding, maybe more so at one than the other, but people will relate across the globe to these things that we're getting at. And so some of the myths about grief or what we call misinformation about grief, that society kind of transfers to us, , are like the one you mentioned earlier, we call grieve alone, right?

[00:30:45] We're taught to kind of isolate with our grief, which can be very detrimental. And so what you are talking about is the counter to that.. Which is we don't do this alone. Right. We can talk, we can check in, we can let each other know what's going on with us, and there's ways to do that so that we, , we can support each other.

[00:31:03] We, we call it, Hey, let's be a heart with ears and no mouth. Cause as grievers, all the other person needs to do is hear us. And the problem is, is people uninvited, well intentioned, but uninvited will give you a bunch of intellectually accurate stuff that at the time is, is usually completely emotionally unhelpful.

[00:31:25] Right. And so, this all goes back to, like you said, mostly it's an attempt for us to try and help people not feel sad when they're going to feel sad. Cause they just had a really sad event happen. Right. So we're already interrupting that, which is not beneficial for them. So really all we need to do is sit there and make sure that we're in the moment for them and they feel heard.

[00:31:45] And it's really easy to do that. It's just being in the moment and listening. Right. And then what we like to do in our work at the end of that is say you, would you accept a hug? Would a hug be helpful? I won't obviously just hug someone, but I'll ask them in some way just to have a little cap on that moment.

[00:32:03] And so that they know. Okay. I heard that. And that's all I'm doing there. Now I obviously I have a lot of skills and tools, but that's not the time to do it. Right.  So anyway, that, that one is huge; grieve alone. We do not want to do that if we can help it. Another one that's really big. And again, parents are taught this very often is be strong, right?

[00:32:24] We tell people to be strong, you gotta be strong for the kids. You gotta be strong for your wife. You gotta be strong for your husband. Whatever it is that the signal is be strong. Let's go with kids. This can be very, very confusing. Cause kids are very intuitive and they're actually, frankly, much better dealing with grief than we are.

[00:32:42] We've gotten way away from the healthy stuff they're trying to do. But imagine if, , let's say that someone loses their wife, right. And everyone in the family, it's like, you gotta be strong for the kids. So what they're hearing there is really be robotic, be stoic and show no emotion in your effect. Right?

[00:33:00] Well, all of the kids just lost their mom. They're absolutely crushed and devastated. And they're looking for a leader. They're looking to someone to, to know how to do this grief thing. Right. Well, dad looks like he barely has been affected by this, right. Because he's again, trying to be strong and it's, it's so insidious because we think we're being of service to other people because you've gotta be strong for the kids, right?

[00:33:24] And so that one's very, very tricky because we say, you know, be strong or be human, pick one. And usually like being human is the, , the right way to go, which is if I have tears, I'm going to have tears. If I'm sad, I'm going to be sad. Like all of those things are okay. And like you, the aim for me and my life is not to be in the fetal position, crying all day.

[00:33:46] I would like to be laughing more, but I promise you if you catch me in a bad day or a bad situation, and I got bad news and my kids are watching, I'm going to be human. I'm going to have tears. If those are naturally going to occur for me there. And that way it makes it okay for them, you know, to, to do what they want to do anyway, which was probably to have tears or to be sad and stuff like that.

[00:34:07] But we, we try and kind of shortcut that whole experience for them. And then they don't feel heard. And then they have to go farther or longer with that because we didn't just hear them in the first place. Right. Cause we have this idea we can shield them from sadness and pain and we cannot.

[00:34:26] So anyway, be strong is another one. Another piece of misinformation we get all the time is that time heals, right. 

[00:34:35] Lenora Turner: Time can help, but it does not fix things. 

[00:34:38] Cole James: Right. And what we say is,  we're sticklers in, okay, well, what are you doing within time? Right. Time just passes. So if I have a bad plan or no plan at, all time can actually make things much worse.

[00:34:51] I can't tell you how many people where grief becomes their identity or that cloud that you talked about becomes our identity because time passed, but they did the wrong stuff in time, or they didn't know what to do. Right. Or they sought out or yeah. Or they sought out distractions. Like you talked about could be addiction, could be alcohol, could be food.

[00:35:12], could be any kind of distraction where it'll relieve a little bit of pressure in our, in our body, a little bit of energy, but we haven't looked at that actual loss. So then we have to do that little pressure release valve over and over and over. And that, you know, sometimes that stuff can be disguised as healthy.

[00:35:28] Right? If you show me like an ultra-marathoner, you know, Pacific Northwest, we have a lot of people that like will just randomly run a hundred miles. If I talk to them for about 15 minutes, I'll find some massive loss in their background. Often. I don't want to generalize like same with CrossFit or, you know, some of these exercise things where everyone's like, you're so healthy.

[00:35:49] A lot of the time I'll see someone with unresolved grief, right? So it's not always about like drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it's about like, things people would say, , are healthy, but , if I have to do it and I don't have a choice, cause I need that kind of release of pressure, it probably is what we would call a STERB which is a short-term energy relieving behavior, you know?

[00:36:09] And that's just the term we use around these distractions we use, because we don't know how to deal with our grief otherwise. Right. . 

[00:36:15] Lenora Turner: That's helpful. And obviously being fit is a good thing. Some of these good ways is, are positive things, but like you said, if it has to be the only way that you can keep yourself feeling like your life, isn't going to fall apart that's an indicator you're not dealing with some other stuff under there. 

[00:36:32] And I think people often are afraid or they don't know how they don't know if it's okay. We have these habits in society of how we've dealt with this and, and how human it is to sometimes in a sense, it's okay to fall apart in the sense of, or maybe that's not a good term, but to go let it down, realize, you know, what I feel broken or I hurt right now.

[00:36:52] And, and to realize that doesn't mean it's a permanent state, it's where I'm at right now. And I've got to get some. Be okay to, for one realize you're there and also get some help too, to get 

[00:37:05] Cole James: Absolutely. And one thing I want to touch on, cause I think there's really important for your listeners and this isn't picking on you because we all do it.

[00:37:12] I do it too. But just look at the terms that we use for crime, right? We say break down, fall apart. They lost it. They fell to pieces, you know? And so, no, no, don't be sorry. But because again, like I said, I, I did this too. And earlier in our conversation, when I said I fell for the same thing society did, even though I grew up in the quote, unquote grief, recovery home, everyone in every movie I watched, there were no heroes in the movies crying.

[00:37:41] Right. There was like, I always, I always saw the hero that I looked up to grieving alone. So I picked up a lot of these things even though I had like front row seats to a healthy way to do it, but again, society's overwhelming. So , I just want all of us to be aware of these terms we use, because if we're going to hope and expect that people should be able to just have a normal human emotion around tears, we have to start changing the language. One of, one of the commitments we have, if someone does our work is like, Hey, let's try to not apologize for feelings because the minute that the tears come, what do people do?

[00:38:15] I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It's almost like, there's like, um, like a red alert siren going off.  Now what, what, what I do in my mind is if I have tears coming on, I'll get that natural societal thing. Oh, are you going to cry or are you going to fall to pieces? And then what I do is I just have a little self-talk that says no, you're going to have a normal human emotion.

[00:38:37] Lenora Turner: That's so good. 

[00:38:38] Cole James: And I just use that because that seems to help me know you're going to have a normal human emotion. And if someone's apologizing for tears, I'll just tell him, you know what, thanks for having a normal human emotion. Right. And just that term for whatever reason, kind of helps reset it for me.

[00:38:53] I just did a video on Instagram about, um, unfortunately I had a good friend of mine and he took his life last Sunday. And, uh, just, I was absolutely blindsided by it. And he had three small children and a wife and no one saw it coming and he, uh and he hung himself and, and I I'm just, uh, you know, this week has been very, very tough for me.

[00:39:16] Lenora Turner: ' I'm so sorry.

[00:39:16] Cole James: Thank you. No, I really appreciate it. And I just, you know, it's, it's just, I'm a griever right now, right? I'm not an expert in this field. I am just hurting myself. So I got to remind myself of that, but you know, the, the point being is, I did a video on my truth, which is just sharing what I'm going through.

[00:39:32] And so many people were so loving in the comments, but so many people use the term vulnerable. Thank you for being vulnerable. And I did a video because the video is titled Vulnerable or Emotionally Honest, because it didn't ever feel vulnerable to me and felt like I was being courageous. It felt like I was hopefully setting the tone for other people to tell their truth, to talk about the emotions that they were having.

[00:39:59] It felt more like leading, right, than being vulnerable. Vulnerable is this kind of place that most of us don't want to be where if we're leading or we're being courageous and we're making it okay for other people to tell the truth about what they're going through and opening the door for us to have a real human conversation, that's more empowering to me.

[00:40:18] And that's how, that's how it felt when I, when I can openly share it. Right. So just, just having us all kind of think about that when we're talking about sad or painful emotions. Because the messaging growing up is, I mean, by the time we're 15, we get tens of thousands of messages. If it's sad or painful, hide it. We don't want to see it.

[00:40:40] Right. And then, and then we start layering on these terms and it's like, it's, it's amazing anyone can cry nowadays, you know. So anyway, that's just a little piece of it, but, if you don't mind, Lenora, I just want to get back to two more of those pieces of misinformation because these ones are important too.

[00:40:55] Another one is, again, we already covered grieve alone, time heals, be strong, keep busy as another one. So we're taught to keep busy, right? And again, if we're keeping busy with the wrong stuff or we're keeping busy and we don't have any other tools, I've, I've seen heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story where these people have just spun their wheels for years or decades.

[00:41:19] Oftentimes people will create these kind of big, non-profit movements. So no one else is a victim of the way they lost whoever they lost. Right. And it's great. I mean, it's courageous work, but unfortunately these are still very hurt people and they're not happy. Right. And they just use that energy in that pain of grief to create these like large nonprofits to help other people.

[00:41:41] And I just wish they would come to us first so we could help them with their grief and pain, and they could be even more effective at these big initiatives that they launched. So keep busy can be another very dangerous one for people. If we don't have anything else there, you know, 

[00:41:56] Lenora Turner: You know, that's brought up in a book called Struggle Well, by Ken Falke. And you guys should definitely connect. They do some also great work with veterans and it's called post traumatic growth. And so , I've thought, Oh gosh, there's some amazing crossover and connection, but, , like you said, there's, um, you know, we'll, I'll tweak this afterwards because I it's just, you know, so much goes on here.

[00:42:24] First of all, again, I just need to say, I am so sorry for your loss of your friend. 

[00:42:29] Cole James: Thank you. It's been horrible. It's been horrible. It's yeah, I appreciate that. I don't know what else to say other than it's just been horrible. No. Yeah, 

[00:42:39] Lenora Turner: no. And I don't know how you feel. I don't want to turn this into something, but it's so true.

[00:42:44] People think we'll say, I know how you feel. I don't know how you feel. You know? So I just, I care and I am sorry. 

[00:42:52] Cole James: I appreciate that. I really do. 

[00:42:55] Lenora Turner: Yeah. I know that, um, people that do w we certainly, aren't saying that when people take their passion and their hurt and they use it for such good, that that's not only is, that's a fantastic thing, but they also bring up in the book Struggle Well, that if you, if you are out of balance on that, and you haven't gotten yourself healthy and you're trying to do too much, you can always try to cover your wound with it. It will not help you in the long run If you're still hurting and you need the proper help. And help others, yes, but within balance of getting yourself whole. 

[00:43:32] Cole James: Exactly. We have this, I mentioned it earlier. We have this certification course, and we have people from all walks of life.

[00:43:39] Hospice. We love hospice. They're courageous. I love that you had the experience you did. They're amazing people doing amazing work. But anyway, we train a lot of kind of professionals, but we also train people just who have had grief that want to help other people. And one of our main criteria for getting our certification is you have to be willing to do your own work.

[00:43:57] We will not certify you to go distract yourself by helping others until you have done your own work. Right? And so it's such a critical piece of it that we do our own work. And like you said, my hats off to anyone that wants to help other people, but we can't, we can't skip past our own work or we won't be effective with other people.

[00:44:17] And we also be, uh, not doing the service that we could do the people in our lives. You know, our friends, our family, our intimate relationships, our kids. That's just one of the reasons I, I work tirelessly trying to get this work out there because I see so many really great hearted capable that just have the best intentions.

[00:44:35] That are just being affected by their unresolved grief. Right. And they're not connecting with people in their lives. Like they could, if they just had a couple of tools to kind of set themselves free of this past hurt and it's affecting their present day, you know? And so that's where, that's what gets me out of bed every day.

[00:44:55] Lenora Turner: Wow. 

[00:44:55] And it doesn't mean you don't care anymore when you get better and don't feel sad. It doesn't mean you're not dishonoring the loss or forgetting somebody when you get healthy yourself. I'm thinking we can shift to a question I have about how your Institute, The Grief Recovery Institute is evidence-based. That's powerful.

[00:45:18] Can you say how you guys got that statement made about you and what that means? 

[00:45:24] Cole James: Yeah, sure. Thank you. Yeah, we're, we're really proud of that, obviously. We've been around for 40 years, so if you want anecdotal evidence, we, I could give you a lot, a lot of that. Right. But we kept kind of interfacing with people who are like, okay, well where's the evidence-based stuff?

[00:45:39] Right. And we, so we've been looking for a while and we had this lady named Dr. Rachel Nolan, and she's incredible. And she's connected with Kent State University. And she said, I want to study the grief recovery method. And so we agreed to do that. And so for several years, she did a research study on our eight week in-person group program.

[00:46:02] So she studied thousands of people going through our eight week program out there in the community, you know, all over the Midwest and other parts of the United States specifically. And I'm not the most academic guy you'll ever meet. I'm kinda more of the like caveman knuckle dragger guy over here.

[00:46:19] But I have a whole team of academics that assure me that assure me that this was very legitimate work. We're in a couple of medical journals that we're very proud of. And, , it's one of those things where we want to continue researching the method. There's a lot of things we want to keep doing with that.

[00:46:36] You know, they're working on funding to be able to do that. But yeah, for the first time, in our 40 years, we get to, to say that we're the only evidence-based grief recovery intervention in the world. And so we're really proud of that. And again, if you want more information on that and you want to really get, kind of get into the details that I can't get into right now on our website, up at the top, there's at griefrecoverymethod.com and you'll see a tab for evidence-based and you can seek kind of a synopsis or go full on into the journals on it and see all the, all the details.

[00:47:10] So, yeah, you know, I think, for most people like grievers that are looking at our work, they just want to talk to another griever, you know, and say, Hey. Yeah, I've tried everything. You should go check this stuff out, this, you know. So that the anecdotal still is really good for people who are just grieving, and they just want social proof from someone else.

[00:47:28] But then we do work with a lot of organizations that really do want to see that evidence-based stuff. So I'm just thrilled that we have that too. And hopefully, again, like I said, we'll have more of that coming in the near future as well. 

[00:47:39] Lenora Turner: Yeah, I was re-looking at your website and I'm impressed. I know you've done a lot of work with that based on where you came back in from your background.

[00:47:46] Nice job. To see those short videos are so helpful to get those one to two minutes from people on what they've faced. I think that's very powerful. You've got the groups that people can do search for their own group to be a part of, to get their own support, or get involved with getting themselves certified, going through the Institute themselves and even advanced stuff.

[00:48:07] So there's a lot of options. And the fact to see that you are in the UK, you're in Australia, you're in Africa. You're where else again, are you guys doing work? It's amazing.

[00:48:15] Cole James: Yeah, we, we just started an office in Hungary. So we're now in Hungary, which is really exciting. , I think you touched on it, Mexico, UK, Australia, Africa.

[00:48:24] Where else Sweden, we're in Sweden as well. And we have a great, great office there. And I think that's about it for right now. , but yeah, we've been looking at Singapore and then also, uh, Japan. So there's some other places that we're looking at starting offices. So hopefully we can help people in that region a little bit more.

[00:48:42], but yeah, it's just, , it's incredible work and . It's an honor and a privilege to be able to work on a very deep human level with people daily and cut kind of right through all the surface level stuff and just go right to like what we shared, you know, like, I appreciate you having the skills and knowing what to say to me after I share with you about my friend and vice versa.

[00:49:01] When you share about your ex-husband and your mom, just to be able to connect on that level and know I can't fix you, you can't fix me, but we both heard each other. Right. And that's what I needed. And I appreciate that so much from you that you heard me and you were in the moment, and I can tell you weren't busy in your mind trying to give your rebuttal or some intellectual statement on why I shouldn't feel bad.

[00:49:23] You just heard that my best friend killed himself and I'm heartbroken over that. And we can't, we can't do anything about that. Right? The, the work that I need to do has to be done within, and luckily, I have some tools on how to do that. And, and that's really what we're trying to do do for people is give you these tools so that you can go do that work.

[00:49:41] Right. And it's an important kind of distinction too, right? It's, it's, it's hard to know when the willingness comes for you to do that work. Like I'm not immediately, doing grief recovery work on this friend. I got the news last week. But at some point, I will be motivated to do that work. And it's, it's like, you, you kind of touched on, I'm not dishonoring them by doing that work.

[00:50:02] I'm doing that work so that I can not be a sad guy in front of my, my kids or I can run into his wife or his kids and I can tell stories about him without them turning painful. Right. And so it's in everyone's best interest for me to go do that work or, again, there's choice being robbed from me.

[00:50:25] So an example of that would be, if I'm unfinished with this friend that has committed suicide, and let's say I have another friend, and this actually comes right out of my life. So that's why I know this is, I told you before Blake, my cousin took his life. For about a year and a half or more I didn't do anything about that loss.

[00:50:44] I stuffed it again. I took society's advice. I stuffed it down. I grieved alone. I just covered it with anger about how he chose to do it. And I didn't do anything with it. So I'm unresolved emotionally with that loss of my cousin. I have a friend that starts talking about suicide. Okay, but he mentions that he's thinking about it, that kind of thing. Because I'm unfinished with this other friend and the grief around that, my best thinking is cut this friend off because he's just going to go do it.

[00:51:12] So I better just separate myself from him. Right. So I do this for a little bit and my intuition tells me that doesn't feel right to you. That doesn't feel right. You don't feel like the loyal friend of this guy by just moving away from him. Okay. And it was because of the unfinished pain that I had from this other loss.

[00:51:30] So instead, what I, I eventually did is I went, and I worked on getting emotionally complete with my cousin who took his life so that I can be open and present and be a good friend to this other friend that is struggling. Right. That's to me a much better approach to it. Then what I did before. Another example of that would be is if I'm unfinished with my last three ex-girlfriends, and now I'm trying to have a happy marriage, it's going to be really hard if I'm emotionally unfinished with these other people, right?

[00:52:02] Like how many of us have had an argument with someone in the room, but you swear, you're having an argument with three other people in the room. You're like, well, why am I being accused of this? I've never been even close to disloyalty or unfaithful. Why, why am I getting this right? And it's because of the other, person's unresolved grief on some of their old event.

[00:52:20] And so it's really hard again, just to maintain a friendship, maintain a marriage, maintain any kind of a kind of partnership if we have a bunch of unresolved pain from the past. Right. And that's really what it keeps coming back to for me is if that's you, or you feel like that's, you, there's some work that we can do in a really safe place to do it.

[00:52:41] Right. And it only helps you and everyone around you. 

[00:52:44] Lenora Turner: So powerful, so powerful. See this is why this is why people, we need these tools. I did a brief podcast a while back, uh, on my own with talking a little bit about this awareness piece, .

[00:52:56] I did it with my associate producer and I don't even know what to title it. Cause you never know what you exactly want to say. And it was like How to Lose so We Can Win Again. It's like, if you don't know how to lose, how do you win? And you can't move on. It's like you said, with relationships, it's like you put more and more barriers between, and then you wonder why you aren't connecting.

[00:53:14] Well, you've got all this armor to protect yourself from the hurt that you just went through. You don't want to go through again. And it defuncts the relationship before you can get there because you've already set up all the reasons why I'll reject you before you can reject me. Because I went through that last time. All the things that go on with humans. And I like the term, you use something I've said to my kids or friends or coworkers, or when it's come up and said, welcome to human.

[00:53:37] Is their thinking of, Oh, here's how I failed, to here I go, welcome to human. 

[00:53:41] Cole James: Yup, I love that. 

[00:53:41] Lenora Turner: Welcome to being human. Well, I finally had to get it and I went, I just couldn't hold it all together. And it was like, I felt like I was accepting being human and boy, it felt good to go. Humans have flaws and I'm going to accept that's what I'm going to be is a human being that has whatever different parts and pieces and learn how to do that rather than try to be something that I cannot maintain. 

[00:54:04] Cole James: Yeah. It's so much easier to connect with other people when you're just a human. Right. It's like sometimes in my classes, people are like, how do you quote, unquote, build rapport so quickly.

[00:54:13] I'm like, I self-disclosed that I'm a human being. Right. And then people are like, Oh wow, I'm a human being too. And we've just cut through like, days’ worth of nonsense, right? 

[00:54:22] Lenora Turner: Oh my gosh. 

[00:54:24] Cole James: I'm going to have you title different things for me cause you're, you're really, I like your title. So I'm going to, if you don't mind, I'm going to come to you for a title on things. 

[00:54:30] Lenora Turner: Please do. 

[00:54:31] I really, I really seriously, I care very much about this. If there are ways that I can help you, trust me, I'm there, I, I do want to touch on one piece cause I know we're going to have to wrap up, but there's so much in this process. I know some of the work that you're saying that we do, which is to me, absolutely.

[00:54:49] It's not like work. Like you're going to go dig a ditch unless you really love digging ditches. This is work that is so helpful and healing. And sometimes you, , you choose to do the parts and pieces, but it's, it's really produces some amazing results. Can we touch on the one where you kind of, I'm not saying it right, but where you kind of map things out because different losses are different sizes?

[00:55:09] Can you just talk a little bit about that piece and then we'll probably have to wrap up cause there's more and we'll want, people will want to know how to connect to you. 

[00:55:16] Cole James: Sure. Thank you. Yeah. So , the reason that I think our work , is quite effective with this topic of grief is we're action-based.

[00:55:24] And a lot of the stuff out there with grief that it's not, there's not really a roadmap, there's not really a step-by-step process. So it's a lot of like quotes here or inspirational stuff here, some pieces of awareness, but not like a really ironclad plan for people. And our method gives people a plan, but still very much honors the uniqueness of their relationships.

[00:55:46] So it gives you a lot of places to flow with where your feelings are when you're kind of reviewing the relationship. Sorry. I know we don't have time, but that's why we don't agree with the five stages of death and dying, which is diverted to grief. Yeah. 

[00:55:59] Lenora Turner: Yeah say a little bit about that. 

[00:56:00] That's huge. And it's like, Ooh, we're stepping on a big thing right there.

[00:56:04] Cole James: So, so real quick, I'm Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who was an amazing woman who during a time, when we really were shameful about people who are dying in our society, kind of drove into society this, uh, belief that, um, Hey, we should do more for people who are dying and, and give them dignity. And she did this thing called five stages of death and dying.

[00:56:23] So if you were, you know, diagnosed with a terminal disease, you may go through these stages and it made sense. Right. But people thought, okay, well, great. It works so great for death. Let's just have it work for grief too. And grief, unfortunately, is this completely separate, emotional experience than getting, you know, three months to live with a terminal disease.

[00:56:42] These are two different things. But society just thought it was so neat and tidy to put people in five stages. Let's just do it for grief as well. And it, you know, trickled into society and people just kind of picked it up and.

[00:56:53] Lenora Turner: There's elements that work. And yeah. 

[00:56:55] Cole James: Yeah. So, it's just a model.

[00:56:57] We don't use it. We don't agree with. We've seen it not really work all the way to really hurt people. Right. We have blogs and information on that. If you want to look more into, you know, how we kind of debunk the stages of grief and stuff. Um, so yeah, so that's, that's just a piece of it.

[00:57:15], but to get back to your original question, so we have a really, , step-by-step approach. And so there's writing assignments in it. There are reading assignments. It needs to be witnessed by another person or heart with ears who's not analyzing or judging you. And one of the exercises is the one you just touched on, which is called the loss history graph.

[00:57:32] So we're going to learn all about the 44 events that can be grief in your life over 44 events. So we cause we need an education on what grief is and what it's not first. But once you kind of understand all the different stuff we can grieve, we're going to have you chart from the very first dawn of your conscious memory all the way until today, all the different losses that have been significant to you.

[00:57:56] And then we have you kind of rate the intensity that you've felt in that moment. So you end up with this pretty powerful graph of all these different losses in your life. So for me, you know, I have my dog died here. My grandma died here. I broke up with my high school sweetheart here. I lost my knee; I blew out my knee and lost my baseball career here.

[00:58:17] My cousin Blake committed suicide here. And so you kind of get a picture visually of this backpack I was referring to earlier of. Okay. Wow. These are my losses. And these are the ones that really feel life limiting to me right now. And so it helps you identify maybe the first one you want to address. And for some of us, we, and we're very clear, here's the line and this is the longest line on our graph.

[00:58:40] And it's very clear. This is what brought me here. Some of us, a lot of the time when working with younger people, you know, they're just like, I'm not quite sure. And then we can help them identify. , you know. But it's a, yeah, it's a very powerful exercise and it just kind of shows people, wow, grief is cumulative.

[00:58:54] I have plenty of it. And there's some work I can do around it. Right. And again, it's not just to do the work it's if you can remember, I am going to be more open in every relationship today, I, it will improve my marriage. It will improve my relationship with my children. It will improve my relationship with my living parents.

[00:59:14] Half of the people doing our work are grieving people who are still alive. We're grieving our mom and dad, and we're grieving the hope, dreams, and expectations and who they were going to be growing up. And we're not finished with that because they weren't who we needed them to be.

[00:59:28] Right. And it's affecting all of our current relationships. So that's just a, I don't think we touched on that point on this call yet. And so like a lot of the times we're doing grief work on living relationships. I've done grief work on my wife. What? Cole? And I'll tell you, I have a good marriage, but there's unfinished emotional business from 15 years of being together and she's done work on me.

[00:59:51] And that helped us grow closer. Right? I did. When I, you want to talk about work I needed to do. I went from just my dad's son to a business partner. Right. When I came on board. I had grief work I needed to do with him, or I could not be present for our current working relationship. Right. Sorta 

[01:00:09] Lenora Turner: Does that somewhat mean like very missed expectations that you thought you had or wished you had or needed, and it wasn't there?

[01:00:16] So you had that missing mark? And so you're kind of, when you say grieving in some of those changes, or am I saying that right? 

[01:00:23] Cole James: I know we don't have time, but basically let's let, I'll give you a quick example. Let's say that my dad always had this tone of voice with me, right. Uh, throughout my whole childhood.

[01:00:34] And I'm, I'm kinda making this one up because this wasn't the case for me, but let's say he had a tone of voice and I always felt less than when he had that tone of voice. Right. And let's say I start working with him now. Right. And he uses that tone of voice. And I have all of this energy wrapped up in that tone as a child.

[01:00:52] Right. Even though now I'm like 30 years old and a grown man and have worked on myself and have respect and love for myself. But that tone can be the stimulus for me to revert right back there. And now in this business meeting in real time, I have to overreact and my energy is 30 years’ worth of energy versus what it should be, which is just like, Hey, we're having a business disagreement.

[01:01:15] So if I don't go unpack all of that energy from growing up with dad and saying goodbye to a lot of that stuff, Right. It's very hard for me not to have the relationship blow up right now because we're working together. So I identified because of my awareness. I got to go let go of the energy I can so that I can be very present for what is right now.

[01:01:35] Right. And that, again, these, these, this work is so beneficial because it just cleans up these relationships. Right. I have to go work on that one breakup that was my, you know, my big, first true love. Otherwise, that's coloring my, my interactions with my wife right now. Right. It's really interesting once you get into this work and find the places that are again, life limiting to you right now, or just behaviors you don't like in yourself.

[01:02:02] And then you go back and look through grief recovery and oh wow. That belief system was someone else's. And I'm going to give that back to mom because that's not my belief system of who I am now. And I know it's my responsibility. And as adult to be in control of my belief system and fine tune it right now, I didn't get that luxury when I was a kid, I just absorbed with no filter.

[01:02:23] You know, here's how you're to be treated, how here's, how you treat others. But now in real time, I should fine tune at it as an adult. Right. I love doing that work with people because, you know, it's just, it can be so life-changing for people and breaking some of these habits and patterns.

[01:02:39] Lenora Turner: Yeah. That's why I get so excited about this and believe in it so much. I just saw, and I experienced some of the power of it myself. I know that I'll go back and look at some of those tools again. And, because whether you get the book and if you maybe, maybe some listeners want to go, well, let me just check into it.

[01:02:55] We'll read the book. You can download your PDF. You can, I highly recommend going through it. You can have a partner go through the book with you. You can go online, put in your zip code, find out someone nearby. There are so many ways you have to offer this. And like you said, I think you're getting you get tools.

[01:03:12] I I'm the type that likes give me some tools and then I'll work at it at times because I'll just choose to keep you facing some things and dealing with it other times, go, Oh my gosh, I had these tools now how exciting. I have a hope rather than feeling like I'm now stuck because of something that happened or something I keep bumping into and wondering, why does this mess with me so much?

[01:03:31] Why is it a trigger in my life and find out, Oh, so it's, it's so powerful. Cool. I really liked our conversation. 

[01:03:39] Cole James: Oh, my pleasure is all mine, Lenora. I can't thank you enough. I did it too. 

[01:03:43] Lenora Turner: Thank you. And I, , I know I'll, , look forward to getting this episode out and helping people know where they can contact you, how they can contact you.

[01:03:52] And I think they got some insight into why it's so powerful and welcome to human is really kinda what this whole thing helps you do and find out there's so many things we can put off on the things we accepted about grief or loss and turns out we can actually enjoy being human more and gosh, help other people do that too.

[01:04:11] Cole James: Yeah, I love it. And again, thank you for just spreading awareness around the topic of grief, right? It's okay to be sad. It's what, especially when sad stuff happens, and we don't need to immediately go to distractions because then we never deal with what happened.  We can look at it in a safe place and there's tools we can have, and we can apply them.

[01:04:30] Right. Although I never wanted to get the news I got last Sunday, I know that I have a set of tools and when I'm ready, I can use them to apply them to the heartbreak that I have for this loss. Right. And that's really comforting to know that even in the midst of it, it's really nice to know I got tools that, because again, we don't graduate from this life experience.

[01:04:50] We don't graduate from grief. And, and so anyway, I just so appreciate you having me on, and again, it was an honor to be on with you Lenora. 

[01:04:57] Lenora Turner: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for doing this work and being committed to it. And in the future, let me know how I can help get the word out. 

[01:05:04] Cole James: We'll definitely do that.

[01:05:06] Thank you. 

[01:05:07] Lenora Turner: Thank you.

[01:05:07] 

[01:05:07] I hope you enjoyed that episode. It's one of my favorites, such an important topic. Again, you can connect with them at griefrecoverymethod.com. You could also go to lenoradiane.com to get on our email list for this podcast and subscribe to this podcast. 

[01:05:26] Thank you for listening and take good care of you.