we're not living in our best self
when we're grieving.
We're really an automatic pilot of kind of what we default to when
we're not having a good day and we're not living in our best selves.
So I think that knowing that, is really challenging, right?
And like I talk about the grief pit, I talk about falling in that hole.
And what I encourage people to do is just find resources
that can help you build hope.
You know, grab that hand that's reaching down to you in the grief pit.
You can stay down there, but grab the hand and know you're going to come out.
Know that you don't have to stay there for the rest of your life.
Know that you don't have to stay there 24/7 and 24 hours a day.
You can come out.
And you may go back in, but just know that that darkness that you feel the
light will connect with you again.
And it's so hard for people to realize that.
I'm in awe of those special people who have had to step up to being
caregivers through no choice of their own to their loved ones who have a
progressive terminal illness or in fact any condition that requires care.
It's a position that is often done with love for that person they are caring
for, though it also has the capacity to turn life upside down and inside out.
My guest today on the Beautiful Side of Grief, Sheila Clemenson, is one
such lady who has been on this journey.
Her first husband developed the muscle wasting disease, amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, which known as ALS or maybe you even know it as Lou Gehrig's disease.
In a journey, Sheila has used writing as therapy.
She founded and ran a grief retreat, helped her mum with a visiting angels
caregiving franchise before moving into HR and which led her to finding
her passion as a transitions coach in her own business, Transitions coaching
services, where she is dedicated to helping people move forward through the
challenging stages of career change.
Just recently, though, she's also become an author after 24 years with
her own story, Over the Rainbow, From the Depths of Grief to the End of Life.
She describes this book as more than just a tool for self discovery and healing.
It's an extended hand reaching out to you from someone who has
traversed the pit of grief and emerged stronger on the other side to hope.
It's about the resilience of the human spirit and hope.
The potential for redemption, even in the darkest moments of life.
So we will chat about this and more.
Oh, and we're also going to have a look at the mystical things that can
happen when you lose a loved one.
So thanks for listening in today and let's get into this conversation.
A very warm welcome to you, Sheila.
Oh my gosh.
I am so thrilled to be here sharing this time with you.
Thank you.
Very happy to have you here.
Hey, Sheila, just before we get into this, this conversation,
I would love to know who your fur babies are and what their names are.
Yes.
So I have two beautiful fur babies, Rio.
She's 10.
She's a total mutt.
And we say she's a purebred mutt, a New Mexico variety,
as we'd say out here, rescue.
And then I've got another one who is too named Zoe, who is a
half Husky, half German shepherd.
And she was a rescue also.
Aren't they treasures in your life
They're absolute treasures.
I call them dog angels.
Yes, I agree.
Yeah,
they are our earth angels in so many ways, aren't they?
Because they just come and give you unconditional love if you're open
to it and healing and they just have this extra sense, I believe.
They do.
And my older girl, she's 10.
She just had a cancerous tumor removed from her leg
and she's going to start chemo
in the beginning of January.
And so I'm being a little bit of a caregiver right now.
Yeah,
role again.
Hey, speaking of that, just before we get into what your caregiving role
was like with your first husband, can we get an understanding of what
your life was like prior to ALS?
Oh,
basically, my background is in HR, industrial organizational psychology, and,
my first job out of college was working for Mazda research and development.
So I worked for an automotive industry in Detroit, really awesome position,
and, you one that I had a lot of fun in and, that was my foothold
from a professional perspective.
I did a lot of HR work, and I was just having a really fun
time working for a big company.
Grant came into my life, honestly, whisked me off of my feet in
some whirlwind romance, that is something out of a fairy tale.
And I was just, picked up by this charming international salesman who,
then shortly after we met, moved to France and I was doing a long distance
relationship with him from Michigan to Paris, Saw him every three months.
And then after about a year and a half, I said, I don't want to do this anymore.
Like we're either going to be together or we're not.
And I left my job.
I moved to the banlieue of Paris, which was Pontoise and I lived
there for four months, helping him finish out his assignment,
which when I look back on it now.
Was like that gift that we got of time together that was priceless when he
was fully healthy, we were able to explore the world and we traveled to
a lot of different European countries.
And as well, I was traveling with him internationally because that's the
foothold that he had in his career.
We had a very lively, Amazing life together.
He basically brought the world to me and we were on adventures
traveling and having a lot of fun.
We were, I was in my mid twenties.
He was in his early thirties and, we had the world.
by the tail,
right?
magical.
So living in a very dreamy place
too.
Then I moved up to Northern Michigan, this beautiful town called Petoskey, which is
as quaint as it sounds off Lake Michigan.
It's absolutely beautiful.
Five months of the year, the other seven, it's frigid, cold, and you
really don't want to be there.
So I was imported and I was, we were just building our life.
We, we got engaged, we bought a house, we were planning a wedding.
And then that's when the rug was pulled out from under us.
Oh my gosh, that early into your relationship,
Yes, I was 26.
He was 32.
We were planning a wedding and he had been seeing an orthopedic specialist
than a neurologist because he was having problems coordinating his feet.
He thought, maybe I've just skied too much.
Maybe I've messed my knees up.
And he came home one day.
As I was unpacking boxes in our new home and he came to the kitchen
table and he put two pamphlets down.
He said, the neurologist says I either have MS or ALS.
This is what they're all about.
And we really don't know right now until I see the disease progress further.
I
Oh gosh, that must've been just devastating.
How do you cope with that news?
Yeah.
that I probably shouldn't have said.
I was quite angry and I was quite angry at the doctor and quite honestly, how
the doctor communicated that news.
And I really hadn't shared this.
I haven't shared much of this with a lot of people.
She told him by himself, he drove home by himself and, All I could
think was why would they not have had a meeting with he and his
family or who he wanted to involve?
It was a callous way that she told him as well, which was like she was sharing
this mystery that she had solved and the humanness of the whole experience was not.
Evident.
So I was really angry.
I was angry about the whole way that it was handled and then
it was some denial and shock,
right?
Denial from a functional place of, maybe they're, they didn't get this right.
Or maybe, because at the time he was having some symptoms, but it wasn't.
That he couldn't do so much of everything that he would normally do.
So it was just a thought of progression at first.
The shock piece was really, is this really happening?
Is this really what this is about?
And so Grant approached me and said, I really want to marry you,
but I don't want you to marry me.
Knowing where I'm going with this, and I don't want to do this to you.
And I basically told him, I said, I followed you all over
the world at this point in time.
I'm not going anywhere.
I'm going on this journey with you.
I'm committed to you and we're going to do this together, whatever this looks like.
What was that journey like?
At one point in the journey, Grant said to me, honey, I think that you
bit off more than you could chew.
And I looked at him and I said, yes, I think that you're
right, but I'm still here.
But that is the reality of what you're dealing with, isn't it?
It's like I said, you didn't choose to be a caregiver in that sense of the word.
And when you're suddenly thrust into something you didn't choose,
it can be a rude awakening, can't
And the thing is I grew into being a caregiver because the way this
disease progresses, It eventually takes that person's independence away.
It doesn't
happen all at once, right?
And so I would compromise for things he couldn't do.
He couldn't open that jar or he couldn't, do something in particular.
And so I was compensating for it.
And then over time, what really awful happened, you're going to just, I
don't know, you'll, I don't know what you'll think when I tell you
this, but so Grant had moved into an international sales manager role.
He was very.
He was an excellent businessman, okay?
He had a knack for coordinating his trips, even at just the right time.
He had planned a five week trip for us to do three weeks business between
New Zealand, North and South Island.
And Australia, we were going to do 2 weeks of vacation, 3 weeks of business all over
both
Places.
So we had planned our trip.
We were really excited.
I hadn't been to either place and I knew what was waiting for me because he
told me all about New Zealand, right?
It's
liked it.
And, I was shopping for some toiletries before you could do that
online, and I was paged at the local store to come to the front desk.
And I came up and I saw a friend of ours, because we lived in a small town.
Everybody knows one another.
And he said, Grant's at the hospital,
he fell and he broke his arm and what happened was he fell on black ice
going in on a Sunday because he felt like he needed to get things done.
He fell and broke his arm.
And I want to say that started to be the beginning of the end of his independence
because we had to cancel the entire trip.
When someone has ALS, it's not like a normal person breaking their arm.
He was using a cane with that particular arm to get around.
We were devastated.
Clearly devastated because we couldn't take this wonderful adventure together.
And then also devastated because my role as his caregiver kicked in.
Because he wasn't able to coordinate the use of his hands and his
arms as well as he could anymore.
Now, the thing you need to know is he was hiding this diagnosis from
the people that he worked with
because he had worked really hard to get this promotion and
he didn't want to let it go.
And so he made me promise that I wasn't going to tell anybody
that was outside of our immediate family that he had this disease.
And so on a wing and a prayer, he would go off on his business trip and his rep
would meet him in the next country and, you know, would actually take care of him.
So Grant, had an extensive network of friends that were
business colleagues that, they just embraced him with open arms.
So he was able to hide this and function through other people to a certain extent.
And then when he started having a hard time walking and then using his hands,
that's when things really changed.
And that's when I realized that I was becoming an extension of
him and what he could not do.
That's something that just happened from a small place in the
beginning, and then eventually I was doing everything for him.
Until I was able to bring some caregivers into support and help me, but it was,
you know, you can look back on it now.
And I would say, if I could do it all over again, I would choose to be more
of Grant's wife than his caregiver.
But we were also so young, the money aspect of that.
It could have been challenging as well.
Right?
I know hindsight's such a wonderful thing, isn't it?
You think back of all the things you could have, should have, would have done.
But the reality is that you make the best decisions at that point of
time with the information you have.
So you just do the best you can.
And that's, the decision that Grant made to carry on in his role
for as long as he possibly could.
How long was that timeframe from when he was diagnosed to when
he eventually lost his life?
Yeah.
So he was diagnosed in July of 1995.
I want to say he lost that ability in December of 95
When he fell and broke his arm.
And then the next year was when, no.
It would have been December of 1996 is when he broke his arm.
We got married in March of 96.
And then from December of 96 until we moved to Kauai and took an early
retirement, that was in September of 97.
So, You know, there were one year time periods or eight to nine month time
periods where things would progress, but we could keep up with it at that point.
And then when we moved to Kauai, really, he was in a wheelchair.
He wasn't able to drive.
He wasn't able to completely walk on his own.
He could use his cane a little bit to get a little bit from here to there.
And then.
I, became the person really caring for him, in terms of helping him get dressed
and different kinds of things like that.
And then eventually we hired some caregivers to come in and to help
out as I was working in Kauai, I was able to work and get our
insurance covered working part time.
It was a special program they had there.
And, we were able to find our way.
Grant being a good businessman, we had some savings and resources.
His dad was really good with giving us some money each month
to help pay for some things.
And then we moved to Kauai.
It was five years after Hurricane Iniki,
which the island was completely devastated by a Category 5 hurricane.
So the island was still rebuilding at that time, we were able to rent a three
bedroom, two bath home for A price you could never imagine today, right?
So we were able to make things happen to help him live his
best quality of life at the end.
And as we tried to keep his quality of life high, my quality of life
was really going down the shitter.
Oh,
Not from a Kauai standpoint,
but just,
It was the caregiving piece of wanting to be everything that you could be for
somebody, and that's not humanly possible.
No.
And who supports the caregivers.
Really?
That's a big, big part of this as well, because often a lot of caregivers
go through giving their absolute all and more, and they're not actually
getting anything back in return.
There's no real self care for them.
And sometimes, I hate to say it, but sometimes they end up dying before the
person that they're taking care of because they're not taking care of themselves.
They're not paying attention to those things.
I think about how young I was going through that
and how old I looked by the end.
And I was in my early thirties, you know,
I think of people who are so much older, who are going on this journey
with their partners, but, I talk about becoming a more conscious caregiver
through this process moving forward.
And I talk about that in my book, because it's so important for
you to take care of yourself.
So that you can be there for the people who need you.
There are a lot of people out there that uh, nursing, dementia, like partners,
spouses, people with Alzheimer's, it's a hard, tough road, terminal illnesses.
My hat goes off to them every single day because, it's unsung hero, really.
That is what you are in that position, an unsung hero.
But what I want to say about that too, Helen, is my book talks about the raw,
vulnerable aspect of being a caregiver.
I actually talk about the not so nice moments,
the humanness of the experience, and even things that I said
or did that I regretted.
And I felt guilty about later, I really felt it was important for people to know
this is not a hallmark movie where you're wistfully looking off into the distance.
This is.
Real life living in
the trenches, right?
And this is where, you're not showing your best self every day, no
matter how much you love somebody.
And, so that's the
reality of it, right?
Is, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I said that to this person who I love,
or I was yelling at them today or,
I even remember doing that in my role of parenting, with my daughter, there
were times where, my stuff got on top of me and I took it out on her.
I had to go back and apologize a number of times, just to say,
God, that just so was not you.
That was me getting
overwhelmed and not able to cope and, facing some stresses
that had nothing to do with you.
And I took it out on you.
So
Yeah.
I, and I want to say, yeah, I want to say that, I had a lot of guilt about that.
And the interesting way of how some of that guilt was resolved is through
the mystical experiences that I had connecting with Grant after he died.
So tell us, yeah, tell us about that time, suddenly you've gone from, probably almost
full time caregiving and organizing stuff in this chaotic lifestyle to suddenly
not having that person with you anymore.
That in itself is a huge shift in your life.
And then you're facing grief.
You can never, yeah, you can never anticipate what your life is going to
be like without that person, no matter how much anticipatory grief you have,
Yeah, I agree.
right?
And, that grief aspect, right?
Is.
It's so painfully hard and just knowing that you're never going
to hug that person or connect with that person again in that human way.
You're grieving everything about that person that you love
that you don't have anymore.
And the anticipatory grief of what we had is I was grieving parts about
him that he lost that we no longer had in our relationship to, but then
after he died, going down memory lane and grieving those things again,
as well as, what I didn't have.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that.
I was very open minded about trying to connect with him after he died.
It wasn't something that I really sought out until I was
working at the clothing store.
And this person walked in from Michigan and she and I just struck
up a conversation like people do.
And she says, Ooh, if you get back to Michigan, you should
see the Reverend Carrie Carter.
She's this amazing medium and dah.
And she tells me all this stuff.
And I wrote this in this little journal.
What happened was I put the journal aside.
Six months later, Grant passes away.
I pulled the journal out.
I go to Michigan.
I'm working on planning his memorial service.
And I opened to the page.
Where it says that with a phone number with the person's name, and
I'm like, I need to call this person.
So I called and I reached out and this was in 1999 before you could look up
people on Google and on the internet.
So I called and they said, you know what?
We're booked four months out.
Sorry.
And then, Oh, wait a second.
We got a cancellation.
And it was the day before I was leaving to fly back to Hawaii.
So
Oh my goodness.
That's divine.
And I went into this appointment with a very open and skeptical mind.
But now, mind you, before I went on this appointment, I had a lot of
little mystical things and energy happening around me for those couple
months that after he had passed away.
And I include a lot of those in the book.
But this situation, when I went in and I met with this woman, she looked
like Sylvia Brown, if you know her, she was a famous psychic medium who
was on Montel Williams, Larry King.
She looks at me and she goes, Hey, Grant just adored you.
And I looked at her and I said, and I was just crying and I'm like,
I need to know if he forgives me for everything that happened that
I feel so guilty and so bad for
in our experience together, and she looked at me like I was crazy and she said, he
says, there's nothing to forgive, you were both having this human experience
and doing the best that you could do.
And he adores you and loves you.
And I just held space with that.
And then.
I was thinking, okay, this isn't anything that she couldn't know, or make up.
And
so she says to me, she looks really confused.
And she says, was your husband afraid of going to the dentist?
And this is just random out of the blue.
And I said, no, he loved going to the dentist.
His friend put him on nitrous.
They would laugh.
His friend was a dentist.
No, he was fine.
Then she says, why would he say to me now?
I don't have to worry about going to the dentist.
And I said, because that's what I told him two weeks before he died.
And she goes, I said, Two weeks before he died, he wanted to get a teeth cleaning.
And I called the dentist and I said, I'm concerned about Grant aspirating.
He's not breathing and swallowing properly.
It's going to be a problem.
And the dentist said, no, we're not going to clean his teeth.
So I came home.
I told him, I said, Grant.
You're not going to the dentist.
I know you want to have clean teeth, but this isn't going to happen.
And he was angry and he was so angry.
And this is only as a caregiver who had experienced this for four
and a half years with somebody.
Okay.
I looked at him and he was with hospice.
Okay.
I looked at him and I said, Grant, where you are going, you don't need your teeth.
You don't need to worry about going to the dentist.
Oh my goodness.
I put my feet, my foot down, right?
Me, Grant.
And the dentist were the only three people who knew about that.
And so when she said that, when that, the psychic said that I
knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, she was communicating with him.
And I also knew that he was so witty that he knew just what to say.
That I would know it was him and that's who Grant was.
He was witty and he could come up with things like that.
So I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt in that moment that he had connected
with me and that he did say, I, there's nothing to be forgiven.
It was a human experience.
I was able to heal through that guilt.
which was really powerful for my healing process.
And having that incredibly mystical and unique experience, it's hard
to explain to people who don't understand or believe in that, or who
haven't had an experience like that.
But when you have had an experience like that, your whole world and
your view of the world changes.
Absolutely.
I agree.
And I always say that, you know, it's just that confirmation that you get
from the other side and the signs and the, all the little mystical things
that happen and magical things happen.
And it just makes you feel, I think, I You know, for me, it made me feel calm.
It made me feel like, wow, she's in this beautiful place.
And, so it's just me left here to get on with it all
Right.
But really, I think having a healthy dose of skepticism is
so necessary in this yeah.
And there are people who will take advantage of people who are grieving.
And I do want to say that they'll come out of the woodwork
and take advantage of people that way.
I'm thoughtful about that as well.
I'm also thoughtful that, you might be the best person.
Person for them to communicate with, and it's about how do we
pay attention to those signs?
How do we seek to understand that different language that they might be
using to communicate because they can't talk to us
in the same way that they used?
Yeah.
And that's exactly it.
It's learning a new language and it's unique to you often, no two
people are going to get the same sort of, you know, they may get similar
symbols, but, I think it's always unique between the people that you're
Absolutely, and there are things that, you know, even inside jokes that you
may have had in your relationship or
those words that you would say, You just have to pay
attention to those things, right?
Or, spirit animals or,
Some people say, Ooh, when I see this animal or I see a
hummingbird or I see a hawk or, it's sometimes in the strangest places
too.
I get songs on the radio
Yes.
and they're very telling songs and I pay attention to what the lyrics are now.
Yeah.
When I'm driving to work, when I was driving to work and I used to start
work early in the morning and you could almost guarantee that there was a message
in the song that just happened to be playing for the distance and I didn't
have to go far from the distance from home to work and there it would be.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
let's.
talk now, Sheila, about some of the more taboo subjects around grief
that people do not talk about.
What do people not talk about?
I just see it even in promoting my book, right?
People don't want to talk about grief, period.
It's like it's a contagious disease.
Yeah.
Really they're like, Oh, it's if they talk about it or if they address
it, like it's going to happen.
It's already happened.
I say that we're all grievers,
past, present, and future.
And, that we're really just finding our way with a very human experience
of loving people, because once you love people, you will experience loss
and, the taboo subjects, I think that people will Walk around with it.
I'd say a mask on right
because they really don't want to bring things up that are
going to bring people down.
I say some taboo things, of course, are suicide as
well.
My, my real dad killed himself when I was 5 and,
I just say, that suicide piece is really Taboo.
Sometimes the way that people die can be a taboo, right?
And that people don't want to talk about it for a lot of different
reasons, but they don't want people to see them differently
Yeah.
It's it's almost like it's their fault, isn't it?
And
I don't understand that, but yes,
yeah,
it's true.
And when you're as raw and vulnerable as I was in my book, what's fascinating
about that is people will come up to me now and they'll tell me things.
They don't tell other people
and they tell me, Ooh, and I don't want to tell anybody this because I don't
want them to think of me differently.
And I'm thinking, why are they going to think differently about you?
Because a family member committed suicide.
I think we just have to stop this wearing of masks.
We're so very good at having a multitude of them and, the greatest
happiness in my life has come from being the most authentic, raw, messy
human that I am and not hiding that.
Yeah.
where we connect.
That raw vulnerability is where we really connect with people.
And I knew when I was writing this book that's the only way
that I could write about grief.
for having me.
And, but it's really hard to stand in that place because then we risk being judged.
And I just, got to a point where I'm like, if you walked into my, in my
shoes, I guess you could judge me.
But if you haven't walked in my shoes, then I might not listen to you.
And that's it, so many of us listen to the opinions of others and that's
only based on their experiences and their knowledge and their whatever.
It's got nothing to do with us really.
It's just, and we take that on board and we buy into it and then that
screws us up even more sometimes,
Through listening to it.
And it's just really exactly like you said, unless you've walked
in my shoes, have your opinion, but I'm not going to buy into
Are you feeling lost, anxious, unsure of how to navigate the
loss of your beautiful loved one.
I don't know where to head next.
Yeah, I get that.
Then you may be interested in the new offering I've developed
A Letter of Hope and Aroha.
To help you find out who you are right here and now.
And how you can navigate that without being on that emotional roller
coaster feeling out of control.
That's a feeling I really disliked after Tahl and then Adrian died.
So I've developed an eight week support program where each week you
get an email of what worked for me.
As well as other tried and true tools to help with grief, it's a beautiful
calming, mean healing resource that I think you're really going to like.
And that you can use in your everyday life to find out what
works for you and what doesn't.
And the great thing is you find yourself feeling stronger and more in
control, so you can work out what you want life to look like going forward.
So with this sounds like something you would like to check out, head
over to my website, or check out the link in the episode notes, you're
looking for A Letter of Hope & Aroha.
Yeah.
I think that sometimes, caregivers.
yes.
Yeah.
People who naturally connect in that caregiver role also tend to be people
pleasers and I would, I had the people pleaser syndrome, where I'm apologizing
for things that I have no business and no reason to apologize for and, trying
to make everybody feel comfortable, even though I'm the least comfortable,
um, so I think that, but, you know, another thing that I think is really
interesting about being a caregiver is what could be taboo is, and by HIPAA law
in the United States, we're not allowed to share medical, Information about somebody
that's their own private business.
And so when I think about grant in his desire to not share his diagnosis with
people, I was holding that secret.
And I was carrying that secret around with me every single day, going to work, trying
to function like a normal human being.
And my life was far from normal.
It was a whole different level of crazy.
And there were not many people that I could talk to about that.
Yeah, that's a big burden to carry.
You do it in the most loving and caring way, for Grant, but
yes, a huge burden nonetheless.
How did you go about discovering what it was that you needed following his death?
Because like you say, it changes your whole entire world, your
whole entire outlook on life.
You, you suddenly are left without this beautiful person in your life.
So what does life look like for you from that point
going forward?
Well, I was stumbling around in the dark looking for the light
switch in my underwear for years.
I love that.
Oh my gosh , that is the best.
I've
I'm not.
over exaggerating.
Oh,
to say that I had so many dysfunctional ways of trying to cope with my grief,
drinking, promiscuous behavior, sleeping with men.
I was trying to fill my needs that were so rock bottom.
I was so So at the rock bottom of having my needs met.
So I came out of that experience with physical touch as a love language.
You're not going to get away with not doing that, I guess.
Um, it really was, oh my gosh, I was liberated.
I was suddenly free from the caregiving responsibilities and also, I was
left to my own devices of whatever I was going to do or not do in a
healthy, functional way in my life.
I was a functional alcoholic, I say, because I got up, I went to work, I took
care of people, took care of my animals, whatever I did, but I was a party girl.
So I loved going out with people.
I didn't want to be alone.
I wanted to be with people and drinking was always a part of that.
I've been sober 18 years now, but
that was that was.
an event and quite a thing in my life at that time.
And then despite that, I was also open to a lot of alternative healing.
I was doing Reiki.
I was getting massage.
I was living on Kauai, which is a very naturally inclined island to that kind
of alternative healing and so I was able to bring those professionals and
those people in and I've always been an excellent support system builder.
So people just magically as well came into my life as well as I seek them out.
I've always been a support system builder and that's one of my strengths.
So I just built this amazing support system around me
and I held on for dear life.
And they took care of me.
How do you encourage people who are not like that, who are not naturally
inclined to being able to build good support systems around themselves?
What advice would you give to somebody listening right here
and now and says, no, I isolate.
I don't have people around me.
I encourage people to reach out to the people they do have in their life.
And in particular, maybe even their one most resourceful friend, their
one most connecting friend who knows everybody and reach out to that person
and tell them that you need help.
Sometimes you don't even know what you need, but if you can reach out to that
person, who's a mind reader, who's somebody that you can really connect with.
Sometimes.
If you just tell them, I really need you, I need you to help me navigate
this, they can help you do that.
Separate from that connecting with a really fantastic therapist.
is really crucial, I think, or a really fantastic grief support group.
You can find them through different organizations.
Connecting with a group of people who are going through something similar to you
and finding that common connection can help you feel not as alone.
and they may have resources that are available to you as well.
It's hard to reach out to people, but you have to reach out to a lifeline outside
of you because you're not going to know everything and you need to find some help.
So that's just really what I would encourage people to do, is to just know
You're not supposed to do this alone,
Yeah.
and that's okay, unless you want to, and if that's the type of person that you
are, and you're feeling okay about that, I also don't want to judge how somebody else
processes their grief, but there's a point where it, Needs to be more functional
and healthy as you're moving forward and that can take a long time and that
can look different for different people.
Because I always say that when you're going through really deep grief, it's
like everything gets thrown in the mix.
Everything that's ever happened in your life that wasn't very functional
suddenly starts to rear its ugly head.
And you're not just dealing with grief per se, you're dealing with all of your
life.
Yeah.
I think what's interesting about that, right.
Is you're an automatic pilot and you're not living in your best self typically.
We're not living in our best self
when we're grieving.
We're really an automatic pilot of kind of what we default to when
we're not having a good day and we're not living in our best selves.
So I think that knowing that, is really challenging, right?
And like I talk about the grief pit, I talk about falling in that hole.
And what I encourage people to do is just find resources
that can help you build hope.
You know, grab that hand that's reaching down to you in the grief pit.
You can stay down there, but grab the hand and know you're going to come out.
Know that you don't have to stay there for the rest of your life.
Know that you don't have to stay there 24/7 and 24 hours a day.
You can come out.
And you may go back in, but just know that that darkness that you feel the
light will connect with you again.
And it's so hard for people to realize that.
And I want to just say what was really interesting is I believe that other
people can be an inspiration and a source of hope for other people.
Your guests on your show, everything that you write about, and you connect with
as a professional and individual, right?
Giving people hope that they're going to move forward through this and be able to
be functional and normal, quote unquote.
Their new normal.
They're new normal, maybe as crazy as ever, but they're new normal
and, that they're going to be able to feel happiness and joy again.
I realized when I went, I was taking care of my grandmother
after my grandfather had died.
They were married 60 years and this was, so many years after Grant died and six
years, seven years after Grant died.
And I showed up.
And this was after my grandfather died and my grandma looked at me
and she said, I know that I can make it through this because you did it.
Yeah.
You don't know who's watching you, do you?
And I looked at her and I said, Grandma, I was only with Grant for seven years.
I wasn't with him for 60 years, like you were with grandpa.
And she said, That doesn't matter.
You've loved him.
Yeah.
And it, I have to tell you, I, I was blown away that this woman who is a
second mom to me had so much wisdom and she could look at my experience and go,
I'm going to be okay because she did it.
Yeah.
And so I want to say we're sources of inspiration and hope for one another.
I know that I can fall back in that grief pit again.
I know that I chose to move forward and get married and love another
man and have step kids and have these beautiful animals in my life.
I know I'm going to grieve again.
In a deeper way again, and I know I'm okay, but I also know
that life is so much stronger.
Life is so much worth living
in that place.
Despite all of that, right?
We can't close ourselves off because of what we're afraid
of in terms of losing somebody.
But it's very easy to go there, and it's very easy to close our heart
and shut our heart down because we don't want to experience that.
But I want to say once we do our healing.
We have a stronger and a bigger capacity to love even more.
And that's, what is amazing.
Yeah, it's a gift on the other side, isn't it?
Then that's the beauty that I see.
That's the beauty I got revealed to me on the other side of grief.
And that's why this podcast is called exactly that.
One thing that you touched on, and we spoke about feeling guilty
earlier, but people even feel guilty about laughing again and Being happy
again after they've lost that, super special person from their life.
And it's almost Oh, I shouldn't feel happy.
Why not?
Of course, if you're in that moment feeling happy, that is okay.
We sometimes feel guilty, don't we?
About allowing ourselves to feel happy again.
It's like we're, Where, what's a phrase, what are we doing to them?
It's just we're not honoring them or, the vows we made to them
and that's not, just not true.
Yeah.
we're forgetting about them.
We're
not being present in our memory of them.
But really, they wouldn't want you to be sad.
I really don't think, maybe miss them a little bit.
Okay.
Just a little.
Just miss them a little bit.
But, no.
No.
They wouldn't want, I don't think that they would want us to be
sad for the rest of our lives.
I think that we're here to have this amazing experience of life
and we're all going to die.
So it's a matter of how do we make the most of the life that we have.
And despite the fact that our dreams were shattered, our dreams were shattered.
were taken from us.
Yes.
The experiences that we were going to have with that person are gone.
They're no longer a part of us here.
The memories are still there, but it doesn't mean that you can't
build new dreams and that you can't have an amazing life and another
amazing love and an amazing partner.
And that doesn't take away from the relationship that
you had with your loved one.
If you have another child, if you decide to get married again, the relationship
that you have with that person is forever
and it's forever in your heart and you will always have that.
And so for me in my book, what was so important was for me to write
the journey about moving forward, finding a new partner, embracing
him and bringing him into my life.
Reconciling him living with the ghost of my husband, which he did
brilliantly, I could not have connected with a better partner in how he
held space for my husband, Grant.
And I want to say that even the mystical stuff afterwards that I put
in my book, Sean, my current husband, he didn't know all of those stories.
I didn't tell him.
There's some mystical stuff in here, honey.
And he's okay, as long as you're not levitating down the hallway,
I guess I'll be all right with it.
What do we,
yeah.
Just to,
say, yeah,
that, that's in there too.
And he doesn't downplay it or poopoo it either.
He's it's your experience.
absolutely.
And that's really important.
What do we learn about ourselves from our grief, Sheila?
I think number one, when we get to the other side of it, we
learn how strong we really are.
We learn how resilient We are.
We learn how resourceful we can be.
It's like I always say, I see the big picture.
I will never not see the big picture of what's really
important in this life ever again.
And that big picture is love, loving people.
And, the journey that we have in this world and being there for each other.
It's very easy to get tripped up in all of the mundane different things of
the day, but ultimately, if we really remember, we're all in this together
and we can help each other through it.
And that's a choice.
That's the big picture.
And so moving forward, living life more vibrantly and
brilliantly and more in love with.
Life and people.
I think ultimately that is the gift on the other side of working through your
grief is that you will get to that.
And there it is possible to experience grief.
and joy at the same time.
Yeah.
So yeah,
Yeah.
And like you say, just allow yourself to hold space for that, for both.
Yeah.
It's
hope's the bridge.
Hope is
the bridge to that.
It raises your vibration as well, and it helps you get out of the grief pit.
So why did you want to share your story now so many years after?
It was always there.
My shitty first book that I wrote, that's what I call it, was the one I
emotionally threw up in and had it edited.
And that was my book.
And I wrote that in 2005.
This book was always on the back burner because I read an amazing
book when I was a caregiver.
I read the book, The Caregiver's Companion, and when I read
it, I didn't feel alone.
Yes.
person expressed rawness and vulnerability, and I felt that I wanted to
write this book for grievers so that they could connect with the rawness and the
vulnerability in that grief process and to talk about the things that people were
afraid or they don't want to talk about so that you know you're not crazy, you
know that you're not alone, you know that under pressure, Other people can validate
you and support you and understand you.
And so if I have touched one person's life that they can know that I have
done what I needed to do with this book.
And so that was my desire and my passion for putting this out.
There was to be a supportive.
resource as well as, a supportive person for other people to share that journey.
I'm surprised that I actually got this book done.
And when people say, Oh, I want to write a book.
I'm always like, you really need to know what you're
getting into when you say that.
It's not for the faint of heart.
And it actually, when you're self publishing takes quite
a bit of money as well.
So like you have to have a passion for doing that.
yeah,
And actually to birth it and get it out of you in a way that
people can at least resonate with.
And I had a lot of help.
It wasn't just me doing this.
I have amazing, book coaches and editors, and I brought a lot of really gifted and
talented people in to help with that, but really being able to share the story,
in an authentic way was important to me.
I think that's the key to it too.
Authentic.
So it's real.
It's telling people like it is and allowing people to be okay with whatever
they may be experiencing in that moment.
So I think that is so vitally important.
Yeah.
That's the treasure in your book.
I think now another treasure that goes alongside of it is that you've also
got like a companion journal, haven't
Yes, I have a companion journal that you can download from the website,
Sheilaclemonson.Com and people can work through that it'll eventually
be available on Amazon as well.
But, I wanted to make sure that it was useful.
And so you kind of have to test things when you're putting it out there too.
I think at the beginning, right?
So yeah, there is that, I do a lot of coaching with people moving through
transitions from my HR background.
The big fit is the career coaching, but I find that my niche is starting to be
people coming in, experiencing significant loss that can be job loss, death, divorce.
It can be a lot of different things.
And.
I'm helping them find their way moving forward career wise professionally,
because often we still have to pay our bills and we have to put food on the table
and we have to take care of our family.
And so I'm helping people move forward when they're not living in their
best self, but they have to show up as their best self to move forward.
And
sometimes you need to get away from what you're in, but you don't know
where to go, what that's going to look like if you're brave enough to
do it, because it does take courage.
It does take bravery to move out of your comfort zone even
if you don't enjoy what it is,
Yeah.
And I tell my clients, you don't have to have this figured out.
We'll work on that together.
I have so many people sometimes they're like, I got to figure
this out before I work with you.
And I'm like, do you understand that I help you do that?
That's what the transition part is.
You don't have to do it alone.
There's a lot of tools and resources that I'm sharing to help you with that.
And yeah, it's, it's powerful.
I'm passionate about the work I do.
And what's funny is when I was sitting with the book, right.
And I'm like, I have a very successful career coaching business.
It couldn't have been a better business through the pandemic.
Okay.
Everybody wanted to quit their jobs and go do something else.
And they were looking for help with that.
And so I was able to build my business through that challenging
time I've had it for six years.
And I thought, Why am I writing the grief book and not the career coaching book?
And every single time Spirit, God, Goddess,
Universe, Source, whoever, whatever you call it, would send me a client
Yes.
didn't need a therapist, but they needed help moving through this
to get to where they needed to be.
Professionally meaningful purpose.
Whether that's work or vacation or volunteering or whatever it is.
We're all looking for some kind of meaningful purpose and
what we're doing every day.
And a lot of the time after we've gone through a grief experience, we can't do
our normal life the same way ever again.
It's I'm not going to show up for that job that I hate.
I'm not going to be doing this.
You're rewriting your complete contact list because you're not friends with
or family with those people anymore.
It's
Yeah, so it's a perfect time to bring in somebody to support you and to
help you sort through all of that.
So wise.
Yeah.
And it's reaching out and allowing people to do that because yeah, we don't always
have the answers like I, it's funny.
And I've shared this with my listeners in that, I am typically
very good at whatever I choose to do.
Like I'm just that sort of person.
I go in boots and all, and I'm going to conquer it.
But that's not always necessarily a good thing because, in the latest
instance, that was taking me further and further away from this podcast.
And in fact, I was, having less time to do it.
And then like universe just slapped me on the cheek and went, You
need to get your butt back to this because this is where your heart is.
This is where your passion is so you can be good at something.
But what you need to recognize is what is your passion?
What lights you up?
And for me, it's speaking to people like you,
honestly.
Oh, and that vibrant, sassy spirit you've got.
I read that you also had a different dance party at the launch of your book, which
I think is such a cool idea, especially when you're talking about a grief book.
Oh my
like grief and
Yes.
I had a lit up dance floor.
I did a DJ that played eighties.
I had a Taylor Swift outfit change
I just
I Dr.
I dressed up in my valley girl eighties outfit.
I was ready to go and I had disco platform shoes that I found at a vintage fair the
name on them was over the rainbow the
oh,
of my book
perfect.
so there you go, like things just all came together and it was a Celebration
and that's what I wanted it to be.
I wanted it to be a celebration of All of the people who helped support me move
forward and helping me birth this book and that we forget to celebrate, to have
celebration sometimes for the things that we're working on, that we're accomplishing
and we're moving forward with.
And so it was a celebration that I wanted to bring forward.
Yeah,
I can understand why Grant just thought you were the bee's knees.
and you know what we were together.
And yeah, yeah, I can just feel him all around me.
He's
I can feel him as well,
yeah, he was very charismatic and he loved dancing.
He sent me those disco platform shoes, just so you know, he was a big Bowie fan
and he was really into shoes himself.
And so I'm like, yeah.
Yeah, he brought those to me.
And I have to share
yes, great, that is beautiful.
I
that was a very funny picture of him.
He wanted to have a Fez cat bun and he wanted to be goofy.
And so we put it on a button to celebrate him at his memorial
service.
And so
that's that's kind of his funny, his funny face
Oh,
me connecting with him.
Oh,
I wanted to share that because sometimes you really have to find
those ways to connect and bring that humor back in for you and laugh at
those memories and those good times.
Yeah.
Because there are many good times in there, and that's what
we need to allow ourselves to
go back to and feel that beautiful energy of those really fun, crazy
times that you had together.
and what I'll say is Grant is now my best friend on the other side,
Oh, I love that.
Knows that Sean's my husband.
In fact, he's Oh my gosh, good luck to you.
Good luck.
You need all the
help you can get.
But it's, and that's how I've reconciled it.
It's he's my best friend on the other side.
He's not my husband anymore.
And you know
what?
That's okay.
absolutely.
So I just want to say that, things can change over time and we can bring
that person forward into our lives, rebuilding our lives and living
very happy, full, wonderful lives.
And they still have a place in it because why would they not?
When they're larger than life when they were alive, they're going
to be that way on the other side.
Hallelujah.
Yep, I know I've had some people that I've spoken to, some clairvoyants mediums
and they go, she's really bossy isn't
She's really what?
Bossy.
Yes.
And I go, she was so like that in life, demanding that we do
stuff and telling us what to do.
And she was just so confident and she could just pull it off.
And, that's never left.
And I love that.
I love that because that's what made her so special.
She was the complete opposite to me.
It was like a.
a beautiful, frustrating journey together.
Hey, look, there's some questions that I always ask each of my
guests as we wind things up.
And I'd like to know what is the best thing that has
happened to you so far today?
Oh my gosh.
My conversation with you.
Oh,
go on.
you've brought things to life that are precious to me in this conversation and
this connection is really important.
The connection between us has been really beautiful.
I'm a connector and with your audience, it just, this is really fabulous.
Because I'm a great believer when people feel safe then they just open
their hearts and they open their voices and that's when you get the gold.
absolutely.
that's what I felt like connecting with you Sheila.
We like just hit it off right from the get go and you know it's
been a brilliant conversation.
I'm grateful for that.
What is something that you are most grateful for?
I am most grateful for the people in my life.
They're my rock.
They're my support system.
I can say they're my ohana, which is the Hawaii term for
the family you choose, right?
I have an amazing support system and I would not have made it
through everything without it.
And I just am grateful for that every single day.
That's beautiful and I think it's because you are such a shining light
that people just gravitate toward you.
So
Thank
you have moments in your day that are not going so well and we have a term
here when they turn to custard, how do you pivot out of those moments?
Oh, it might be a few four letter words that I might say.
And then I give myself a new attitude adjustment and a new affirmation.
That's going to be better.
I quickly look for that better thought.
That better experience, and I try to sometimes look from a curious
place rather than thinking.
I know everything.
So sometimes it's like, well, you know, maybe that's what you think,
but maybe you, maybe that's not the story that you need to tell yourself.
oh
That's really key for me and getting out of those mindsets
and to shift out of that.
I really like that.
That's really good.
Yeah.
So how can people get hold of your book over the rainbow?
Hi.
the depths of grief to hope
it is available on Amazon.
That's the best way to purchase it.
You can also download the companion journal at Sheila Clemenson.
com and that's on the homepage a little further down.
You can tap into that and, you can also click in from that website into
Amazon to purchase the book as well.
So I'm going to have those links in the episode notes anyway, but it's always
good for you to be able to share them as
And I think you people just have to recognize the country
that they're in sometimes.
And that, the link won't work if it's a U S versus New Zealand
Oh yeah.
another country.
We live in such a small world now that it's crazy that you could
be on the other side of the world from me and yet feel so connected.
Oh,
It's Amazing.
And I love it.
Yeah, it opens up a world that you could never have imagined, like I think for
the beautiful souls that I connect with on a weekly basis and I just go, Oh, how
lucky am I, there's a richness to that.
Beautiful.
So Sheila, I just have to say to you, what a wonderful hour I got to spend
with you having this chat about your experiences, caregiving, all the, your
beautiful HR tips about, making sure you're well supported and getting that
community behind you and, writing that beautiful book and from the grassroots
so that it's really going to be
of help to people going through a similar experience that you went through.
So well done.
Congratulations to you.
And I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to speak to you today.
Thank you so much, Helen.
Thank you for the opportunity to connect today.
I loved our time together and, yeah, thank you so much.