Speaker 1: Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls Podcast, a weekly
Speaker 1: conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
Speaker 1: decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
Speaker 1: of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
Speaker 1: a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
Speaker 1: to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
Speaker 1: at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
Speaker 1: love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
Speaker 1: not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
Speaker 1: a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining me for Session three, p. Fifty two of
Speaker 1: Therapy for Black Girl's podcast. We'll get right into our
Speaker 1: conversation after a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: I'm Leslie Gray Streeter and I'm on the Therapy for
Speaker 3: Black Girls podcast. I'm in session today unpacking my experience
Speaker 3: as a black widow.
Speaker 1: One of life's most profound and devastating experiences can be
Speaker 1: losing a spouse. It's a journey that can be marked
Speaker 1: by sorrow and the reshaping of one's identity. But it's
Speaker 1: not one you have to go alone. For today's episode,
Speaker 1: I'm joined by author, veteran journalist and speaker Leslie Streeter.
Speaker 1: Leslie is the author of the memoir Black Widow, a sad,
Speaker 1: funny journey through grief for people who normally avoid books
Speaker 1: with words like journey in the title. A native of Baltimore, Maryland,
Speaker 1: she and her work have been featured in The Water
Speaker 1: Shington Post, CNN, The Atlantic, and more. During our conversation,
Speaker 1: Leslie and I discussed the shifting stages of grief in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of losing a spouse, how having a village
Speaker 1: aided her through the death of her spouse, and what
Speaker 1: our society gets wrong about helping loved ones through a
Speaker 1: grief experience. If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation,
Speaker 1: please share with us on social media using the hashtag
Speaker 1: tpg in session or join us in the sister circle
Speaker 1: to talk more about the episode. You can join us
Speaker 1: at community dot therapy for Blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for joining us today, Leslie.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to chat with you. So I wonder
Speaker 1: if you could take us to the beginning of your
Speaker 1: journey as a widow. Can you talk to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about those initial days after losing your partner.
Speaker 3: The initial days were I can't see my face, but
Speaker 3: it's the face, is what it is. Because it's like
Speaker 3: anytime any of you who've gone through loss, sudden loss, particularly,
Speaker 3: it's just you're trying to survive your Bodi's in survival mode.
Speaker 3: There's a sense of all of the stages of grief
Speaker 3: all at once that you're in denial, you're in shock
Speaker 3: here in everything. And I guess it was just knowing
Speaker 3: that I had no idea what was about to happen
Speaker 3: in any moment, but also knowing that I had to
Speaker 3: keep it going, which don't always work in the same way,
Speaker 3: but they.
Speaker 2: Kind of have to.
Speaker 3: That survival butting the head against you wanting to just
Speaker 3: shut down is a constant and as you know, with grief,
Speaker 3: there is no linear stage. You could be a one,
Speaker 3: stage one, and then stage seven and then back to three,
Speaker 3: and then roll around in five and seven all over again,
Speaker 3: and it can all happen at once, and it's just
Speaker 3: your body trying to keep you alive while protecting you.
Speaker 3: And it was really disorienting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I can't imagine. Can you talk to us
Speaker 1: about what support was like for you. Who were the
Speaker 1: people that you were able to lean on in those
Speaker 1: first couple of days.
Speaker 3: I have the most amazing village of people, And I
Speaker 3: know village at this point has become so used as
Speaker 3: to become trite, but I had immediately when it happened.
Speaker 3: One of my best friends and her husband came over
Speaker 3: and she drove me to the hospital.
Speaker 2: And I had a friend.
Speaker 3: That friend's husband and my neighbor who I was supposed
Speaker 3: to go walking with that morning, came over and stayed
Speaker 3: with my son. I had my aunt, who was a
Speaker 3: pastor in DC, who prayed with us as we drove
Speaker 3: to the hospital. I had my husband's cousins who drove
Speaker 3: in from Fort Lauderdale from that area about an hour
Speaker 3: or so drive depending on where they were, to say
Speaker 3: goodbye to him in the hospital, and then took the
Speaker 3: rest of the day off. It was one of that
Speaker 3: cousin's birthdays, and he took the day off to be
Speaker 3: with us. My sister, who was down in about three
Speaker 3: hours from Baltimore it happened. She woke her husband up
Speaker 3: and said, grabbing the credit card, I gotta go. My
Speaker 3: mother was down in five hours, people from work, people
Speaker 3: just showing up.
Speaker 2: Every day.
Speaker 3: I would wander out of my room and there'd be
Speaker 3: a different person in my house that.
Speaker 2: I'd go, Oh, that's so nice. Oh it's not a visit,
Speaker 2: that's right.
Speaker 3: Something terrible happened that It was really reassuring in the
Speaker 3: moments where I felt really discombobulated to know that people
Speaker 3: were there for me, not just the ones that were
Speaker 3: physically there, but the ones who were able to talk
Speaker 3: to me on the phone, the ones who called but
Speaker 3: didn't stay too long because they knew that it.
Speaker 2: It's okay if you don't want to talk, and I go,
Speaker 2: that's great. It was a lot going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I've talked with other people who talked
Speaker 1: about like having a person be in charge of answering
Speaker 1: questions for other people and like handling some of those
Speaker 1: logistics of all of those people. Was there somebody who
Speaker 1: was able to fill that role for you?
Speaker 3: My twin sister Lynn, who everything in my life, is
Speaker 3: that person and I am that person for her, just
Speaker 3: instinctually for fifty two plus years now assume that role immediately.
Speaker 3: She was the person that people first of all called
Speaker 3: because they're like, what's going on. So she was working
Speaker 3: with other people to say, coordinate who got picked up
Speaker 3: from the airport, or someone would say what do you
Speaker 3: want me to handle? And she'd say, can you handle
Speaker 3: the food that people were bringing? Or can you handle
Speaker 3: we're talking to the rabbi and Leslie's talking to the rabbi,
Speaker 3: but can someone else do this? And so she was
Speaker 3: the team master and all of that. I knew that
Speaker 3: I could trust her A because she's good at that stuff.
Speaker 3: B because she knows how to delegate. C Because she's
Speaker 3: my sister and she wasn't going to drop the ball.
Speaker 3: It was difficult too, and she went through her own
Speaker 3: grieving process for my husband because she was very close
Speaker 3: to him and loved him very much. But at that
Speaker 3: point it was about me. So she was able to
Speaker 3: pull it together, just as I have done for other
Speaker 3: people who have had losses, because at that point, my
Speaker 3: grief is not the center grief, it's theirs. I say
Speaker 3: to people all the time when they say my friend
Speaker 3: lost her husband or someone I know at work, what
Speaker 3: do I do? And I was like, find out who
Speaker 3: the coordinator is, don't call them, maybe least something on Facebook.
Speaker 2: We're so sorry.
Speaker 3: If other people are doing that, but find out who
Speaker 3: the coordinator is. Find out who that person is, and
Speaker 3: that person will tell you what they need.
Speaker 1: Great suggestion there, So, Leslie, it seems like your experience
Speaker 1: as a widow is also layered by the fact that
Speaker 1: your mom was a widow or is a widow. Can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about how she was able
Speaker 1: to support you in that in anything? That kind of
Speaker 1: was interesting about that process given her experience as well.
Speaker 3: I think we can all help each other, even if
Speaker 3: we don't have the exact same experiences. But I think
Speaker 3: those friends of yours who do, and God knows, I
Speaker 3: don't wish widowhood on anybody. I don't want to have
Speaker 3: that kind of relationship to people. But my mother did.
Speaker 3: And she had been planning to move down to Florida
Speaker 3: from Little Rock with us, not with us, like in
Speaker 3: an apartment, living by herself down the street. And so
Speaker 3: when it happened, and that day that she showed up
Speaker 3: at my house and I said, can you just live
Speaker 3: with me? And she agreed, and I was like, wait.
Speaker 2: What have we done?
Speaker 3: There was this a terrible mistake, but it wasn't. It
Speaker 3: turned out to be amazing. I think that she understood
Speaker 3: being like I say in my book ground Zero for
Speaker 3: the grief. She understood because everyone else was hurting when
Speaker 3: my father died, my sister and I were hurting. Everyone
Speaker 3: else was hurting. His brother and sister were hurting. But
Speaker 3: she was the locust of that grief, being his partner
Speaker 3: and being the every day in the house and being
Speaker 3: the person who was always around. And I think she
Speaker 3: understood that's what I would be going through. So she
Speaker 3: was there to give me as much space or no space,
Speaker 3: or watch me. She was able to be just the
Speaker 3: most wise person sometimes by saying nothing.
Speaker 2: So yes, I think that.
Speaker 3: My mom was the best person. And I said, I'm
Speaker 3: sorry that she had that experience, which is the best
Speaker 3: person to help me, because she understood there be times
Speaker 3: where I wanted so many people. There be times when
Speaker 3: I wanted to know people. There were times when I
Speaker 3: wanted to be physically touched. There were times I was
Speaker 3: just like, ugh, everybody, get away from me. And she's
Speaker 3: a social worker at a psych nurse, so she also
Speaker 3: understood clinically about grief and why that was. And she understood,
Speaker 3: like I said, unfortunately personally, and she I think kept
Speaker 3: a lot of people out of my face, which I
Speaker 3: think is also sometimes the person who handles the meal
Speaker 3: coordination in those days is also the out of your
Speaker 3: face person, and that's helpful I have too.
Speaker 1: MM. One of the feelings you mentioned is feeling discombobulated
Speaker 1: after the laws, and you know, I think that there
Speaker 1: are some things that you can expect that you would
Speaker 1: experience after the laws of your partner. Are there things
Speaker 1: that came up that you did not expect that you
Speaker 1: think would be important to highlight?
Speaker 2: Anger?
Speaker 3: Man, I you know, and that's part of the stages
Speaker 3: of grief. But your anger at the person who died,
Speaker 3: which is something you can't do anything about, and as
Speaker 3: my therapist said, it was futile in a you'll never
Speaker 3: win that argument way. You're never gonna go back and
Speaker 3: have them do it. But you're angry at being left alone.
Speaker 3: You're angry at are there things you could have done.
Speaker 3: I would never blame my husband for his death, but
Speaker 3: he was a forty four year old guy who had
Speaker 3: some health things he did not take care of, and
Speaker 3: I felt guilty myself. It was angry at me. Could
Speaker 3: I have done something? He was a grown man. I
Speaker 3: did what I could, and once again anger at dead
Speaker 3: people doesn't really go anywhere, but acknowledging that you have that,
Speaker 3: I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to feel.
Speaker 2: Useless, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: I think that because I'm a where's the solution person?
Speaker 3: What can we do? What are the steps? What's the
Speaker 3: game plan? Kind of person? There were times where I
Speaker 3: could make all the plans I want and my body
Speaker 3: wouldn't let me do it. My body wouldn't let me
Speaker 3: get up, or I was so tired, or I would
Speaker 3: walk into a room of people and my body would
Speaker 3: go panic mode, panic notes, shut down, shut down, and
Speaker 3: I would go, it's been so nice to see you,
Speaker 3: and I could like count the steps back to where
Speaker 3: I was going, because I.
Speaker 2: Was like, I got to get out of here. I
Speaker 2: gotta get out of here.
Speaker 3: But I can't flee and run. Can go ah and leave?
Speaker 3: I mean you could, but I probably did in the
Speaker 3: first couple of days. Just no one told me that.
Speaker 3: But I think that the out of control part of it,
Speaker 3: after being a person who I mean, I was married
Speaker 3: at thirty eight, almost thirty nine, and to become a
Speaker 3: parent while I was forty two, and so my life
Speaker 3: and the design of it and the schedule of it
Speaker 3: had always been my own. So even giving up that
Speaker 3: as part of a partnership is a vulnerability when that
Speaker 3: ends and you're trying to pull all the pieces back
Speaker 3: to yourself and you.
Speaker 2: Don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: They're also really tired and really sad and really sleepy.
Speaker 3: And I was unfortunately a little high on bourbon and
Speaker 3: pie at times too, so that will add to it
Speaker 3: the whole self medication peace, and you just feel out
Speaker 3: of control when you're a controlled person like myself type A.
Speaker 2: That's really scary too.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And the anger, I think is an interesting
Speaker 1: one because I think people often feel a lot of shame. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like I feel bad for being angry at my
Speaker 1: deceased partner, right, And like you said, like you really
Speaker 1: can't go anywhere with it because there's no conversation that
Speaker 1: you can have, and so it is often one of
Speaker 1: those very I think difficult emotions for people to be
Speaker 1: able to navigate.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and also as women, we are taught to be
Speaker 3: easy about things, and be forgiving about things, and be
Speaker 3: accepting about things, and to sublimate how we feel if
Speaker 3: it makes other people feel uncomfortable. There's that scene in
Speaker 3: Steel Magnolia's where the Sally Field character has lost her
Speaker 3: daughter and she runs through the whole gamut in the
Speaker 3: Grave Heart, where she's yelling, I'm so angry, I can
Speaker 3: hit something, and she's she knows that she's making people uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: but it's not about them. It's about how she feels
Speaker 3: at that moment. And it's wonderful to have people who
Speaker 3: are going to let you be uncomfortable and make them
Speaker 3: uncomfortable because that's what the moment is about, and the
Speaker 3: anger and the pain and the just trying to box
Speaker 3: with God part of it.
Speaker 2: And I did that too, not physically, but I.
Speaker 3: Would yell why, and I felt like the Sally Field character.
Speaker 1: So you've mentioned a couple of times about grief experiences
Speaker 1: and like whose grief is central and whose grief needs
Speaker 1: to be tended to right? And I can imagine that's
Speaker 1: very difficult when you're a mom and have had this loss.
Speaker 1: So you've lost your partner, but then your son has
Speaker 1: lost his father. So can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how you navigated continuing to be a parent and
Speaker 1: like tending to your grief and your sons at the
Speaker 1: same time.
Speaker 3: It was very difficult with us because my child was
Speaker 3: a baby, he was two, and so his immediate loss
Speaker 3: is where's Daddy? Because he doesn't understand death. And I
Speaker 3: say in my book it took a long time for
Speaker 3: me to be able to say the word dead. I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, he's gone. He can't be here, so
Speaker 3: he at three, thought he was just someplace else.
Speaker 2: He't.
Speaker 3: You can't make sense of these things, and it's hard
Speaker 3: to say. It's hard to talk about the things, particularly
Speaker 3: when you don't know if the person will understand. My
Speaker 3: nieces and nephews were like ten eleven, thirteen, so their
Speaker 3: loss of him, they.
Speaker 2: Knew him longer than I did.
Speaker 3: Like on his side, dealing with their grief was a
Speaker 3: different grief because they knew him fully as a person.
Speaker 3: He had been there as far as they knew their
Speaker 3: entire lives. With my son, it was going back to
Speaker 3: what is grief, what is loss, and going from there.
Speaker 3: Now I focus on his grief is of what he
Speaker 3: doesn't have, because it's very sad he doesn't remember Scott.
Speaker 3: He was very young, he was not quite too when
Speaker 3: he died, So his grief is he went through about
Speaker 3: two years ago. Everyone else has a dad.
Speaker 2: I don't have a dad, and.
Speaker 3: He misses not just Scott the person, but he misses
Speaker 3: the place in his life that a father would have had,
Speaker 3: and that is terrible to do so. And also I
Speaker 3: am healed in a way that I was not immediately.
Speaker 2: After the deaths.
Speaker 3: So I am now, I think, through therapy and time
Speaker 3: and all of those things, able to more properly address
Speaker 3: those things about what my child is feeling and that
Speaker 3: loss without including mine got it.
Speaker 1: So that did give you a little bit of space.
Speaker 1: It sounds like so because he was so young, you
Speaker 1: were able to maybe more attend to your own grief,
Speaker 1: and now you're able to support him as he's gotten noticed.
Speaker 1: EXA Yeah, more from our conversation. After the break, he says,
Speaker 1: it's nice to see you're still with us. What do
Speaker 1: you think about the conversation so far? Did anything come
Speaker 1: to mind? Or are you just listening and learning that
Speaker 1: works too. I want to take a moment to share
Speaker 1: an affirmation with you, something to add into your wellness kid,
Speaker 1: or something to pull out when you need a little
Speaker 1: extra self love and support. Repeat after me, I get
Speaker 1: to heal on my own timeline one more time, say
Speaker 1: it with me? I get to heal on my own timeline,
Speaker 1: use this affirmation when you need it, and remember to
Speaker 1: take good care. All right, let's get back into our conversation.
Speaker 1: So you've mentioned therapy a couple of times. I'm curious
Speaker 1: at what point in your grief journey did you actually
Speaker 1: start working with a therapist. Was it pretty immediate or
Speaker 1: did you take some time before and was pretty immediate.
Speaker 3: Let's see, he died in July, late July, and I
Speaker 3: think I was probably in therapy by September, having had
Speaker 3: therapy for or other things before. I understood how important
Speaker 3: that was living with my mother at that point, who
Speaker 3: has been a therapist. I understood the need for it.
Speaker 3: I understood the need to talk about it in a
Speaker 3: setting that was not going to emotionally hurt the other person, because,
Speaker 3: like I said, so many other people had lost around
Speaker 3: my husband dying. They felt his loss in different ways.
Speaker 3: And to talk to someone whose job it was to
Speaker 3: listen he was not emotionally attached in the way that
Speaker 3: I was, was very important and she was great. It
Speaker 3: was weird because I at the time wrote for the
Speaker 3: Palm Beach Post and she was in that community, and
Speaker 3: several sessions in. I said, did you know who I
Speaker 3: was when I called you? And she said I did?
Speaker 3: And I knew why you were calling because I'd seen
Speaker 3: in the paper that your husband had died, and being
Speaker 3: a professional, she'd said nothing. I wouldn't have known.
Speaker 2: I just at some point I thought I should ask
Speaker 2: this question. I would just curre.
Speaker 3: She did, and the fact that she played it off
Speaker 3: like she had no idea was great.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah. And she was really able to hold
Speaker 1: space just for you and not her perceptions of it
Speaker 1: or any of that. Yeah, I'm glad that you had that.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you came from a family, you know,
Speaker 1: a professional who knew the importance of therapy, and so
Speaker 1: it sounds like it was a good help for you
Speaker 1: right there. So what do you think the general public
Speaker 1: kind of gets wrong about grief and being a widow?
Speaker 1: Is there something that immediately comes to mind for you?
Speaker 3: Yes? And I had mentioned before just in general about
Speaker 3: grief that people because we're Americans and we put things
Speaker 3: in tight little boxes, on schedules, on steps, we go
Speaker 3: ABCD healed, everything is wonderful.
Speaker 2: And if you're not, did you do it wrong? Were
Speaker 2: you really trying?
Speaker 3: And like I said, It comes back to the part
Speaker 3: of us that believes that everyone else's job is to
Speaker 3: make us feel comfortable and to not be a downer,
Speaker 3: and to not be the buzzkill that comes into the situation,
Speaker 3: and to not want to be around people whose experiences
Speaker 3: might be buzzkilly or what I just made up.
Speaker 2: But I think that what we get wrong is.
Speaker 3: That we're not helping that doesn't help the person, and
Speaker 3: to ask weird questions. I know people who've lost animals
Speaker 3: and then the first thing I say is you're going
Speaker 3: to get another dog? And most of the time it's like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm still grieving bandit, I'm still grieving cocoa or whatever.
Speaker 3: So when you say to a widow, where are you
Speaker 3: going to get married again? Or don't worry you'll get
Speaker 3: married again, or never date again, your time is over
Speaker 3: you or forever without your person, just the weird stuff
Speaker 3: people say, or when people want to compare it to
Speaker 3: their divorce or they want to compare it to the
Speaker 3: loss some other things. I think that we have such
Speaker 3: a discomfort and talking about hard things and talking about
Speaker 3: uncomfortable things, that we have this unwritten pact with each other.
Speaker 3: If you will agree not to make me uncomfortable about it.
Speaker 3: I'll give lip surface to it. I'll say sorry for
Speaker 3: your loss. I'll give some weird platitude about God's timing
Speaker 3: and plans and cycles and all that garbage.
Speaker 2: The biggest thing I would say is that doesn't help either.
Speaker 3: Trite sayings, assumptions about someone's spirituality. The better place that
Speaker 3: person might be in the journey they have trod all
Speaker 3: that garbage. They're with God now. Even though I believe
Speaker 3: that that wasn't helpful to me because I wanted him
Speaker 3: to be with me.
Speaker 2: I wanted my husband next to me on the couch.
Speaker 3: I wanted him in my child's life, driving to my
Speaker 3: friend's house in Key West for his birthday. I wanted that.
Speaker 3: I didn't want him to be sitting at God's right hand.
Speaker 3: God can wait. Is not my thing. And yes, I
Speaker 3: understand people say things because they want to be helpful,
Speaker 3: but I would say to people, would that be helpful
Speaker 3: to you?
Speaker 2: And no, no, no it won't.
Speaker 1: And I think it's really difficult for people who have
Speaker 1: not had that kind of a loss, right because there's
Speaker 1: something that you could think might be helpful, but until
Speaker 1: you're really in that situation, you don't realize that those
Speaker 1: kinds of things are not actually helpful. Now, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you were already writing. You mentioned that you were writing
Speaker 1: for the newspaper, and you've now written your book. So
Speaker 1: the book is called Black Widow, A sad, funny journey
Speaker 1: through grief for people who normally avoid books with words
Speaker 1: like journey in the title, which I think is a great,
Speaker 1: great title. And so I'm curious to hear how writing
Speaker 1: has been helpful in your grieving journey and in your
Speaker 1: process to healing.
Speaker 3: My therapist asked me early on if I was keeping
Speaker 3: a grief journal and said, yes, I'm writting a book.
Speaker 1: Oh, you were writing a book.
Speaker 3: Immediately, immediately it came an outlet, and I'll be very honest,
Speaker 3: and some people go, oh, no about it. It was
Speaker 3: an outlet to get it literally out of my brain
Speaker 3: and off of my check. And also I thought, I'm
Speaker 3: a widow. Now I might need the money. I might,
Speaker 3: you know, need to sell a book. I might need
Speaker 3: the income, any extra thing I get. Because when you
Speaker 3: were widowed, you're not just missing your partner and the
Speaker 3: love of your life and your child's other parent. You're
Speaker 3: missing income, You're missing potential support, both financially and otherwise.
Speaker 3: So when I was writing a book and people would say, oh,
Speaker 3: isn't it great Even if you never do anything with it,
Speaker 3: you accomplish something, I was like, no, I also need
Speaker 3: to sell this book, and I needed to also get
Speaker 3: it to other people. I have read so many books
Speaker 3: about grief or so many articles about grief that were
Speaker 3: from the perspective of the healed, that were like the
Speaker 3: ten steps that got me through, or this is how
Speaker 3: I'm okay, and I was like, am I okay? I
Speaker 3: am not okay. I don't know what okay looks like.
Speaker 3: So admitting that I was a mess and that it's messy,
Speaker 3: and once again that those steps to heal, those stages
Speaker 3: are not linear and they loop loop loop around, that's
Speaker 3: what I wanted to write. So as I made that
Speaker 3: clear in my mind, as I wrote, and as I
Speaker 3: was in therapy, and as I begin to heal and
Speaker 3: time begin to go, all that made more sense to
Speaker 3: me because I could see on the page and I
Speaker 3: would look back to the first chapter of the book
Speaker 3: starts with me standing in the graveyard eating chips with
Speaker 3: my whole family on a golf cart, and I would
Speaker 3: read after a couple of years. I would reread the
Speaker 3: whole thing from time to time, and lots of things
Speaker 3: changed in the book, but that stayed there, and I thought.
Speaker 2: I remember that girl.
Speaker 3: I remember how lost she felt, and how weird and
Speaker 3: hungry she felt, and how lost and just untethered she felt.
Speaker 3: And being able to go back to that and read
Speaker 3: it and know at different stages I was no longer
Speaker 3: in that stage was as helpful as people who keep
Speaker 3: traditional journals because they can go back the stages that
Speaker 3: they are at.
Speaker 2: So it was both.
Speaker 3: It was something to help my career, It was something
Speaker 3: to help other people. It was something to help me
Speaker 3: and I think ultimately my son, because I think I
Speaker 3: worked out things in the writing, both in the book
Speaker 3: and speaking and in writing stories for the newspaper and
Speaker 3: writing for a publication called Model Laws. It's a website,
Speaker 3: and just exploring my grief in different ways really helped
Speaker 3: me talk it out.
Speaker 2: It was all therapy mm in the book.
Speaker 1: I mean, even starting from the title, clearly there's a
Speaker 1: humorous approach that you take with the book that I
Speaker 1: think is very different than on like ten Things that
Speaker 1: idea to get over this loss, and that it tends
Speaker 1: to be a little bit more serious. Can you talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your approach of using humor? I
Speaker 1: think naturally it sounds like you're a very humorous person,
Speaker 1: But can you talk a little bit about your use
Speaker 1: of humor in the book and maybe people's response to that.
Speaker 3: I think that people that really got the book are
Speaker 3: those type of people like me who do process things
Speaker 3: through humor. It is bitter, bitter, desperate humor, and some
Speaker 3: of it is absolutely weird Chuckley thing.
Speaker 2: That's funny.
Speaker 3: My sister and I were talking this morning. The Emmy's
Speaker 3: just had a really beautiful immemorial.
Speaker 2: Presentation, and she said, guess what song it was?
Speaker 3: And it's that song from The Fast and the Furious
Speaker 3: that I'll tell you all about it when I see
Speaker 3: you again, which I had banned.
Speaker 2: I was like, nobody sing it. I'm gonna find you.
Speaker 2: And then my.
Speaker 3: Husband's cousin, whose birthday he had died on, says, I
Speaker 3: have a couple songs I want to play him, like no,
Speaker 3: And he pulls up on his phone and it's that song.
Speaker 2: And my sister looks at me and.
Speaker 3: I go and she said, because I'm like, I'm disassociating
Speaker 3: to the whole thing like Wade's world, you know, like
Speaker 3: not here right now.
Speaker 2: It's like and I couldn't kill him because I love
Speaker 2: my cousin. He's great.
Speaker 3: He was there, he was grieving, he was doing it.
Speaker 3: They were like brothers. And also I'm like, oh, this
Speaker 3: song and that's funny. It's funny because it's terrible. It's
Speaker 3: funny though, and I process things like that. I think
Speaker 3: some people thought it was inappropriate. There was a guy
Speaker 3: I don't read good Reads reviews because it's not for us,
Speaker 3: it's for the readers, but some guy wrote she said
Speaker 3: it was a sad funny journey. I found it neither
Speaker 3: sad or funny, and I was like, I could say,
Speaker 3: and I think it's funny, but how could you not
Speaker 3: think it was sad. That's like people are. That's funny too.
Speaker 3: Other people's reactions are funny.
Speaker 2: I think that's it.
Speaker 3: For the most part, I was writing this book for
Speaker 3: specific people, including people who understand that their reactions might
Speaker 3: be off as off as what society would term what
Speaker 3: they would be or how they should be or how
Speaker 3: they should react, and that there was just a lot
Speaker 3: of messy there and sometimes that, like I said, it
Speaker 3: translates itself into being really funny.
Speaker 1: Got it? Got it more from our conversation after the break.
Speaker 1: So one of the other topics that you address, of course,
Speaker 1: in the book is race, and you know, I'm curious
Speaker 1: to hear can you talk about how you think being
Speaker 1: a black woman impacted your experience of grief and how
Speaker 1: might other black widows have a different experience of grieving
Speaker 1: than people from other races.
Speaker 3: I always say mine, I say this in the book
Speaker 3: is a black experience and it is not the Black
Speaker 3: experience because that does not exist. But I think, for instance,
Speaker 3: those of us really say in the Black Christians say
Speaker 3: Baptist Church, like I was, our outward grief is funerals
Speaker 3: or everybody's crying.
Speaker 2: Out loud, oh no baby, why way, Lord why.
Speaker 3: And lots of walking up and down and people catching
Speaker 3: the spirit and it's long and whatever.
Speaker 2: When my husband went to my father's funeral, he's like,
Speaker 2: why is this so long?
Speaker 3: What's what?
Speaker 2: The open casket? What is all this stuff?
Speaker 3: Like the oh, Lord, help them to do this, help them?
Speaker 3: And then hey, would you like some chicken? So it's
Speaker 3: a different experience. So I think I wrote from the
Speaker 3: perspective how I had learned to do grief, and I
Speaker 3: think that there are not as many books, and they
Speaker 3: certainly are now, but at the time, there were not
Speaker 3: as many things about that experience we as in within
Speaker 3: finger parentheses, tends to be a homogeneous experience that is
Speaker 3: not black. And so when we say this is how
Speaker 3: we grieve, and you see these movies about funerals, read
Speaker 3: books about funerals, rey books about grieving, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't relate to this at all. So I think
Speaker 3: a lot of people did relate to the outward way
Speaker 3: that we grieve, which is the talking about it and
Speaker 3: the crying about it and in some ways over the
Speaker 3: top things. Although I think every ethnic or religious tradition
Speaker 3: has food as part of the tradition, it's different. I
Speaker 3: set shiva with my husband's family when his mother died,
Speaker 3: and that is a much longer process, but my mother
Speaker 3: in law's body was in the ground in twenty four hours,
Speaker 3: so it's a different compartmentalization of it. I think that
Speaker 3: because there had not been as many mainstream grief writers.
Speaker 3: Now you've got like Tim Bilocke's book From Scratch, which
Speaker 3: was a wonderful Netflix movie, and a lot of other
Speaker 3: people writing about grief in different ways, both widowhood and otherwise.
Speaker 3: And once again, all of our situations are different, but
Speaker 3: just even acknowledging it, even acknowledging that we may grieve
Speaker 3: differently because we are black, or a Christian or Muslim
Speaker 3: or atheist, in particularly against the backdrop of a different
Speaker 3: culture or religion. Just acknowledging that's different, and not trying
Speaker 3: to claim a universal experience or not see ourselves any
Speaker 3: quote unquote universal experience and say, well, nobody relates to me.
Speaker 2: It was important to name those things to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I'm wondering are there other books or movies
Speaker 1: or things that you've seen that you feel like have
Speaker 1: also done a really good job of really providing context
Speaker 1: to all of the things that could be grief. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned from scratch, Are there other things that have
Speaker 1: been helpful for you?
Speaker 3: I and it was. It's not a great show, but
Speaker 3: it had some moments. It was originally on BT plus
Speaker 3: The First Wives Club, the version that they did on
Speaker 3: TV with Jill Scott. There is a scene in the
Speaker 3: third season where one of the friends dies and these
Speaker 3: are like bougie people, so I speak bougie as well.
Speaker 2: So the way that there is a.
Speaker 3: I'm making a scene or not making a scene, or
Speaker 3: I'm being passive aggressive in my beautiful hat. That whole
Speaker 3: thing I related to very much in the way that
Speaker 3: there's always a friend who's trying to make it right,
Speaker 3: and always a friend who refuses to be right, and
Speaker 3: mothers and people with long secrets and stuff and long grudges.
Speaker 2: Everyone has that.
Speaker 3: But the way in which the bougie black people among
Speaker 3: us can make that happen felt really familiar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I enjoyed that the whole series, but the third
Speaker 1: season I thought was done well. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned your or other along in your healing
Speaker 1: journey now and you're able to support your son differently,
Speaker 1: What do you feel like healing does look like for
Speaker 1: you right now? And are there things that still come
Speaker 1: up for you that like trigger this oh immediate sense
Speaker 1: of like grief and lass even still now.
Speaker 2: That's a wonderful question.
Speaker 3: I think that part of answering that question is something
Speaker 3: that you were giving me that a lot of people
Speaker 3: don't give her the people, which is they compartmentalize grief
Speaker 3: and go, Okay, you're over it, great, bye, and they
Speaker 3: don't check back in and they don't come back. So yes,
Speaker 3: it's been almost nine years, which is so crazy to
Speaker 3: me because it feels like fifty years in two days.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it just depending on where I am. I think
Speaker 3: what healing looks like has also been exacerbated and enhanced
Speaker 3: by having moved. We were in one house when Scott passed,
Speaker 3: and then my mother and I and my son moved
Speaker 3: to a different house several months later because my landlord
Speaker 3: were selling the house and we weren't going to buy it.
Speaker 3: And then we lived in another place in West Palm
Speaker 3: a house he never saw, so that was very poignant
Speaker 3: to me for four years. And then I'm back in
Speaker 3: my hometown in Baltimore and a house that he has
Speaker 3: never seen, And I have to think about sometimes. Would
Speaker 3: he have liked this house, Maybe not, but he wanted
Speaker 3: to live right in Baltimore City, probably not. Would he
Speaker 3: have been mad that my son was not playing football,
Speaker 3: because I like his brains in his head, he would
Speaker 3: have had a problem. But also that gives me space
Speaker 3: to remember that I'm not the same Leslie I was
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen, and Scott would not have been the
Speaker 3: same Scott in twenty twenty four. Then he was in
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen. So I had a discussion yesterday with some
Speaker 3: friends about, oh, our husbands, I don't have a husband. Oh,
Speaker 3: we could all go out and our husbands could hang out.
Speaker 3: I'm like, wah, wah, you know she's standing alone. So
Speaker 3: in those moments, I mean, I have whatever moved on.
Speaker 3: Looks like I have dated since then, no one, super seriously.
Speaker 3: I have a person that I see currently. I don't
Speaker 3: know if I'm ever going to get married again. Right now,
Speaker 3: I don't feel the need to because I'm financially supported
Speaker 3: by me and I have a son who is where
Speaker 3: he is. I don't need someone to come back in
Speaker 3: and be both emotionally.
Speaker 2: Responsible for me or my child.
Speaker 3: And this is going to sound people are gonna go,
Speaker 3: oh no, but you read so many things about women
Speaker 3: who didn't trust people who come in and take their stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, when they remarry or recouple. And my stuff
Speaker 3: is my sons. My stuff is not for anybody else
Speaker 3: but me and my son and anyone that we should
Speaker 3: decide to give it to. So I'm not in a
Speaker 3: real hurry to seed that control to anyone. And that's
Speaker 3: a self protection that's good at first. It seemed like
Speaker 3: that was just something I was doing because I was healing.
Speaker 2: No, not really.
Speaker 3: It's also because it's a good way to be when
Speaker 3: you're now the single parent, the solo parent. Now my
Speaker 3: mother's not here. She got married almost two years ago.
Speaker 3: I moved out, so it's just me and the boy.
Speaker 3: So healing looks like autonomy. Healing looks like being able
Speaker 3: to do certain things. I used to basically hold my
Speaker 3: anniversary and the anniversary of my husband's death as like days,
Speaker 3: and I don't have to do that anymore. It's nice
Speaker 3: to look at them and say, it would have been
Speaker 3: a nice time, but I don't feel me to. I
Speaker 3: don't have to like go away anymore, or like have
Speaker 3: a sad thing where I have a drink and eat
Speaker 3: a bunch of popcorn or something. You know.
Speaker 2: I don't have to do that anymore. And healing looks like.
Speaker 3: A future where I can remember those things but not
Speaker 3: be struck down in my place where I'm standing because
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 1: Was it difficult for you to leave Florida and move
Speaker 1: to a completely different state.
Speaker 3: Oh no, it was not, And that may have been
Speaker 3: because it happened in twenty twenty, where everything as you
Speaker 3: know changed. We had been thinking about moving. My book
Speaker 3: came out in twenty twenty, in March. It came out
Speaker 3: about a week before Lockdown happened, which unfortunately had a
Speaker 3: detriment to the sales, and that kind of thing that
Speaker 3: I had to grieve too. I had agrieve this idea
Speaker 3: of what that was going to be. I was supposed
Speaker 3: to go to New York and be on this day
Speaker 3: show canceled. I was supposed to be in person at
Speaker 3: book conn and New York canceled. I had a small
Speaker 3: tour between Miami and New York and Baltimore and New
Speaker 3: Orleans done, and I got to do some of those
Speaker 3: things online from a zoom someplace, but it's not the same.
Speaker 3: So the paper that I worked for had been bought.
Speaker 3: They started laying people off. We started having furloughs. I thought, Oh,
Speaker 3: this isn't going to be sustainable, and it was just
Speaker 3: time to go. My mother was seeing her now husband,
Speaker 3: who had been her sweetheart at Morgan State University in
Speaker 3: the sixties. My grandmother, who passed this year. At that
Speaker 3: point was in her early nineties and my mother really
Speaker 3: wanted to be close to her. They lived about forty
Speaker 3: five minutes away from us, and it was just time
Speaker 3: to go, so starting over. I felt weird about leaving
Speaker 3: the grave?
Speaker 2: Is that weird? And I've bought the place next to him.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'll actually be buried there because
Speaker 3: I don't live there anymore, So i'd have to have
Speaker 3: a funeral there fifty years from now, and who's going
Speaker 3: to go, who's gonna come see it, whatever, So that's
Speaker 3: a whole thing, and that's guilt. But I felt guilty
Speaker 3: about leaving him. The morning that we moved, I drove by,
Speaker 3: I drove brooks By and say goodbye. And I've been
Speaker 3: back a couple times to Florida to see him, put
Speaker 3: rocks on the grave per Jewish tradition and just talk
Speaker 3: to him, how you know, brough us up. But he's everywhere.
Speaker 3: I don't need to go there to see him. His
Speaker 3: spirit does not live in that box, it does not
Speaker 3: live in that that field. So if I need to
Speaker 3: talk to Scott, I can do it sort of anywhere.
Speaker 3: I have guilt sometimes about being happy, and I know
Speaker 3: it's weird for people because I'll go I'm really happy
Speaker 3: and They'll look like like I'm not supposed to ever
Speaker 3: be again, and I'm not the happy that I was
Speaker 3: with him, but it has to be a good happy because.
Speaker 2: Otherwise I was forty four years old.
Speaker 3: I'm never supposed to be happy for the rest of
Speaker 3: my life, and so I've let go a lot of
Speaker 3: the guilt about saying things like I am happy.
Speaker 1: So who are you able to have those kinds of
Speaker 1: conversations with? I guess would be your twin. But are
Speaker 1: there people in your circle who like allow you to
Speaker 1: still have those days where you maybe do feel guilt
Speaker 1: around like, oh, I haven't been to visit or what
Speaker 1: does this mean I'm never going to get married? Like
Speaker 1: wh who's able to support you in those kinds of conversations.
Speaker 3: So many of my close girlfriends, many of them have
Speaker 3: lost parents. I've had friends whose partners have not died,
Speaker 3: but have had serious physical issues or devastating injuries or
Speaker 3: that kind of thing, so they have their own grief
Speaker 3: and also making it okay to say to them, you
Speaker 3: can talk to me about that, we're not comparing. I
Speaker 3: relate to those as a couple of those friends, and
Speaker 3: I can say it's okay to be sad about the
Speaker 3: loss of the life that you thought you were living
Speaker 3: and yes, you still hear and you've made it a
Speaker 3: different thing.
Speaker 2: But it's okay to grieve that.
Speaker 3: It's okay to grieve the thing that you had before,
Speaker 3: the thing that you thought, because we all are in
Speaker 3: different ways. And to just listen. I have so many
Speaker 3: people who will just listen. And one of my best
Speaker 3: friend's current husbands was widowed and so we've bonded over
Speaker 3: that and he sees it from a different perspective. When
Speaker 3: I wrote my book, I had written that first chapter
Speaker 3: really raw, and then had gone through several rounds of
Speaker 3: editing and I think we had edited out some of
Speaker 3: the rawness and I said it to him.
Speaker 2: He goes, what is this? No, put it back? Put
Speaker 2: it back?
Speaker 3: And I said to my editor, yeah, okay, so my
Speaker 3: other widow friends, I had to put it back, so
Speaker 3: I will and it worked. It worked, and he goes,
Speaker 3: that was the point of it was that you were
Speaker 3: like untethered and raw in those first several hours. And
Speaker 3: that's what I'm going to relate to. That's what other
Speaker 3: people will relate to, no matter what their journey is.
Speaker 3: So I am so lucky to have those people to
Speaker 3: talk to.
Speaker 1: So there's somebody who's enjoying our conversation, who has recently
Speaker 1: become a widow. What kinds of things would you offer
Speaker 1: to them? Is there something you wish you would have known,
Speaker 1: or things that you feel like could be helpful.
Speaker 3: What I always say to new widowed people is to
Speaker 3: take it easy on yourself.
Speaker 2: And that's harder.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it looks if you do not have the support
Speaker 3: that I have, if you don't have the day to
Speaker 3: day physical people helping you take care of your kids
Speaker 3: or driving you around or doing whatever it is those
Speaker 3: physical things that need to happen, not just the emotional things.
Speaker 3: And I would say, find one or two people who
Speaker 3: can do that for you, who will let you just be,
Speaker 3: who are not gonna let you like drown, but they're
Speaker 3: gonna know instinctively when to grab you, when to let
Speaker 3: you alone, like my mother did.
Speaker 2: And just to know that.
Speaker 3: You don't have to do anything. You don't owe it
Speaker 3: to anybody. Don't want to be a terror and be
Speaker 3: like terrible on purpose. But you also don't have to
Speaker 3: watch your words in ways. You don't have to like
Speaker 3: start a war. But I said to my sister, stop
Speaker 3: me from like biting people's heads off. But if I
Speaker 3: talk about people badly in my room. I'm gonna do that.
Speaker 3: That's gonna happen. I said something.
Speaker 2: She goes leslie.
Speaker 3: I go no, no, I get to be sad and
Speaker 3: mad and hate people irrationally right now.
Speaker 2: Don't let me like.
Speaker 3: Throw things at them at the funeral. But I'm gonna
Speaker 3: feel how I feel. And she goes got it and
Speaker 3: it never happened again. It's like, what are my parameters?
Speaker 2: What am I supposed to do?
Speaker 3: And find people who will give you space to grieve
Speaker 3: and who will tell other people let her sleep right now?
Speaker 3: Who will answer the phone and go, yes, she'll call
Speaker 3: you back. Who will help you make excuses? People would
Speaker 3: ask me to do things. They were being very nice.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I want to go out, sometimes I didn't, and
Speaker 3: my mother was home with my son, and she would say,
Speaker 3: if you need to do it, If you don't, just
Speaker 3: say you're tired, you're busy, make of an excuse, or
Speaker 3: don't say I just don't want.
Speaker 2: To and don't.
Speaker 1: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that
Speaker 1: with us. So where can we stay connected with you?
Speaker 1: Where can we get a copy of the book and
Speaker 1: follow up with your work? What's your website? As well
Speaker 1: as any social media channels you'd like to share.
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, okay, So you can find me at
Speaker 3: I need to update at more or Leslie Grace Streater
Speaker 3: dot com. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram
Speaker 3: and on Facebook as Leslie Gracetreeter. You can find me
Speaker 3: at The Baltimore Banner, which is my full time gig
Speaker 3: where I write a column two days a week. You
Speaker 3: can find me on my podcast that I do with
Speaker 3: my town sister, Find Beats and Cheeses.
Speaker 2: We are on Spotify and.
Speaker 3: Apple and all those other things that you can find
Speaker 3: us on. And I have new projects and things happening
Speaker 3: that I can't talk about yet right now. But if
Speaker 3: you keep up and I'll have to update the website
Speaker 3: and you follow me on social media pretty soon you
Speaker 3: will figure out those cool things.
Speaker 1: And the book is available where all books are available,
Speaker 1: where all.
Speaker 2: Books are available.
Speaker 3: I'm, like I said, it's almost four years old now,
Speaker 3: which is weird to me because I feel like I've
Speaker 3: missed two years during the crux of COVID. Although we
Speaker 3: are still in COVID, we are still in a pandemic,
Speaker 3: very high rates of it right now, honestly, but you
Speaker 3: can find it on Amazon, you can find it on
Speaker 3: all of your online situations. And occasionally I'll walk into
Speaker 3: a bookstore it'll be there too, and that's fun.
Speaker 1: We will be short to include all of that in
Speaker 1: our show notes. Thank you so much for spending some
Speaker 1: time with us today, Leslie. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad Leslie was able to join us for
Speaker 1: this episode. To learn more about her and her work,
Speaker 1: be sure to visit the show notes at Therapy for
Speaker 1: Blackgirls dot Com slash Session three point fifty two, and
Speaker 1: don't forget to text two of your girls right now
Speaker 1: and tell them to check out the episode. If you're
Speaker 1: looking for a therapist in your area, visit our therapist
Speaker 1: directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory. And
Speaker 1: if you want to continue digging into this topic or
Speaker 1: just be in community with other sisters, come on over
Speaker 1: and join us in the Sister Circle. It's our cozy
Speaker 1: corner of the Internet designed just for black women. You
Speaker 1: can join us at community dot Therapy for Blackgirls dot com.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Frida Lucas and Ziria Taylor.
Speaker 1: Editing was done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much
Speaker 1: for joining me again this week. I look forward to
Speaker 1: continuing this conversation with you all real soon. Take good care,
Speaker 1: what