The phone rings in the middle of the night. In an instant, life shatters into fragments. When facing catastrophic loss, we stand at a profound crossroads—a moment where every assumption about how the world works suddenly comes into question. “Everything I was told about how the world operates was clearly a lie,” explains Suzanne Jabour, describing the aftermath of losing her adult son in 2020. This moment of devastating clarity marks not just an ending, but the beginning of an extraordinary journey to rebuild a life that no longer resembles what came before.
Grief transforms us. While we may resist this transformation initially, clinging to familiar patterns and expectations, the rebuilding process ultimately demands that we reassess everything—our relationships, our priorities, our sense of purpose, and even our fundamental understanding of how life works. The path of rebuilding after loss isn’t about returning to who we were; it’s about consciously deciding who we will become.
Catastrophic loss creates a fork in the road where we must make countless decisions, both small and monumental, while navigating overwhelming emotions and cognitive challenges. As Jabour describes it, she found herself “standing with my arms full of these big, huge 3D puzzle pieces… and a whole bunch of other puzzle pieces on the ground around me. And that was me. I now was in these little pieces, and I had to decide which ones to pick up and take with me.”
This metaphor perfectly captures the essence of rebuilding after loss—it’s not just about healing; it’s about consciously choosing which parts of yourself and your life you’ll carry forward, and which parts you’ll leave behind. This process of selection and transformation may be the most profound decision-making journey any of us will undertake.
The Decision to Be Conscious and Curious
When catastrophic grief shatters our world, the overwhelming nature of loss can make even the simplest decisions feel impossible. Suzanne Jabour describes the phenomenon of “grief brain”—that sensation where “your brain is all of a sudden made of mashed potatoes… flavorless, smooth, nothing.” This cognitive fog makes the rebuilding process challenging at its most fundamental level.
In the face of this challenge, Jabour made a pivotal choice that would guide her entire rebuilding process: “I got a download very early on that the path for me was to be conscious and curious.”
Consciousness, as she defines it, meant “allowing all of the emotions to be okay, to be acceptable. Even the ones from the bad negative list, the ones that were overwhelming, the ones that were all tangled—that just had to all be okay.” This decision to fully experience grief rather than suppress it represented a fundamental break from cultural norms, especially in Western societies where emotional containment is often valued over expression.
“The stuffing that we do so well, especially in North America and Western culture, was not going to work,” Jabour explains. “That was not going to be survivable.”
The second part of her approach—curiosity—involved asking questions about what needed to happen next, even at the most basic level. “In the very earliest days, it’s about what has to get done today,” she notes. This curiosity-driven approach led to practical survival strategies: “One hard thing, and then the rest of the day, the to-do list was to breathe. And that was literally the list, one hard thing… and then breathe.”
When Amy Stone asks about the cognitive and emotional struggles in early grief, Jabour emphasizes the importance of this conscious curiosity even about physical symptoms: “When you’re crying so hard that you can only gasp for breath, how do you oxygenate your body? Like, you can’t do that for a long period of time because that doesn’t feel survivable.”
By consciously deciding to remain present with her emotions while curiously exploring ways to navigate them, Jabour created a foundation for rebuilding that honored the reality of her loss rather than attempting to bypass it.
Reassessing Relationships and Priorities
Perhaps one of the most significant shifts that occurs in the rebuilding process involves our relationships with others. When catastrophic loss happens, it often forces a profound reassessment of who and what truly matters in our lives.
“I rebuilt relationships,” Jabour explains. “Relationships completely transformed my focus on what’s important in the world and how I want to be.” This transformation included shedding patterns that no longer served her, particularly people-pleasing behaviors: “I’m a recovering people pleaser. That all went by the wayside, in a way that I think was shocking to a lot of people because I had no capacity to do that anymore.”
This lack of capacity extends beyond people-pleasing to a broader intolerance for superficial concerns: “I still, I mean, it’s almost five years now since Ben died, I have very limited capacity for bullshit and complaining and gossip and whining.”
The decision to reallocate her emotional energy represented a fundamental shift in how she approached relationships: “I think what happens for us when something truly catastrophic happens, our capacity to relate with people for whom catastrophic is ‘they didn’t have the kind of milk I wanted at the store today’ is severely limited.”
This reassessment doesn’t mean abandoning relationships entirely, but rather redefining them based on a new understanding of what matters. It’s about consciously choosing which connections to nurture and which to let go—another aspect of deciding which puzzle pieces to pick up and which to leave behind.
Amy Stone reinforces this point when she observes, “Everybody I know who’s got enough life experience to have experienced some pretty hard stuff, they do have their own version of what you were talking about, which is like, I’m no longer willing to be frustrated by the following things…”
This process of reassessing relationships and priorities isn’t just about saying “no” to things that don’t matter; it’s also about saying “yes” to what truly does. For Jabour, this meant finding a new purpose in educating others about grief: “It became so obviously clear to me that as a collective, we didn’t know enough about grief, and we didn’t know how to support people, and we didn’t know what was happening to us if we were the griever.”
Finding Purpose Through Pain
One of the most remarkable aspects of rebuilding after catastrophic loss is how it can redirect our sense of purpose and mission in life. When Jabour experienced the loss of her son, she was at a professional crossroads, having just completed coaching training and preparing to launch a new program.
“The programs that I had designed and was launching as Ben died, I don’t know, they might come back at some point because they’re still important,” she reflects. “But it became so obviously clear to me that as a collective, we didn’t know enough about grief.”
This realization sparked a profound shift in her professional focus. Rather than continuing on her planned path, she decided to channel her experience and skills into educating others about grief: “If I could be a voice for people who don’t feel comfortable talking about it, so they could say to a friend, ‘Hey, you want to understand what’s happening to me? Go listen to this podcast. This woman talks about it.'”
This decision to transform personal tragedy into a mission to help others represents one of the most powerful forms of rebuilding. It doesn’t erase the pain of loss, but it creates meaning from it—a meaning that extends beyond personal healing to potentially benefit countless others facing similar struggles.
“That really became my focus and my passion,” Jabour explains. “How can I do everything I can in my one precious life to push this conversation, to shift this paradigm, to change this system, because it’s systemic. Our lack of knowledge, our gap in care, our misunderstanding of how to reach out and support people…”
This transformation of purpose wasn’t immediate or easy. It emerged gradually from the process of conscious curiosity that Jabour had committed to from the beginning. By remaining open to what might emerge from her grief—rather than trying to force herself back into her pre-loss plans—she discovered a new path that honored both her son’s memory and her own evolving identity.
Amy Stone raises an important question about preparation: “Do you actually think that you could have been more prepared or well prepared for this to happen to you?” Jabour’s response is illuminating: “No. I think the way that we prepare is to be living in such a way that our foundation is strong and we know how to regulate our system when it gets disregulated.”
This insight reveals an important aspect of purpose after loss: sometimes the most meaningful purpose isn’t one we could have predicted or planned for. It emerges organically from the process of rebuilding, reflecting both who we were before the loss and who we’re becoming after it.
Embracing a New Identity
At the heart of rebuilding after catastrophic loss lies perhaps the most profound decision of all: who will we become now that our former life has been irrevocably altered? This question of identity shapes every other aspect of the rebuilding process.
“I also was really clear in knowing that the person who I was before that phone call no longer existed,” Jabour reflects. This recognition—that catastrophic loss changes us at our core—can be terrifying, but it also opens the door to conscious transformation.
The process of rebuilding identity after loss isn’t about creating something entirely new; rather, it’s about selectively incorporating elements of our former selves while making space for new growth. Jabour describes this using her puzzle piece metaphor: “I had to decide which ones to pick up and take with me.”
This decision-making process requires both honesty about what no longer fits and courage to explore new possibilities. For Jabour, certain aspects of her pre-loss identity fell away naturally: “I’m a recovering people pleaser. That all went by the wayside.” Other aspects became more pronounced or evolved in new directions, such as her desire to educate others about grief.
An essential part of this identity rebuilding involves making peace with the permanent nature of the change. As Amy Stone observes, catastrophic loss creates “a fork in the road of the future.” There’s no going back to who we were before; there’s only moving forward into who we’ll become.
This forward movement doesn’t mean forgetting the lost loved one. On the contrary, incorporating their memory becomes an integral part of the new identity. When Stone asks Jabour to share a memory of her son, Jabour responds with beautiful reflections about Ben’s unique perspective and how it enriched her life: “I just always really loved seeing the world through his lens… the way that he saw the world and the way that he saw how things worked or what was interesting or what was important was so different from how I saw it.”
These memories don’t remain static; they evolve and integrate into the new identity being formed. The love remains, though transformed, becoming part of the foundation upon which the new self is built.
The Courage to Rebuild
Rebuilding life after catastrophic loss requires tremendous courage—not the flashy kind celebrated in action movies, but the quiet, persistent kind that gets up each morning and faces overwhelming grief with consciousness and curiosity. It’s the courage to sit with unbearable emotions, to make decisions when your brain feels like “mashed potatoes,” to let go of people and patterns that no longer fit, and to embrace a new identity and purpose without knowing exactly where they’ll lead.
This rebuilding process isn’t linear or predictable. Some days bring progress, others setbacks. Some decisions feel clear, others impossibly complex. But through it all, the conscious choice to remain engaged with the process—rather than numbing out or giving up—creates the possibility for transformation.
As Jabour explains, “I think how we prepare ourselves for life’s ups and downs, whether they’re big or little, is to really know what’s important to us. Know what our moral compass says, what our values are, live according to those and really have a sense of what’s important and what’s not important and what’s mine to own.”
This preparation doesn’t prevent catastrophic loss or eliminate its pain, but it does provide a foundation for rebuilding when the unthinkable happens. It gives us something to stand on when everything else falls away.
In sharing her story, Jabour offers not just insights about grief, but a powerful testament to human resilience and our capacity for meaningful transformation even in the face of our greatest fears. Her journey reminds us that while we cannot control much of what happens to us, we can decide how we respond—which pieces we pick up, which we leave behind, and what we build with those we choose to carry forward.
Through conscious decisions made day by day, moment by moment, we can rebuild lives that honor both what we’ve lost and what we’re becoming—lives that reflect not just our pain, but our courage, our values, and our enduring capacity for growth and connection.
This article was inspired by a thought-provoking interview with Suzanne Jabour and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Interview Transcript Suzanne Jabour with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | June 20, 2025
Amy Stone [00:00:05]:
Jabor. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. Are you ready for a fun chat?
Suzanne Jabour [00:00:10]:
I am ready for a fun chat.
Amy Stone [00:00:12]:
Yay. Let’s do it. All right, I start every interview by asking people where they call home. Where are you these days?
Suzanne Jabour [00:00:19]:
I am in Vancouver, Canada. So British Columbia, just north of Seattle. So if you’re in the US and you know anything about Seattle, it’s exactly that. Except Canada.
Amy Stone [00:00:26]:
Exactly. So I have done several interviews with people who are in the Seattle, Vancouver area. And the thing I always mention is I do believe that it is the longest flight and longest nonstop flight is Miami, where I live, to Seattle.
Suzanne Jabour [00:00:41]:
Oh, I bet it is.
Amy Stone [00:00:42]:
Yeah. So. And it’s a flight worthy of getting the nonstop, because if you break it up, forget about it. That’s a long day. That’s a long day. All right, so in a second, we’re going to start the official topic of the interview, but before we do, I want to ask one more get to know you question, which is share with us, me in the audience, something about you that is a hobby, a passion, a something you love, but it’s not work or family related.
Suzanne Jabour [00:01:10]:
That’s such a hard question because both of my hobbies I do with family, so I actually had to think of one that like, no one in my family does with me. And so I would say for me, that hobby that keeps me going is being in nature. So going for walks down to the. I live quite close to the beach. I’m very, very lucky. So it’s a 10 minute walk down to the beach where there is not really surf, but there’s water, or I can get very quickly into a forest. So for me, that’s the thing. Get me into some nature.
Amy Stone [00:01:41]:
That’s wonderful. That is wonderful. I love that. So walking by the beach, hiking in the forest, all of that, that’s a fantastic passion. Okay, so we are going to get to the topic of which is rebuilding your life after the death of your adult son. I know you’ve talked a lot about this and it’s a thing you’re comfortable with, but are you ready to have one more conversation with me about this?
Suzanne Jabour [00:02:04]:
Yeah, absolutely. Because I think that first of all, I love that you were like, let’s have a fun conversation. And I’m like, all in. Because it doesn’t need to be a heavy conversation. So for people that are already like, ooh, fast forward, don’t want to talk about this, it really is not going to be a heavy, hard conversation. And I am always ready to have a conversation about it, because if we were having more conversations about it, about grief and loss and rebuilding, we would be much better adulting.
Amy Stone [00:02:31]:
Yeah, it is. It is a part of the human experience, and it’s one of those things that most of us are not. We don’t have the life experience to really be good at it and be trained in it. And it’s one. It falls into this. I have a list of things that we do a terrible job of preparing each other for. Like I said, we do a terrible job of preparing our kids for some of these things. That’s not always true. There are going to be families that have a lot of experience in this, but we do sort of. We do sort of segment it. So before we dig into the details of the intense story, I want to paint a little bit of a picture of your life before this happened so that we know. So I think you led into this. Was this an only child or are there other kids in your family? Tell me more about your family and what life was like before this happened.
Suzanne Jabour [00:03:15]:
Yeah, I have a daughter as well. And so Ben died in September of 2020. So if you can cast your mind back to that fun time.
Amy Stone [00:03:23]:
Ye.
Suzanne Jabour [00:03:25]:
You know, it was, as my daughter says, chaos and shenanigans globally. Chaos and shenanigans. Right. The world was literally on fire. We’re all locked down, various degrees of lockdown on and off. For Covid, as we tried to navigate that as a collective. There’s all kinds of civil unrest because of the George Floyd murder. All kinds of things were happening. It’s a very complicated time on the planet. So my daughter actually had eight years before that or so moved to Toronto, which is sort of eastern from here, as everything is, to go to school, and then was building her career there. She was one of the many, many Covid come home kids, as I call them, because as you know, airlines started to cancel flights and we started to see that really this was actually we were going to have to shelter in place. I wanted her here. So she had moved back in with Ben and I and, you know, with her one suitcase with, like, we’re so naive. Right. Just bring a couple pairs of leggings and like some T shirts in your PJs. Like, you’re only going to be here a couple weeks. Yeah, she’s still here. Needless to say, we have gone back and got all her stuff. But that was kind of life at that time. You know, we really were so happy to have her back because, you know, she was settled somewhere 3,000 miles away. And, and we were just all doing the best we knew how to try and navigate this strange thing that was happening to all of us. It’s, I think for me, you know, I’m in my mid-50s and it was the first time in my lifetime we’d had that kind of collective global experience. Like I wasn’t around for any of the world wars. So we had. Or, you know, the Great Depression or the plague or, you know, there’s all these kind of times where we had these collective planet human experiences. And that for me was kind of the first one. Yeah, that was really hard to navigate.
Amy Stone [00:05:10]:
Yeah. It was definitely lockdown was a collective experience for so many people. And there are others that have happened in our lifetime, but they’re flashes. Like we can ask people. So you and I are similar age. So I could ask you, where were you when the Challenger shuttle exploded? Right. That’s one of our generation. People who are older than us. You and I are too young to do this. Would ask each other, where were you when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? Those are flashes in time, but such an expansion.
Suzanne Jabour [00:05:36]:
But there are some things that specifically happened in the U.S. true.
Amy Stone [00:05:40]:
Well, that. And that is, that is a very us centered. I’m sure there are other international ones we. Oh, we could do. Where were you in the Wall? My earliest news memory that I remember is the Berlin Wall falling. Yes. Yeah. Like I remember seeing that on the news, but yeah, like those I did give absolutely us centered answers. Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:05:58]:
And ones that impact us. Like I remember when the Challenger exploded. I remember watching it. I remember that when the Twin Towers happened. So there are those kind of flash moments, but not something that was kind of sustained and where we had to really lean into helping each other.
Amy Stone [00:06:14]:
Yes.
Suzanne Jabour [00:06:14]:
And figuring out like, how are we going to do this?
Amy Stone [00:06:19]:
It’s so interesting. I love that you called it the COVID come home because so I live in Florida, which, you know, and we didn’t do as much of the lockdown as many other places did. We had a different thing, which is we invited everybody to come and hang out with us in Florida. So we did. But it was. Everybody came. Like I had a very, very full house. Everybody was in my life. Everything was around. I was like, okay, it’s time for you guys to go. Please go home. Please go home. When are you leaving? So, yeah, the love. You go. You know.
Suzanne Jabour [00:06:48]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:06:48]:
And that was hot.
Suzanne Jabour [00:06:50]:
When you’re not in my house. Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:06:51]:
That was totally not an option. All right, so let’s talk a little bit about exposure to grief and death before you went through this very personal experience, had you had other experiences with death of family members or friends or. And did you know anybody who had actually gone through the process of losing a child?
Suzanne Jabour [00:07:13]:
So, yes, I. And I. I want to preface what I’m going to say by saying we are very ill equipped. Our language is not rich when it comes to talking about grief. So when I say that I’m really grateful I had had close losses before Ben died, it’s not that I’m grateful people died, it’s that I’m grateful I had had that experience. So I had some skills in my toolbox, not enough of them at all. But yes, my dad died when I was in my early 30s, so far too young. And my mom died when I was in my mid-40s.
Amy Stone [00:07:47]:
Okay, so you had definitely.
Suzanne Jabour [00:07:48]:
So I had actually experienced the loss of both of my parents before Ben died. And yet I was wholly unprepared for the death of a child. There’s something about that out of order death that is next level. And I think also because Ben still lived with me, you know, he was still very. I think it’s similar with spouses. There’s. I see a lot of parallels with people who’ve lost spouses. It’s the people who are that intrinsically embedded in our day to day life.
Amy Stone [00:08:18]:
Okay, yeah, I see that.
Suzanne Jabour [00:08:20]:
So you’re losing like the person you come home and debrief with. You’re losing the person who you know is in your way that leaves their stuff in the kitchen, that makes a mess in the bathroom. But also like the person who took out the garbage, the person who did some of the groceries. Like, it’s those intrinsic, like embedded things that I also think makes the loss different.
Amy Stone [00:08:41]:
I can absolutely see that. So I have not experienced the loss of a child or. But I did. My dad died when I was in my mid-30s. So that’s the closest, closest person. And the reason I asked about your experience was that when I went through that, I had an impression as I was navigating it that I did not know anybody who had gone through a similar experience. It turned out actually that that was wrong. Like it was that I knew tons of people who had experienced it because it is a human experience. I just was looking in the wrong places. But that was my experience. And the things that were so interruptory, which is not a word, but all of the patterns and all of the habits, like the regular conversations and the holidays and the reminders and if you are l with somebody, that would be Almost every moment of every day. Yeah, that would be a much more intense process. All right, so you. But you did have some experience, which I do think. I think that learning how to talk about it, having experience, even watching other people, I think that, you know, there’s. It’s two sides of the same coin. It’s like one, it’s preparing you, and the other, you can’t actually prepare for things you haven’t gone through. So. Yeah, so that’s. You want to, but it’s hard. All right, so do you want to share with us and the audience the story of some of the details of how your son passed away so that we know what we’re talking about?
Suzanne Jabour [00:09:59]:
Yeah. So I, you know, literally lived every parent’s worst nightmare. My daughter and I had gone away for the weekend, and Ben decided not to come with us, which was fine. It was the, you know, that was fine. He’d been away with friends the week before and really, I think, was, you know, thrilled to have the apartment to himself because there’s three of us living in our apartment. That was for two people. And I got a middle of the night phone call, literally got that middle of the night phone call that parents dread from the police telling me that he had died. And that was as surreal, discombobulating, disorienting, confusing. Like, you know, we’re such sense making creatures that we immediately go to trying to make sense of things. And in grief especially, we’re trying to make sense of the nonsensical because it’s never going to make sense. I mean, ultimately, over time and work, it does make sense. But in the. In the immediate aftermath of getting the news or the person dying, it, It. We struggle a lot with making sense of it. Ben died of depression and anxiety.
Amy Stone [00:11:10]:
Okay.
Suzanne Jabour [00:11:11]:
Um. And many people would say he died by suicide, which is also the truth. I choose to say he died of depression and anxiety because I find it endlessly frustrating that we don’t treat mental illness the same way we treat physical illness.
Amy Stone [00:11:26]:
It is a puzzler. It is absolutely.
Suzanne Jabour [00:11:29]:
I mean, it’s really not a puzzler. It’s. There’s all kinds of reasons why that is and all kinds of, you know, ways that I can make sense of why we do that and why we’re stuck. And it’s not okay with me.
Amy Stone [00:11:39]:
So that’s why I choose to say I have, like. I mean, it’s one of those things that I accepted when I was younger because it’s just the way it is. But now as I get experience, I find it endlessly frustrating the things that we segment out as. Like, this is a different part of healthcare. So, you know, I can’t remove my teeth from my mouth, so why do I need separate dental insurance to cover my dental coverage. Right. Same with my eyeballs, with the glasses.
Suzanne Jabour [00:12:05]:
Right.
Amy Stone [00:12:06]:
You know, hearing aids. Why is this separate? Right. And the last time I checked, like, we talk about this, like, the mind body connection. I can’t separate those two. So somebody, you know, like, you know, your. Your lungs, they’re inside, and you go to the pulmonologist, but it’s connected. It’s all part of the system. But when we go to the brain, it’s super weird because neurosurgery would be part of the western medical system. But, like, your thoughts. Oh, yeah, sorry. That’s a whole other game, you know.
Suzanne Jabour [00:12:32]:
And completely siloed off. Yes, completely off from, like, what’s.
Amy Stone [00:12:38]:
Yeah. And one hand doesn’t talk to the other. Rules of, you know, and then, you know, and then there’s the other thing. Like, if you’re a woman, you’re like, oh, you’ve got your own doctor team. And, you know, like, I just. I do think that when you back up and you look at it, you’re like, well, why would that be? Like, why would that be? And I remember. So we have. We have many, many issues with health insurance in the United States, which my Canadian friends do a much better job with. But they. They passed. They were like, you don’t need. It was like, you’re going to make hearing aids more accessible so you don’t have to go through, like, a specialist. And I remember thinking about. I was like, why would anybody. Why wouldn’t this be available just to anybody? Like, why would you need to jump through hoops? Like, it’s like it should be. Do we. Do we want people to not be able to hear? Like, what’s the problem here anyway? I have opinions, obviously. Good thing I’m not in charge. All right, so anytime I talk to somebody about a family member that’s been sick or that has passed away, I like to take a second and flip it around a little bit. And. Because we’re talking about the end of this person’s life and the impact it had on you. But I do want to take a second and celebrate the person in their life, because people are more than the story of their illness and their death. So do you want to share with us something, a memory or something that was wonderful about Ben as a. As a memory of who he was as a living Person.
Suzanne Jabour [00:14:01]:
Yeah. And I love that question. Thank you so much. For those of you that are listening, that are supporters, please know we want to talk about our person. You will not make us sadder or make it worse by asking us about our person or sharing something if you knew them, that you’re remembering about them. That is a gift to us. So, yes. Thank you. This is a beautiful question. Oh, there’s just so many things. Ben was a magical unicorn, of course, because I’m his mother. And so I think. So I. What? I learned so much from him, which are the things that I kind of look back and think, you know, and look in the present and think, you know, there’s so many things that he was passionate about that I learned to be passionate about, or at least to try to understand why you would be passionate about them. Because of him. He loved fashion and art and architecture. He introduced me to opera. He was just very. He was highly gifted, so super, super smart. And also, the gifted brain works in a different. So getting to live life through the eyes of someone who sees things in a completely different way than someone like me. Like, I’m a pretty smart, typical kind of person.
Amy Stone [00:15:10]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:15:10]:
But the gifted brain works a different way, and the way that it integrates information is different. So I just always really loved seeing the world through his lens, which I think, as parents, we all kind of get that. You know, when we have toddlers and they’re, like, discovering the world, and it’s so fun to kind of embrace that and rediscover the world with them.
Amy Stone [00:15:28]:
Yes.
Suzanne Jabour [00:15:28]:
And then that continued on, because the way that he saw the world and the way that he saw how things worked or what was interesting or what was important was so different from how I saw it. And so we could just have endless conversations about what he thought versus what I thought and come to some kind of common ground or agree to disagree or whatever it was. But those conversations were always so, so interesting.
Amy Stone [00:15:53]:
I love that memory. And it’s so true about young kids and their joy of discovering things and how much fun it is. And then, as somebody who has been through four rounds of kids that age, there’s also that moment when you’re with them where you’re like, all right, I understand that this sand is endlessly fascinating, but now it’s time to leave.
Suzanne Jabour [00:16:11]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:16:14]:
All right. These worms are really, really cool, and they need to stay in the park. Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:16:19]:
Yeah. And they’re not coming home with us.
Amy Stone [00:16:21]:
How many sticks do we need to bring home from today’s walk? Exactly. Exactly. All Right. So as I mentioned, I have not experienced the loss of a. Of a child. Right. What I. And my experience with my, with my grief. My closest experience with grief was with the passing of my dad. One of the things that fascinates me about this, we’re talking about decisions that you made, reinventing your life after this. The 12 to 18 months after my dad passed away was so overwhelming and so like so much pressure. Just the physical grief and all of the emotional things. It’s a weird combination because there are a million decisions that have to be made. And I was terrible at that point at making decisions. So, I mean, I just really thought that was kind of a big problem, to be honest.
Suzanne Jabour [00:17:11]:
It’s totally true. We’re asking an inhuman thing of people when we want them, when they have grief brain, to make these really important, permanent decisions.
Amy Stone [00:17:18]:
Yeah, terrible.
Suzanne Jabour [00:17:19]:
The setup is terrible.
Amy Stone [00:17:20]:
The setup is really rough. And the. The thing I wanted to ask you is now today you do a lot of talking about grief and. But did. Were you somebody who had an interest in grief and things like that before this, or was it something that you discovered through the process?
Suzanne Jabour [00:17:35]:
Yeah, I. So just before Ben died, I had just finished my coaching training.
Amy Stone [00:17:40]:
Okay.
Suzanne Jabour [00:17:41]:
And I was about to launch a completely different program that had nothing to do with grief, which of course that all fell apart and I just shelved everything because as you say that first. It’s really about the first two years. But yeah, 12 to 18 months of just really not sure which way is up and how the world works. Absolutely normal. And I really knew for me, even though I had experienced the death of my dad and my mom, so I think that second death of a parent, when you become an orphan is also a big deal.
Amy Stone [00:18:11]:
That’s what.
Suzanne Jabour [00:18:12]:
Yeah, I don’t necessarily tell us about, but it’s a big deal. So I’d had both of those. But I still. I just knew. I did not know enough about what was happening to me. I didn’t understand it well enough. I didn’t know what sim. You know, which symptoms were normal. And I talk about this in my TEDx talk. It’s like that sense of like, why didn’t anyone tell me this was coming. Yes, why aren’t we having this conversation? And even the other day I was messaging. Oh, I was talking with a client and saying, you know, there’s a physical pain, like your whole body hurts, your muscles are weak, like, even your teeth hurt. And he was like, wait, that’s exactly me. I’m like, yeah, because that’s normal. But Nobody tells you about it. So it really was that sense of, like, is what’s happening to me normal? And getting some comfort from knowing that it was. Doesn’t make it go away, but it makes it less scary.
Amy Stone [00:19:02]:
It makes it. You’re not losing your mind.
Suzanne Jabour [00:19:05]:
Yeah. Because I really, for a time.
Amy Stone [00:19:06]:
Really? Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:19:07]:
I was scared what was happening to my brain.
Amy Stone [00:19:09]:
Yeah, no, very similar. Like, not different experience. But I was calling. I called a therapist for advice on how to talk to my kids about it because I had no idea what I was doing. And. And they. That person asked me, they said, how are you? And I. I just said. I said, yeah, I really think I might be going crazy. Like, I might be losing my mind. And they. They were like, tell me about it. And then they’re like, no, no, this is grief. This is grief. And it was an enormous weight off my chest because just like you said, it was the very first time that I had ever actually experienced that an emotion could be so strong that it would be physically painful.
Suzanne Jabour [00:19:43]:
Yes. Yeah. And that your brain just does not work. It’s like your brain is all of a sudden made of mashed potatoes.
Amy Stone [00:19:50]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:19:50]:
You know, flavorless, smooth. Nothing. Like, just nothing.
Amy Stone [00:19:55]:
Just nothing. Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:19:56]:
And I also was really clear in knowing that the person who I was before that phone call no longer existed.
Amy Stone [00:20:05]:
You really did. I mean, you. This is a situation that is so famously scary and emotional that it shows up in movies. Like, they. They cinematize it because the drama is right there. It is. You live through the thing that is the experience that mo. That most of us will not go through. And we fear. You know, that’s. We were talking about our phones being on do not disturb before we started this interview and I shared how my kids are. The only. The only time my phone rings is when the kids call and my heart pounds because I am afraid of not even this, but a car accident, you know, which we. We have. We have. I have a million. We have been through that. Like. Like, we have the fender bender. Like, it’s like, you know that part. But ye. I. I am.
Suzanne Jabour [00:20:57]:
And the flip side of it for me is my phone is not on do not disturb, even overnight.
Amy Stone [00:21:01]:
Yeah, No, I.
Suzanne Jabour [00:21:04]:
If they need to phone me, my phone needs to ring.
Amy Stone [00:21:07]:
Oh, yeah. No, I can.
Suzanne Jabour [00:21:09]:
So it’s so interesting.
Amy Stone [00:21:11]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:21:12]:
And I talk to people all the time. We’re like, oh, how can you have your phone on in the nighttime? And I’m like, because I’ve received a middle of the night phone call that I would not have wanted to miss.
Amy Stone [00:21:21]:
Yes. Right. No. 100%.
Suzanne Jabour [00:21:24]:
It’s so interesting how our experiences really shape even our relationship with technology.
Amy Stone [00:21:30]:
100%. Yeah. No, it’s. It’s definitely. It’s definitely there. And my experience with. With grief was that I made the phone call, like, so my dad didn’t. My dad didn’t call me back, so I had to call and inquire. So I didn’t get the call. I made the call. But getting the call and having that be on the other end, I can see how that would absolutely be a fork in the road of the future.
Suzanne Jabour [00:21:51]:
Yeah. And I. And I think because I had that. Knowing that meant I had to start to make decisions, little tiny ones. Because I also knew my brain didn’t work very well.
Amy Stone [00:22:04]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:22:05]:
About who I was going to be now. Like, who was I next? What was important to me. And I had such a strong. And I’ve tried to get AI to help me make the picture, and I can’t get it right. But in my head, I had such a strong image of me standing with my arms full of, like, Those big, huge 3D puzzle pieces, like on Survivor.
Amy Stone [00:22:25]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:22:26]:
And a whole bunch of other puzzle pieces on the ground around me. And that was me. Like, I now was in these little pieces, and I had to decide which ones to pick up and take with me.
Amy Stone [00:22:38]:
Yes. Okay. Yeah. I see.
Suzanne Jabour [00:22:40]:
And my arms are already full and I can see parts of, like, who I am and what was important to me and what I mattered. And, like, it’s all on the ground and my arms are already full.
Amy Stone [00:22:51]:
Right.
Suzanne Jabour [00:22:52]:
And I knew I needed to take baby steps and keep moving like there was still a life here to be lived that was mine and that I wanted to honor Ben and honor my daughter, and I wanted to be able to help her figure out, like, what does life look like? So it really was. Absolutely. And I. And I don’t know that there’s any way it couldn’t be one of those fork in the road moments. I’m very, very grateful that I already had done so much work on myself and I already really lived from that place of possibility, from that place of curiosity, because if I hadn’t had that as my North Star, I don’t know how it would have gone.
Amy Stone [00:23:37]:
Yep. I can definitely see that. And you touched on a couple of things there that I’ll just echo back because they are really important. One of the challenges with any big experience when you are in a family is, you know, you were doing more than one thing. You were taking care of yourself. And also trying to be there for your daughter. And that’s a layer of complexity that makes things harder. It also can be an escape route. You’ll see people, like, dive into caring for other people and not themselves. Right? Yeah. And you talk about that. You had a pretty good sense of your own identity and your North Star. Right. Which I think is key because when big things happen and you are searching, it’s another level of destabilization. Right. So your connections to who you think you are are things that we can ignore. And when stuff goes wrong, if they’re not there, it’s harder to find our way back.
Suzanne Jabour [00:24:31]:
Yeah, Yeah, a hundred percent. One hundred percent. And I. And I got a download, whatever. However people think they have these ideas, I just call it a download. Very early on that the path for me was to be conscious and curious.
Amy Stone [00:24:46]:
Okay. Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:24:47]:
Oh, conscious was about allowing all of the emotions to be okay, to be acceptable. Even the ones from the bad negative list, the ones that were overwhelming, the ones that were all tangled like that just had to all be okay. The stuffing that we do so well, especially in North America and Western culture, was not going to work. That was not going to be survivable. So allowing all of the emotions to flow and overwhelm and do what they needed to do. And the curiosity was really about, you know, what, you know, in the very earliest days. It’s about what has to get done today.
Amy Stone [00:25:19]:
Right? No, it’s like our rule was one.
Suzanne Jabour [00:25:22]:
Hard thing, and then the rest of the day, the to do list was to breathe.
Amy Stone [00:25:25]:
Okay.
Suzanne Jabour [00:25:26]:
And that was literally the list, one hard thing. So do I need to cancel an account? Do I need to notify somebody, one of those things? And then breathe. That was it. That’s how we managed our to be listed. And the curiosity also, at the very beginning, literally was around physical things. Like when you’re crying so hard that you can only gasp for breath, how do you oxygenate your body? Like, you can’t do that for a long period of time because that doesn’t feel survivable. So. And I was all literally about survival. It was like, how do I survive? So it really was that sense of, okay, somebody knows somehow I will find the answer. I will figure it out. And I did. I listened to this amazing podcast where they would talk specifically about when you’re sobbing so hard, what you do. I was like, oh, I 100% need that. And I just over and over to close that stress cycle, because I was also really knew that my body was, you know, and my mind and my, you know, the whole mind, body, spirit, connection was all. Every level was an overwhelm.
Amy Stone [00:26:29]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:26:29]:
And for that to not become malignant, I had to tend it very carefully.
Amy Stone [00:26:34]:
I think that means you’re more aware that I think you could have. You could have. You could have numbed it out and ignored it. I think that was a choice there.
Suzanne Jabour [00:26:42]:
And I think there’s healthy numbing. Watched all 42 seasons of Survivor.
Amy Stone [00:26:48]:
There are 42 seasons of Survivor. I know that’s a. I mean, I.
Suzanne Jabour [00:26:51]:
Think there’s 47 now, but at the time there was 42. And I could not be in the house when it was quiet. So when my daughter went back to work, she was working in person and I was still working from home. And I couldn’t stand the house to be quiet. So I was like, well, what can I put on that requires no mental capacity that can just play in the background? And, you know, thanks to the wonders of technology, you can sign up for a streaming service that has every season of anything you want. And I. That’s what streamed for however long that took me two months.
Amy Stone [00:27:18]:
I think that is outrageous. I know that’s a strange thing for me to grab onto. And what you said that there are 42 seasons of Survivor. That just seems like so many.
Suzanne Jabour [00:27:28]:
I think there’s more than that now.
Amy Stone [00:27:29]:
But at the time, I believe it. What a. What a long four. That’s a lot of. That’s a lot of tv. But I do get that. I do. I think that that’s an easy thing for people to understand. What you would. You would be uncomfortable with the quiet and that it would be comforting to be entertained with something that didn’t require. I think that many of us have been through that part of stress management, even in smaller. In smaller things. Okay, so. So we’re talking about rebuilding your life after. After this. Let’s talk a little bit about what that means. Like, what did you feel like needed to be rebuilt?
Suzanne Jabour [00:28:08]:
I mean, really everything. And it was really interesting in that I rebuilt relationships. Like, relationships completely transformed my focus on, you know, what’s important in the world and how I want to be, you know, how much I’m prepared to over give. I’m a recovering people pleaser. That all went by the wayside, like, in a way that I think was shocking to a lot of people because I had no capacity to do that anymore. I still, I mean, it’s almost five years now since Ben died. I have very limited capacity for, like, bullshit and complaining and gossip and whining like And I think what happens for us when something truly catastrophic happens, our capacity to relate with people for whom catastrophic is. Yes, they didn’t. Kind of milk I wanted at the store today is severely limited.
Amy Stone [00:29:00]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:29:01]:
Like, just. And I would be. It would take everything I had. And I do still sometimes say in the kindest way I can think of, you know, if that’s the worst thing that happens to you today, it’s a pretty good day.
Amy Stone [00:29:12]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:29:13]:
No, that’s like, your perspective really shifts. And my focus on what I wanted to be doing out in the world shifted. You know, the programs that I had designed and was launching Aspen died. I don’t know, they might come back at some point because they’re still important. But it became so obviously clear to me that as a collective, we didn’t know enough about grief, and we didn’t know how to support people, and we didn’t know what was happening to us if we were the griever. And as someone who. I mean, I’ve been public speaking since I was in elementary school. Like, speaking was not hard for me. Writing is not hard for me. So if I could be a voice for people who don’t feel comfortable talking about it, so they could say to a friend, hey, you want to understand what’s happening to me? Go listen to this podcast. This woman talks about it, right? That it was like, that really became my focus. And my passion is, you know, how can I do everything I can in my one precious life to push this conversation, to shift this paradigm, to change this system, because it’s systemic. Our lack of knowledge, our gap in care, our misunderstanding of how to reach out and support people is for most of us. And even as someone who lives and breathes this 24 7, I still am like, oh, okay, I need to say something. I need to offer something. And you still have to kind of really slow down and think about what’s the right. What’s right in this circumstance, what’s right with this person. It’s different every time. You know, the. For me, as an individual griever, it’s different every time. My grief for my dad was different than the grief for my mom is different than my grief for Ben. And There are about 10 symptoms you probably will have at some point. And there really, I believe, is a way we can flip how we talk to people and how we make offers that makes all the difference. So that’s really become my drive.
Amy Stone [00:31:07]:
That makes sense. And when I. It is interesting, because when I was writing this and thinking about the questions that I Was going to ask you. And I have the experiences with grief that I’ve had, which are limited. Grandparents, my father, pets, a few friends like, things like that, but they are limited. And it definitely was front of mind for me that it is completely different than the experience you’ve gone through and that not necessarily helpful or productive for me to make them seem like they’re equivalent. And I know that they’re not. And yet it’s also. It’s a space making. Like once you’ve experienced a catastrophic loss, I think that it makes it easier for us to give space to other people who we can see are going through that. Which lines up with what you were saying. It’s like you don’t know what catastrophe is until you’ve done it. And anybody who’s ever worked in an emergency type situation where you’re walking somebody through that triage, it’s like, listen, is this important? Is it urgent? Is it emergency or is it a catastrophe? Is the house actually on fire or are you just unhappy about the temperature of your meal? You know?
Suzanne Jabour [00:32:17]:
Yeah. And I think we do that with our kids. I mean, I remember with my kids we had a sort of structure that we would go through. I would be like, okay, so are you going to care about that in five hours?
Amy Stone [00:32:28]:
Yes. Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:32:28]:
Are you going to care about it in five days? Are you going to care about it in five months? Are you going to care in five years? And if you’re not going to care in five years, then let’s modulate our response.
Amy Stone [00:32:39]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:32:40]:
If it only matters for the next five minutes. Is this massive drama really what we want to spend our time and energy on? And we kind of lose that thread. I think when we get caught up in the doing of it all and we’re forgetting to just be.
Amy Stone [00:32:53]:
Yeah. And part of it is in working with other people, just not. Not as a professional, but as a human being interacting in a planet with other people is the awareness is that even what’s really important to you today may be totally different than from what’s important, but it doesn’t mean it’s not important to you. It’s like, right, so, yeah. And everybody I know who’s got enough life experience to have experienced some pretty hard stuff, they. They do have their own version of what you were talking about, which is like, I’m no longer willing to be frustrated by the following things. Like, I’m just not going to be pissed off about traffic. You know, I’m just not going to be annoyed at the line at the grocery Store and. Or it could go the other way. I’m not going to tolerate.
Suzanne Jabour [00:33:33]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:33:33]:
You know, people doing. Treating me this way. Yeah, exactly. So one of the questions that pings around in my head when I talk to people about changes and things like this is, is whether it actually is truly possible to be ready for some of the crazy things that happen to us in life. You know, like, and so like, I mean, this is a terrible question, but I’m asking it anyway. Do you actually think, do you do. Where do you weigh out on this? Do you think that you could have been more prepared or well prepared for this to happen to you?
Suzanne Jabour [00:34:04]:
No.
Amy Stone [00:34:04]:
Yeah, yeah. That’s my.
Suzanne Jabour [00:34:06]:
I think, I think the way that we prepare is to be living in such a way that our foundation is strong and we know how to re. Regulate our system when it gets disregarded.
Amy Stone [00:34:21]:
Yeah. Or in. Or sometimes happening. That awareness that I’m not regulated.
Suzanne Jabour [00:34:27]:
Typically prepared myself for the death of my son in these circumstances, in that complicated time in the world, in this timeline. No, not any more than I had.
Amy Stone [00:34:35]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:34:36]:
But I think how we prepare ourselves for life’s ups and downs, whether they’re big or little, is to really know what’s important to us. Right. Know what our moral compass says, what our values are, live according to those and really have a sense of, you know, what’s important and what’s not important and what’s mine to own.
Amy Stone [00:34:58]:
Yep.
Suzanne Jabour [00:34:59]:
That’s been really important for me in this rebuilding process is I got really clear and I was already sort of on that path of exploring that and thinking about that and really looking at my relationships in my life. But I got really clear on having absolutely no desire to own anything that’s not mine.
Amy Stone [00:35:17]:
Right. Which is, I mean, it’s a recommended tool for being happy.
Suzanne Jabour [00:35:22]:
But I think that’s how we prepare. Right. The way that we prepare for life’s worst moments is the same way we prepare for the best moments. Right. It’s knowing who we are, surrounding ourselves with good people, looking for the good in everything, being curious, being open, you know, being able to keep ourselves relatively calm. Right. Understanding that sense of impermanence. That’s how we prepare, you know, And I think understanding things helps. Right. We’re sense making creatures. So if you can understand that grief is. Grief is grief. Even though. Yes. The catastrophic loss of an adult child who still lived with you is different than your loss of a father. And it’s still grief. And there’s no win in that weird hierarchy we have of like, oh, well, it’s A pet. We get another one to, like, I’ve lost a child, like, having summited that mountain. There’s no win there.
Amy Stone [00:36:14]:
There’s no grief Olympics. There’s no trophy for having a war story. Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:36:20]:
No. And. And so if we can level that a little bit while understanding that some will be more disruptive in our lives than others, but they’re not even going to be the same for everyone, because for some, the loss of a job or a business is wildly disruptive. And for some, they go, I didn’t really like it anyway, and they go, get another one. So we can’t. You know, when we label what’s sort of worthy of grief or worthy of these big emotions, we’re doing ourselves a big disservice. And most important, we’re missing chances to practice, because practicing grief skills on someone like me, a grieving mother grieving out loud, I am not a good first assignment.
Amy Stone [00:36:59]:
Okay, fair enough.
Suzanne Jabour [00:37:01]:
You might practice on, like, what you might want to say, how you might want to support someone. You could practice that on someone who’s had a loss that feels less disruptive.
Amy Stone [00:37:09]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:37:10]:
And it’s all a chance to build connection instead of isolation. And right now we’re building isolation because the griever feels alone, confused, misunderstood. They don’t even understand themselves. The supporters don’t know what to say or do. They don’t want to do harm, so they end up doing nothing, which does harm. And now we’re just all isolated, which isn’t what anybody wanted or needed.
Amy Stone [00:37:32]:
Right. And so. And I. I say right as an acknowledgement, not as a. As a judgment, but as a. Just a word that I threw in there. All right, so you talk a lot about talking about grief and talking to people who are grieving. And so I did want to ask you if you wanted to share for us based on your experience or your knowledge, however you want to go with this. What are some of the. What are some. Because this is a topic that comes up, like, this is what you say, and this is what you should not say, and this is what you do, and this is what you shouldn’t do. And they’re like, you know, kind of almost like people feel like there are rules. We don’t ever teach the rules. So people guess all the things. Right. But what are some of the things that were really good that people said or did? And then if you want to share, what are some of the things that people said or did that were maybe like, really kind of crappy or didn’t feel good?
Suzanne Jabour [00:38:18]:
Yeah, I So I would say that any cliche, platitude kind of thing, if you could say it to anybody, don’t say it. It’s not going to be right because it’s so unique and different each time. I actually think we have what we say and what we do backwards. We tend to say something really specific and shut down the conversation and we tend to offer something really open, like, anything you need, let me know.
Amy Stone [00:38:44]:
Right, Right.
Suzanne Jabour [00:38:45]:
We have it backwards. We need to say something open. Right. Open hearted. Probably a little bit vulnerable. It’s going to be messy because we’re really good at cliches and platitudes which don’t help anybody. So if we’re trying something new, it’s going to be messy. The most helpful things people said were things like, I, I don’t know what to say.
Amy Stone [00:39:05]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:39:05]:
And I don’t really understand what’s happening. And I’m here for you and I will walk this walk with you and we will figure it out. I will get you tea or coffee. I will sit quietly if that’s what you need. I will go to a smash room if that’s what you need. I will do whatever you need. I’m here to support you. Right. Something like that. And you’re not going to say that. And this is why I say, you know, if I could come up with the one perfect thing, sure, I’d be a billionaire. But there’s never going to be. Because what you would say to a close friend or a family member or a colleague or someone who’s an acquaintance, for all the different kinds of loss, there’s never going to be one right thing. Which is why those cliches don’t work.
Amy Stone [00:39:44]:
Right. Fair enough.
Suzanne Jabour [00:39:45]:
They would want you to be happy. Aren’t you over it yet? You should be moving on all of those. Just make a list. Have a ceremonial burning. However, you need to release those back to wherever they came from. No more. They’re actually actively harmful because the subtext of most of them is, I am not comfortable with your grief.
Amy Stone [00:40:04]:
That’s right. I don’t want to. I’m going to say this and it ends the conversation and I’m not. Yes. It feels very dismissive. Yeah. It’s not what people mean, but it feels very dismissive.
Suzanne Jabour [00:40:13]:
Yeah. And the other thing, weirdly, that doesn’t help is inserting your grief into the.
Amy Stone [00:40:19]:
Conversation, which I felt like I was doing earlier when I was adding my conversation about your dad, my dad, into this. I was like, wait a second.
Suzanne Jabour [00:40:26]:
But I wanted to feel like I was doing that because there’s ways to do it that are really helpful and healthy and there’s ways to do it that aren’t.
Amy Stone [00:40:33]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:40:33]:
So here’s a perfect example. I was talking to someone recently about another loss that I had experienced and they had phoned me to share their condolences and check up and see how I was doing. That conversation is supposed to be about me.
Amy Stone [00:40:48]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:40:48]:
So when you add to that conversation, oh, this, this terrible thing happened at work and we’re all really upset about it, you have dismissed what happened to me.
Amy Stone [00:40:56]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:40:57]:
Right. So that’s not helpful. Or when you want to say, oh, yeah, well, I had a loss too. Okay. Also not helpful when you’re having a conversation like you and I did, where you’re saying, oh, yeah, I had this loss too. And that’s so interesting. I also had this 12 to 18 months of like, my brain just didn’t work. Right. And we’re having a conversation where we’re learning from each other that it’s super.
Amy Stone [00:41:20]:
Helpful because I think it. In my mind, it is me trying to make sense of where the questions go. And that was my intention. But as I was writing it and as I was doing it, I was like, I hope that I am not flipping this too. But it is, it is hard to have a conversation with somebody about their experience without also jumping in and trying, you know, and feeling like you’re, you’re driving the ship. But.
Suzanne Jabour [00:41:43]:
And I think some of that has to do with timeline. Right. If it’s your earliest conversations with the person where really what you just want to be doing is supporting them and offering your love and offering space and giving them, you know, holding them. That’s not the time to be sharing your stories.
Amy Stone [00:41:58]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:41:59]:
About them.
Amy Stone [00:42:00]:
One of the. You talked earlier about that you like to have, like, it’s helpful to have people bring up that they’re thinking about them and doing stuff.
Suzanne Jabour [00:42:08]:
I love that.
Amy Stone [00:42:09]:
One of the, one of the times where I was really struggling in my grief and trying to not show up in that grief. So it was a holiday, like a family holiday. So I was trying to be on my best behavior and not be a Debbie Downer. I didn’t care about.
Suzanne Jabour [00:42:22]:
That’s one of the puzzle pieces I left behind.
Amy Stone [00:42:24]:
I know. So. And my father in law actually called me in on it. He noticed and he was like, I think you might be thinking about your dad today. And it was so helpful because I had pushed it so far down trying to behave in such a way, which was a abject Failure. I was in a terrible mood.
Suzanne Jabour [00:42:41]:
It’s not possible.
Amy Stone [00:42:42]:
It wasn’t working right. And when he. When he brought it up and then it forced me to, like, you know, actually think about it. And then. And then the emotions flew through the. You know, the emotions came out. She didn’t actually make it a jolly holiday right off the bat, but I did feel better.
Suzanne Jabour [00:42:56]:
Well, and. And. And why do we have this expectation that it needs to be a jolly holiday?
Amy Stone [00:43:01]:
Fair enough. I did absolutely put a lot of pressure on myself for that. Yes.
Suzanne Jabour [00:43:06]:
To pretend that nothing big had happened when there’s, like, this big thing that happened.
Amy Stone [00:43:10]:
Yes.
Suzanne Jabour [00:43:10]:
And likely it happened to everyone that’s in on that jolly holiday. So how different could it have been if you had all said from the outset of planning the jolly holiday, we’re all gonna be thinking about dad that day. So how do we have him with us? How do we honor him? How do we have him at the table? How do we do we all share a funny story? Like, how do we acknowledge that and not have the event be only about that?
Amy Stone [00:43:31]:
Yeah. No, I think that is beautiful. And I think having people. I think it would be miraculous to go through this in a situation where you had a group of people, a community of people, whether it’s your family or your friends, who did know how to do that and were able to do it. I mean, I did. In my experience with walking the path of grief, I found. I find some people who had tools that they would walk me through. They were supportive, which I did think was really helpful because it was like, the great mystery of, like, what am I doing? You know, what am I doing and what’s happening to me? Every time I found somebody who could say, oh, this is a process, I was like, whoa, pressure off. Let’s try that.
Suzanne Jabour [00:44:07]:
Yeah, you’re supposed to be a hot mess.
Amy Stone [00:44:09]:
Yeah. For a long time, that did surprise me. And I can’t imagine the. I do think it’s very different. I think that’s the reason it is an established trope and storytelling. The challenge of losing a parent, losing a child because a child losing a parent, that’s the cycle of life. That’s the way it’s supposed to get. That’s the story we’re told, Right? Yeah. It’s club nobody wants to join. Right. We don’t prepare each other for it, but it is the way we’re told it’s supposed to go. But the other way, there’s a lot of space there to internalize it and be like, something has gone wrong. I have done something wrong. The world is not working for me because things went out of work.
Suzanne Jabour [00:44:49]:
Yeah. Yes.
Amy Stone [00:44:51]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:44:51]:
And I never had that sense that I had done anything wrong. I was. Yeah. I didn’t have that piece, though many people do, especially parents that experience the death of a child. Because we’re supposed to be able to take care of our children. That’s our job as parents, is literally to take care of them and make sure they live. And we failed at that one job. That’s a whole made up story. That isn’t true. But that’s how. That’s what we’re told. But it is. That sense of the world no longer makes sense.
Amy Stone [00:45:21]:
Yeah.
Suzanne Jabour [00:45:22]:
Everything I was told about how the world operates was clearly a lie.
Amy Stone [00:45:28]:
That. You said that really beautifully, actually. That is such. It feels, it’s like the Peppermint Patty, like when she’s, like when Charlie Brown falls out. It’s like the rug is pulled out from underneath you. It’s like everything that I was told about how this is supposed to work is not, is not laying it out. And, and then you also hit on it. We’re not going to talk about it today, but it is a very pervasive story that we tell parents that they are responsible for the behaviors and the actions of their children that can control them, which is absolutely not true from day one and an impossible standard for anybody to hold themselves to. But it’s, it’s, it’s a real pressure that we put adults under. It’s a real pressure. All right, so as we record this in. We are recording this in April, but it’s coming out much later. You have a TED Talk that has come out which is. And I’ll the link to that and everything that goes out for the show. You say grief is hard. Let’s do better. Why do you feel that it is helpful and important that we do better with grief?
Suzanne Jabour [00:46:26]:
Because it’s the one guaranteed thing we’re going to experience.
Amy Stone [00:46:30]:
Oh, interesting.
Suzanne Jabour [00:46:33]:
Everybody’s going to experience it. Everyone’s going to need support to support someone through it. And right now we are terrible.
Amy Stone [00:46:40]:
Fair enough.
Suzanne Jabour [00:46:41]:
That is doing harm. It’s doing harm to our communities. It’s doing harm to our families. It’s doing harm to our friendships. It’s doing harm. And, and, and we can do better.
Amy Stone [00:46:51]:
We can do better. We can do better. All right, so in a minute we’re going to do the final questions. I want to give you a chance to directly speak to the audience and tell them about what you do and how they can Connect with you.
Suzanne Jabour [00:47:00]:
Yeah. Thank you. I love that. So the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn or Facebook or on my website. All of them are Suzanne Jabbour. So if you can figure out how to spel complicated name, you will find me everywhere. I’m grateful to have a complicated name. I’m the only one. And I what I’m really excited about is a new ish way that I’m offering my services to the public, which is taking sort of the best of what I do with private clients and with organizations and offering it in a drop in workshop structure. So at this point, well, we’re in April, where they’ll be in June, I’m not sure, but you can pull up my calendar. There’s six different workshops right now, but I’m always adding to them as people request things. So there’s three that are for grievers. One is about anticipatory grief, one’s about collective grief, and one is a small group for people with specific losses to them, personal losses. So that’s what’s up for grievers. And then for people trying to support someone or to just understand grief better, there’s three for them. So those are what can I say? What can I do? And what about at work? So those run on a drop in basis. Each month a new schedule comes out because I just keep kind of moving them around until I figure out where the sweet spots are for people. And there I have made them very inexpensive because I don’t want them to be a financial barrier for people. And for your wonderful listeners, I’m happy to offer a discount code in the show notes and you can use that to get 10% off.
Amy Stone [00:48:29]:
Yes, exactly. So the code is going to be the letters A, I, a and it’s 10% off. That is a very generous offer on a very important product. I hope that people will take advantage of it and tell their friends of places because it is a time when we tend to feel alone and just having anybody to offer us the slightest illumination of a path forward is I think very helpful. So for everybody watching that heard all of those things, all of those links go in the show notes. So if you’re listening, they’re there. But the easiest way to get all those links is to be a subscriber to the perfect adulting email community. And then they come right into your email box and you just click on them. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. So, Suzanne, are you ready for the final three questions? The rapid fire questions?
Suzanne Jabour [00:49:15]:
I am. Let’s go.
Amy Stone [00:49:16]:
Let’s do it. All right. Do you know the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that says, do something every day that scares you? Yeah. Okay, so, yeah. What is something that scares you?
Suzanne Jabour [00:49:27]:
Oh, my gosh. There is actually not much that scares me. I think when your whole world is falling apart, you get less scared. I. I am still a little bit scared of, like, extreme height, height related adventure y things. So one of the things I want to do is, like, skydive.
Amy Stone [00:49:47]:
Okay.
Suzanne Jabour [00:49:48]:
And I know I’ll be terrified I’m going to do it anyways, but that’s something that kind of scares me.
Amy Stone [00:49:51]:
No, I get that. I do get that. I just have recently been like, oh, maybe I’ll do it. But it’s always been a thing that I’m like. I’m like, I don’t think that I’ll like it. I have bungee jumped, which is why I don’t think I’d like skydiving. But, yeah, no, I do get that. I will push it, though. Like, if I go to Australia, when I go to Australia, I’m absolutely going to climb over the bridge, which is high up over water, which is the thing. But I mean, it’s worth doing. Like, it’s worth pushing through. All right, so today in our modern world, they’re trying to figure out how to send human beings to Mars. This is not something that I myself am working on, but by the way, they are working on it. If you were offered a spot on a spaceship going to Mars, if they called you up like, Suzanne, we’ve got a seat for you. Do you say yes or no?
Suzanne Jabour [00:50:37]:
No.
Amy Stone [00:50:39]:
I don’t know why I love this question so much. I was writing it totally cracking myself up. I think stuff. Such a.
Suzanne Jabour [00:50:45]:
Let’s figure out how to take care of the one planet we have. We don’t need to go mess up another one. When we figured out how to take care of this one, then maybe we deserve another one.
Amy Stone [00:50:52]:
That’s fair. That’s totally fair. All right, last one. Much easier. Do you like tea, coffee? Both or neither?
Suzanne Jabour [00:50:59]:
Oh, both.
Amy Stone [00:51:00]:
There you go. Suzanne Jabor, thank you for being a wonderful guest today on the art of imperfect adulting.
Suzanne Jabour [00:51:05]:
Thank you so much for having me.