This transcript was exported on Feb 23, 2021 - listen to the podcast here
Fran Solomon: We really encourage couples not to judge each other, that the level and depth of grief probably couldn't be more equal. It's the expression of grief that often gets misunderstood.
Ashley Rivard: Hey, guys. I'm Ashley Dawn Rivard, and you are now Into the Dawn. A provocative podcast that looks at all things taboo, such as suicide, grief, sex, addictions and more. Each week I talk with experts who successfully investigate their areas of interest. And if you like what you hear, please remember to subscribe.
Ashley Rivard: HealGrief founder Fran Solomon's passion lies in helping others deal with the traumatic. She helped spark the conversation, removing the taboo over life's most inevitable cycle, death. "Grief is universal and has no boundaries," says Solomon. Today we unpack grief. What is the difference between the way men and women grieve? What does it look like to cope in a healthy way? And the number one step in dealing with grief. We also touch on some tools on how to communicate with someone you know who is grieving.
Ashley Rivard: Carl Jung said, "All neurosis grows out of an inability of not learning how to suffer." Now, would you say grieving is learned or is it innately within all of us to know how to do it?
Fran Solomon: So, interesting question because our society doesn't have a manual on grieving. Actually I'm going to take that back. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her studies with the dying, came up with the five stages of grief. Inadvertently, although the studies were very clearly done on those dying, it was adapted as the five stages of grief one goes through after a loved one dies. The reality is, and even before her death, she was very adamant that the studies were adopted incorrectly. We believe, and it is taught in our systems today, that the five stages of grief actually exist yet we know ourselves... those that have the experience of being bereaved, know that there are no five stages.
Fran Solomon: Grief is a chameleon of mixed emotions and they're not learned emotions. There's no set guide to the emotions, they just tend to happen and they're very, very personal and independent to each individual and they usually relate to the person that died. For example, someone whose mom died may feel guilt and remorse whereas someone else who doesn't have a great relationship with their mom or is the caretaker of their mom, may actually have very mixed emotions with a little bit of relief...
Ashley Rivard: Right, yeah.
Fran Solomon: ...into it. But really, back to your question... No, I don't think that they're learned. Something that we as individuals experience very individually and unfortunately many of us don't realize that grief is a lifelong journey, until you're actually experiencing it.
Ashley Rivard: What do you mean by that?
Fran Solomon: Well, at HealGrief we have a philosophy and that philosophy is, once you're bereaved you're forever bereaved. And we believe that because years later, regardless of years gone by, there are life's triggers. Whether it's a cycle of life, a birth, a wedding, a marriage or a smell, a phrase, a color. That will bring someone right into that moment of grief as if it were yesterday, reminding them of their person that died. So if grief is something that expires and goes away, why would we still have that emotion evoked in us? We should be over it. Time should have healed it.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah.
Fran Solomon: But the reality is it doesn't, so people are still bereaved for a lifelong journey.
Ashley Rivard: But would you say that the dissipation of the emotion lessens?
Fran Solomon: No, I wouldn't. I don't believe... In the phrase, once you're bereaved you're forever bereaved, I don't believe that you're grieving every day. I do believe that when that emotion is triggered, it is as deep as if it were yesterday. My dad died in '98 and there are times where I'll talk about him and the triggers in my life that remind me of him, and as I am right now my eyes are swelling.
Ashley Rivard: Can you touch on the way men grieve versus women grieve?
Fran Solomon: Yeah, and wow, grief is something that has created a lot of divorce. So, by nature women generally tend to express more emotion. They're much more communicative in their feelings. They're more outspoken. There's less of a stereotype... They're more able to shed their tears and show their emotions because there's less of a stereotype of being strong, that cliché of being strong. Whereas men on the other hand, by mere nature tend to be much more private, personal and the stereotype of a man is that they're supposed to be strong. And they will typically be able to push their grief aside and presume what is perceived to be a more productive day-to-day existence.
Fran Solomon: What we share is we really encourage couples not to judge each other. That the level and depth of grief probably couldn't be more equal. It's the expression of grief that often gets misunderstood. And well, you didn't love them as much because you're not crying as much. Well, how could you say that? I love them just as much as you. Just because I don't cry... There's this competition almost. The processes are very, very different. That doesn't mean a man can't be more vocal and verbal and expressive, and that doesn't mean a woman couldn't be more stoic, for lack of a better term.
Fran Solomon: But we really encourage lack of judgment and understanding that we do all grieve very individually, and our relationships to the person that died are very, very different. And even in the case of a child, there could be very, very different relationships going on. Very, very different dynamics. But the grief, although expressed very differently, can be just as deep, if not deeper.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah. Wow. Is there a certain way women can show up then for men, to facilitate their grief? Because I would say... correct me if I'm wrong, men would take more of the route of, "I'm going to just go to work." Right? "I'm going to put my head down and push this aside."
Fran Solomon: Yeah. I would say recognizing some triggers that may occur, being empathetic to the fact that men generally do process differently. As a matter of fact I was just on a phone call this morning with a man whose 22-year old son died, and he did what most men do. And he went back into his work world and dove into it very heavily and he actually started privately journaling his feelings. And his journal became so deep in his grief and healing, that he actually published a book about his journal.
Ashley Rivard: Oh, wow. Oh, beautiful.
Fran Solomon: So, although his family may not have seen the depth of his grief and understand what he was doing in silence for his own journey, they're aware of it today. But he was grieving just as deeply.
Ashley Rivard: Wow. I know grief is so individual and everyone grieves in a different way and I have seen with a lot of people that I know personally. I've seen people who faced it head-on, but whatever that head-on looks like for them. And then there's others who don't talk about it or numb themselves out. Are they grieving or are they running from their grief?
Fran Solomon: I would suspect that they're running from their grief. Grief is an experience that we don't choose to have.
Ashley Rivard: Right, yeah. It takes you down.
Fran Solomon: It falls upon us. And unfortunately most of society again believes that, okay there's a grieving process, you have the funeral and you just pick yourself up, put your big-girl panties on and you get back to work or your life or whatever you need to do, and you'll get over it. And as time goes on you'll feel better and better and forget. So this is what I would like to share from my own experience. My dad died in '98 and I did what I believed I was supposed to do. I grieved, the funeral happened and the Monday after the funeral I went back to work and I threw myself into work overload so I wouldn't have time to sit and be with my emotions. I literally took my grief, put it in a box, put a pretty little bow on it and stuck it on a shelf. And I was fine for years.
Fran Solomon: In 2002 my daughter was born and that was a huge trigger for me because the one thing my father wanted more than anything in the world, was to have a granddaughter. And so grief, not understanding it was grief at the time, hit me in the face. I didn't know what was coming at me, what hit me, and how to recover from it.
Fran Solomon: Now that I'm in the field now of bereavement for over a decade... God, almost two decades, I can't express enough how many similar stories to my experience, other adults have shared with us. Where, as they may be in their forties and all of a sudden a trigger comes along and it hits them in the face and they don't understand what happened at the moment. And it's only then when some of these individuals have seeked professional help, that they learn that it was unresolved grief that got in their way.
Fran Solomon: And it's interesting... I'm going to go a bit on a different tangent here. We are in partnership with an agency called Jade Recovery and they deal with mental health issues and opioid addiction. And one of the things that their research has found is that for many people they begin the path of addictive behaviors because of a traumatic event. And if they further dive into that, that traumatic event is often a death, an unresolved grief that someone didn't learn how to cope with. Going back to your first question, grief is not learned. Coping with grief can be learned, but the grief itself is not learned so they never received the appropriate coping skills.
Fran Solomon: They may have stifled their grief like I did and like many do, and then all of a sudden 10, 15 years later it hits them in the face and they turn to addictive behaviors, not understanding what's going on and how to resolve it, which further spins into alcoholism, drug addiction, even the possibility of suicidal thoughts and suicide itself. So grief is something very important to address, and to learn the appropriate coping skills and to not suffocate and not to tuck into a box and put a pretty little bow on it and have it come and hit you in the face years later.
Ashley Rivard: Right. Yeah, well thank you for sharing that. So what does dealing with grief in a healthy way look like then?
Fran Solomon: So, I want to suggest the first step to what we call a healthy post-bereavement growth, is acceptance. So often... We deal a lot with young adults on college campuses and the colleges often offer what they call supportive services that focus on resilience. Well, in the field of bereavement, to us resilience is a setup for failure because the mere implication of the word resilience is that things bounce back to the way things were. When someone has died, things will never be the way they were. So now you have a lot of people thinking that they're supposed to be resilient, so they're grieving and they fail at resilience too. So imagine what that does to the psyche.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, yeah.
Fran Solomon: So for us it's really the acceptance that things will never be the way they were. And then as part of the growth, resilience does have a play in that growth but the first component is really the acceptance.
Ashley Rivard: Okay. And most people, would you say in your work and your research with this, don't accept it? Is that where more of the suffering comes from?
Fran Solomon: I think it's that learned model of the five stages of grief.
Ashley Rivard: And what are those five stages?
Fran Solomon: So the five stages of grief that are learned are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Whereas for us, in a post-bereavement growth, acceptance is really the first component that one really needs to understand to accept that things will never be the same, to accept that this person is forever gone in body. And it's interesting that depression is thrown in there as one of the five stages of grief, because for us, we don't believe that grief is depression. We believe that grief could lead to depression, have depressive behavior, but grief is grief.
Ashley Rivard: What do you feel is the main difference between the two?
Fran Solomon: So I'm not an MD, but I believe from a layman's perspective, that depression is often a chemical imbalance that can be addressed with drugs. Grief is not a chemical imbalance. Grief is a natural response to a death. I can't say it more simpler than that.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, yeah.
Fran Solomon: It can appear to be depressive in behavior, but too often our MD's are quick to say, "Oh, you're depressed," and prescribe medicine which doesn't solve or address the issues of grief.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah.
Fran Solomon: And that, personally I think, is criminal. It just creates a whole host of bad behavior, of behavior that really is unnecessary, medication that is unnecessary. We can go into personal philosophy here, but I don't believe you take medicine unless you need to.
Ashley Rivard: Absolutely, yeah. So what then is... I think you've probably touched on it, but to be clear, what is the number one taboo around grief?
Fran Solomon: That it's supposed to be silent. The people... It's funny, I have this conversation so many times in that people say, "Oh, but they don't want to hear my story anymore." Or someone will say, "But when are they going to get over it?" And I'm thinking to myself, first off they're never going to get over it. You have a child die, you're never going to get over it. And by not talking to your friend or your spouse or your children, about the child that died, isn't going to make that death go away.
Fran Solomon: You're going to live the rest of your life knowing that you had a child die or your sibling died, it's just with you. So not speaking about it doesn't make that go away. They're not going to forget five years later that their child died, so we encourage people to talk about it. I have a friend whose... and I use this example, whose child died over 10 years ago and I still refer to her by her name. And I'm like, "What do you think so-and-so would be doing today?" We talk about it, and I can't tell you how cathartic that is to my friend who is so grateful that her child is not forgotten.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, yeah. I can see that. So then that's part of her healing?
Fran Solomon: That's part of her healing. That is definitely part of her healing. And for so many to say, "Oh they're tired of hearing about my story," or, "I don't want to talk about it because it's old..." It's not. Even though someone may not be here in physical presence, I promise you if you love and they're gone, they are living within you every day, within your heart and mind.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah.
Fran Solomon: They haven't gone away. And in talking about them, not only validates the feelings that you still hold for them, but allows their legacy to live in, in those that you share their spirit with.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah.
Fran Solomon: In those that you share your memories with.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, wow. So talking about it is definitely an important solution for moving forward.
Fran Solomon: Absolutely.
Ashley Rivard: Are there a few others that can help people heal their grief?
Fran Solomon: We work a lot with young adults and one of the things that they really love to do, no pun intended, is to actively move forward which is the name of one of our programs specifically targeted to young adults ages 18 to 25. And they love to be active in doing things in memory of their loved ones. So we have a program called Kindness in Action and one of our young adults whose mother was a librarian, she put together a group of people and they did a book drive and they donated to their public library, a bunch of books in memory of their mom.
Fran Solomon: That is cathartic and that is empowering, knowing that you're making a difference in the legacy of what your person was passionate about. That's cathartic, it's empowering, it's healing. So we advocate a lot of that, doing something in memory of your loved one, talking about your loved one, creating a memorial and journaling in the memorial as if you were writing letters to your person. There is nothing wrong in that. There is... Anybody that's going to say, "Oh, haven't you moved on?" Well, they're ignorant. They're ignorant to grief.
Ashley Rivard: What do you say then to people...? I've had this with some friends as they're going through grief. I say, "How are you doing?" And they could say, "Oh, I'm feeling a little depressed but I've just got to focus on work." I mean, you were talking about this. What do you say, as a friend that you're trying to support somebody, but you don't feel they want to talk about it? They don't show their feelings. How do you show up for them?
Fran Solomon: So first I am going to suggest that a grieving person isn't asked how they're doing, because I can assure you they're not doing well. I think the more appropriate question is, how are you coping?
Ashley Rivard: Oh I like that.
Fran Solomon: It opens up, I think, a lot more room for conversation, because how are you doing? The stereotype answer is fine, or I'm okay or I don't want to talk about it. How are you coping is more, terribly, okay, it's difficult. That lends itself to further questions. But then, regardless of the response, I think it's really important to just say, "You don't need to talk, but I want you to know that I'm here for you and even if it's just to rest your head."
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, it's beautiful.
Fran Solomon: That's very welcoming and inviting and it's showing up and it's reminding them that you remember.
Ashley Rivard: Now how long though? I just see a lot of people... I know you've heard this, what do I say to somebody who lost somebody they love? I'm so sorry... They become awkward so they shut down, you just don't know how to talk to somebody who loses somebody. If you're asking somebody, "How are you coping?" I know there's no timeframe, but when does that shift, generally speaking, to that intensity...? Like, two years from now... So somebody loses somebody and then in two years when you might talk to them on a normal basis, are you still saying, "How are you coping?"
Fran Solomon: A holiday, this must be a difficult time for you, how are you coping?
Ashley Rivard: Okay.
Fran Solomon: On an anniversary of a death, I know your mom died three years ago right around this time, this must be a difficult week for you, or day for you, or I just want you to know that I remember. Sometimes just the fact that someone remembers is so important.
Ashley Rivard: Absolutely, yeah.
Fran Solomon: So I don't think there's ever... For some people, grief or symptoms of grief are short-term, with triggers throughout ones life. And for others, it's much more long-term. I think it really is an individual thing. I don't think there's a black and white answer and I think it really also depends on your relationship to the person. If you're a lifelong friend who grew up with this family and a father died and you're still friends and you're in your thirties or forties, I think it's fair to always think about holidays or special days or anniversaries or birthdays or dates of death.
Ashley Rivard: So it is important then, for... Even if somebody doesn't speak about their grief or might say, "Oh, I'm doing fine," to just make note.
Fran Solomon: I think it is.
Ashley Rivard: To say something where you're not pushing them to share, but just to let them know you're .
Fran Solomon: I think it is. Only once in my life I had somebody say, "I don't want to think about it," and I honored that but I thought to myself, "Well, I don't have to remind you to think about it, I know you're thinking about it. But I will respect and I won't bring it up again." But that's an unusual response.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah. With all your work in grief, how do you think American grief differs from other society and we deal with it versus how other societies deal with it?
Fran Solomon: I have a lot of personal opinion on that. I think one aspect of that is that we here in America, and not only in America but in many other societies, we look for longevity. We push death away. We strive to live longer, live better, which is all great but we really... death is a taboo subject. Whereas the reality is, it is a natural cycle of life and there are countries and societies I should say, that embrace death and honor it as a cycle of life and not as an ending, but as a new beginning.
Fran Solomon: So, I think there are many reasons. I think the one that I mentioned is probably the primary that I personally think is the case, but there are other cultures that do so much more. For example, I believe it's Haiti, on the year anniversary of the death the family goes to the cemetery preparing the decedents favorite food, and they have a picnic.
Ashley Rivard: Oh wow.
Fran Solomon: So they really honor their dead, whereas in our culture I think many people have really even shied away from visiting cemeteries.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah.
Fran Solomon: And I even wonder if cemeteries are not being visited generally just because families no longer tend to stay in the geography of where they grew up and a parent may be buried. So it's become, I want to say passe, just as we've evolved in this global world, to visit cemetery. So how do you honor your loved one? What do you do?
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, which you actually have on your website, HealGrief Memorial.
Fran Solomon: Yes, yes.
Ashley Rivard: We can honor people.
Fran Solomon: Yes, regardless of years gone by, we have an area where you can create a memorial and many of our users will share that memorial with other family members or loved ones and say, "Oh, help me remember my dad, my mom, my sibling, my best friend, whoever it might be," and people will light a virtual candle. People will actually journal on the memorial as if they're writing to their person.
Ashley Rivard: Right, that's awesome.
Fran Solomon: Which again, is very healing and cathartic. And when other people remember and embrace and share in that spirit, it may sound so odd to listeners because we tend to silence grief, but it is so, so cathartic.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah. And to speak on the silencing of grief, is that because there's an element of shame that we feel? Just deeply ingrained in us, of like...
Fran Solomon: That's a loaded question. And it's not black and white and I'm going to go into areas that may be uncomfortable. So for those who are grieving after a suicide death, there may be shame in that thinking that someone chose to take their life. Well, just a little bit of information, we don't believe that anyone of sane mind chooses to take their life. We believe that someone has some type of illness, an illness of cancer, an illness of depression, an illness of something, that they could no longer think clearly of sound mind.
Fran Solomon: So we believe that there is no shame. They died of an illness. But for many others, a death of a suicide is something many people are still shameful of. If someone overdoses, there's a stigma about drug abuse. Fortunately, it's becoming less of a stigma and more something of a mental health issue that we're addressing as a society, but still for many, they don't want to talk about how someone was what they perceived to have been, out of control with drugs that they have died.
Fran Solomon: So there may be shame with that, whereas someone who died of a natural death at an old age, someone most certainly won't feel shame in their death. They'll just go on as if it were the process of life, and no longer talk about it.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, that makes sense. It's interesting though because I lost both of my dogs last year very close together and I felt like a bit of shame, feeling the depth of pain I did. Like I made it... I was almost like people... I saw how I felt, I couldn't talk to certain people because I projected that I was being judged for the... Literally, you would have thought like it was the worse thing that ever could have happened to me, the amount of pain and grief I was feeling. And I was like, this is stupid because this is just a dog, people will be like, "Dogs die," and so I felt like, "Oh my God it's been a month, I can't tell people I still can't function very well and having breakdowns." So it's like I wasn't accepting or I was making myself wrong in that grief, because I was also diminishing like it was just a pet.
Fran Solomon: So when my first dog died as an adult, I didn't leave my house for two weeks. I was devastated. So I understand the depth of grief. Culturally, let me shed light on some new demographics.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, please.
Fran Solomon: Many people are choosing not to have human families. They're choosing to have four-legged friends as their family. For elderly who no longer have children, their pet is their companion, their lifeline. They care for their pet, they talk to their pet, they receive love from their pet. So when that pet dies, that is as deep as a human connection. And so unfortunately, yes one would diminish, "Oh well it was just a pet and you can get another one." Well that's just like saying, "Oh well, it's a child you can have another one."
Ashley Rivard: Right.
Fran Solomon: Or that's a husband, you can get another one.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, yeah.
Fran Solomon: It is a very deep loss and grief, and actually there's been a lot of controversy with grief support centers. While we recognize how pet loss can be as deep as a human loss, but how do you hold a group of someone who is grieving over the death of a pet with another room who may have a group with someone grieving over the death of a child. It almost invalidates... or people perceive that it invalidates the depth of grief for someone who has lost a child.
Fran Solomon: So we at HealGrief really deliberated a very long time, whether we were going to mirror a section for pet loss and we came to some conclusions, some of which I shared with you. And how society today chooses not to have human families, they choose to have pets as their family, and for the elderly. But we also felt that for most children, their first experience with grief is usually the death of a pet. And if we can begin to teach a young child how to cope in a healthy way and to be able to memorialize their pet and be able to journal about their pet, what a gift that would be when they're older and they're facing their persons death.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, yeah.
Fran Solomon: They'll already have developed some good coping skills. So on our website we do have a Pets Count Too! section, where people can literally create a pet memorial, they can light virtual candles for their pet. I will confess that it is not... Once a memorial is created, it is not visited or used as often as a memorial that's created for a person, but we do believe that we're really setting a precedent. One, on acknowledging how deep that grief can be and again, offering families an opportunity for their children to begin the appropriate coping skills that will be a lifelong lesson for their future journeys with grief and their persons death.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah. So to touch on the children aspect, is there anything else parents should know about grief with children, in communicating?
Fran Solomon: So, it depends on the age of the child. There's a lot of different developmental ages, some which they ask questions and you only give them the answer. You only give them the answers to those questions that they ask, when they're ready to learn more they tend to ask more questions. So there's a lot of developmental nuances to dealing with grief, but one of the... The old school is, don't have a child at a funeral. Well I hate to tell you, children need closure too and actually explaining the process and explaining it in a very real way.
Fran Solomon: For example, when I was a child my aunt died and they said, "Oh, she went away." And the first thing I remember thinking about was, "Well, when is she coming back?" So they went away, doesn't really explain what happened. They died. Their body stopped working. They were old. Their body got ill. They stopped working. One of the things... I paused when I said ill, because many people say, "Oh God, I'm so sick." If a child thinks that someone was so sick in the hospital they died, the fear level of that innocent phrase, "Oh my God, I'm so sick," or, "Oh my God, I'm so sick I feel like I'm going to die," for a child to hear that is very, very traumatizing.
Fran Solomon: So I like to suggest people swap out the word sick with illness. They were very ill. They died of an illness, whereas I'm sick, I died of a cold. Because for a child who doesn't understand, they take things very literally. But yes, it's very important I think, to talk to children, to explain. And I don't know if I subscribe to, they're in a better place. I think that's a cultural thing. Because for me, well no, my dad's not in a better place. His better place was with me.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, of course.
Fran Solomon: So, they died. Their body stopped working, which is a fact. They died and their body... and they died because their body stopped working and you can even go further than that if the opportunity arises or you feel the need is there. But that's what happened, and depending upon your culture... I mean, for some... and when a body stops working and the body dies, we put the body in the ground and... You can explain it that way or if you subscribe to cremation, you can go on that path or whatever your belief is. Religion, belief, whatever that may be. Just explain it. This is what we do when the body stops working. And then you can also add to it, but they still live with us.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, absolutely.
Fran Solomon: They're still in your mind and they're still in your heart and we can talk about them as often as you want. A lot of children don't like to talk about grief, whether it be a sibling or someone else, because they're afraid to evoke emotion in their living parent. It's very important for the living parent or the caregiver or provider, to really allow for the questions and for the opportunity for conversation, because I assure you they will keep coming and they're not going to come just the day of the funeral.
Ashley Rivard: Right.
Fran Solomon: They're going to keep coming.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah. Yeah, it's like you were saying, the stigma of being silent and going back to when someone dies, what do you say to that person who went through the loss? And it's really just better to say something than nothing. There's a fear in us, like, "Oh, I'm going to make it worse for them."
Fran Solomon: And one of the things that drives me crazy is, someone for example, loses a spouse and then someone who may have had a grandparent die say, "Oh yeah, I know how you feel." No you don't. You don't because one, your relationship is to a different person and two, you didn't have the relationship I had with my husband. So, no you don't. So one of the things that we try to suggest is offering, I don't know how you feel.
Ashley Rivard: Okay.
Fran Solomon: I just can't imagine. I'm here for you.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, that's great. Validating the depth of their pain, yeah. I like that. Wow, it's all good stuff. So just to wrap it up, you've touched on so many important aspects of grief and shining light on all of that. If there was one thing you want people to remember about their grief, what is it?
Fran Solomon: Don't judge yourself, be patient, be kind to yourself, and accept that this is going to be a lifelong journey that you should have no shame of and no judgment when those triggers do arise. And speak about them, share them, embrace them, because that's part of the healing process.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah. Beautiful. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. Well thank you so much Fran, for taking the time. And your website that everyone can visit, HealGrief.com.
Fran Solomon: HealGrief.org
Ashley Rivard: .org, I'm sorry. HealGrief.org
Fran Solomon: And I'm going to spell that because grief often gets misspelled, it's H-E-A-L-G-R-I-E-F.org.
Ashley Rivard: .org. And there's a bunch of tools on there and support people can find.
Fran Solomon: Yeah. We are tools and resources to guide ones journey with grief into a healthy post-bereavement growth.
Ashley Rivard: Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much.
Ashley Rivard: That's it for today's podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today. Please let me know what you think. Leave a comment, share and we'll be back next week with a new episode.
Please don’t forget to forward this article and podcast to someone whom it may serve.