[00:00:00] Maria Kliavkoff: Every symptom of grief is designed to slow us down. And the reason it's asking us to slow down is so that we can start. Processing for ourselves. What is really going on here and what do we know to be true in all of this? And that takes time.

[00:00:15] Angela Kennecke: Maria Kliavokoff is a former hospice worker who now helps people learn how to grieve in a healthy way. As a grief coach Maria is trying to revolutionize the way we think about grief and mourning, and has some practical advice for anyone coping with loss. 

Well, maria, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm anxious to talk to you because the name of my podcast Grieving Out Loud is because that's what I feel I've been doing since the death of my daughter. I have been. Just kind of shouting from the rooftops what happened. I write a blog about, dealing with my grief and so I'm really anxious to know more about healthy mourning.

[00:00:57] Maria Kliavkoff: Well, thank you so much for having me here, and thank you so much for, for everything that you do. I, I mean, it, it seems. To me that you are grieving the loss of your precious daughter in a way that is helping so many other people. And, and it really is grieving out loud, which is gorgeous.

For most people, they use the term grief and mourning interchangeably, and the reality is, Grief is a constellation of of our experience of loss that is internal. So whether it's mental symptoms, physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, grief is this constellation.

It is not an emotion unto itself. It's a combination of emotions and a combination of symptoms, but it all happens on the inside. Mourning is the external expression of that loss. So when you talk about the blogging and, and the podcast and stuff, those would be examples of mourning. It's how you are mourning your precious daughter.

[00:01:52] Angela Kennecke: I wanna talk a little bit about how you got into this field, but I also think it's so taboo in our culture. We all act like we're never gonna die. People around us are never gonna die, and we sort of are given this grace period of a few days, or maybe a couple weeks, if you're lucky, a few months, you know, to grieve or mourn, and then you're supposed to just move.

and I, as you know, if you lose a child . Or you lose someone very close to you, you're never gonna move on. I always say you're gonna move forward, but tell me first before we get in, dive into all of that, a little bit about how you got into this field. 

I like to joke that my master's degree is, in theater directing.

[00:02:29] Maria Kliavkoff: My undergrad is a combination of psychology and theater arts. So who, but a theater person would start a hospice in a rural community. But I came from New York and I moved to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And from there I moved to, a small community in the Canadian Rockies called Radio Hot Springs, which is part of the Upper Columbia.

and they did not have a hospice. And two years after my father died, I, I realized that, that a hospice was needed. I, I wanted to volunteer for the hospice and I was told there was no hospice. Do I wanna start one? And, I was already, a public speaker. I was working with my company, MK Facilitations, and I broke my ankle and I was stuck in radium Hot Springs, so I wasn't doing the public speaking.

I had to cancel my fall tour, and it was all very fortuitous because it gave me the opportunity to be in front of the doctors and the nurses and the physios and all of the people who I could have the key conversations about. What would a hospice here look like? And do we need one? In five years of being the founding executive director of the hospice, I was tasked with creating the volunteer programs, both for end of life and for bereavement, and how we would support 14 different communities in grief and bereavement support.

And then we got a request from the rcmp, which is the police in Canada. they saw the fentanyl situation coming down the pike, and they asked, If we could provide special bereavement support for traumatic grief, particular to fentanyl loss and vehicular homicide. And I knew what I didn't know. And so I basically said, unless I get training, and it would have to be very specific training.

And the board said, You get one shot at a grant and if we don't get all the money in that grant, then you don't get to. I wrote the grant and I said, If any one of us, including Dr. Will felt, who is the North American expert on grief and mourn, if, if he doesn't think I'm qualified to do it or if I don't think I'm qualified to do it, or if the board doesn't think I'm qualified to do it, then I won't do it.

And we needed a letter from him saying, I, I'm good to go. And his letter said, She's good to teach other hospices how to. Hm. And so I got my death and grief study certificate with Dr. Wo felt, and In 2017, my mother died. My father had died in 2010.

so in that time period we had started the hospice. but by 2018 I knew I needed to step down from the hospice and I needed to do my own grief work, and I needed to do my own, writing and such. and what I got to see is what a grief pandemic we were in long before the Covid Pandemic. We were, we were a society in North America, both the US and Canada. And I'm a dual citizen working in both countries. So I see both countries quite clearly.

we, we are. Societies that have forgotten how to grieve and support each other as we mourn. Cuz the grief journey was never meant to be a place that we get stuck in. It was meant to be a journey, and it's called a journey for a reason. It's also called the grief process. It is a natural process of life to grieve our losses.

[00:05:43] Maria Kliavkoff: It is not natural for us to stay stuck in our grief, but we've become so afraid of our grief that what ends up happening is we bury and carry our. And then that befalls all kinds of other physical ailments and such. You know, because grief will await welcome. One of the great myths about grief is the time is gonna heal this wound and it doesn't unless we do the work of mourning.

When we do the work of mourning, then it does heal over time. 

[00:06:10] Angela Kennecke: You said something and all that, That caught my attention a little bit, about the fentanyl and the traumatic deaths. And I, I think a lot about that. I think a lot about how, how, because overdose deaths are at record highs in the us The last, yearly number was from November of 20 to November of 2021, and it was 107,000 overdose deaths, mostly caused by Fentanyl.

And I think of all these parents just like, Siblings, I mean, all of us who are here left behind going, Why did that happen? That shouldn't have happened. I should have been able to stop it. All these thoughts, you know, that you have when something, when you're not expecting someone to die, and they do.

[00:06:53] Maria Kliavkoff: All of those thoughts that you're talking about feed, what's often referred to as the regret review, which is kind of the review of what could I have done differently, when could I have seen it clearer, when could I have stopped it? All of that is a necessary and important part of the grief journey.

It, it is necessary for us to actually go through that because it is a way of us bringing gentleness, forgiveness, and absolving. Ourselves ultimately recognizing we did the best that we could. But until we bring ourselves to the point of, I should've, I could've, It's it's not for anybody external to you to say, How could you have and, and everybody in your life will, will pull you off of that.

Right? And, and say, No, no. There, there's no way. You could have known it 

[00:07:42] Angela Kennecke: well, except society. I feel really blames mothers like, you must have been a really bad mother. To have your child, not fathers. They don't blame fathers the way they blame mothers. I've even gotten this just cuz I'm in the public eye.

You must have been a really bad mother. You should have been a better mother. You should have been paying more attention to your, I mean, you know those, and they don't have any idea about my life, obviously. But I feel like that gets directed to those of us who have children that died of 

stigmatized death.

[00:08:09] Maria Kliavkoff: Yeah, that's a really good point, and I'm really sorry that that's part of your experience. Certainly in the public eye. You're right, you, you become a bit of a lightning rod, don't you, for all of that. And, and that just compounds your own situation and I'm so sorry for that. and, and yet that too becomes part of the grief journey.

It becomes part of what is true here for me, Every symptom of grief is designed to slow us down. And the reason it's asking us to slow down is so that we can start. Processing for ourselves. What is really going on here and what do we know to be true in all of this? And that takes time. I distinguish the process and the journey by saying, The process is this process of, of really filtering through everything that's coming up, all of the thoughts that are occurring to us, all the feelings that are showing up, working through them, one by one by one, and, and looking to work through them so that they don't start backing up on us.

And, and we don't get overwhelmed by the whole thing because it's so easy to get overwhelmed in the grief journey. The grief journey itself is about finding where the relationship with your loved one is, right. So I, I love the phrase death ends a life, not a relationship. It was, a philosopher in 1930 in the United States who originally spouted espoused that sentiment.

but it was Maury Schwartz and it was Mitch album in his book Tuesdays with Mory that actually said the phrase, Death Ends Life, not a relationship. And what's so important about that and the relief that that brings many people that I work with is. When, when everybody's talking to you about closure and talking to you about, you know, final sentiments and saying goodbye, they're talking about severing a relationship.

[00:09:56] Maria Kliavkoff: And most of us don't go to our grief because we're terrified that that's what grief is going to ask of us. That we actually say goodbye, that we actually bring closure and this thing inside of us know. That that's not true for me to do. And so my work is about helping people to understand, trust that voice inside of you only you know, your pathway through your grief.

Grief is unique to every individual, I started this charity and I talk a lot about my daughter and I use a lot of her artwork and our charity. And that helps me. But that wouldn't be for everybody. That would definitely not be for everybody.

Exactly. Yeah. Every, everybody does it in their own way. And the truth is, everybody, you know, we have many deaths during our lifetime. How we approach one death may not be how we approach the other death. Right? So it's not even unique to the individual. It's unique to this relationship for this individual, this is how I'm going to grieve this.

but we have to trust and lean in and lean on our grief cuz our grief is gonna get us through the journey. 

[00:10:59] Angela Kennecke: What about people who won't accept our grief? I found that almost everybody I talk to, including myself, have had people in our life that can't handle our grief, don't wanna be around our grief, leave our lives because we're in grief, that kind of thing.

we unfortunately live in a grief avoidance society, which means most of society avoids their grief, and, and we live in a society, as I said before, of buried and carried grief. And, and that was true before the pandemic. Now, It's just been exponential, right? Because of Covid and all of the death and loss due to covid, not just loss of life, although there has been plenty of that, all of the losses, right?

[00:11:42] Maria Kliavkoff: Our entire society is experiencing grief on many different levels. Including the bubbling up of buried and carried grief that's coming up. And so our society is grief avoidant to begin with. So the people who, who just don't even wanna deal with their grief, when you bring your grief to them, what you're doing is you're inviting their buried and carried grief to bubble up.

So they actually are not just pushing you away, they're pushing you away hard cuz they're not willing to deal with their. I've never heard it explained that way, but it does. I think that's really helpful because it tells people not to take it personally. 

 that they are pushing you away, says everything about them, and reflects in no way on you.

[00:12:25] Maria Kliavkoff: It simply reflects somebody who is bearing and tearing their own grief, and so they cannot be around your grief because they can't tolerate their own feelings around that. 

[00:12:35] Angela Kennecke: I found that, with my own grief, I found the first year. I kinda label it and you know, the timeframe's sort of rough. But the first year definitely shocked because it was an unexpected traumatic death.

The second year was depression for me, and then the third going into the fourth year. The third was just a lot of different emotions. And now that I'm in the fourth year, I feel like I am accepting the fact that my daughter has died. It's like acceptance. It's not that I like it, it's not. I don't still miss her, but I accept it.

 if that's the way you're experiencing it, that's the way you're experiencing. grief is unique to the individual and to the, to the relationship and the person that you lost. And the grief journey is about finding where your relationship with your daughter is. And so, the experiences of depression, the experiences of anger or regret review or, or any part of that is all part of what will get you to hearing where the relationship is now.

[00:13:36] Maria Kliavkoff: And that acceptance that you're talking about usually comes about. As we start to rebrace the memories, because in the beginning when we're in the trauma story and we're in the death story, any memory, any song that might trigger a memory is really painful and it's really hard. We get to a place where we can start to rebrace those memories.

We start to claim them back, and they start to become joyful. And, and we remember when our beloved daughter was four years old and what she did at four years old, and it's not the pain of she's not physically here now. Instead, it's been replaced with a, a peace and a calm and an acceptance around, you know, that, that our relationship is in a different place and maybe it's the place of memory right now.

I'm gonna start celebrating that. I'm gonna start. I'm gonna start bringing that more to the fore and, and often that's the place when, when we are moving to the healing part of the grief journey, 

[00:14:44] Angela Kennecke: I know that we have a lot of listeners. Who recently probably lost children in the overdose epidemic. Other people that have recently lost a loved one for, for a variety of reasons.

And I remember that horrible, like stabbing pain that you feel like you cannot survive. Like you, you just don't even know. Like I just felt like I was outta my mind, you know, in pain. And I wanna give people some kind of comfort or. I want you to, a way to deal with that in the moment. You know, what, what can you do when you feel like, you know, you'd rather just go jump off a cliff than go another moment.

And I think we've all had that experience if we've lost someone extremely close to us, especially in sudden and unexpected ways. 

the, the first place of that, It helps to normalize it. It helps to recognize you're not alone in this, that, that this experience that you're having, this, this thought of 

[00:15:47] Maria Kliavkoff: It would be easier for me to just turn the car into the oncoming traffic. Now, that's not somebody who is suicidal. That is somebody. Who is having a very real encounter with their level of pain right now. And, and the phrase, it would be so much easier. And yet that's not what I'm going to do.

I'm gonna keep driving on my side of the road, to, to be present to that and to normalize it and say that I'm having these. I don't need to worry about me being suicidal right now. What I can do is I can, I can say I have had this huge loss and I can be present and willing to actually feel that level of pain because if I'm willing to feel it, then the pain won't sustain.

The pain will move through. so there are three steps to this. The first step is to be present to it. If I'm actually having the thought and I'm aware, I'm having the thought, I am present to what's going on for me right now.

So that's present too. I, I can say to somebody, This is what I'm thinking, or this is what I'm feeling right now. I'm present. Now the question is, am I willing to feel it? Just because I'm present to it, I'm aware of it, doesn't mean I'm willing to feel it. Am I willing to feel it? And honestly, no is a fair answer to that question.

 We don't need to hold our feet to any imagined fire here. We're grieving. We need to be gentle, and we need to be loving with ourselves, and we need to trust that our grief will get us through it. And the way we start trusting our grief is we can say, I see you, I, I see that this thought went through my head.

[00:17:32] Maria Kliavkoff: I see that I'm in this huge amount of pain, and for right now, I'm not willing to feel it. I'm not willing to feel it. And what grief will do is grief will dose grief, will distract you temporarily. And bring you back to it when you're more ready to, It's why we have what's called psychic numbing in the first three to six months of a death.

Often, right? Where you're talking to somebody and they're working as if nothing happened. That's a psychic numbing. That's their insights protecting themselves. But the truth is, there will come a time when that, numbing is going to melt. And when that melting happens, now we're gonna start to feel. 

[00:18:11] Angela Kennecke: I've never heard anybody put it that way to give yourself the, a permission to say, No, I can't feel you right now. And just also, I think we all, especially women, have a hard time being kind to ourselves, right? We we're so hard on ourselves. Society's been hard on us, we're hard on ourselves, and I think just being kind to. Being gentle with yourself, not expecting so much outta yourself, but the, the idea you can say, No, I don't wanna feel you right now.

I've never even had that thought. I think that could be very valuable for somebody. 

[00:18:42] Maria Kliavkoff: I think the way we think about this is let's just be gentle with our grief. Let's start a dialogue with our grief. So if, if the question comes up, am I willing to, to go into what I'm seeing is on the horizon?

And the answer is no. The way we avoid our grief is we go and we distract and we do something else. You know, I'll go turn on the tv, I'll eat something, I'll drink something, I'll smoke something. Right. It's a very different thing to be in dialogue with your grief and, and say, I'm not willing to feel that right now.

I really do need to be dosing a little bit here. Right. When dosing is not right to do anymore, then that's gonna feel awkward to you. That's gonna feel uncomfortable, but as long as it's right for you to do it, you'll be okay. So what I mean by dosing is I'll just turn on the TV here and three hours later I find I'm still in front of the TV.

Now if I'm still in front of the TV in three hours time and, and I'm. I'm not upset about it and it's okay. It's a natural part of grief to go through this. If at the half hour mark I start to get really impatient and antsy, it's because it's not true for me to be doing this. It's because the grief really does need my attention right now.

[00:19:56] Angela Kennecke: I think that's a great way to look at it. The other thing I have found, my fact was talking with a friend of mine who lost her son about the same time that I lost my daughter, and we were both saying, We're going on with our lives. Like there was one point where I never thought there would be anything happy again.

Like nothing would feel joyful and, and I do experience joy now, and I just thought there would be nothing to look forward to. I'm back to looking forward to ordinary things that, you know, I couldn't look forward to for a while. So we're going on with our lives and there's some guilt in that, you know, there's some guilt in like, we should be carrying the torch for our children whom we lost, not going on with our lives.

 Again, this is not uncommon in grief that this would be part of what we need to go through and what we need to deal with, because we get to the place of there is a new norm. It, it's never gonna be the way it was before. You said that at the very beginning, right? It couldn't possibly be, but Dr.

[00:20:54] Maria Kliavkoff: Wolfel refers to the time when you're in the midst of the grief, when you're really in that grief journey. As liminal space, you're in between. You're between the time when your loved one was alive and a time when you discover what the new life is going to be like. Some people refer to it as a new norm, but it's basically the life where you've now discovered where your relationship with your loved one is and how that sits as part of your new reality.

So how, how we engage with memories, how we engage with them. You know, if, if we're talking to them out loud, it, it's become our new norm in, in how we are in our life. And when that happens, joy starts coming back in part because when we reclaim the memories of our loved one, that's a very joyful time. It's joyful to be able to think about them and, and remember them with love in our heart.

[00:21:52] Angela Kennecke: Yeah, I see that cuz I talk a lot, like if I'm in, I'm with friends or I'm with relatives and I'll say, Oh, Emily, this cuz it'll remind something, will remind me. And I'm just like, you're just gonna have to get, if that makes you feel uncomfortable, I'm sorry, you're gonna have to get used to me talking, but it, it, it doesn't hurt me to talk about it.

I, I enjoy saying, Oh, remember when Emily did this? Or remember, you know, something will trigger, you know, from the experience, right. A memory. 

[00:22:16] Maria Kliavkoff: Yeah. And, and people, when someone's grieving, they're so afraid to mention their loved one's name. They're so afraid to come up to you and, and say anything about Emily.

And yet the reality is one of our biggest fears is that our loved one will be forgotten. You know, I love it when somebody comes up to me and starts talking about my mother and, and tells me a story I've never heard before. And I, it's a side of her that I, I never got to see as her daughter. Right? Right.

And so now I get to hear these fabulous stories and, and there's just so much affection and love for that side of my mother. I now get to discover. So there, there is this healthy place that happens in the grief journey where, we're feeling joy and then that guilt of, Oh, maybe I shouldn't be feeling joy, and maybe that's wrong.

This is where we get to come face to face with. We are going to continue on with our lives. Now in the relationship that I'm in with my daughter, my life can in part be a tribute to her and, and a tribute to everything that I've learned from her as she was living and from her as we've found this relationship now.

[00:23:32] Angela Kennecke: Yeah, that's a beautiful sentiment. I love that. And I do believe. Like I really believe that your mother lives on through you, through every cell in your body. And I think that mother child bond, I mean a way Emily is in me. She may not be in this physical world right now, but I really believe that she's with me in a way and with all of us who loved her and part of her family.

So the Greeks used to say that somebody dies three. They die when their heart stops beating. They die when they're married and then they die when we forget them and stop talking about them. Which was a wonderful way to give permission to people to share their stories and to speak about their loved ones.

the sense of it's not enough. That's the place where there's still grief, right? That's the place where we still really. Solidified where the relationship is now and that's why it's a grief journey because we don't do that as a one and done. Right. We do that over a long, prolonged period of time. 

 Tell me a little bit about what your, I know you offer courses to people and what does that include or what, What do you offer to. 

[00:24:43] Maria Kliavkoff: Yeah. well, I do private sessions with people, so I do private consultation and I do it via telephone or Zoom around the world. but I also wrote, a book after my mother died, which is Healthy Morning, Happy Loving, 52 Ways to Convert Your Grief to Mourn, and, and the whole idea is it's written for somebody in Grief Brain, which means no chapter is more than two pages

[00:25:05] Angela Kennecke: I like that 

[00:25:07] Maria Kliavkoff: when we're grieving. You must have had the same experience.

[00:25:10] Angela Kennecke: I did. I did. 

[00:25:11] Maria Kliavkoff: I would read a paragraph 20 times and then I'd throw the book across the room in frustration cuz 20 times.

And I still don't understand one sentence of that paragraph. Right, right. So, So the whole idea of the book is, it's written for somebody who is going through that right. It's written so that if you've, you're having physical symptoms of grief or mental symptoms of grief or emotional symptoms of grief, you can find a conversion technique that will work specifically for what you're going through.

and then it gives you ideas because again, you are the expert on your grief. So I talk about a conversion technique. I talk about how I've used it in, in my life in paragraph number two. And then the second page is getting started. Just bullet point ideas of how you. Do this and it's completely about encouraging people to, to take from it what works for them and use it in whatever way works for you.

 Can you give an example of what a conversion would be? What are the 52 way, you know, what would it be? 

 In days of your sailors would take to the seas, and their wives, girlfriends, and children would write letters, put them in a bottle and release them into the sea.

[00:26:19] Maria Kliavkoff: In the hope their loved one would find the message and feel their. Finding ways to communicate our love with the person who has died is vital in our healing process. and then it goes on to just explain, you know, how I did something like this. And then, page number two, We don't have bullet part points.

We have heart points, right? And the heart points are just the getting started ideas. So ideas for how you might send a message in a bottle. How do you communicate your love to your loved? 

[00:26:53] Angela Kennecke: because Grief is really love with no place to go.

I've heard that said number of times. 

[00:26:59] Maria Kliavkoff: Yes, and that's why I love. Death ends a life, not a relationship because then you discover, wait a minute, I'm grieving the physical loss of my loved one and, and there's nothing that's going to replace them being physically here and us hugging and such. That's true.

the love when I discover where the relationship is now I know where to send the love and how to send the love and the grief journey is about teaching you how to do that and where to do.

[00:27:27] Maria Kliavkoff: Yeah, it's perfect. It's perfect. Yeah, And when we recognize that's what the real grief journey is, then we don't need to fear it anymore.

Then, then, then we're kind of excited to say, Okay, so how do I do this? And this book was all because I had clients in hospice who were saying, How do I do this? When I, after I wrote it, it, it got released in November of, 2019 and. and somebody said to me in one of the book readings, So what are you gonna do with this book?

What are you gonna create with this book? And I realized, 52 ways. There are 52 weeks in a year. I'm gonna discover what I wrote, and I'm gonna start January, first week of January. And every 

So you did it yourself? You did it yourself. well, I started a program for people who wanted to be with me on the journey.

[00:28:14] Angela Kennecke: Oh, sure, sure.

you know, now we are, we, we have been doing it. We did it in 2000, 2001. Now we're doing it in 2002. and we just meet once a week via Zoom. And when shutdown happened, what a perfect way it became for people who were grieving to come together once a week just to do a touchstone. And then on Facebook in a, in a closed group to share what we discover.

[00:28:41] Maria Kliavkoff: As we do this particular conversion technique and give each other ideas about how to use this conversion technique, 

 you talk a lot about having a relationship, you know, continuing with your loved one who's gone. What do you think happens after we die? 

I have my own belief system about that. because I work with hospice, I, I love the way hospice refers to it because when somebody is in end of life and we're with the family during the end of life process and we have visitors sitting by the bedside, we talk about the veil and that we're very close to the veil now, and at end of life we discovered that the person who is dying is kind of bouncing back and forth.

[00:29:23] Maria Kliavkoff: On either side of what is referred to as the ve when they die, they go to the other side of the bail. I love that because it leaves it open to interpretation and, and whatever your belief system may be, that idea that they are simply out of our site. And yet energetically, you know, physically their body has died physically.

They are no longer in physical form, and yet there's something that goes on and what, whatever that is, that continues in whatever faith tradition you, you believe in, that's what's true for you. And that's, that's where you go to look for where the relationship is. I do believe that energetically we continue.

[00:30:09] Angela Kennecke: I think so too. I think we are fields of energy. Yes. and I think that that cannot die. I think the energy, and if you look at the earth and the way everything is recycled, Right. . Yeah. How, how, how, how could there be such a thing as true death, Right? 

[00:30:27] Maria Kliavkoff: Yeah. 

 And there's so much visible evidence of that if, if you look at stories that people tell.

[00:30:33] Maria Kliavkoff: I know with my mother and I tell the story in the book, there was one day that I was just so frustrated. It was a horrible day at work. I wanted to come home, I wanted to call her, I wanted to talk to her to get her point of view, and I was. I wasn't sad she wasn't there. I was angry and, and I started talking, you know, I was building the relationship and I was talking out loud to her and I was furious that she wasn't there and that she wasn't answering.

And, and I, I, I got into this frustration of. Why do I even believe that you're here? Like it's ridiculous for me to believe that in all the world, in all the many worlds, wherever you could be, that you would be here with me. And I pulled into the garage and I slammed my, my car door closed, and I remember slamming the car door at the moment of thinking, I don't even know why I would think you would be here with me.

And just. Something that to this day, I do not know what it was. Something fell at the back of my car and shattered behind my rear tire. It was some form of glass that just fell from somewhere and shattered and, and I used to tease my mother as she was dying, that, she always, she always told me that when something falls, somebody is trying to communicate with us from the other side.

And so I, I would, I would tease her and I would say, you know, my favorite picture is stay away from them. And we would laugh and what have you. But I knew that that was her. Her system of communication, that's how she understood somebody was trying to talk to her. it just felt like. Okay. I'm not gonna ask, I'm not gonna challenge you on this anymore. You're here. I get it. Okay. And I was so shaken by that, that I, I, went inside and I think the next day had the glass knot still been there for me to clean up, I probably would've not believed that it had happened.

[00:32:26] Angela Kennecke: Wow. 

Because I was That's an incredible story. Yeah. and my, my grief counselor said to be, Well, what does it hurt to believe in those signs? Who are you hurting? Right. And I think, I think she's correct. You know, if you could find comfort in that, that's great.

[00:32:41] Maria Kliavkoff: Yeah, I, I know for sure that the universe moves in quite miraculous ways and whatever's delivered the message, whether it really is my mother on the other side of, of the veil that's delivering that message, or whether it's coming to me in some other way or form, it's still answering my question, right?

It it's still helping me to, to, be present. Where I want the relationship to be now and where I am feeling it and where I'm not feeling it. And yeah, I agree completely. What does it hurt? What does it hurt to believe? 

[00:33:14] Angela Kennecke: Yeah. Well, thank you for all of the work you're doing to help people who are, you know, having to bear a lot.

And, and I think you're right through the pandemic and so many people suffering from so many losses in our whole society seems to be turned on its head. Right. We don't know what's gonna happen next, and I, I appreciate the work that you're doing. 

[00:33:36] Maria Kliavkoff: Thank you. I'm, I'm really dedicated because you touched me deeply when you said, you know, that, that you're getting these attacks and that people are wondering about a mother who would, and and such.

I think as a society we need to understand that we have to create compassionate grief communities. We have to, in our communities. Find ways to be of support to one another and not challenge each other in our grief or say, Aren't you over it yet? But rather truly be present to one another and say, I'm here for you.

Tell me your stories. Tell me about your daughter. Tell me about your mother. Tell me about your sister. When, when we can do that, that's when we will be a mature society. 

[00:34:22] Angela Kennecke: Most people are compass. Most people don't do that. It's just a small percentage and it's always in our human brains, it's always the negative that stands out.

Right. but I do think we need a lot, We need to destigmatize these overdose deaths and the stigma surrounding addiction because it's the disease of the brain and. There are many factors to blame, not just one , you know, many genetic factors. Environmental, fact, there are lots of factors to blame. but instead of blaming, we should be looking for solutions and, and ways to be compassionate.

We all need to listen to each other and have a more compassionate world all around, and I think we'd be better off for it. 

[00:35:01] Maria Kliavkoff: Yes, absolutely. 

[00:35:04] Angela Kennecke: Well, thank you again, Maria. I appreciate you being a guest today and we'll direct people to your website and your book as well in the notes of this podcast. 

[00:35:12] Maria Kliavkoff: Thank you so much and thank you not only for all you do, but thank you for mourning the loss of your daughter so beautifully. You honor her with everything that you did. 

[00:35:22] Angela Kennecke: Thanks for saying that. I really try to, I try to keep her talent and her spirit alive in a. Yeah. 

Yeah. It's palpable and it's beautiful and well done. Thank you for joining me for this latest episode of Grieving Out Loud. You can listen to more episodes and read my blogs on our website, Emily's Hope Charity. Thank you for listening. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope,