And what happened with the eating disorders? They kind of like slowly went away. I don't think I'm fat, but I'm not happy She's one of the world's most recognized sex and relationship therapists. From the Oprah Winfrey Show to the Dr. Oz Show, Dr. Laura Berman has spent more than three decades helping people navigate relationships and life's challenges. But nothing could have prepared her for the loss of a relationship, at least in this physical world, when her 16-year-old son died from fentanyl poisoning. Her husband, Sam Chapman, previously shared their family's story on Grieving Out Loud. Our child was on the, uh, Snapchat, and dealer reached out with a colorful menu of drug choices. And it turns out that the drugs that our son ordered and had delivered to our home like a pizza were, um, not drugs at all. The, what, what he'd ordered wasn't in there. It was just fentanyl. And- Just pure fentanyl, 100%? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In this episode of Grieving Out Loud, Dr. Berman joins us to share how she has grown through her grief and how she is now using that experience to help others who have lost someone they love. I struggled with depression most of my young adulthood, and I was so scared of it. I think that's a big reason I became a therapist,'cause I wanted to make myself feel better. I wanted to make other people not feel bad. And what this has really taught me, because this kind of pain is inescapable. You have no way through it other than through it. Um, can bypass it and numb it, but eventually you're gonna have to go through it, you know? E- and, and I realized that it's nothing. Feelings are just feelings. It's nothing to be afraid of. If you know how to work with it, it will not take you down. It will set you free in ways you can't imagine, My guest today is someone most of you already know from television, radio, and the bestsellers list, but she's here with me for a different reason. Dr. Laura Berman has spent more than 30 years as one of the world's most recognized relationship therapists. She's a New York Times bestselling author of 11 books, an Emmy-nominated broadcaster, and a familiar face from OWN, Showtime, and Discovery, along with just about every major talk show and women's magazine that you can name. She holds two master's degrees and a PhD from New York University. But in 2021, Laura's life changed in a single afternoon. Her son, Sammy, died at 16 after a drug dealer reached out to him on Snapchat and delivered a fatal dose of fentanyl to their home. Her husband, Sam, actually shared their story with me on this podcast a little more than a year after they lost Sammy, and I have followed their fight to hold social media companies accountable ever since. Laura has now turned her clinical expertise and her own lived grief into a new mission. She's released a book called Crying Out Loud, built around six pillars she's identified for moving through loss, and she's launched a podcast by the same name. Today, she's sharing those six pillars and what she's learned about grief that no textbook could have taught her, and how she's rebuilding a life around connection and love after unimaginable pain. Welcome, Dr. Laura Berman. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you so much for having me I'm so sorry that we share this commonality of losing a child to fentanyl. I, I wish it wasn't the case, but I feel we have so much in common because I've learned so much doing this podcast, Grieving Out Loud, for the last seven years. So much from grief experts and other parents like us, and I know you've learned so much in your journey since the loss of Sammy as well Yeah, absolutely. I mean, listen, I was no stranger to grief either personally or… I mean, personally, I had been by both my parents' sides when they took their last breath, and my grandmother's, and even a couple of very dear friends. and I certainly had ushered thousands of people throughout my career through the most painful points of their lives, including tremendous loss. But, uh, you know, as you know, nothing can really prepare you for the loss of… There's, it was much deeper and wider than anything that I could have ever imagined There, I always say there are no words, right? There are no words to really describe that pain of losing a child. Mm-hmm. Especially in s- you know, you have no preparation for it when it happens in such an unexpected way, a- as it did with your son and my daughter. I, I often tell people, especially parents who think, well, their kids are safe at home. Their kids are… And your son, it was lockdown for s- you know, I mean, you just would never imagine that something like this could happen and nothing could pr- even if you had some kind of warning something was wrong with your child or something was gonna happen to your child, I don't know if that makes it any easier. I don't know. But, uh, nothing could have prepared you Yeah. I mean, at this point, I have worked with thousands of grievers. Many, many, many, many grieving parents in particular. You know, a soft spot for grieving mamas, and I do a lot of retreats and programs for them as well. And it doesn't matter how their child died. Some of them had terminal illnesses, you know, or illnesses that became terminal for years, and they had a very long goodbye. And there may have even been a teeny bit of relief that the child was no longer suffering at the end. But it, there is, it is just… I mean, listen, before the advent of penicillin, you know, uh, this w- you know, it wasn't so, it was probably more in the collective consciousness that you could lose a child. Right for many, many, many generations now, including ours of course, it is not the natural course of nature. It is not something we are prepared for. And no matter how your child dies, I think it is tremendously traumatic. Particular- yes, there is a whole new level to it when you don't get a chance to prepare for it or say goodbye, right? Um, and it, you kind of are gobsmacked by it. That, that adds a layer of trauma. But all grief, no matter who you've lost, me is trauma. Um, and, and I treat it like that There's also an element of stigma that goes along with these fentanyl deaths. I wrote a whole entire blog called My Child Died Too, But Not From Drugs. You know, I've heard that from parent after parent, and I think we've all felt that when, when they die from fentanyl, like, well, this was your child's own fault. They did something they shouldn't have done. my fault Or, or, yes, a mom's fault. Always the mom. And when you're in the public eye, uh, I mean, I'm in the public eye on a, a much smaller level than you, but, Yeah, uh I've heard it all. Like, you, you know, you just weren't a good mother, you weren't home enough, you didn't do… Yes, I've heard it all, and all on social media. You know, they don't say it to your face. They say it on social media. So how do… basement. Yeah. Right. So how, how, how did you c- but still, it can sting, and sometimes those comments, I notice those comments take about 36 hours to leave my brain. I- that's what I always say, about 36 hours and I'm, like, stewing about something. How did you cope with comments like that or the stigma that went along? Because y- the, the death of Sammy was really public at the time and, and you were public, and thank you for being public. I mean, thank you for being public. I think that helps other people as, as tough as it can be on you and your family. Yeah, I mean, the news, I, I wasn't intending for it to be public. I, I was just trying to help my online, you know, my community on social media, and it went viral. And then every television show that I'd ever been, you know, name it, I… And it was calling me, and I couldn't imagine. I remember turning to Sam, my husband, and being like,"I, it's not like I can complete a sentence without snot running down my face. I'm not gonna be doing any hair or makeup." And he was like, "Who cares?" And I was like, "You're right. Who cares? If one kid is saved, I'm just gonna do it." And so I forced myself for about 10 days straight, I went on every single show. And then after, like, 10 days to two weeks, I called UNCLE,'cause I couldn't just… Uh, for me, it wasn't, you know, talking about the issues wasn't as painful, 'cause he had just died, as recounting the story of his death again and again and again. And so I called UNCLE at that point and dove deep into healing. And Sam, you know, so masterfully took the reins of that and has become, you know, it's been this amazing journey for him. He's become one of the leading advocates, as you know, for online safety and fentanyl s- you know, um, fentanyl legislation. But, uh, and I know you've joined him in a lot of that, and I'm so grateful, 'cause I am ready. You know, everyone has their skill set. I am… I cannot do what you guys do. I am ready to murder someone when I do the advocacy stuff just because of what we're pushing up against. But in terms of, like, the, the pushback on, um, from the comments, I b- you know, you mentioned I've been in the public eye for a really long time. I learned a long time ago not to read the comments. So I, I, I, I give that advice to other people, like when they would do a news story with me. Don't read the comments. yeah, and I also understand who those people are. there have been times where someone has said something really cruel, and I'm like,"Wow." The only comment I'll give back is like, "Wow, you must, I'm so sorry, because you must be in so much pain to wanna say something like that to a mother who has just lost their child." And, you know, so I, I ha- I'm not saying I am, you know, Teflon and it never gets through, but I am much more interested in how Sammy lived and how the way he died can stop other children from dying. But I'm not really interested in belaboring, you know, h- who he was was, with all of our losses, no matter who you've lost, it's not a, you know, yes, a part of it is about the loss itself, but it's, it's even more so that they lived. You know? That they were a human being on the planet, and if whether they were here for four hours, 16 years, or 50 years, they were here, and they had a life, and they had an impact. And, you know, they left a hole behind, and in your heart, and in your mind, and in your soul, and in your family, and in your community, and, and that's what I'm interested in focusing on. So when people get really focused on, you know, the fact of how he died, you know, I don't care whether you died from fentanyl poisoning, from an accidental overdose, from suicide, you know, all of these quote-unquote stigma things. I refuse to give those, um, weight, you know, except from the standpoint of how they affect your grief and how we can use that to create change. Yeah, they m- the, these people mattered. They mattered to somebody and many somebodies in, in most cases. And also, it shouldn't have happened. I think that's the thing, because it's stigmatized because our children took something, but if they wouldn't have been able to take those things or get those things, if they wouldn't have been available, if, if Snapchat wouldn't have allowed y- dealers on the platform, you know, if, if my daughter would've known what she was getting, our kids would still be here. And, and 20- when we were growing up and somebody was experimenting or even addicted to something, they had chance after chance, right? Because it wasn't a death sentence, and I think that's what we have to h- people h- have to understand. Yeah, I And that- say good kids make really dumb decisions. I sure as heck did. I Sure. of dumb decisions when Yeah. Yeah now unfortunately, those dumb decisions can kill you Right. That's so true. And then I wanted to tell you too that I do share Sammy's story along with a few other young boys who died in the same way with audiences, with high school audiences all over the country, because I think it's so impactful for them and their parents to hear this. Because many people don't even, still to this day, you'd think the way you're shouting from the rooftops, I've been shouting from the rooftops, you'd think that people would know, but they still don't always know. And so it's important. I think I know that Sammy's story has saved lives. I know you've saved lives, and you don't always know how, but, but you know it's happened Yeah, that's very, that's really a beautiful heartening part of this. You know, I said early, um, that, you know, advocating and educating doesn't take away the grief, but it does help with some of the helplessness of that kind of grief. You know, feeling like you are helping others or saving others. And yeah, that to me has been so heartening when I hear from parents all over the country that they had conversations that they would have never had, that they shared Sammy's story, that their, or that after that their kid came to them and said that they had just ordered something and now they weren't gonna take it. You know, that, that is really a beautiful thing. I mean, it's a terrible, beautiful thing, but it's a beautiful Yeah. You wish it didn't have to be the case, but at least it's not like your child, it seems like such, s- it's just didn't, so unnecessary, didn't have to happen, and you don't want your child to have died in vain. And, and you know that he hasn't. He hasn't. But I, I wanted to… child does, No, no. And I, I wanted to ask you a little bit more before we dive into your book and these six pillars of grief that you're, you, you're talking about. I wanted to ask you more about what's happened in the last year with these social media cases, because we've been following at Emily's Hope, of course, and I know many of the players involved. Do you think enough has happened in these court cases? Are, what needs to happen? And I know, I know you don't wanna be the advocate, but what needs to happen with the social media companies? God, I mean, I, it is… There are eight lobbyists, eight social media lobbyists for every lawmaker in Washington. This is like fighting Goliath times 10. but, you know, and people… I guess, uh, what I, what I think is important is that, you know, what you see in the news that now Meta is being, you know, the judge ruled against Meta. Meta is going to appeal the poop out of that. They are gonna hold it up. They are going to appeal. They are going to fight it. And what they actually settled on i- well, haven't settled on, but what the judge said didn't even attend to the biggest issue, which is the addictive nature of the algorithm. So that piece is still in play. Um, and so that said, every case, and, you know, this is how Sam and I approach. We're involved, as you know, in this 65 family lawsuit against Snapchat, which to me is evil. A- as you think Meta is, Meta at least, you know, they had these whistleblowers come out. Praying for the whistleblowers to come out more fully for Snapchat, but Meta had the whistleblowers come out, so those cases are kind of taking on momentum, but just wait. If you wanna know, like, multiply what Meta is doing by 50, and that is how evil Snapchat is. Like, they are so evil. It is like dro- i- 85% of kids are on there, and it is like dropping them off in the most dangerous, crime-ridden, you know, pimp, prostitute, drug dealer, predator-ridden, dark, evil alley and expecting them to be okay, everything disappears. And Evan Spiegel knows exactly what's happening, and he is just twiddling his thumbs and grinning while, um, Meta is being, you know, taken out to the, taken through the paces. But, um, the way that we look at this lawsuit is however it turns out You know, we're not att- we're gonna keep fighting, but we aren't, you know, we aren't focused on. What we're focused on is that each conversation about the case heightens awareness, you know, and brings awareness to the issues, um, in a way that the news will cover and in a way that families get the message. And so a- we are nowhere, we are just at the beginning of making any substantive change. Um, I think the only way to keep your child safe on social media is to create a community early of, like, 100, you know, families, not just four or five of your closest, you know, in your school and, and girls and boys club, and after school communities, and, and clubs. Like, a whole community that agrees to stay off social media. because, you know, that's what we're really gonna need. That is the ul- there is no way to keep your child safe on social media right now, period. It does not matter how many conversations you have with them, does not matter, you know, even if you don't let them have an account, they sneak and have one. Mhm, the mhm. is, the, the reason they're on there, because most kids now, especially as they get to their mid-teenage years, would love to be off it. They're understanding the toll it's taking, but they can have no life if they're not on there. I just had a young girl tell me that she's on the soccer team, and she has been off social media 'cause her mother doesn't let her on, and she didn't even find out that the team was u- wearing the different color jersey. She showed up in the wrong color jersey because they alerted each other on Snapchat. Um, so they communicate about everything from what they're doing on a Saturday night. You don't know what's happening. You don't know what happened over the weekend. You don't know who liked who. You don't know what's happening socially. You don't even know what's ha- what jersey you're wearing to the soccer team if you aren't on social media. So that's what has to change, and parents have to come together to make that change'cause the social media, we are a long way off from the laws demanding that social media change, and that's the only way they're gonna change. Well, and anytime there's money and power involved, you know, with Congress or any, wanting any kind of change, these social media companies have so much money and power. And what you said to parents, there's no such thing as safe social media, but it's a quandary. It's gonna be, what do you do? Like, if y- if your child isn't allowed on it at all, like you said, then they're completely left out, and maybe even ostracized. Probably ostracized. So i- it's a, it's just a, there's no winning here for parents or for kids, um, with the social media climate like it is today. And, and it's so unfortunate, because it's just hurting our kids and, and killing them in, in many cases. And that's not over-exaggerated. Um, it truly is. Behind every overdose statistic is a person who was loved. The Into Light Project is putting a face to those we've lost, humanizing the addiction and drug crisis one story at a time. Artists create graphite portraits of people who have died from addiction, overdose, fentanyl poisoning, or drug-induced homicide. A professional writer crafts a narrative to go with each portrait so the person's story is told alongside their image. When it's finished, the family keeps the original artwork. Exhibits are opening in South Dakota, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, and Maine, and submissions are open right now. If you've lost someone you love to this crisis, this is a chance to make sure their story is seen and remembered. Submit your loved one's story to intolightproject.org/shareyourstory. That's intolightproject.org/shareyourstory, and we've put a link in the show notes to this podcast. I, I know we don't have, ugh, easy solutions. A- and you're, you're saying to parents, "Don't, don't let your kids on." I- is there anything else you want parents to know about social media? all those conversations with them, like, you know, about all the dangers, the suicide baiting, the sextortion, the predators, the drugs, the, you know. But they are infallible and immortal and are not gonna listen to you. You know, one of the organizations that, um, d- you know, I'm on the board of a- and I know you're familiar with, is the Organization for Social Media Safety, and they have a, a relatively new, uh, initiative that they are calling Influencers for Safety. So they have these social media influencers who are creating content and advocating for social media safety online. Um, a- and you know, we know from the research and from child development that peer education, they don't listen to our, you know, as much as we'd like to think they listen to us, they don't. Right to their peers. And so, you know, I think this, the, the social me- you know, the phone-free schools and the legislation that is keeping kids off more and more social media, we cannot count on the settings. Do not fall for it if the social media companies say, "Oh, we've now put on safety gaps and settings that will protect." BS. Any 11-year-old can turn them off. They are not real. It's just lip service that they're doing to make you think it's safer. It is not safer. So the best thing you can do for, I mean, if you have young kids, I'm not kidding when I say, like, if I had it to do over, I would be pounding the pavement to every after-school group, every club, every organization that is in a 300 and s- you know, a degree of my home, and be creating a coalition of parents who understood the risk and who all agreed from the time they were pre-middle school to keep them off social media. So there's a huge community of kids who are doing the same, and it's kind of normalized. If I had older kids where it's too late to do that, I would just be doing my best to limit it. I would be really containing it as much as possible. I would be spending a lot of time with them looking at the stuff online and saying, like, you know, h- like, "What is this bringing up inside? When you see, why do you follow this person? Like, what is it about them that's, how does it make you feel when you look at that girl who's a size zero telling you about a diet? You know, how are you feeling inside your body?" And like, help them create more self-awareness of the ways, of the insidious ways that social media is harming them and manipu- and manipulating them. But you know, there's no way to keep them off it. And if we could get Sammy's Law passed, that would obviously make it all a lot safer, but know, there's politics involved in there, too. So it, it's probably gonna be a while before we can, i- if we can get that passed, that we do. Right. And I, I, I often think that all this just takes too long. In the meantime, we're losing kids, and we're seeing more nefarious things getting into the illicit drug supply, and a- all of it, you know. And I just, I think that way about, um, just teaching kids in general about drugs that w- we're working on at Emily's Hope. It's taking years, Yes get into many school systems. And I'm like, how many kids miss this education? Just like taking years for Sami's Law to, to be passed and in a, any hate, I, this is why I'm so grateful to you guys because I am r- I'm, I am ready to murder someone Ja. I s- when Ja against this BS of politics, money, power being more important than our children's lives, Right the m- and the manipulations and the, "Yeah, I'm gonna pass this 'cause I know the next guy is gonna put the kibosh on it, so I get credit for pa-", like all of that BS is happening and allowing so many children to die makes me insane. Yeah, I get it. I know. I know. So to the people who can tolerate that and keep fighting the fight, like you, like my husband, like so many others. It's, Oh. thank goodness you're doing it, 'cause Well, I but what… you heal. Yes. Yes, let's talk about, okay, perfect, perfect segue here to talk about Crying Out Loud and your book, and the six pillars, uh, of grief. So can you tell me a little bit about, I know you've written many books, uh, most on relationship advice, right? So tell me about, um, Crying Out Loud and the foundation for that book Yeah, I mean, really it's, I wanted, wanted to write the book that I really needed. And so much of what is out there, most, pretty much all of what is out there for grief support is what I call sort of the cognitive restructuring, uh, piece. You know, that's, uh, what a therapist speak. But it basically is, you know, guilt and, and anger and sl- you know, the physical issues that happen, and the cognitive changes, and the changes in your community and your friendships, and all of that is super, super, super important. I'm not minimizing that at all. But it's like a quarter what's needed to heal. Um, and, and I, because of all the grief I had processed in myself and all the gr- all the trauma work I had done in my own life around the trauma of gr- loss, but also other traumas, I really understood and learned a lot more through this process. But I really understood the basics of what was necessary, but I didn't know how to navigate it or how to do it. and so through a whole series of really miraculous events that I share in the book, I ended up, you know, really finding a path to healing that really works. And it is all of those cognitive things I've talked about, but an- but there are really three other key elements that you, that kind of f- there are six pillars. We don't even have to get into those, but there are four key categories, right? There's that cognitive piece that I'm talking about, which includes an emotional. You know, the depression, the anxiety, the anger, all of that. The six stages or fi- you know, which aren't, aren't really even stages. They Right you know? But I hate that stage idea. But, um, but also it's about the somat- like, the huge piece missing for me, one of them was the somatic piece of the way grief is absolutely trauma. No matter whether you lost a child or someone else, it is a form of trauma. It affects your body and your brain. So all your old traumas, all the grief you haven't processed from your dog dying when you were eight to your sister being terminally ill. Like, whatever it is that you haven't processed is going to rise to the surface. And until I really learned how to work with- The grief in my body, the anger that I was holding, the sadness that I was holding, um, the pain that I was holding. Without being able to release that in a guided, you know, structured way, I don't know that I would still be sitting here. And I see so many other grievers, you know, staying stuck because they aren't learning how to really surf the waves of pain when they come. Um, that's what I always tr- you know, I, I do this, uh, big Grieving Mama Retreat, uh, in the redwoods of California every year. We just did our third one. And a mama, several of them come to, have come to all of them. Uh, and I bring, I r- we raise money all year. We bring about 90% of them on partial or full scholarship. And this one mama came running up to me this year, she was there for her third year, to show me her new tattoo, which was a surfer surfing a wave. And she's not a surfer, but it was to remind her of what I had been teaching them time and time again, that in order to survive grief, you have to learn how to surf the waves of pain. You have to be willing to be with the pain, run from it, not try to bypass it by focusing on advocacy or some of the other things that we do. Like, all the things we do to not be with our pain, it, it, there's, it may put it off for a little bit, but it really costs the body. Um, and so I spend a lot of time in the book showing you really specifically how to gently and consciously work with your body so that you aren't as heavy and laden with the pain, and so that you're not as burdened by it. You know? It really does to loosen the grip of the pain. I always say that the grief doesn't get smaller. It never does. But we absolutely can stretch our capacity to hold it and, um, get bigger around it Yes. There are a couple things you said in there that I wanna highlight. First of all, that the body holds grief, and you may not even be consciously aware of where or how your body is holding it. And so many people forget about the body. Early on… Now, I got really busy right away at first because I had a platform and I, and I was just busy, busy, busy. But I did go to someone who was a yoga expert who kinda… And I just remember just crying in that yoga class, not over any… but just over releasing certain parts of my body where I was holding the tension. And I think so many people never get to that point, and they get sick. What I noticed about our support group of parents that we have is about 90% of them have had major health problems following the death of their child, and I believe it's because they're holding all that in their bodies 100%. It's inflammation. You know, I learned this the hard way after my mother died, uh, which was my worst, most impossible loss. She was my person, um, Oh. Mm-hmm. she died about 10 or 11 years before Sammy. but I, at the time she died, I was filming two shows on the Oprah Winfrey Network, doing a five-day-a-week live call-in radio show, uh, had three young children at home and a husband, and no desire to go feel my pain and no time to time And within a year… And I was in a lot of pain. I was just containing it, bypassing it, stuffing it, whatever I needed to do. Um, and within a year, she died of metastasized breast cancer. Within a year, with no… I was 40 years old, pinnacle of health, no genetic risk factors, no other risk factors. I had breast cancer in the same breast that she did. I had to stop my life, go through chemo, mastectomy, the whole thing. Um, and that was a big wake-up call to me. Not to say that if you don't grieve properly, you're gonna get cancer. I don't Right that at all. But we all have, you know, there are a lot of inflammatory diseases, and I talk about this in Crying Out Loud, whether, you know, it's arthritis, lupus, um, chronic fatigue, cancers. You know, there, anything that is related to infl- inflammation, we all are susceptible to that, and it can be environmental toxins, it can be toxins in what we eat, and it can be emotional Repression. And when we aren't allowing that grief to move, um, it does often make us sick. And so we do see a lot of cancers, a lot of inflammatory diseases in grievers who haven't been able to, or willing to, or don't know how to be with their pain. So literally for an entire year after Sammy died, I forced myself. I didn't want to 'cause it got to a point eventually, you know, where I could wake up in the morning and not immediately be in pain, and maybe, like, today was gonna be okay, and I didn't really wanna go in. But every single morning, I would go to this little back office of mine, and my family knew, um, you know, that I would, I would be like, "I'm going to move some emotion," and I would just sit with myself and scan my body, and wherever I felt density or tightness or pain, whatever was calling me, to me the most, I would just put all of my conscious awareness there, let it get a little bit bigger. I wouldn't think. I wouldn't analyze it. I wouldn't make up stories about it. I'd just start, say to my body, "You do what you need to do," and I'd just start rocking back and forth a little bit to kinda get the momentum going, and I'd start wailing. Or, you know, if you follow me on social media, you probably see me, like, beating the crap out of a bunch of pillows or screaming into pillows. Like, whatever wanted to come out, w- the body is so brilliant. If you just get out of the way and give it room to move, it moves through. It takes about 10 minutes, and you feel so much lighter, so much clearer, much more t- attuned and tapped in. And for me, who really believes in ongoing, the ongoing ability to connect with him, um, you know, I have a lot of communication with him, that got even stronger after I would have a big release. Huh. and, you know, there are r- reasons for that, that we could get into, but, uh, or theories I have as to why that is. But it's, I, now I've taught, you know, thousands of people how to do this, and, and they say the same thing. yeah, I wanna talk about that. Communicating with Sammy because, uh, one, one of the things that, um, I'm going through right now is I'm in the process of downsizing. So I'm, uh, all my kids are out of the house and I'm downsizing and I'm coming across all of Emily's stuff. Like Rubbermaid container after Rubbermaid container of thing… And I can't throw anything away. And I haven't forced myself to go through every single piece. I've gone through some things and then I'm like, "Okay, this is enough." But I, I do try to just sit with how I feel and I might just cry. Now eight years later I might cry for five or 10 minutes and then I just move on to the next task. But I think the thing is, is to allow yourself Yes have those emotions no matter how long it's been, no matter what is going on in the moment. Or if you can't cry in the moment 'cause you're not alone and you're surrounded by people, make sure you come back to it at, you know, once you get home. Because I think when you, when you just, uh, try to ignore it or shove it down or act like you can just make your way through it is when we get stuck. Yeah, stuck And I have techniques in the book for literally, I call it containing versus restraining your grief, and you wanna contain it, not restrain it, and how to contain it.'Cause sometimes you have a parent-teacher conference, or your kid is Right. needs you, or Right a board meeting or whatever. You know, for me, I was like containing, containing, containing after my mother died 'cause I had to be on camera and I had to keep it together, but I wasn't opening the container ever. And so I lead you through the process of how to contain when you need to, but also once, to keep that appointment with yourself and what to do during that appointment to open back up. And I- if you don't think too much, and I'll often … And this has been shown in numerous studies that a, an emotion only takes about five to 10 minutes to move through you. You're not … You know, people are afraid to feel their pain, and I was too at first,'cause it was so profound. You think you're gonna sink in the bo- it's an o- bottomless ocean. You're never gonna reach the bottom. You're just, it's just gonna, you're gonna sink forever. And the opposite is true. If you don't think too much and you just let your body do what it needs to do, it takes five to 10 minutes. You feel so much lighter and clearer. You reach a sandbar, it's so important for your healing. It really is. And so I do spend, in addition to the cognitive pieces, I spend a lot of time helping people understand somatically or body-wise how to d- all the different ways you can work with your grief in a way that sets you free and allows you to be much more tapped in and tuned in, much less constricting. You know, to not feel you have to keep everything super tight or you have to keep running, Right of those things are sustainable right. And you mentioned the other side, and I've heard you talk about our loved ones on the other side. And I'm wondering how you came up with your theories about this. And I've certainly talked to enough parents, and I myself have had signs, things you can't explain. And I always say, "Well, just believe in that. It doesn't hurt anything. And if it makes you feel better, that's, that's, that's great." Um, I often talk on this podcast about how I had my own crisis of faith after my daughter died. And it wasn't … I, I don't know, you know, I … This isn't a religious show or a spiritual show or anything like that. But, um, I've certainly had some remarkable signs, and sometimes I do hear her voice. And I'm wondering how you view that and what your advice is to other people when it comes to those they've lost, and what happens after we … Who knows what happens after we die? Who knows? But I did share, there's a whole section in the book about this, about… I, and I share a lot of research, 'cause, you know, I come from a- I, I was a full-time professor. You know, I come- I published many, many peer-reviewed journal-y blah, blah, blahs. You know, I, I'm a science-y girl, and, um, I'm very metaphysical. Um, and I, uh, share a lot of the research to back up what I'm saying. A lot of it actually comes from quantum physics, which is interesting, but there have been a lot of studies to look at, look at this. And, you know, I, I'm not inter- I, I… Can I prove it unequivocally? Probably not, but I can prove, and I do prove how it can work and why it works. And here's what we kn- we know from quant- So here's the core principle, right? Underneath it all, in a kinda simplified way, is that, you know, we are, we seem solid. You and I seem separate. We're looking at each other through a, a computer screen right now. But if we were to look at all of this through an atomic microscope, at the smallest at- 'cause we're all atoms. We aren't, you know, we aren't solid. We're pure vibrating energy. So if we were to look at ourselves through an atomic microscope, we would see nothing solid. We would see vibrating atoms. And we would see no separation between me and this computer I'm looking at, and you. There's no separation. We seem like separate, I seem separate f- from this mic I'm talking to, but on the quantum level, it's all connected. We are all pure energy. We're just vibrating at different frequencies. Um, and so when energy, of what we're made and what everything is made, cannot be created or destroyed. That is a, that is a fact, a scientific fact of quantum physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only change form Okay? So when, when the energy… When I die, the energy of, of what I am, the form, the body, is gonna go. But the energy of what I am remains. Now, you can say goes to be with the Heavenly Father. You can say goes to be one with the universe. You can say whatever your belief is. Doesn't matter to me,'cause I don't know. I know is that the energy does not die, and the energy of which my son was made, which I like to call our soul signature, right, our essence of who we are, Now, does that mean we don't… You know, and I also have spent a lot of time, even before Sammy died, I have many, many dear friends who are exceptional, impossible to, not believe mediums, where you watch… And I can give you some examples of things. This one medium who I bring on all my retreats, um, shared just a few examples with me. Um, but I watch her work, and I'm… You know, what she brings out. Like, I, we just had a Good Grief Day where we had a bunch of people. We were, it was a fundraiser for our retreats, and it was a whole day of different healing activities, and there was a couple there whose son had died by suicide. she said, "Okay, there's a young man in the room." You know, she figures out it's them. She said, "Okay, he died by suicide," this, that. You know, she knew some things. But, you know, it might, she coulda, mighta, coulda, woulda, shoulda possibly known even though they were strangers to her And then she said, "Oh, he's saying someone is wearing his shirt. Who's wearing his shirt?" the mother's looking around, like, "His shirt?" And the father starts sobbing 'cause he had put on his son's T-shirt under his button-down that you couldn't even see, Wow wore to this event. Like, things like that happen all the time, and I've had many experiences with her. I also have a dear friend. I always recommend this book to grievers. a dear friend who died of terminal cancer. She had, uh, uh, lymphoma. All her organs were gone. She had grapefruit-size tumors up and down her spine, 60 pounds. Died, to the other side, had this whole experience that she writes about in this beautiful book called Dying to Be Me. She comes back. Her family is just, like, about to unplug her. She comes back, wakes up, and says, "I went to the other side. I'm gonna be fine." the doctors thought she was crazy, and within two weeks… This was 17 years ago. Within two weeks, she walked out of that hospital with no trace of cancer, and it's never come back. Um, and she writes about what she discovered on the other side, what she saw and what she was told and shown. And, um, so I have learned, with the help of many of these people and through my own experimentation, how to have connection not only with him, but with my other loved ones on the other side. So it starts off with signs, like you said. You know, when my mother died, it was March in Chicago, freezing cold, and I was sitting up in my room meditating, and the boys were downstairs with Sam. And I was like, "Okay, Mom, I'm gonna pick a sign for you. I wanna pick something that's really hard and, you know, that I'm not likely to see. How about a hummingbird? I'm not gonna see a hummingbird in the winter in Chicago." I don't even see hummingbirds in Chicago, I've never seen a hummingbird in Chicago either. They're not really very popular in the upper Midwest, so yeah, yeah downstairs after, and my kids are watching a nature channel that was on… You know, they used to have a nature channel. They're watching a documentary on hummingbirds And then every single day for an entire year, I either through a card I saw and it suddenly got put in front of me, or a painting, or a television, or literally I saw a hummingbird every single day for a year now. Was that definitely my mother? Can I prove it? No. But it sure feels like it. And so I have learned so many beautiful techniques for… I play games with him. I communicate with him. Um, I was in a really deep meditation, and he often comes in when I'm in meditation or doing breathwork, he'll often come in. um, and so I can see him in my mind's eye, you know? I can see his face. And in one of these… And he, he'll often say things to me that I couldn't possibly make up that, that I can't stop thinking about and blow my mind. Like, drops these wisdom things on me that I'm like,"What?" And I, I can share one of those with you. But what he said to me on this occasion, I said, say, I had just decided to write this book, which happened so Like, I was not… I knew eventually I'd write a book. I was not planning on writing one now. But it literally just was ha- like, okay, it's time to write this book. I said to him, "Are you gonna help me write this book?" And he looked at me with this like, you know, side smile of his, like, looking at me like,"You're such a goof," you know? And he said, "Mom, I was always gonna write this book with you. This was always the plan." Um, and I really felt him. I felt him a lot helping me and supporting me through this writing, and may- and sometimes even helping me write. but it's, it's a, it's a skill that, you know, it's, it's, it's something we can all do, and I get into deep specifics on how to do it. But, um, it does require just an open mind, right? And, Right can, like you said, you can, you can absolutely make up that you're making it up. Um, or you can decide you're not. And I am very happy deciding I'm not making up. You know, one of the things this medium I was talking about, Susan Gratz her name, said to me once is like, "Look, you say Sammy's a butterfly," right? Or whatever you say. And a butterfly comes and you say, "Oh," you know,"Hi, Sammy." And then you say to yourself, "Oh, I'm just making that up. That's not really Sammy." Угу to this and seeing it, and maybe he did or didn't send you the butterfly, but he's like,"Oh, uh, she obviously doesn't think butterflies are me. I'm not gonna send her any more butterflies. That doesn't mean I won't try other things, but I'll have to find something else." Or maybe a butterfly comes that he didn't even send, and I say, "Oh, thank you, Sammy." And he's like, "Oh, okay. Butterflies are a way she knows it's me, so I'm gonna send her more butterflies." Um, so it's really, you know, f- you were talking about a crisis of faith. The… I was never one. I was raised without a God. My father was God, and he was a horrible God. Hmm. and I d- I was not raised with faith. I did not understand. I understood intellectually what grace is. It is not until I started having these experiences and connecting to spirit as deeply as I have that I really understand grace, and that I have developed deep spiritual faith this versus through more traditional channels Are you ready to protect the next generation from the dangers of substance use? Emily's Hope has created a comprehensive K through 12 substance use prevention curriculum designed to educate, empower, and equip students with the tools they need to make healthy choices. Our age appropriate lessons start in kindergarten and build through high school using science, real stories, and interactive learning to help kids understand their bodies, brains, and risk of drug use. We're already reaching thousands of students across multiple states, and we're just getting started. Visit emilyshopeedu.org to learn more and share our curriculum with your school administrators and counselors. At Emily's Hope, we believe prevention begins with education. Let's work together to keep our kids safe. That's so interesting to me that, you know, the worst tragedy of your life, and y- I, I know you had s- other tragedies, but could lead you to a, a much more spiritual path. And maybe you were always on that spiritual path to some extent, but it led you to a more spiritual path. And I al- yeah and I always say, like, God didn't show up… Well, I, I'm gonna try to put this in a better way. I didn't get what I wanted when Emily died. I was there upon her death. I, I prayed that God take me. I prayed all of the things that anyone would pray in that moment, right? And it didn't happen. But grace showed up for me through other people, and magically, all these doors opened, things started happening, and I f- once I put one foot in front of the other and, and took the steps to try to help other people and to try to use Emily's life as a living testament, really, to end this hor- these horrible things that we see happening in our culture and our society, um, that's when other people started showing up along the way, and things happened that I can't explain, and I call that grace. I call that grace. Yeah That is grace. The grace I'm talking about is the physical grace, like, where it fills your body. Hmm The c- the grace of love, of God, of, you know, it is a, for me, it is often, it is that, what you're describing, and it has often been a full mind, body, physical experience of just knowing how supported we all are. And you know, I think about back to Anita Moorjani and her going to the other side. You know, it's, it was very hard for her. She's become a really dear friend, so I've spent a lotta time talking to her about this. But in her book, she shares this metaphor of trying to describe what she was shown about who, who she was in the whole, quote-unquote,"tapestry of life" and how everything fit together, right? Like you were saying, you didn't get the, I didn't get the outcome I wanted either when Right. Like, Right to explain those things and still have faith. And what she described is that what she's like, it's the equivalent of seeing the hugest, most intricate, most impossibly to describe gorgeous tapestry, and you can see your one thread and how it touches some threads or blends with other threads or weaves in and out with other. All part of the humongous picture that we're not gonna understand until we get there too, right? We can't possibly understand our thread and what happens happens, right? But I think we will. I think we will. And we can already see it, like a little bit of it, you know? In the way you said the things that came together. My guess is you've come to a place where as much, and I have too, where I would give it all back in a hot second to have my kid back. Of course things that have grown out of him leaving in terms of the other lives saved, in terms of the people whose lives I've been able to support and touch and healing, and the lives I've saved from people who come up to me at the end of, you know, reading something I've written or coming to one of my retreats and saying, "You know what? I was thinking about taking my own life, and now I see a path out." Like, all of that is because Sammy left. Right. of it would've happened if And right, and of course w- we would not do any of this to have our kids back, of course. And but I have become a better person, a more… Mm-hmm become more of myself. I've, I think I've c- those kinds of things. I think, I think a lot about this, that, um, I'm more compassionate, I'm less judgmental. I, I feel much more confident in myself and my decisions and what I'm doing, what I wanna do. And when Emily first died, I didn't think I would be able to ever find any joy again, and I'm sure you felt the same way. I thought joy is gone from my life. I have to live for another 20 or 30 years without any joy, without w- with life seeming meaningless. But in fact, the opposite has happened. And I had a mother tell me, who lost her daughter, and it happened shortly after, uh, Emily's death, and she had lost her daughter 13 years earlier. And she said, "Life can get much deeper and richer and more meaningful if you allow it." And that, I remember her saying that, and I was in the throes of the worst grief. Yeah. I'm like, "That's, that can't be true. That cannot be true." And now eight years later, I would say that is absolutely true. And it c- it's not true for everybody because some people can't allow it, won't allow it, don't allow it. Yeah But I think it can be true i- i- if you open your h- if you don't close your heart, if you don't close your heart. But so it- your heart, if you do the healing that's necessary, I have a whole chapter in the book about what it means to choose life and how to do that.'Cause it's not just choosing not to kill yourself, 'cause I Right. to people too. It's Sure live and to live fully and, and, you know, and what I have found along the lines of what you're saying is that the more pain I was willing to allow myself to feel, the real pain that I allowed myself to be with, with support, um, that stretches your capacity for all feelings, including joy.'Cause they Yeah. the same channel. You can't Yeah. pain Right. feel more joy, you Right, right I, and I see this universally, what you're talking about is a, a, a, a more, not suffering fools, not better boundaries, Right not really able to do small talk. Superficial stuff. Yeah, superficial stuff. Like these… Like, we just got into a really deep conversation, Laura, and I would say, you know, a lot of people spend their time on podcasts talking about superficial crap that we know, we know doesn't matter, right? Because of that pain. Because of the pain. It's, it, it, it changes you. You know, I… People often say, still say to me, but, often said to me, I'm sure they say to you, too, like,"Oh, know how you survive this. I don't think I would survive it." And in the beginning I felt like saying, "F you." Like, "I don't know how I'm surviving it either. You think I'm, like, doing it, you know, I don't have a choice." Now when people say that to me I say, "N- you're right. I did not survive it." The woman who was who I was on February 6, 2021, died with my son on February 7th. is gone. And part of the grief process of healing is allowing that unraveling. I love looking for metaphors in nature, and it wasn't until adulthood that I learned when a caterpillar goes into the cocoon it doesn't just, like, morph a little and grow wings. It decompensates to complete mush, a complete soup, then in that decompensation are the what scientists call the imaginal cells of the butterfly, the DNA of the butterfly, and it slowly reconfigures into a new version of itself. But what's really cool about that metaphor is just in recent years a young, I don't know, he's like 10-year-old boy genius did this experiment that they ended up replicating at Georgetown on a much larger scale that shows that butterflies have memories of things they learned when they were a caterpillar. Really? they completely decompensate to soup and reconfigure into an entirely new being, they still have recollection of lessons and things they learned as a caterpillar. Um, and I think that's an even more beautiful extension of the metaphor because we don't disappear completely. Obviously we still have so many aspects of ourselves, but this new version is a more boundaried, clear, compassionate, loving, open-hearted, tapped-in and tuned-in authentic version of ourselves. And I really liked, I'd done a lot of work on myself. I really, a lot of healing before Sammy died. I really liked mys- self and my life, and yes, you know, caveat again, I'd give it all back to have him back, but I really enjoy this version of me even better. Like, I like this version even I re- than remember at the time when Emily died feeling like this is not supposed to be my story. This is not supposed to be how things go. I remember feeling very much like it was hard to let go of what I thought life should be, what I thought my life should be, and what my family's life should be, right? But then once I just, I just dove into the deep end and, you know, really is what I did, um, without ever looking back. And, and I don't regret that. You know, I don't regret just letting it all go and, and finding something completely different and new. And each one of my family members in their own way, the same thing has happened to them. You know? It, it, different, different things, not the same as me, but different. And, um, it's so interesting for that. I stand for the fact that we can grow our capacity. We can… grief can be a- an inspiration, a companion, an expression of our love. It does not have to be an albatross around your neck. It does not have to be a miserable life. You can live. You can hold joy and grief at the same time. Right a full, beautiful life. You can. You know, healing is not, uh, it doesn't have an end to it. Um, but you can. You absolutely can, you know, find a path. I mean, that's the subtitle. A Path Through Grief into a Life Reimagined. Like, that's really what it's about for me. And I, and I love teaching people how to do that I wrote a blog called The Dance Between Grief and Joy. One of these days I'm gonna put all my blogs together in a book, but I don't know when. that'd I'm too busy running a charity and doing the podcast and all these things. But eventually I plan to do that with writing some transitions between them. But, um, the, the dance between grief and joy, because they do exist on the same planes, and I think, um, the, the, the weight of the grief, you, you learn to carry it. It never goes away, but you learn… And then it pops up. Like I said, I was going through Rubbermaid containers."Oh, oh, there it is again." But it's okay. It's okay because it means there was love. It means Yes. was love between… it. Right how to surf the wave of pain, and it rolls through, and it can even become a beautiful visitor, you know? An expression of love. It doesn't have to be… I, I spent most of my, uh, life, certainly into early adulthood, you know, I was raised by a mother who was severely depressed, so I had to really buffer her up to even get my most basic needs met, and I was always her therapist. I struggled with depression most of my young adulthood, and I was so scared of it. I think that's a big reason I became a therapist,'cause I wanted to make myself feel better. I wanted to make other people not feel bad. And what this has really taught me, because this kind of pain is inescapable. You have no way through it other than through it. Um, can bypass it and numb it, but eventually you're gonna have to go through it, you know? E- and, and I realized that it's nothing. Feelings are just feelings. It's nothing to be afraid of. If you know how to work with it, it will not take you down. It will set you free in ways you can't imagine, and that has been a revelation for me and something I'm so passionate about helping people understand. Hmm. I love that. I love that. I think that's probably a perfect note to end our conversation on. But I want to let people know that we will put a link to your book and your podcast by the same name, Crying Out Loud, and also to the book that you mentioned, Dying to Be Me. Is that your friend's book? Yes, we'll put a… Yeah, we will put a link to that too, because I, I wanna read that book now, and I, I have your book, but I wanna read her book as well. And, um, and also more information about your retreats too, because I feel like I know our listeners and viewers will wanna learn more about that as well, so If you are a mama and you wanna come on our annual grieving, we go for five days into the Redwoods, and I take you through all the different components. You learn how to do everything. There's… We have a large volunteer faculty. Um, there's grief yoga, sound baths, mediumship, somatic experiencing workshops, the works, um, that you can find. You can find out at drlauraberman.com/lovemama. and then if you just go to my website, drlauraberman.com, uh, anytime there's, like, a new event, or you follow me on social media either at drlauraberman.com or the Grief Healing Collective is, um, another… is, like, my grief-specific social media pages and also the name of my online grief healing membership. We have a beautiful community of grievers that we do live healing events with and guided meditations and toolkits and everything on there, too. Well, I about all of that on, on, on social media or on the website I love that, and we'll make sure people have the links they need in the show notes. So thank you again. Thank you for the conversation, and I, I'm so grateful for it Thank you. Thanks for having me on. It's been a beautiful conversation And thank you for listening to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. If you'd like to hear Laura's husband share his story on the podcast, just head to the show notes where we've linked the episode along with a couple of others that we thought you may find helpful. Be sure to turn in each week for a new episode of Grieving Out Loud. And you can find hundreds of past episodes anytime at emilyshope.charity. We've included a link in our website to the show notes as well. Thank you again for listening, and until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Wonnenberg King and Kayli Fitz.