Turn Your Grief Into Meaning That Actually Lasts | David Kessler

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0:42If you grieve well, you live well. If you get stuck in the breakup, the job loss, whatever it is, you're not going to do well. So I was really honored to work with Kubler-Ross. She taught me, and I was able to do a couple of books with her and adapt her stages of dying to stages of grief formally with her. And about nine years ago, I thought my grief was long behind me, and my younger son, David, died unexpectedly. And as brutal as you would imagine, I was on the floor. And I remember back then that at some point I thought, I have to find a way through this. What do I do for other people? Now, you're the grief expert.

1:39You've written books about it. Helped a million bereaved parents. Yes. And now I'm in it. Oh, my God. In the epicenter. Now, how long were you in it? And did you beat yourself up for being like, I'm the expert, why am I still feeling anger or sadness when I know these steps, I've taught this for years, and yet I'm still in this? There was an observer in me. And there were moments that were really, those two got separated. Like, I used to tell people, go see a counselor, go to a grief group. I handed that out like candy at Halloween. yeah when I had to go to a grief group took me three times I was like there's traffic there's always traffic in LA I can't find a parking place finally the third time I went into this grief group and I was like grief group I shouldn't be here and which is a feeling we have in grief this shouldn't be happening to me and literally I had to sit down in a chair with these other parents with with a table of books, and my books were on that table.

2:48Wow. And I couldn't say, oh, that's me. I'm that author. I had to be the father that buried a child. Oh. So brutal, brutal, brutal. And I eventually would notice, yep, you're in denial. Yep, you're trying. And then I thought, I got to accept this someday. And that wasn't enough. I'm like, it can't end with acceptance. I need more. Because if you just accept something, then what? Well, it felt like a low baseline. All right, I accepted it. Yeah, life sucks, I accept it. Life sucks. This happened. My life sucks. And you know, there were a lot of people who were like, this shouldn't have happened to you.

3:34And it's like, why not me? Like, I'm not exempt from human life. And so it was really, I looked at this and I was like, I know I've been teaching for years. No matter what you've been through, you can find joy and happiness again. Even though I couldn't see it when I was in it, people would remind me. and I eventually thought about I want to there has to be more could it be meaning and I went back and read Viktor Frankl's book a man's search for meaning and meaning didn't always jive with people in grief because it would be like there's no meaning in a horrible death there's no meaning in a murder there's no meaning in the and I realized and the work became to understand the meaning is not in the horrible event.

4:32The meaning is in us. Who do we become after the horrible event? And I also thought back to my son David, who loved my work. And he would not have wanted his death to constrict it. And I thought, then I have to expand it.

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