How Joy Finds Us Through Grief

Kim Sargent talks about the space between podcasts that she spent with her Mom on an Alzheimer's journey, until her passing. And how joy finds us... through grief.

Emotional Health Matters Podcast with Clinical Director, Kim Sargent, founder of Neural Network Therapy®.

Learn more about Kim's counselling practice in Peterborough, ON and book an appointment at canadianfamilyhealth.ca. Neural Network Therapy® emerged in 1997, largely in response to advancements in neuroscience. We provide a practical and holistic approach to boost mood, reduce anxiety, manage anger, break unwanted habits and develop strong, healthy relationships. We believe that every form of counselling should be backed by science, so our approach is too!

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Transcript

Welcome back to Emotional Health Matters. My name is Kim Sargent and I'm the clinical director of Canadian Family Health Counselling and founder of Neural Network Therapy. I have not sat to a podcast in quite some time, and I thought I should sit to a bit of an explanation on that. And I'm going to bookend it between a couple of major trips.

One of them. Was my trip to Antarctica to visit some penguins.  For anyone who knows me, I'm obsessed. It's not a, it's not a very logical thing. In fact, I was able to swim with the penguins in the Galapagos islands for my 50th, which was a dream come true. And another dream I had, the biggest I've had yet is to hike into the jungle in Uganda to hang out with some gorillas.

And I'll be flying to do that next week.  But in between my penguins and gorillas, an awful lot has happened.  For one,  the day that I flew to  to begin the process of boarding the ship.  Through the Drake Passage and on to Antarctica, my mom went into a long term care facility. And thankfully, I wasn't there,  although I was really quite devastated that that's when the bed became available.

At the time, the great thing was that she actually did really well with that transition. A number of staff that had worked for her in another facility, um, happened to be there and working. So my mom thought that she She worked at this place, and I think that she maintained that right through to the end,  but in April of last year, her health took a turn, and she went into the hospital, and these were the last eight days of her life, and in all of the time leading up to that, It took all of my focus to unjangle myself in whatever way I could and continue to spend time with her in a way that was  meeting her where she was at. 

And it sounds like a simple thing to do. It just wasn't. It took everything that I had. And so when I would walk in the door of her nursing home, I would feel like I was where I was supposed to be. But the moment I would leave, I would feel like I was displaced and that I. I shouldn't be living a life outside of there.

And it took a long time to focus on the presence and be able to do all that I could to live my life in between these visits.  So,  my mom and I had a, I think, a really beautiful time in all of this, uh, disease. I, I didn't accept the social construct that this is a horrific disease, and I sought to reframe it, at least for myself, and to decide that perhaps she just needed a little time. 

To watch the world from a different angle, to not be responsible for it, to, to just sit and listen to the birds, which we did for many, many, many hours,  we took long drives for ice cream and sang songs, and we spent a lot of time holding hands, sitting on a couch, and it was beautiful. She was very peaceful, and this is something   that I'm reminded of, you know, again and again, even though I wasn't able to have the conversations and the intellectual relationship that we'd once shared for All of my life.   

 She was still very present. She was there. And so that time was a time I decided was really important just to stay present with. I have a tendency to intellectualize to make everything some sort of a lesson to bring back whatever my emotional experience might be into the counselling practice and share.

And I think that's a great thing to do. And I think it's been a beautiful lesson. Journey doing that, but  not everything needs to be that. And first, I needed this for myself. So in April of last year, in those last eight days that she was in hospital and before she passed,  there was a transition of letting go that was  the hardest of my life.

I mean, my father had died really abruptly and traumatically of a massive heart attack when I was 19. I didn't know these people could die at that point.  But my mom, you know, this was a long goodbye. The funny thing is that my mom had a terrible time ever hanging up a phone conversation.  So the long goodbye was really very fitting for her. 

But in these eight days, we gathered together as a family and we played lots of music and we had beautiful conversations and we did a lot of laughing.  And when it was time, we all seemed to know that it was time and we were there together and we saw her off to her next adventure.  And then I needed some space just to be able to  allow grief to find a home.

It's way within me to have its way with me, I suppose, is a better way of putting it.  And for me, that's really tough because I understand intellectually what's going on. , there's a process. There's a number of steps that go with it. We have numbers of exercises that help people through a grief process.

And so I used all those exercises on myself, but I refuse to sit and wax philosophical on the subject. And so that's where the distance between then and now comes.  And so here I am, I'm preparing to head off on this adventure to hang out with these gorillas in Uganda. And from there, actually a number of safaris in Kenya and then Tanzania,  check out Zanzibar and fly home.

And in all of this time, I realized, wow, I've just started coming to surface. I've just begun to To breathe life again in a different way. And that same thing I'd forgotten all about from many, many years ago when my father died has happened again, which is this access to a joy and an appreciation of life that I didn't have prior to my mom's passing. 

It's a strange part of the grief process. I think it's there for all of us. There's sort of this contrast of the deepest sorrow to the greatest joy, and it's hard to explain. It's more of a feeling in the cells of your body than it is any sort of something you could write a poem about. 

Nonetheless, I think the space between my penguins and gorillas gave me what I needed to be able to find it.  So I'll leave you with that. Until next time.