Episode 6
Marked Days and Anniversaries: Embracing Personal Rituals on Hard Days -6
In Episode 6 of "Enduring Grief," host Sarah Peterson and guests Marlis Beier and Dean Sharpe navigate the emotional labyrinth of grief rituals and traditions. Discover how personal rituals can serve as anchors in turbulent times, providing a sense of control and connection to lost loved ones. The conversation ranges from how to handle the often intense emotions around marked days like anniversaries and birthdays to practical advice on self-care and community support. Tune in for personal stories and cultural insights that illustrate the importance of intention in commemorating the lives of those we’ve lost. Learn how even familiar TV shows or simple actions can become part of your unique grieving process.
Dean Sharpe trained as a general surgeon and worked in private practice from 1980 to2002. His interests expanded and in 1994 he earned a master’s degree in health administration, becoming the first Vice President of Medical Affairs at St. Charles Medical Center. He shared this position with his surgical practice until 2002 when he became a full-time administrator. Informatics and computerized medical records arrived, and he facilitated that change at St. Charles from 2004 to 2006 as VP Clinical Informatics. In his two administrative jobs, relationship and change facilitation were his major roles.
His passion as facilitator and educator led to helping design and facilitate “People Centered Teams”, an organizational and personal seminar beginning 1992. The program grew from St. Charles to national, impacting the lives of over 5000 participants. He helped design and teach Death and Dying workshops at St. Charles in the 90’s with the goal that caregivers would become more comfortable with their own mortality as well as their patients. He believes the physician’s role is to facilitate the relationship between patients and their illness, which allows healing, regardless of physical cure. Teaching the Sacred Art of Living Community seminars are a natural extension of Dean’s interests because of the wedding of psychological and spiritual aspects of the inward journey. He has facilitated Healing the Healers seminars since 2008. Starting in 2017 he has facilitated with his wife the 10-month track (part of a program called Anamcara second year) Soul of Wellness: The course focuses on the lifelong questions “Who are you and what do you want? He is married to Marlis Beier, has two daughters and three grandsons. He lives in Bend, Oregon and enjoys cooking, skiing, hiking, gardening, traveling and being with his family.
Marlis Beier started her professional career in Obstetrics and Gynecology in Bend, Oregon. She found gratification accompanying patients facing life transitions. She learned about grief when her best friend, brother and beloved patients died. Her chronically ill daughter asked her to help her die at age 5. Grief comes not with just the loss of someone but also loss of identity and ability. The diagnosis of MS meant repeated grieving loss of ability and with time, her identity as practicing physician. She found similar gratification volunteering in hospice being with the dying. That’s where she met Sarah. Their deep friendship held space for Sarah as she grieves the tragic loss of her daughter Marley at age 2 from a drunk driver on a Sunday morning.
Marlis has been a spiritual seeker from an early age, learning from many traditions and teachers. She has become a mentor to many through teaching at hospice and the Sacred Art of Living Center. Although she teaches many diverse subjects, her intention is transformation of suffering. Her greatest love is her family, including husband Dean Sharpe, M.D., two daughters, Marissa and Anneliese, and grandsons Thielsen, Sawyer and Kepler. The saga of Anneliese’s health challenges since age one inspired her to become a better doctor, mother and companion to anyone facing illness or challenge.
Sarah Peterson is a licensed clinical social worker with over 13 years of experience in medical social work, hospice care and in private practice. As the founder of Clear Mourning, a nonprofit organization dedicated to shifting the culture of grief through innovation, support, and awareness, Sarah brings a deep understanding of grief and loss to her work. Her personal experiences, including the tragic loss of her two-year-old daughter and father, have profoundly shaped her mission to provide compassionate support to others navigating grief.
Sarah holds a Master of Social Work from Portland State University and has extensive experience in both private practice and nonprofit leadership. She also serves as an adjunct instructor at Portland State, runs her own private practice, and provides supervision for licensure candidates.
Follow us on Instagram: @ClearMourning
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Transcript
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Sarah Peterson [:Welcome to enduring grief, healing practices and true stories of living after loss, where we dive into real honest conversations about the journey through grief and the support that makes it possible. I'm Sarah Peterson, an LCSW, and in this space, I bring my experience as someone who has walked this path, as well as my work with my nonprofit Clear Morning. I'm often joined by 2 incredible guests, Doctor. Marlis Beier and Doctor. Dean Sharpe, both incredible people and physicians who've spent their lives caring for people and have supported me personally on my journey through grief. In our first episode, I'll share my personal story and how I've come to this work, why it matters so deeply to me and how it might resonate with you. Whether you're navigating your own loss or standing by someone who is, this space is for you. Join me as we uncover the stories, the struggles, and the hope that lead to healing.
Sarah Peterson [:Let's walk through this journey together. Alright. Welcome back to our podcast. Last time you heard us talking about what it means to let go of the personal belongings, the things, the wedding ring, things that bring us comfort and help us feel connected to our memories. We hope that you were able to tease out some helpful tools, whether you're a griever or a supporter, in ways that will allow you to trust yourself, trust your own process, and and, I guess, challenge yourself too because, I mean, ultimately, it does take a leap of faith to get rid of the thing for a lot of people. So if you didn't catch that episode, we hope you'll go back and listen to it. Today, we're gonna talk about what I call marked days, but that refers to anniversaries, birthdays, the date of death. They call it the angelversary or something.
Sarah Peterson [:Heavenly birthday. Heavenly birthday is what they call it, the death date. I see that a lot social media. Anyway, it's a big deal. It's a big deal to get through these days, especially in the beginning when you really don't have a strategy to lean on to help you cope with what these days mean to you. And one of the things we'll talk a lot about today is ritual. And I think kind of like self care has its own momentum in our culture that it has to look a certain way, like massage and facials and girls weekends and yoga. That's the story.
Sarah Peterson [:That's the social media version of self care is that it requires a lot of resources to do. I think that, also, ritual could fall under that category and that it the word alone can be intimidating to people if they don't think they have an enormous amount of resources or an incredibly large group of people or this elaborate plan to shape and honor this experience. Do you disagree with me? We do ritual all the time. We do, but I don't know that everybody knows that.
Marlis Beier [:Okay.
Sarah Peterson [:So we're gonna break it down because you, listener, are doing ritual all the time.
Marlis Beier [:Okay. Can we just, like, take a birthday party? Yeah. Let's do it. Okay. So the key to ritual is that you acknowledge the past. And when you think about a birthday party with a cake, what you're doing is you're putting all these candles on the cake that represent how many years somebody has been through And then there's this, like, uncertainty about the future. So you have to, like, light all these candles so that you have hope and the person then makes a wish about the future, which is uncertain and then you have to have some negative part of it. Some part that is going into the don't know and you blow out the candles.
Marlis Beier [:And so, in blowing out the candles, you've let go of all of that and you come into the present moment and you eat the cake. And the parts of ritual, first of all, the story. So the story is really about the marking time, and the symbol are the candles, and then you have to have an action, which means that you light the candles and then you blow them out, and the space is where everybody's gathered around the birthday cake, and the community usually is family or friends or whoever it is. And there's usually somebody who is running the show called the ritual elder, and that's someone who's able to speak. Now, I'm in the Jewish tradition, and in Judaism, we have pretty specific rituals for at the time of death. We open the window to let the soul leave. We close a mirror because the time for any ego or vanity is over and light a candle. And everyone can have their own rituals around the time of a loss.
Marlis Beier [:Then the next day or within 24 hours, it's washing the body. And there's this ritual. It's really about gratitude for the body, having been the container for this person on the way through their life. And then there are rituals for a month, a year, and then every year afterwards. And one of the rituals every single day of the 1st year is a a specific prayer, but, you know, it can be a reading, a psalm, some practice because if you're able to find some meaningful ritual over the 1st year of grief, you'll find that grief changes every day. There's like a new emotion that shows up. There's a new process. There's something different.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. And even you might find control. Because in those early days, especially of grief, one might find themselves experiencing loss of control. And in creating and cultivating a ritual that you can depend on, even if you've discovered new things amidst your ritual every day, like that prayer, I think that there can be a sense of control if we're thinking about strategies to just keep yourself regulated and understand what this process means for you. Do you agree with that?
Marlis Beier [:I think it's more being willing to just feel the diversity of emotions that show up that maybe saying the prayer is a discipline. But if you're willing to be conscious as you engage in that discipline, it's wild what shows up. Yeah. All the complicated emotions are suddenly, you know, before you were unaware, and that's when all the things you didn't wanna think about may just show up, and it's an opportunity.
Sarah Peterson [:So this just popped into my head, and I know that it's attached to some of the angst people grievers feel as marked days approach. The holidays are coming. The birthday is coming. So there's angst attached to that because there was a tradition that occurred with this person likely. And so, Dean, I'm curious. Your thoughts, tradition versus ritual. What's the difference?
Dean Sharpe [:Well, there are a number of things that we do out of tradition which are kind of unthought about. We they're just actions we go through because that's what we've always done at this time, and then we sort of check them off.
Sarah Peterson [:Okay.
Dean Sharpe [:Ritual is about entering into all of the metaphors that are working in any situation like that and allowing something to happen to you as you move through the ritual. So we can do birthdays as an example. I mean, how many of us have done birthdays all of our life and never dissected it down into, oh, I'm saying goodbye to the past year or the past life. I'm moving into the future that's unknown. I'm gonna make a wish. We're gonna light candles, bring light into the world, but it's kinda scary, so we're gonna blow them out to sort of how many of us have gone through that and allowed our birthday to transform us and to recognize that we are dying to who we were and moving forward into a new way of being in the world. And so with the same thing, it can happen with any holiday As we take our absent loved one into the holiday, can we go through it in a way that's more conscious and less denial and more of a presence of them, and at the same time allow all the emotions that show up in that situation to show up. There are tons of rituals that people have done over the centuries, and many of them, our culture has simply said, well, we just don't do that anymore because we don't believe that.
Dean Sharpe [:So the ancient Celts and many, many organized spiritual traditions on the planet will accompany the person who died their soul on the journey for the 1st 49 days. It happens in Tibetan Buddhism, happens in Celtic Christianity. Actually, Pentecost is the 50th day, and we all Christians know about that. And that accompaniment might look like reading one of the Psalms, Psalm 119. It might look like writing a note at 3 in the morning. It might the belief is that 3 in the morning is a thin time, and you have some ability to contact the spirit of your loved one. Now in our day and age, you start I start talking about that. People look at me like you're kind of nuts at you.
Dean Sharpe [:What kind of nonsense is all souls and all that, and the reality is it ain't important whether you actually believe that there is a soul over there and your prayer is actually assisting them on their journey. But I gotta tell you, in doing it, your psyche and the ritual of repeating that, and it's even saying the Jewish prayers daily for the 1st year. It's an acknowledgment of the reality of what's happened. It is accompanying yourself and the memory of the other, if nothing else, and it's acknowledging the new place where you're going while you're going there. And I think all whether you do it by reading a psalm or you do it sitting out on a bench in nature every day and having a short conversation or you do it on your walk every day in nature or you do it just prescribed significant days like Christmas and New Year's and their birthday and your birthday and whatever, that in a way the ritual begins to speak for itself and can can offer some transformation. I remember, I was listening to someone talking about their father's death and the Irish wake, and the Irish do die in in a more conscious way than we do. They you throw awake and 300 people will show up, and the bodies in the parlor of the house and not in a funeral parlor. And people walk into the house, and they go up to the person who is grieving, and they shake their hand, and they say, I'm sorry for your troubles.
Dean Sharpe [:It's almost formulaic in a way, but it is also the potential to be a ritual space. And this person said that on the first day after the death of his father, there was so much of him that was like, this isn't real. This can't possibly be true. How can he be gone? And he said that every handshake was an affirmation of reality as it was, and he said it was powerful for him to have every one of those handshakes be saying to him, he is dead. Not in a bad way, but in a way that broke through his total rejection of what was real and brought him into beginning to have the conversation with what's real.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. And when we think about approaching these marked days, we have to be able to have a conversation about what's real, and what's coming to me right now is, like, should we be helping grievers turn the tradition into a ritual on these days? Like, might that be a very conscious strategy that one could lean on to tend to these marked days? Back to the birthday, it's like, well, yeah, the tradition is that we just mindlessly go through this set of tasks or what's the word I'm looking for? Set of activities, actions, and maybe the ritual is that we pause. So when you think about the person's anniversary of their death, how can you turn a tradition into a ritual? Or when you look at the holidays, I know a lot of people ask, you know, well, at Christmas, we would always do this, and at Thanksgiving, we would always do that. And now without this person, none of that feels possible. Well, yeah, it's not. They're gone. So how can you take that tradition and make it a ritual?
Dean Sharpe [:Right.
Sarah Peterson [:How do you like this? I like this.
Marlis Beier [:Oh, it's absolutely brilliant, and I think that Dean, in his stories, summarized what's essential. And in each one of these American sort of traditions that lack the ritual, when you have lost someone that you love, if somehow that gathering can acknowledge their loss.
Sarah Peterson [:Oh, Marlis, that might make everybody uncomfortable. It might make people sad. Can we do it anyway?
Marlis Beier [:Duh. Duh. Yes.
Dean Sharpe [:Yeah.
Sarah Peterson [:Okay. So Well, I would do it anyway with the thing.
Marlis Beier [:No. No. No.
Marlis Beier [:I mean, the whole point of shifting it from a tradition to a ritual is the willingness to counter our American culture of denying death, denying grief, and wanting everyone to be happy.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. Okay, Dean, before you forget.
Dean Sharpe [:I was just gonna say, it's so huge that so often people will gather, and it's like this elephant in the room of the absent person, and everyone pretends like it's no big deal, and no one brings up or mentions the person who has died. And from my perspective, why not set a place at the table for them? Why not include them in the conversation? I mean, there are cultures where in Madagascar, they go dig the bones up of the people who have died every number of years and bring them to the table and set a meal for them, and then introduce the bones to anyone new who was born, any additions onto the house they might have built, big events, who got married, and then they take the bones back out and rebury them. The day of the dead in Mexican culture, where once a year, you have an altar to all the people who have died and cook them a meal and invite them in and acknowledge and speak about those people. Yeah. I mean, in a way, we all die. The first time we die is when we actually die, but the second time we die is when no one is willing to mention us. No one remembers us anymore, and actually, I think that for many of us, our fear of death isn't so much the fear of actually dying, but it's this concern we have, like nobody's gonna remember me. Yeah.
Dean Sharpe [:I mean, who's carrying me with them? And in our culture, the reality is no one Right. Because no one wants to talk about it. Yeah. Because, oh, heaven forbid if mom cried or somebody teared up at the table as if those holy tears were somehow a problem.
Sarah Peterson [:Right. Ugh. So unfortunate. It really complicates the whole process. So that's why we're here, guys. That's why listeners, that's why we're here. We're trying to uncomplicate the process that's already very hard. So how can we make it a tiny bit softer? These are the ways.
Sarah Peterson [:Last year, I do a kids grief support monthly, and then we have a kids grief camp in the summer through the nonprofit Claire Morning. And last year at the November kids grief group, we made placemats for all their people. Oh. And they were like, what? This is so great. Because, I mean, I don't wanna go too deep into how kids are dealing with it, but you wanna talk about, like, an undercared for grieving population. Primarily, I think it's because their caregivers are grieving the same loss, and it's really hard to then care for somebody who appears to typically be doing pretty well because they're so resilient. And it's a whole different language for kids too. But, you know, if we can shift the culture at Claire Morning, I I do like that we start with the kids, and they loved creating that placemat.
Sarah Peterson [:And I think they all had a place then for their loved one at the Thanksgiving table. Yeah. It was good.
Marlis Beier [:And if we can each time that we wanna mark, and you know them because they're the ones that are so hard. The birthday Mhmm. The time that you used to do this amazing thing with them. It's each one of the big holidays that they're not there. I mean, take Christmas. If you can just somehow bring the presence of that person there in a way that the community acknowledges and even name it out loud, It's so healing.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. Like, you might even be able to say something like, I miss them today. Right? Like, you could say that at the table even. I really miss them today. Today is one of the days that I miss them more than others. Wow. I loved when they would fill in the blank every year at Christmas. Man, decorating the tree just isn't the same without them, and that is our opportunity to step away from tradition.
Sarah Peterson [:This is how we always decorated the tree, which feels very hard, and we might even find some resistance to that tradition because the person is no longer here to turn it into a ritual that says we're gonna we're gonna change this up a little, and we're gonna show up with intention. Maybe that means you don't decorate the tree that year. That's okay too. However that looks for you, it doesn't have to replicate what was before, but I think, you know, Marlis' description of ritual as story, symbol, action, community, space, and an elder is great. I whittle it down even further typically, and I just say history, what acknowledging the past, intention, why am I here doing this, and then action, I'm doing this. And if we can create any Yeah. You like that? I like that. It's easier to remember.
Sarah Peterson [:I don't have to write it down. Right?
Marlis Beier [:Oh, right. No. Well, mine is past, future, present.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. And so I think mine is too, but Yours is. It is lacking.
Marlis Beier [:Clearer because mine doesn't have intention in there, and intention is all that matters.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. I think intention is all that matters. Happens. So as you're approaching one of these marked days, first of all, let the pressure valve go. It doesn't have to be fancy or take hours or money or anything like that. In community, Yes. But it can be a community of 1. Right? That's still a community.
Sarah Peterson [:And where can you insert that as a strategy for coping? As an experiment even so that next year, when this day rolls around, you can trust the wisdom of your experience to say, wow. That really worked. Here's what felt comforting about it, or holy cow. I'm not doing that again. That was really brutal. I don't think that I got what I needed out of it. You know, one of the things that yeah.
Marlis Beier [:Go ahead. Or I I'm this is the next ritual. Yeah. This is where I am now.
Sarah Peterson [:Right. Because we are evolving. Always. One of the things I do to honor Marley on her birthday is I go shopping, and I spend not probably quite as much as I do on my other kids, but I I do try to let myself pretend like she's still here for a little while. And I buy some gifts that this year an 11 year old would have really enjoyed, cute nail stuff and hair ties and fancy things like that, little purse. And in that moment, my intention is not to I do gift these things to another child in need, but my intention is not that. My intention in that moment is to experience what it's like to have an 11 year old daughter on her birthday and just live in that. And maybe that sounds a little weird, but I know that on that day, the wisdom of my experience tells me that that brings me comfort because I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, right, which is celebrating her life.
Dean Sharpe [:And such a huge piece of our grief is our grief about the things that we're never gonna get to do. And so for I mean, how brilliant for you to take some of those things and continue to do them as if Yeah. With her presence. Yeah.
Marlis Beier [:As an obstetrician, you know, having taken care of women who had miscarriages, which is a huge grief, and or a stillborn, which is a ginormous grief. Each one of those women in particular, but couples also have in their imagination the whole life of that pregnancy and or unborn child and even to the point that they're at their wedding. And so even to have I want to give permission to every woman who's ever had a loss to mark the anniversaries of that loss with something that feels healing to you.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. I appreciate that. That's its own podcast too, is loss of pregnancy and infant death. I mean, it's, again, a very untended to grief. And after my miscarriage, I heard some really crazy things that were supposed to be supportive, but, actually, were not. And you know what? I'll never forget them. No. I'll never forget.
Sarah Peterson [:There's a lot of things I think I forget. That is not what I'm going to forget. I am always going to remember what those people said to me. 1 person said, well, that's what you get for telling people you are pregnant. Like, oh, whoops. Whoops.
Dean Sharpe [:I know. Oh, okay. Take that on.
Sarah Peterson [:Right. Well, I don't love to feel badly about something else right now. Thank you.
Marlis Beier [:Well, I mean and what a statement of our culture's unwillingness, lack of desire, lack of comfort for being with someone who's in grief.
Dean Sharpe [:Yeah. But I mean,
Marlis Beier [:Don't even tell me you have a child because then I won't have to be with you should something bad arise.
Dean Sharpe [:Well, I just I heard a story recently about an obstetrician who attended a miscarriage, and his comment at the end of it all was, well, I guess this pregnancy is a wrap.
Sarah Peterson [:Oh my God.
Dean Sharpe [:I mean, and I just go to places like we are only capable of saying that sort of thing because our culture is not capable of leaning into the fact that death and dying is a part of our lives and grief's a part of our lives, and we just are not willing to journey with or others or ourselves.
Sarah Peterson [:So, yeah, that brings us to a good point. As a supporter, how can people show up for their griever around these marked days? I know people have offered to I have one friend who will always bring me dinner on Marley's death date. She just says, don't worry about it. It's coming. And she doesn't even ask me what we want, which is really helpful. You know? Like, there's just no thought on my part required. It just shows up, and that's something that's very nice and helpful. What are some other things that you've seen supporters do to help grievers on these mark days?
Marlis Beier [:There's the logistical, like, bringing them food, but there's also simply the willingness to be present at whatever the griever wants as a ritual. It's the willingness to be with someone saying a prayer that's in a completely foreign language and having no idea what that's about or being in a circle and burning something that you know, I've been at people letting go, having grief rituals about divorce or having grief rituals about some loss in identity, and I really didn't get why or what, but I knew I needed to be there.
Sarah Peterson [:Like, you were willing to just do the hard thing. Just show up. Yeah. Just show up. Like, set yourself aside on these marked days for your griever, and just be there. Yeah. Do you guys have any I almost said traditions, but I meant to say rituals on the marked days in your life around the people you've lost.
Dean Sharpe [:I always text my brothers on the day that my dad and my mom died. And just a a really short thing saying, thinking of mom today, thinking of dad today, or thinking of them and grateful for the recipes, or grateful for the advice or whatever. And it just marks it marks that time. It remembers those people, and it does it in community. I mean, the community of my brothers and I. And we live in a pretty wonderful world where we can live in all parts of the United States, thousands of miles apart, and in an instant, connect in that way in a very brief and meaningful ritual Yeah. Of acknowledgment.
Sarah Peterson [:It means something.
Marlis Beier [:I write well, we or I write down every date of the anniversaries I wanna remember of deaths or loss or change. And then on those days, you know, I light what's called a Yahrzeit candle, which is a candle, a tiny candle in a tin can that burns for 24 hours and, bring to memory that person with all of the emotions and really focusing on the contributions to my life. In many ways, what it is that I will always carry with me from that person and say a prayer. So, I mean, you know, that's my dad, my mom, my grandma, my grandpa, the people in my life, the wife of this friend of ours, the wife of another friend of ours, rabbi who meant a lot to me. There's a lot of Yahrzeit, I remember. Yeah. And Marley.
Sarah Peterson [:Marley.
Marlis Beier [:No.
Sarah Peterson [:Which last time we talked I know. Always. It means so much. That's another thing that I do as a ritual on Marley's birthday is I'm not a super social media person, but I do think it's a great tool. And in this way, it means so much to me because on her birthday, I will write something about basically saying goodbye to the year past and what I hope for, you know, in the year to come relevant to her memory, to honoring her, to where she could or would be should she have been here. And then I post a picture of a candle, and I ask people to light a candle and take a picture of it and post it. And for Grievers, the beauty in that is obviously the ritual and the intention. And knowing that the greater world is pausing to acknowledge your child or your person in any way, it's good.
Sarah Peterson [:It feels right. In a lot of feeling wrong, that feels like the right thing. And then as a supporter, what a very simple way to show up, to do the thing, to pause, to have a ritual, to create that community. I mean, it's very easy, and there's a couple bereaved moms who I've gotten to know over the years, and we all do this now, and it's lovely. It's you know, when I say lovely, I don't mean it's lovely, like, great that we're celebrating our child who's gone. And yet amidst a really hard thing, it feels like a lovely way to remember them. It's a loving It's a loving there we go. That's better.
Sarah Peterson [:It's a loving thing to do.
Marlis Beier [:Well and I'm feeling guilty because I light the candle, but I don't take the picture, and I don't put it on Facebook. But I do text you Yeah. Day before.
Sarah Peterson [:Well, that's what I wanna talk about. Good segue. Because I think that these marked days are hard and that oftentimes the day before the marked day, the lead up, the anticipation of this uncharted territory for some or this dreadful day, that you've lived through before is worse than the actual day. And the last time we talked about this, you said, Sarah, you noticed I text you on 10th and not 11th, and I thought that I was dense. I wasn't picking it up. So you did that intentionally. Yes. Okay.
Sarah Peterson [:I didn't pick that up last time. Oh. Like, I was thick headed, I guess. So I really appreciate that because, yeah, the day before is harder.
Marlis Beier [:I am always thinking about I mean, I guess I'm always knowing how hard that is.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. Why do you guys think the day before is harder? Mystery?
Marlis Beier [:Mhmm. Anticipatory grief.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. Just knowing that it is gonna be the last year one.
Marlis Beier [:Year has gone by, and she's still gone.
Sarah Peterson [:And how terrible it gonna be? Is it gonna be a sudden upwelling of grief?
Sarah Peterson [:Yes. A suck? A suck? Is it gonna be an overwhelm, or is it gonna be manageable? Am I gonna feel like I've done enough on that day to honor both her and myself and take care of myself, but still tend to the parts of my life that need me? Yeah. It's A lot of pressure.
Dean Sharpe [:Yeah. It can be.
Sarah Peterson [:It can be a lot of pressure.
Marlis Beier [:It's just a big deal every time to go, oh my gosh. I have one more year without Yeah. Her, him Yeah. The I mean, I just keep wanting to put the identity. There's so many other losses that to be consciously aware of the grief process is so useful.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. And I do talk to clients a lot about that trusting the wisdom of your experience. Once you get through those marked days, taking the time to reflect on what eased your way versus what complicated. You know? Especially around the holidays, I think people are tempted to say yes to a lot of holiday parties and holiday commitments, and maybe that was the best thing for you because that's what you needed, or maybe you look back at that time and think, I gotta leave a little more room for for just being still. But to then pay attention to that. I know September is a really hard month. Marley died on 11th. Her birthday is 20th.
Sarah Peterson [:So the strategy I use from the wisdom of my experience is that I do a little bit of extra cooking in August. It goes in the freezer. I tell a lot of people who would normally be asking for some of my free time that I'm just tapping out for the month. I try to get rest. I do spend time with the folks who can really, truly, deeply hold that space for me. So I've crafted ways in which I can survive that month with more ease. What do you think about that? It's self care. Yeah.
Sarah Peterson [:Self care.
Marlis Beier [:I mean, it's all about how you can find self care, and I think the most brilliant part of that is creating space for inner journey as opposed to distraction, finding the balance between space for your inner journey. And distraction is tough in our world because, you know, distraction is available every second of your life. And, you know, sometimes the right thing to do is binge on Netflix, and sometimes the right thing to do is to just spend silent time grieving.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. Contemplation. Period of contemplation. Just being in.
Marlis Beier [:So yeah. No. It's not a clear cut journey. There are no roadsides.
Sarah Peterson [:No. There's only deep feelings
Marlis Beier [:Yeah. If you're willing to feel them.
Sarah Peterson [:We want you to feel them, listeners. We want you to feel them, and know that you're gonna survive feeling them.
Marlis Beier [:And sometimes it's watching call the midwife for an entire evening, and that was my grieving.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. So I could do a whole podcast on how Grievers watch TV because it's really interesting, the things I've noticed about the way Grievers watch TV. I find and I'll just say this because I know Dean's writing some things down, so he's got important things to say. But I think that we've, as Grievers, are drawn to watch things that we've already seen many times. Yes.
Marlis Beier [:And My god. How many times? How many times.
Sarah Peterson [:Wow. Many times because I think that it offers a sense of predictability. Like, in a world of a big question mark of how does this end, I know how this ends. Season 5, episode 21, I know how that ends, and it can really create a manufactured sense of control or I don't know. What's the word? Is that the right word? Control? Predictability.
Marlis Beier [:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I've never understood that before, but I did know that well, I listen to classical music because I know it's gonna remain structured Yeah. Unchanged. And, you know, I just I came home last night unglued, and Dean was playing music that just felt too dissonant to my emotional state. You needed the classical version. The predictability. Yes.
Marlis Beier [:Mhmm. Actually, I think we listened to Reiki.
Sarah Peterson [:Oh, k.
Dean Sharpe [:We soothed her aura.
Sarah Peterson [:Good. Good. Thoughts with Dean. What do you got?
Dean Sharpe [:Oh, there's a place where when we suffer a loss or a big change, like the loss of somebody we care about, it's like all the ways that we tend to structure our lives and know where we are in the world get torn up. All the signposts in our lives are gone. Yeah. Obliterated. Obliterated. And sometimes the only thing that we can even begin to articulate in that moment as we're searching around for anything familiar and nothing is, because all we can think about is what we don't want, which is the person to be dead, to begin to focus more on what it is that we might want as we move forward into the future. And even if it's just seems like a pipe dream, just to say, I would just love to find a place where I was in a different relationship with this than or a different conversation than where I am right now. Mhmm.
Dean Sharpe [:Just put it out there. And I think that that is the reason that came up is what I hear in you around your September process is being clear about what it is that you're gonna want in that month and then winnowing away the pieces that don't support that.
Sarah Peterson [:Yes. Thank you for synthesizing that. That's exactly right, Dean. How do I wanna feel?
Dean Sharpe [:Right.
Sarah Peterson [:How do I wanna feel? And then how can I get there? Yeah. Which is an evolution too. Yep. Takes time. Years. Yeah. Well, I've got the rest of my life, I guess, living through September, so I've still got work to do.
Marlis Beier [:No.
Sarah Peterson [:And it's coming together. It is coming together.
Marlis Beier [:There is no path No. There is no all the way to the very end. Oh, well, there is no there.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. So the takeaways for today, I'd say, tell me if you agree. 1, ritual can be just is an integral process in getting to know your grief and in surviving these mark days. And it's attainable and achievable for you. Yes. You. Because all it requires is history, what used to be, intention, what I'm hoping for, and some sort of action, which could be as small as throwing a rock down the road or as big as you can even imagine. True so far?
Dean Sharpe [:True so far.
Sarah Peterson [:Other takeaways, the day before is often worse than the day of. So noticing that and caring for yourself in ways that support making it through that day before, understanding why that day before is hard so you can be gentle with yourself or your griever if you're in the supporting role. What am I missing?
Marlis Beier [:Marking anniversaries matters on the process.
Sarah Peterson [:Mhmm. Oh, and hashtag say their name. Right? Hashtag at the table say their name. That's a popular thing. You know, hashtag? Yeah. It's a movement. Hashtag say their name because that's what we were talking about at the table.
Sarah Peterson [:What would it be like to just bring this memory of this person, this presence that we want to feel to the dinner table, so to speak, or literally?
Marlis Beier [:Well, that's a part of changing the culture of disenfranchising grief that you're not allowed to grieve. Yeah. Eat by yourself or in community. And if you can say their name, it allows you to grieve and everyone there.
Sarah Peterson [:I agree. Did I miss anything?
Marlis Beier [:Nope. SUGS SUGS. And conscious and conscious.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. Be conscious. Pay attention. Be intentional. Think about what's working for you, and then trust it. Give yourself permission to be the expert in their own grief process.
Marlis Beier [:Yeah. There's just no rules, no dates, no expectations.
Sarah Peterson [:Yeah. And sometimes, like, especially in the beginning, or maybe it's always like this for you and it's decades later, you just breathe through the day. That's okay too. That even can be a ritual. Mhmm. Yep. I used to breathe. I wanna keep breathing.
Dean Sharpe [:Right.
Sarah Peterson [:Here I go breathing. Right. That's a ritual. Well, thanks, everybody, for being here today. Thanks, you guys.
Marlis Beier [:Yes. We'll be back next week. Alright. Thank you.
Sarah Peterson [:Thank you for joining us on enduring grief, healing practices and true stories of living after loss. We hope today's conversation brought you comfort, understanding, or simply the assurance that you're not alone in your grief. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might need to hear it and subscribe as a way to stay connected. We'll be back next week with more personal stories and practical guidance for navigating the complexities of loss. Until then, take care of yourself and remember, there's no right or wrong way to grieve. You have the freedom to mourn in the way that feels true to you.
