Practical Insights for Grievers: Sarah Peterson Shares Her Personal Story -1

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Sarah Peterson [: 00:00:03

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 on LCSW. And in this space, I bring my experience as someone who has walked this path alongside my work with my nonprofit Clear Morning. Clear Morning is dedicated to shifting the culture of grief through support, innovation, and awareness. 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. Let's walk through this journey together.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:00:50

In 2016, my world was shattered when I lost my 2 year old daughter, Marley, to a drunk driver. Just 3 months later, my father died unexpectedly. These losses left me navigating a depth of grief I never imagined. And in that darkness, I discovered something powerful. Our culture is broken when it comes to mourning. In this first episode, I'll take you through my personal journey, the moment that sparked the creation of the nonprofit I started called Clear Morning, and how I'm working to change the way we approach grief. If you've ever felt lost in your own grief or if you're seeking a way to support someone else, this episode is for you. Join me as we begin to uncover the path to healing together.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:01:26

Welcome to the first episode of enduring grief, healing practices, and the true stories of living after loss. This first episode is dedicated to my story. Because as you listen to the rest of the episodes, I want you to be able to understand what we're talking about sometimes without reexplaining each and every time what has happened in my life. So, yeah, like I said, in 2016, I packed my kids in the car and headed to a local folk festival actually on a Sunday morning at about 9, and my car was hit by a speeding drunk driver. My 2 year old daughter, who was just 9 days from her 3rd birthday, was killed instantly in front of her brother because he was in the back seat too and in front of me. From that moment, the person I was never came back. Parts of me have returned, but everything was on the table. When a tragedy and a trauma like that happens in such a nanosecond of time, everything you know to be true about life is ripped out from under you, and everything was suddenly on the table for me. In this episode, I'm gonna talk about all the things that happened following the death of my daughter not all the things, a lot of the things that happened following the death of Marley, following the death of my dad, and why that experience has compelled me to create this nonprofit called Clear Morning. At Clear Morning, we're dedicated to shifting the culture of grief through support, innovation, and awareness, and I wanna talk about why I think that's important. So Marley died on September 11, 2016.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:02:57

For weeks after that, we were consumed and held by our community, by our friends, and most importantly by our families as we navigated what it meant to wake up every day without our precious daughter. It was an incredibly difficult time and there were days, hours, deep moments when I wasn't convinced at all that I would ever return to any part of who I was prior to that moment when she died. People said a lot of really dumb stuff like, hey. There's a silver lining, and she's in a better place, and at least she didn't suffer, and things that out of the goodness of their heart, they thought would be helpful. But to me, we're not helpful. I didn't wanna hear any of that because the only thing I knew for sure is that she belonged right back here with us. Having been a hospice social worker up until that day for years, I was I don't know. I still have the hard time using the word fortunate, but I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by a network of loving and caring people who are not afraid to be around somebody in grief.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:03:57

And because of that, my grief journey unfolded in a way that I don't know other people have access to. So with the nonprofit, with this episode, with every episode after this, I am doing what I can to recreate small pieces of what that safety net looked like for me because I do know that most people walking around in grief don't have a beautiful support system of people who typically don't say too many dumb things and who are not afraid to be in the discomfort with you. Once all of the funeral stuff settled down and we returned to our home, which was so hard, oh my gosh, and so interesting to navigate just that as a couple. Because my husband, he was ready to go home immediately. He felt comfort in our home where I probably would have stayed out of our house for weeks on end if I didn't know it was so important for him to get back. So navigating that was tricky, and once we left my parents, the comfort of my parents' home and returned to our own home, oh, gosh. So much work. And it was I don't know if intolerable is a strong enough word, but I needed to get out of town.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:05:06

Let's just say that. And, generously, one of my cousins offered us some time in Hawaii to, I don't know, rest, recover, be near the ocean, be in the warm weather, get out of our zone, get out of our our routine, whatever that looked like then.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:05:21

And so we went. And while we were there, the 1st week, we ended up staying for about 6 weeks. But the 1st week we were there, I got a call from my mom who said dad's been sick all night. I'm worried. I don't know what to do. And he was a stubborn man, so they waited hours before going to the hospital.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:05:39

And when they got to the hospital, they discovered he had suffered a pretty serious massive heart attack, and a whole another layer of my grief journey began on that day. My dad was the kind of dad who was the best man at my brother's wedding. He was somebody I could call middle of the night, middle of the day. He actually promised me one time, every time you call, I'm gonna answer, Sarah, and he would. It was incredible. Sometimes he'd be teaching a class, and I he'd say, yes. Hi, sass. That's what he called me.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:06:05

I'd say, what are you doing? He's like, well, I'm teaching a class right now. I said, my gosh, dad. Why are you answering? He said, because I promised I would. He was just that kind of guy. So when we found out that he was so sick and had suffered this massive heart attack, it rocked my world. But it's interesting. I wasn't terrified. I don't think I could be terrified in those days because I had been so terrified for the last few weeks around what it was gonna mean to live without Marley that this just added a layer of sadness and concern, but not terror.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:06:36

Anyway, we stayed in Hawaii until we were told that he was probably not gonna get better and we needed to come home. So we did that day, And we met them in the hospital where he had been transferred up to Portland and sat with him for a week, came back to Central Oregon thinking that perhaps he was gonna qualify for an artificial heart, and he was not able to qualify for that and came home from Portland on hospice where we then spent the last week of his life caring for him, loving him. And my gosh, the crying. Oh, now the sadness was so sick. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I was gonna lose my dad. I also couldn't believe he got to go be with my daughter. It was really quite a dichotomy to hold because there was a part of me that felt relieved that somebody was gonna go be with her.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:07:23

What then happened after my dad's death was yet an enhancement of the already incredible support that we were all receiving, especially me. I still wasn't really driving, so friends would pick me up, make sure I got to yoga, make sure I got to my therapy, make sure I got to the psychiatrist, make sure I got to my massage.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:07:40

Really just making sure I was out of the bed, out of the house, and doing something to take care of myself. I would volunteer daily at my son's school just at the end of the day for a few minutes in his 2nd grade class so that his wonderful teacher could catch up on some stuff. I could be a part of his life. I could, again, get out of bed, get out of the house, and I'd just read them a story every day. And on one of those days, it was January, and I looked in my closet, and I thought, there's just not enough black in here.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:08:10

I had been experiencing what so many of you experience, which is being out in the real world and watching people and people watching you, and they assume you're okay because you're you're walking fine, and you're you're here, you're talking, and they don't know my personal story. And I was so broken and felt so empty on the inside that I would dress in all this black. I would dress in almost a disguise of sad clothes because there was this thirst for the world around me to know that, no, I am not okay. So, anyway, fast forward again to that day where I was trying to get dressed to volunteer at my son's school and realized there wasn't enough black in my closet to accurately represent the darkness that I felt inside me. And I remembered that at one point in our history, we had a whole section of fashion. It was called the morning dress. It was a whole section of fashion dedicated to what people in grief would wear so that the greater community around them could see they were suffering and offer them a softer place, a softer landing in the community. So that's the idea of Clear Morning.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:09:13

That's when it all began. I thought, I need to come up with a symbol and I need to wear this symbol so that the world around me knows that I am not okay. I need a softer place. I need a softer landing.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:09:24

You know, one small example is that I would go through the coffee drive through, and it would be the only time I got in the car that day. And the sweet, sweet young adult who would be taking my order would always ask me if I had anything fun planned that day. And a couple times, I just laid it out there like, no. Actually, I'm grieving the loss of my child and my father, and it took everything for me to get here for this cup of coffee. And other times, I would almost just pretend like I couldn't hear them. And I'm sure a couple times I've pretended to be on the phone so they could skip that part altogether. But what this really revealed to me is that as grievers, we are sort of assaulted with the rest of everybody's life going on as it does. And that's really tough.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:10:08

That's really, really tough. So then with clear morning, I began to come up with ideas to prepared grievers, prepare their supporters, and hopefully the greater culture, the greater community with how to be sensitive culturally or grief sensitivity. That's what I should call it, grief sensitivity training so that grievers don't feel those same assaults the way that I know we all have for so long. What I would do many days is picture myself down at a riverbank with a group of elder women who did not need to ask me any questions. They, just by instinct and tradition, knew how to care for me. So sometimes I would put myself in that place before I would go get a massage or before I would go be on my mat in a yoga class. Sometimes I would do it by myself in my bed. Because what it did was it allowed me to feel, a, not alone, b, that this type of grief has been happening since the beginning of time, and there are people who know how to care for you in that grief through the wisdom of their experience, through the traditions of their culture, through their insight and intuition, they could care for me.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:11:13

And I know that this was all imaginary, but I started to think, like, what if I could do something like that for grievers through my nonprofit? So you can check out our website and find out the different ways in which we care for grievers, but I always wanna talk about the way I was cared for. Sometimes it was hard. It was really hard to be my supporter. One of my very best, closest sister friends, she said to me, you know, the hardest part is that you don't reply. And I would just get hundreds of text messages backed up where I well, I still do, but back then, it was for a different reason that I didn't reply. And people would be so kind and checking on me right back. I wouldn't know what to say because when you hear there are no words, that is so true, I really wouldn't know what to say.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:11:53

So we developed a little code where if I sent this color heart, it meant this, and that color heart meant this other thing. But the takeaway here as far as being a supporter was that these people, these loving, caring people in my network didn't walk away from me. They kept sending messages. They forgave me. They had an abundance of compassion, an abundance of generous spirit.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:12:17

They kept coming back to take care of me, and I'll always be so grateful for that. And if I can say to you, don't walk away from your griever. Yeah. It might be hard. You might wonder if what you're saying has upset them or you don't know if you've said the right or wrong thing. Don't walk away. Keep showing up. Trust me.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:12:36

Keep showing up. And when they snap I'll never forget. Same friend she put up with a lot for me. We were on a trip together, and I had loaned her a suitcase. And the suitcase was on the cement, and I just, like, lost my mind like a crazy person.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:12:50

I think I apologize to her for that at least once a year. Again, though, the takeaway is not gonna be get the griever to stop snapping because you're having an out of body experience for much of that early acute grief response period. But as a supporter, water off your back. It's not you. It's the situation. It's the deep loss. It's the anxiety that went with that for me, especially. And just don't walk away.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:13:16

Don't give up. And as a supporter, you're allowed to say, I need these things like she did for me. I need you to reply, Sarah. Okay. Let's navigate what's best. Because just because they're supporters doesn't mean they don't have needs too and boundaries. And if you go to our website, you can find what's called the grief supporters manual. It's a helpful tool, 1 page, around what as a supporter you can do to be the most helpful in amidst your beloved's grief experience.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:13:43

So other support systems that showed me up were the ones that cooked for me, that allowed me to be myself, that helped take care of my son, that made sure I got to my appointments, and made sure I was exercising, and would pick up the phone at a really weird hour, and just listen to me cry. I wonder how many conversations where the other person simply listened to me cry.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:14:04

There were a lot.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:14:06

And the fact that these people in my life were willing to do that is such a gift, and it's an easy gift to give if you take away this desire to fix it or this need to silver lining it or the urge we all fight to make it our own pain.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:14:24

If you can do as a supporter, if you can deal with those things and just show up, it's it's not that hard of a job, honestly, to just be there. So I didn't go back to work as a hospice social worker. I ended up actually taking 2 years off of work altogether. And in that time, I went through intensive therapy, a lot of EMDR, which was an incredible part of my healing, was the EMDR. I do have a PTSD diagnosis. I was on antidepressants for a bit, but as grievers know, grief is different than depression. And I appreciate what my medical team did for me to get me through those hardest for I guess it was probably, like, the hardest 18 months after losing her. And luckily, again, I had an incredible team that was willing to continually reevaluate and assess my needs.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:15:12

So I did a lot of EMDR. I used medication.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:15:17

I tried to learn to sleep again. I tried to stop throwing up. That was one of my primary physical symptoms was being really nauseous and then just throwing up. It seemed like every day, at least once every day for many months. And interestingly enough, that is something that still is my go to. Like, there's just moments where my body wants to reject whatever is happening, and that's what happens to me. And I know that that happens to other people too.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:15:45

That's a tough one because it's pretty gross. But, anyway, I had a lot of help.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:15:50

I didn't have to go to work, and I was able to do all the things I needed to do to write my brain in any way that I that was possible. So, yeah, therapy, EMDR, talk therapy, psychiatry, medical appointments, massage, exercise, time with friends, time alone, and then I decided with my husband to have another baby. And as I go through even just this story of my life, I know that this is not the case for everybody. I know that there's moms out there that had to go to work within a week or 2. I know there's people that have lost their child, and they're to the season of the life they're in, their age, their jobs, their marriage, whatever it is prevents them from having another baby. It's just not possible. Their job does not give them 2 years off. On and on and on go the things that I realize make my story different.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:16:40

My healing process has been pretty incredible, thanks to all of these factors. So, again, like, where can we recreate for each other small pieces of this? Anyway, so once I had my next child, which was also a girl, it's almost like the switch flipped.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:16:56

It had been two and a half years since the day of the crash. I was required to care for an infant, my baby, So that really kind of put the brakes on me spending a lot of hours in bed or a lot of hours at yoga or doing the things I had been doing to really cope. And I had to find a new way to live in this reality in the most meaningful way.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:17:20

And of course, having her was the greatest. And interestingly for my son, I noticed losing Marley, I was still a mother, my husband was still a father, my mom was still a grandma, all the things, except for him. He was the one who really lost his role as brother, and to give that back to him was so incredible. Still is. They're very close, even though she's super hard on him.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:17:42

Anyway, the next part of my journey began. And in that, I learned that I was capable of doing a lot more than I thought, which was pretty cool because I would have signed a contract with God that said I was never gonna laugh again. I was never gonna feel joy. I was never gonna be happy. I was never gonna be nearly as good of a good as a mother as I was prior to the crash, on and on and on, I really would have signed a contract that said none of those things were possible for me. And with the ongoing relationship and care with my beloved son and then now this third child, I saw pieces of me which were shifted, but I did see them return. I did feel joy. And to mitigate what it means to feel joy and deep sadness at the same time is a practice. It really is a practice.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:18:29

So I challenge you to practice because amidst your deep grief, I know that most people still have joy. Isn't that wild?

Sarah Peterson [: 00:18:39

And if that makes you mad, I'm sorry. I am because I think that at a certain point in my grief response, that would have made me mad. I don't know. But anger was my thing. I was really angry. I still can get pretty angry about it, but mostly, I was pretty angry. So since then, most relationships have survived, gotten stronger, and even the ones that began following my tragic loss are ones that sustained me even through the grief process today, which is really interesting and noteworthy. I've returned to pieces of who I am.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:19:09

I work full time. I don't work more than full time hour wise, but it feels like I do, like, 17 jobs. But anyway, I do have a private practice. I run Clear Morning. I'm a supportive presence in one of my dear friend and colleague's businesses. I'm teaching at grad school this fall, and now I'm doing this podcast. Why you ask am I doing this podcast? Because I think what I have to say is relevant. In my private practice, I often have grievers on my couch.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:19:37

We'll just call it that.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:19:38

Well, you know, I'm in the chair as a therapist, and they're on the couch. Okay. So on the couch, I hear people talking about, how do they answer the question, how are you? How do they answer the question, how many kids do you have? Are you married? When do they take their wedding ring off? When do they empty out their closet? What about the sister-in-law from way back where that no longer cares or calls me because now my husband is gone and that family tie doesn't feel as strong? These are all the real conversations that I have, and there's a theme, people. There is a theme. And it's not the theme that we find in the books around the stages of grief, which are also helpful. But day to day, boots on the ground, rubber hits the road, people wanna know how to do the regular stuff. They really do. So that's why I have this podcast.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:20:20

I wanna help walk you through doing the regular stuff, like answering the question, how are you? I'm not gonna give you the answer because you need to come up with it, but I wanna walk you through what it means to strategize something like that. I wanna walk you through what it means to filter all the reasons why the clothes in the closet are still hanging there. And I think that using my personal experience, my story, how I've come to answer these hard questions, how I've come to deal with the stuff, like the practical challenges of storage space, and I can't keep everything, how I've come to navigate the question, how many children do you have? I wanna help you do that too. So my commitment is to sharing insights, strategies, and normalizations that can help you through your grief. So I'm not a ding dong. I have the credentials to do this work. I have the story, the street credibility because I've lived it. I've survived it.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:21:08

I'm still living with it, and I have this experience, right, like the culmination of all of these things coming together to help us shift the culture of grief together. I'm gonna ask that between now and the next episode, you reflect on your own experiences with grief and how they might benefit from these insights that are coming for you. How might your own experience with grief grow or shift if you started to really strategize and think about the way you answer the question, how are you? Or if you really were, quote, unquote, stuck in a place where you didn't know what to do, you didn't know if you should empty out the closet or move the toothbrush from its place on the counter, how would it help you if we start to work it through strategies for understanding how you make that decision?

Sarah Peterson [: 00:21:52

So our next episode, episode 2, we're gonna talk about how to answer that question.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:21:58

How are you? We're gonna talk about why it's hard, why it's so tricky to answer that question. For some, maybe not all, for me, it was really hard.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:22:06

Sometimes it would make me really angry. Sometimes it would make me really sad. Sometimes I felt disloyal to my dad or to Marley for a thing. Yeah. I'm fine or whatever. So we're gonna tease out all the different emotions that come with such a seemingly simple question and help you strategize ways to answer it. I hope you'll join us, and I'm so grateful that you are here, and I'm so honored that you are willing to listen to my story. Thank you for joining us on enduring grief, healing practices and true stories of living after loss.

Sarah Peterson [: 00:22:36

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.