Grief is a universal experience, yet it manifests uniquely for each individual. In this episode, Nina Rodriguez delves into sibling grief and the often-unseen struggles of those who have lost a brother or sister. Nina discusses the challenges of navigating grief within a family dynamic, where parents may be consumed by their sorrow, and the importance of extending grace to one another. She highlights the unspoken truths of masking grief at work and in families, stressing the importance of open communication and acknowledging loss. Join us for an honest and heartfelt conversation about coping with grief, honoring the memory of loved ones, and finding healing in the face of unimaginable loss.

I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

Forever My Brother: A Journey Through Grief And Light With Nina Rodriguez

 

Hello, Nina. Welcome.

Hello, Tina, and thank you so much. It’s an absolute honor to be here. I love your work, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to be here and with your audience.

Thank you for that. I’m like, “Are you trying to get me to start crying?” We just said hello.

I joked around that I make people cry for a living, in the best way.

I want to explain to my audience and people this part of this conversation with us. When we chose the name Widowhood Real Talk with TinaI that name was intentional because even though this organization was birthed out of the passing of my late husband he was my husband when we look at the “hood,” because I’m from Chicago, “hood” means family to me. Being the widow in my hood means that Mark was someone’s brother. Mark was someone’s uncle. Mark was my children’s father. He was someone’s friend.

 

 

Every conversation that we have on widowhood is that conversation from who was impacted by the “hood.” Everybody is impacted differently. It could have been his health provider. It could have been his financial advisor or his lawyer. Even though the widow may be the person most visibly impacted, the person that she has lost had different relationships with other people outside of hers, and it’s always important to have a conversation from different perspectives of that person who is no longer here. Their life may be complete, but we are still going through the process of enduring our lives, living, and experiencing in their absence.

The Symbolism Of A Butterfly

I thank you for being open to having the conversation from your lived experience and in the things that you are doing in this journey, but I want to ask a couple of questions before we get into, maybe, the reason why we are going to talk. Tell me about the butterflies that are behind you, because I am just the blue one. Feel free to turn around. I want to go there. Tell me about those and how you came about them.

I will tell you about them, but first, I want to acknowledge something you said that a loss has such a big ripple effect and profound effect on everybody who loved the person. Thank you for making space for these conversations. In my case, I didn’t lose. I’m not a widow yet, not anytime soon but I did lose my brother. He was my only sibling, and he was right behind me, right there.

About the butterflies, those butterflies were a gift from my grandmother. She gave them to me when I was sixteen years old, and I have had them since. It’s not like I have a close tie to butterflies or anything like that, but I do to these because they are special. They’re something that she felt like she wanted to give me, and they remind me of her. That big one in particular I was moving, and I told my husband, “Be careful with that one,” and as soon as I said, “Be careful,” he dropped it. He was so mad, and I was like, “Of course you would.” In any case, I feel like it’s symbolic of life. Sometimes it’s a butterfly with a broken wing, and it’s still beautiful, and it still reminds me of my grandmother. I feel like it’s symbolic of her presence. They are beautiful, and I like having them around.

Life sometimes is a butterfly with a broken wing, and it's still beautiful. Share on X

I did not even notice that one was broken, and now that you said it but that the beauty did not become less and even paying I never saw that. We focus on Sometimes. Now that’s all I see because I’m looking now. Who is not functioning with some type of broken wing?

I feel like that’s so symbolic of life, and that happened also after my brother’s passing. I said, “It feels real to what we are going through right now, very in line with what we are going through.”

The Grief And Light Podcast

Am I correct that you do a podcast also?

Yes. I created and hosted the Grief and Light Podcast, similar to yours in that I like to give a voice to the griever’s experience. Initially, it started with me exploring my grief because, at the time so, he passed September 11, 2019, when I was looking for information, I didn’t find anything about sibling loss. Whatever little information I found was usually about somebody who passed at a very old age and somebody else losing their sibling.

I said, “Where are the people who lost their siblings at my age? What are the resources?” At the time, there was nothing. I found one online grief group, and it was all over the place. It was a lifeline at the time, but I said, “Why are these conversations not happening? There’s no way I’m the only sibling that lost their brother or sister.” Where are these conversations?

As I looked for more information, I realized sibling loss, in particular, is called “forgotten mourners.” That’s what we are addressed as because everybody asks about our parents. Everybody asks about anybody but us. I always say, “In five years since my brother’s passing, I can count on maybe two hands by now how many people checked up on me and asked me directly, ‘How are you doing?’” It’s such an interesting loss.

In the minds of people, they say, “Mom or Dad losing a child is more important than a sibling losing a sibling.” There’s a social hierarchy unspoken of. It’s not something set in stone, but there’s this understanding that the worst loss is “child loss.” Through the years, I have learned that the worst loss is your own. It’s whatever you are experiencing because it’s the one you are feeling. I have even heard mothers say, “I lost a son, but the worst one was the betrayal from my husband, pain-wise.” Who am I to judge whether or not that’s true? Who am I to say, “No, that’s not true. Your child should be more painful than this other situation”? We honor what is. The podcast was born out of my wanting to explore the conversation about grief and sibling loss. I used to joke around that it was my Batwoman signal to the world “Where are my people? Where’s my grief tribe? Where is everybody? Hello, universe.”

The worst loss is your own. It's whatever you are experiencing because it's the one that you're feeling. Share on X

In a crazy, bizarre, dark-humor way, but we need community. We need that tribe. That is a huge component of someone being able to manage their grief. That is very fitting.

Thank you. It was like, “Mic check is this thing on? Hello? Anybody? Hello, universe?” Next thing I know, I also created an Instagram account with the same name. Next thing, people are saying, “Me too. Same here. Thank you for saying that.” The conversation went from me exploring my grief and sibling loss to realizing there’s pent-up energy from people who want to share their stories. There is not enough time to share people’s stories.

I started saying, “You can come on the podcast. Let’s have this conversation.” I noticed people not only want to talk about their loved ones but also about the greater experience of grief as it is not as we think it should be or how society expects us to grieve. I realized very quickly there’s a disconnect between the lived experience and the social expectation, and that got me even more curious. I’m a curious person by nature. I like to learn about other people, and other cultures, something that’s new to me. I find it interesting, and I want to know more.

As soon as I realized that, I said, “Why is everybody saying they feel unseen? They feel judged. They feel the pressure to move on. They feel pressure to hide their feelings. They feel pressured to mask their reality and hide out in a corner until they “feel better.’” Why is this the predominant experience? This is so weird when it should be the opposite. It should be the support of this person who is trying to figure out who they are in this new context of loss. I started interviewing people and reading books, and next thing, the podcast now features stories from different perspectives and people who have experienced multiple losses, people with different cultural backgrounds and different beliefs. That’s where it came from.

Advice For Newly Grieving Siblings

If someone bumped into you in the laundromat and said, “My brother passed away, but I’m going to focus on making something good out of it right away, and that’s what it’s going to be my goal.” What would you say to them?

First of all, “I’m so sorry about the loss of your brother. I see you or your sister whoever they lost.” More importantly, grief is an invitation to also slow down. It’s good that you want to do something good, perhaps in their name or their honor, but there is a process that we must honor after loss. I don’t have any children, but I feel this analogy fits in this context. When a woman or birthing person is going to have a child, they have nine months to prepare. There’s all this literature about having children, and there are all these things that we know medically, and there’s the care team and the spouse, and everybody celebrates it and yet, when the person is going to give birth, that experience is so unique to that person, and 9 out of 10 times, it doesn’t go as planned.

Grief is an invitation to also slow down. There is a process that we must honor. Share on X

Let’s say you carry the baby to term. The baby is born naturally, and you have this new child. When a child is born, so is a mother. When that experience happens, you are no longer the former version of yourself that existed prior to this creature being here. Death is like the other side of that. In a way, it’s like you are no longer this other person. It’s not necessarily that your identity died, it’s that it has evolved into something else. Speaking of butterflies, it has evolved into something else, something new and there’s a period.

You don’t wake up with a child and then you’re like. “I know how to be a mother.” No. It’s like you have a learning curve with each child, and each one is different. Each one brings its challenges. The same with loss. Each loss brings its challenges. If you lost a sibling and you want to do something right away, that is wonderful. By all means, channel your energy in a way that’s joyful to you and empowering to you. That’s great. At the same time, I would invite you to slow down and honor the process of grief because there are parts of you, whether you’ve realized it or not at this moment, that is going to be evolving in ways known and unknown. The loss always ripples out into all parts of our lives in ways known and unknown.

What is your favorite color?

Blue.

My favorite color is purple. Sometimes I wear it all the time. I try not to do it all the time, but I could.

Funny enough, if you look at my page, my brand, my logo everything is purple. I have grown very fond of the color purple, but that came because nature was very healing to me during my grief journey. One of the moments that I felt at peace was watching sunsets. In particular, my brother passed away in September. I live in Miami, so we don’t get very cold winters. We get a milder version of winter here, and it’s one of the most pleasant times, temperature-wise.

I remember staring into nothingness. Grief so much of grief is staring blankly at anything. I remember in the evenings, looking at the sunset and the colors going from blue and yellow to purple and orange, and that brought me so much peace. I said, “I want to capture that, whatever that is, into the work that I’m doing.” I found this gorgeous photo of a sunset and a lighthouse and the purples, and I said, “This is the one. Perfect.” If you look at anything that I do with Grief and Light, it’s all purple and I love it. It feels spiritual. It feels rich. It feels peaceful. It felt like I could breathe again.

Remembering Yosef

Your brother’s name, would you share with us?

His name is Joseph. This is a picture of him. He was under a tree, and I love this picture because he loved nature and he was very he knew how to enjoy the mundane. He knew how to enjoy the simplicity of life. He even had a phrase for it. When he was happy, he said, “LLPs.” I was like, what is that? “Life’s Little Pleasures.” That is something that I have adopted as a way of life, finding the magic in the mundane, the joy in the everyday things, and enjoying life’s little pleasures.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed, like life is going too fast, like I’m running on fumes, I remind myself to slow down. It’s like, slow down and smell the roses thing. I slow down. I will go for a walk. I will make it a point to stop somewhere. That’s important. Physically stop somewhere, ideally somewhere in nature. Like I said, I live in Miami, so we have access to the beach here. I will take a pause, look at the water, and take a moment to remember him. Breathe in the air and know that at the end of the day, we are still connected. Some in ways that I don’t understand, but that’s irrelevant. We are still connected. That’s all that matters.

What is your funniest memory of Joseph?

He was so funny, and that’s what I missed most. A little side note, my mother, father, and I are very similar in personality, and we are this heavier type, more serious type of personality by nature, very analytical, very overthinking about everything. He was lightness. He would say the most random thing. That’s what I miss most he would take an ordinary moment and randomly blurt out something that it’s like, “What? Where did that come from? What are you doing?” It’s just he knew how to bring lightness to the world.

I’m looking at his picture right now as I’m saying this, but he knew how to bring lightness to life. One particular moment, I don’t know. It’s silly things he would say. It’s not one thing it’s like the way he would be at Thanksgiving, the way the jokes he would say while we were driving together. If I was stressed out, he would say the one thing that would get me laughing immediately. He knew how to bring that lightness to life.

What is your first memory of Joseph?

Thank you for that question. I’m about to cry.

Good. I’m paying it forward, then.

No, thank you for that. I was three years old. We lived in Puerto Rico. Maya was from Puerto Rico, where he was born and I remember this because I was three years old, and my mom was very pregnant, about to

I gave birth, and I remember her telling me to go to sleep because it was the next day already. I was like, “What do you mean it’s the next day?” She showed me the clock, and it said, “You see, it says twelve. That’s midnight right now. It’s the next day.” I was like, “What do you mean it’s the next day? It’s because it’s dark outside. It’s nighttime.” She’s trying to explain this concept, and she said, “Your brother’s going to be here soon. Tell him good night and go to sleep.” She’s trying to get me to go to bed.

We were trying to get me to go to bed, and so my first memory of him is me putting my hand on my ear on my mother’s belly and listening to him in there and telling him, “I can’t wait to meet you.” That was my very first memory of him before he was physically with us. The next one was when they brought him home. He had a little white outfit that my parents got for him. My mother was wearing a blue dress, and I remember the color reflected in his eyes. I thought his eyes were blue. I said, “He has blue eyes.” She was like, “No, it’s my dress,” and she tried to explain it to me. I remember saying, “My brother has blue eyes.” So that was my other first memory of him.

What did he do to get on your nerves?

He marched to the beat of his drum, which is something I loved, but whenever we needed to get things done, he marched to the beat of his own. He just did his own thing all the time. That drove me a little crazy. It’s interesting because now what drove me crazy then is something that I admire. I almost feel like he understood what life is supposed to be about. He innately understood why we came here, and he kept it so simple that it was annoying to me back then.

I’m more analytical. I’m more like, “No, this is the way things are supposed to be, or used to be. This is the path you need to take. You’re falling behind. You’re not doing this.” I would get very frustrated not understanding that. I can say this now in retrospect, but there’s a divine plan to all of this. He was living his life the way that it was supposed to be lived, and I didn’t see that. What annoyed me has now become something that I cherish and honor. It has helped me understand that everybody has a certain mission while they are here because it looks different, it doesn’t mean that they are wrong, and you have to honor everybody’s path.

That is a huge lesson. It sounds like a lesson that has impacted every fiber of your being.

All of it.

Grief And Family Dynamics

People often say, “We are all going to die, it’s part of living.” That statement seems very cavalier until someone very close to you. You heard the word grief before Joseph passed. What does grief mean to you?

It was like, “You’re sad about something.” It didn’t hold any particular meaning other than a word. We lost our uncle early on. He passed unexpectedly when we were children, and I remember feeling sad. I remember it changed our lives. It changed my grandparents. I remember my dad being sad, but it was never anything super life-altering to us.

My dad had this beautiful explanation for what happened. He took a solid cup and then he grabbed a see-through cup. He poured water into the solid cup, and said, “Your uncle is like this. The one that’s solid is his body, and the water is his spirit.” Then he poured the water into the see-through cup, and he said, “His spirit is somewhere else, but now we can’t see him physically but he still lives on. At the time, we were kids, we were like, “Great. That makes perfect sense. Thank you for clearing that up.”

Our grief was more because we would miss our uncle, and it was the first time we experienced our family crying, and that was a little bit shocking. Other than that, thankfully, I am incredibly blessed to have all four of my grandparents still alive and well, both my parents still alive and well and my aunts and uncles alive and well. We hadn’t experienced, other than my uncle at an early age, and great-grandparents in their old age, we had not experienced a significant loss. My brother was the one.

If I’m hearing correctly, thank you for sharing that. Your dad’s brother was the uncle who passed.

Correct.

Have you ever spoken to your dad about sibling loss?

Yes. After my brother died, I realized. I said, “You lost your brother,” and I said, “How long did it take you?” He said, “About two and a half years to come back to myself and then I’m replaying my life.” I guess that I didn’t even notice he was grieving because he was very stoic. He’s very himself. “I’m replaying my life,” and I was like, “Maybe when he was angry, he was grieving. Maybe all these things that played out in our life, he might have been grieving.” It makes sense now. He was the same age. He was 62 when my brother passed. His father was 62 when his son passed. That was an interesting coincidence.

Have you ever had your dad as a guest on your podcast?

Yes. He was my first guest.

I have to go back and look at that.

We did an episode for Father’s Day, and it’s interesting because that’s interesting you bring that up. When he was telling this side of the story, I asked him all the questions, and I said, “Forget I’m your daughter, pretend I’m a stranger.” He was sharing things, and I was like, “That’s not how I remember it.” It made me very aware that we all remember things differently, and that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It’s that he’s viewing that moment in time from his perspective, and I’m viewing it from my perspective and it’s the proverbial like there are four blind people grabbing an elephant from different parts.

That’s what I’m talking about and you’ll see it from a different perspective. That is exactly the elephant and you’re blind, and people touching it describe it from the perspective in which they are experiencing that elephant in their blindness.

If somebody grabs the trunk, they will describe it one way. If I grab the leg, I will describe it in a different way. It was a beautiful exercise because when I got to hear his perspective, I got to get my podcaster legs going, but also because it made me realize that anybody that I interviewed was telling the story from their perspective. I guarantee you, that if I bring in their family members, the story will change in one way or another. It taught me to honor the memory as the person recalls it and if something was true to them in that moment, then something was true to them in that moment. It’s not for me to question that. I can ask questions about it, but it’s not for me to question the validity of their recalled memory.

Your dad gave you a gift for that. You make me curious about the dynamics of a family unit grieving Joseph all differently. How has your family learned to navigate that?

My dad is quieter to the heart. My mother and I talk about it to this day, every day, all the time. My dad is open to talking about it. It’s not that he won’t, but he’s more reserved. My mother and I talk about signs, dreams, and memories. We share pictures all the time. There are license plates that occasionally have his initials, and so she’ll take a picture of the license plate and send it to me like, “I saw him here.” He’s very much a part of our daily existence still, and my dad is a bit more reserved about that.

It sounds as if you respect your dad.

One hundred percent. One thing that was very shocking and thank you for bringing that up when I joined the siblings’ group early on, it shocked me. Two things shocked me. One, how angry people were at their siblings for passing away because I felt nothing but love like, “I have yet to feel angry at my brother. I never felt angry. I never blamed him. It was sudden, it was unexpected, it was traumatic, but there’s an understanding that life is life and this was his time,” and I deeply understood that.

I wasn’t angry at him for leaving, but I was surprised at how many siblings were very upset to the point of saying, “I hate this person for leaving,” or, fill in the blank. There was a lot of anger and pain in their statements. That surprised me and then the second thing that surprised me was how much the siblings blamed and these are adults. I say siblings, but we are adult siblings how much do they blame their parents for grieving the way they did or did not?

Specifically, a lot of siblings blamed their mothers for grieving too long and neglecting them. I was like, “Your mom is not neglecting you. Your mom lost a child.” That confused me a little bit because I said, “There is pain in not being seen and acknowledged and witnessed as a sibling, as a grieving sibling. We also have to extend grace to our parents, who are trying to process the loss of a lifetime. The fact that they have lived experience with a sibling of yours. That goes beyond your experience with your sibling. You were not the one who carried them in your womb. You were not the one that gave birth to the human. You were not the one that dreamed up the plans that they imagined.” There’s a lot of grace we need to extend to our parents as well.

There is pain in not being seen and acknowledged as a grieving sibling, but we also need to extend grace to our parents who are trying to process the loss of a lifetime. Share on X

Many times people want to define their grief experience by seeing someone else do it the way they are doing it. People try to say they are not doing it correctly because it doesn’t look familiar. My situation is different. The loss of my husband caused me to shut down. I looked back at a text thread between my children and me and the gaps of silence where I did not have the energy to barely think of myself, or get out of bed. Sometimes my children were adults and they were out of the house. My son was in the military when my husband passed, and Mark passed in March. My daughter went and made it into the military. We went from a household full of people in November 2016 to, now, May 2017. I am in the house by myself.

Masking Grief

It was very silent, and it was around Christmas time. I want to say in October-November that I finally started coming out of it a little bit and going, “These children have lost their dad, and their mom had nothing to give them.” I apologized to them. I said, “I’m sorry that I was barely getting by myself.” In the idea of trying to carry you or say something, I didn’t have anything. I know that it’s okay that I felt that way, and being honest with them gave them space to talk about how their dad’s passing impacted them without some type of pretentiousness that they could be honest about it. When you hear the words “grief” and “wearing a mask,” what type of mask do you feel like you have worn during your grief journey?

I want to acknowledge something even if those months went by, you still have that self-awareness, and that’s a gift in and of itself. I don’t know the details, but it sounds like they also gave you some grace in that along the way, or hopefully they did.

They did. I still carry the regret that I didn’t have the capacity to show up like they are accustomed to their mother showing up. I realized, “Who could have?” You want to have on your cape, and you want to show up like a regular, but you are like, “This is not me. I’m off my feet. I have nothing.” I never knew myself to be in that space, but I never knew for my husband not to be here. Yes. They extended me grace.

Even when I bring it up now, they are like, “Mom, it’s okay,” because they know and they have seen that. At the end of 2023, I want to say the last episode of 2023 was a conversation with my son speaking about his dad, and the last podcast for 2024 was a conversation with my daughter speaking about her dad. That conversation came up again. They are like, “Okay, mom.” Yes, they have.

It sounds like they are wonderful, and I will look for these conversations. I’m curious. We lose our parents in a way too, and it’s understandable. It’s okay. It would be weirder If not to. If everything was completely “normal” after such a significant loss, that change and that loss of how our parents used to be is part of this ripple effect of the loss of our sibling or our main person, your husband.

About the masks, it’s something that you spoke up about in a post about not honoring the reality of the loss. The way that it looked for me was that I tried to make it so my brother’s absence wasn’t so profoundly felt. What that looked like in practice was, that he passed in September. The holidays are coming up in a few months. I bought gifts for me and him. I said, “This is for my brother. This is for me,” and I did that for about a year. Christmas, Mother’s Day, birthdays, all the things.

I kept buying gifts and I’m like, “This is something he would have given you, and this is something for me.” I would assign it to him, and I would put a picture of him, and he would be in everything. I realized later, it was my way of needing to know that my parents were not going to die too, if that makes sense. I wanted their pain to be so softened, that at the end of the day, it was like, “I need you to live, please,” because I thought they were going to leave me too and so I said, “Maybe if I make it to like they are still receiving gifts. There’s a part of my brother still very much alive with us, and maybe their pain is not so bad that they are going to leave.”

One day, I was trying to find a gift on his behalf, and I said, “I don’t know if he would have given them this. I’m making this up in my mind. This is not true.” This saying, “He would have given you,” is untrue and it dawned on me that I’m not doing this for him, and I’m not doing this for them. I’m doing it for me. Then I stopped and I said, “That’s not my rule anymore.” I’m working so hard to keep my mom happy, or my dad and my parents happy, and in doing so, there’s a part of them that is trying to do the same. We were playing normally when nothing about this was normal.

The moment we decided to unmask, or like I told my mom, “I don’t feel like celebrating this time, and is it if we don’t order Chinese food and not do anything for Christmas?” She’s like, “Thank God you said that.” I realized we were all pretending for each other because they wanted me to feel okay. I wanted them to feel okay. While I also honored the loving intention and the intention of protecting ourselves underneath all of that, I found it more helpful to let people have their pain. We are sad. This person not being here is very sad, and it’s okay to be sad, and it’s okay to not pretend like it’s okay and it’s okay to not give two gifts pretending like my brother would have given her that. If it feels appropriate 1 or 2 times, that’s fine, but it’s not something that you should take on as a personality trait or a to-do list. That was a way of masking and unmasking.

Within the family, outside of that, at work, you have to put your shield on. You don’t have to. That’s what I did. One comment broke that through that shield, and I was never the same and I couldn’t even put the mask back on because the mask was broken and it was this colleague, who was talking about something random, and then she says, “Now that you are an only child,” and then her words faded to the background. I said, “What did you say?” “Now that you are an only child.” It felt like a punch to the gut because I said, “What do you mean I’m an only child? You attacked my identity.” I didn’t say this to her. The conversation was happening in my mind, but it felt very guttural. You had attacked my being because one of my life’s privileges, one of my favorite roles is being Joseph’s sister and I say “is” because I feel like I can continue to be his sister even in this context, after he’s no longer with us.

For you to remove that piece of me, that identity, that part of me that I hold so dear, and you said it like, “What do you want for lunch?” It was such a casual comment. It was so nonchalant, and she had no idea that she had destroyed who I felt I was at that moment. After that, I doubled down and I was like, “I am his sister.” You attacked me, you attacked him, you attacked my memory, you attacked who I am and she didn’t. It was how I felt, that’s how I received it, but part of the mask was pretending like everything was okay at work and like this didn’t happen, and not talking about it, and after that, I was very vocal about it. After that, that helped bring the podcast about because I said, “No, this is not how it works, and people need to know that this is not how it works.”

Continuing Bonds And Memories

In a very nonchalant way, it made you stand up to what you may have not been paying attention to,” and it is interesting, as you say, in some of the similarities in the past of a loved one.  I will always consider myself Mark’s wife. I will always be his widow. Someone may say, “You remarried,” and until they tell me he came back to life, then I want you to explain to me how I’m still not his widow. I want that to make sense to me, that their absence, this life we have lived together, these experiences, these memories, they exist. They have not been wiped away. Did it take you some amount of time to look at memories of Joseph or pictures? As you looked at his picture with such endearment, was that always from the moment he passed? I speak to some people, and they say it’s hard to look at pictures afterward.

I’m sure you are familiar with continuing bonds. That ends a life, but not a relationship. From day one, I felt like I was still his sister, and that was something that I would embrace fully. Not only did we look at pictures, but on Christmas and then on his anniversary. Trying to remember the timeline. I created videos. My memory of our mother is her carrying the VCR cameras that were big like the ‘80s and ‘90s. She had this VHS tape that stuck in her head because she would record everything. We thought it was so annoying. We were like, “Why are you recording everything?” Thanks to her doing that, we have stories upon stories, decades upon decades of film.

Have you digitized those?

We spent the first year digitizing them, and because of that, and because I naturally take a lot of photos, every year on his anniversary, I was able I do a video of photo montage, and thanks to her having the VCR on her shoulder for twenty years, we have these beautiful homemade movies of his life. I create these home movies as a way to honor him. We look at pictures, we exchange pictures, and we create movies. He’s very much visually alive in our lives still.

I digitized the VHS, but I have not pulled them out in a while and done something like that. No. It’s like a lot of different things. I have not intentionally ignored them, it’s like these were things I needed to do to capture them. There was a list like, “These VHSs are old. If I don’t do something with them now, we’ll lose this forever.” It was like we needed to find out how to digitize that check. I need to do all these. It was this list of all these things that I needed to make sure to please. Now it’s like I need to go back to that. You reminded me that I did it. It’s in a box, I know where it is, but I haven’t done anything with it, and I need to pull that out. Thank you for reminding me of that.

It’s such a treat. It makes you cry and it makes you long for the person. At the same time, it makes you laugh, and it makes you almost feel like you are spending time with them. An interesting thing happened. In the fifth year, I was going through the tapes. Each year, I try to switch it up so it’s not like the same thing over and over. I was going through some of the tapes that I hadn’t seen in a while, and my mom said, “What about this clip?” It’s him singing some song in his elementary school or something.

When I’m putting the clips together, I listen to the song that he’s singing, and it’s a Spanish song, and the lyrics I’m not going to sing it, but the lyrics essentially say, “I will live, and I will die, and when I’m gone, let me go because I’m going to be alright.” I was like, first of all, who allowed this song? It’s very upbeat and funny, and it was supposed to be for Spanish class. They were supposed to learn Spanish and I’m like, ‘Who approved the song?” Number one.

Number two, I felt like it was a message that he was saying, “I’m okay and let me go. It is time to let me go.” It’s not let go like, “I’m never going to think of you again.” It’s like, “You can stop worrying if I’m okay.” That’s what we felt. I said, “We have had this for over 30 years, and this is the first time that we are seeing this on his fifth anniversary.” It gave me chills, and I said, “Mom, the song.” She’s like, “What song?” I’m like, “What do you mean, ‘What song?’”

I had her listen to it, we replayed it, and she said, “Gosh.” She’s like, “I didn’t send it to you because of the song. I thought the clip was cute. I didn’t even listen to the lyrics.” Then we looked up the song, and the full version has so many more messages and I was like, “I feel like he’s talking to us through this song.” It was bittersweet, but like, it gave us so much peace, and it gave us the feeling that he’s okay and we can live our lives. Part of the message was, “Continue to live your life, please. I’m okay.” I’m like, “How do you explain things like that?”

I have no explanation, but it does link to the question. You may have answered this already. The signs that you feel like your loved one shares with you, what other signs do you feel like Joseph is essential in this journey?

The most beautiful signs, and I want to share this also acknowledging that a lot of people are desperately seeking signs and they don’t get them. I want to honor that. Sometimes, although I’m super excited about the signs and everything about to share, I also want to honor that this is not necessarily something that everybody experiences, and that’s okay, and sometimes it’s because we need to open ourselves up and sometimes it takes a little bit of time, and that’s okay. A little caveat there.

We started experiencing signs from the first week, and so, when he passed, a friend of mine had lost her, unfortunately, her son was stillborn, and so she was on this journey of trying to connect to her son’s spirit, whatever that looked like to her. She introduced me to a book called Signs, and she said, “You have to ask for them.” I was like, “What am I asking? Who am I talking to?” She said, “Just pick a sign.” I said, “I want a blue jay to approach me.” I don’t know. That felt like a sign I wanted. I said, “I will recognize the blue jay and I wanted to approach me and I wanted to be so obvious that it’s unquestionable.”

I mentally said that. I said, “Worst case scenario, I don’t see anything. Great. At least I tried.” Two days go by, I’m sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen. My brother passed by my grandmother’s house. I’m sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen, and I’m working on my computer, and she has this see-through, glass door that overlooks the backyard, and all of a sudden, I hear a tapping on the drum. Like, “What is that?” Then I look over, and there’s a blue jay tapping on the glass, and I’m like, “You have got to be kidding me.”

I felt like somebody poured cold water on me, and I was like, “Gosh.” My dad was in the next room and I was screaming. I’m like, “Come here, but slowly.” He ran over. I was like, “Slow down,” and we were moving enough to where it would have probably scared a bird away. He did not. It climbed onto the little ledge. It looked into the window. I had enough time to grab my phone and take a video of it, and I said, “You have got to be kidding me.”

I walked towards it, and it stayed there, and I looked at it, and I was like, “Are you it? Are you my sign?” It’s like I have no proof that it is, but I also have no doubt. I’m like, “I feel like this is pretty literal, and this was pretty good.” After that, I said, “I promised myself that I would at least be open to the possibility that this is a way of communicating.”

Shortly after that, I started having dreams, and he came to me in my dreams, and I decided to start writing them down in the notes section of my phone. I have a record in the last several years of over 200 dreams that I have had with my brother and messages that he has shared through the dreams, some of which had real-life consequences and I will quickly share one that is powerful.

I had this dream in January 2020, and I remember because it was right before the pandemic, and this dream, he’s running. We are like in a valley, think like Arizona, like in a valley, like Red Rocks. He’s running on top of these thorny bushes. He’s running on top of it. I’m running behind him, and he’s like, “Don’t stop, keep going. We crossed the thorny bush. We get to a valley. We saw my uncle’s ex-girlfriend. I don’t know why she was there, but she was into fitness. She’s doing yoga. There’s a platform, and she’s teaching us yoga. My father is there, and my uncle’s there, and they are in jeans. We are all getting ready to do yoga, and my dad’s in jeans. I’m like, “Why are you doing yoga in jeans? That’s awful.”

We are stretching, we are laughing, and I wake up, and I’m like, “What was that?” Then I remember feeling that the message was, “The future is going to require you to be flexible.” This is the message that I got from that dream.

I put it aside. This is January. Weeks later, I got a job offer that I didn’t ask for. I was working in real estate at the time, my manager called me and she said, “I have this opportunity. I don’t know how you are feeling, but give it a shot.” I go to the interview to be open. They hire me on the spot, and they expect me to start right away. I panicked. I said, “I’m sitting here with the CEO. He’s telling me, ‘as numbers, expectations,’ all these things.”

Internally, I am panicking. I am like, “I’m not ready. This is too much. I’m about to cry.” I didn’t want to cry in front of him. I avert my gaze and look away from him for a second like I collect myself. When I noticed the suite number, I saw it backward because it was through the glass, and it said 119. My brother died on 911. I’m like, “Maybe I’m supposed to be here.” That, for whatever reason, calmed me down. I collected myself, and I said, “What were you saying?” We continue the conversation. He hires me. I start working. I get very overwhelmed again, and I say, “This is too much. It’s too soon, too much.”

I spoke with the vice president, the liaison between my company and this developer, and I told him, “I’m so sorry. I said yes too soon. I’m not ready. My apologies. I will figure out a way to make this up to you.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “You have to be a little flexible. It’s going to require you to be a little flexible.” When that man said the word flexible, that dream kept flooding into my mind, and I said, “I’m supposed to be here.” I have no question that I’m supposed to be here. It’s like the number, this thing, the feeling. I said, “Okay. Fine.”

This was February. A month later, we got the shutdown for COVID. This was March 2020, and the director at the time, we didn’t know how long it was going to last. We didn’t know what was happening. He said, “I promise everybody that as long as I’m able to, I will pay your full salaries through the duration of all of this. I ask that you give me some grace in how we manage this.”

Thanks to that man, and thanks to sticking to not quitting because of these signs, I was able to pay off all our debt because we weren’t leaving. We were working from home and paid off all our debt, paid our rent, and didn’t have to worry about losing anything. We came up with a surplus. I had some downtime to be able to slow down. I know COVID was awful for a lot of people, and I don’t want to romanticize it. I know it was awful.

Thankfully, we didn’t lose anybody during that time. From my experience, it was a very welcome pause. You know how you lose somebody and you wish the world would stop. It did. It was like, “What is happening?” All certainty went out the window about anything in life. Everything was changing, and it worked out in the end. I started to trust whatever messages came my way through dreams, through signs, through this, through that.

Ever since then, I say it’s a language I have learned to develop with his energy. He’s not a bird. I’m aware he’s not the blue jay. I’m saying that there is something beyond our understanding that connects us beyond life and death, and I care less about why or how. I care more that it happens and that it feels like a connection of some sort, and I welcome it.

Judgment And Grief

You can get caught up in the wine, and everything else. Get to the important part. Everything else is irrelevant. I can see that and when it proves to be true, and it proves to be something you could never have fathomed, made up, considered, or done for yourself, accept it for what it is. I can see that. In your grief journey, how have you felt judged?

I will give you an example. In the second year January 2021. It’s been about two years since my brother passed. A former colleague calls me and she says, “Let’s meet up for coffee. I want to catch up.” We met up for coffee. We are talking. She’s like, “How were your holidays?” I told her, “They were okay, but it was tough. Like it was very difficult. It’s hard to see all the changes.” I’m very honest about my answers. Her response was, “Still? It’s been almost two years.”

That’s when someone gets a throat punch. Like in your mind, they do.

In my mind, I felt like this, “You are done. We are done here.” It shocked me a bit, coming from her, because if she was a stranger and she said that, great. I’m like, “You know me. You know what I have been through, and you went to my wedding.” It was a reality check about the social expectations of how long somebody should be grieving.

In her mind, two years, it’s like, “You should be done by now, girlfriend. What are you doing?” In my mind, two years is a blink in a lifetime because it feels like forever and yesterday all at once. It made me realize that when people say, “Take your time,” they mean that very subjectively, and your time is their time lying in their mind. It also tells me they have no idea what grief is like. They had no idea.

I got quiet after that. I said, “I’m not going to share.” It was a valuable lesson in that. I said, “I’m going to share with people who I feel get it. Otherwise, they don’t need to know.” People are not privy to the details of your lived experience. You have agency. It taught me that I have agency in what I share, who I share it with, and in what context. Your information, your life is not for public consumption and I have a podcast. I share a lot.

They have to be worthy to hear your story and to hold that space for you. This wasn’t a question, but now it is. What are some of the things that people say to the grieving? Give me all of that from your perspective. It is an eye-roll situation. It’s a cringe. Do tell.

The worst thing is the platitudes. “They are in a better place.” “God needed another angel.” “It’s for the best.” It’s all these things that sound good. They sound like a little bumper sticker that would be nice to throw at somebody. That is awful and it negates the experience. You feel like you are going to alleviate their pain with this bumper sticker you flung at their face, and it’s like, no. You flung something reckless at their face, and it caused more injury, and confirmed that you are not to be trusted anymore with information that sounds very harsh, but death, the aftermath of losing a loved one how people respond becomes a litmus test to whether or not they get to play a role in your life from now on.

I feel like that is important because I had friends who said things that were hurtful, but I knew that they were trying imperfectly. They were stumbling over their words. They were saying things that were like, “You almost got that right but you missed the mark here a little bit,” but they were trying from the heart. I have a guest on the podcast, her son, unfortunately, died by suicide, and they were a very religious family. They were part of the religious community. Their faith played a big role, and they had certain standards and conversations and interactions with their immediate community, and they were very tight-knit.

She says that her neighbor gave her something that said, “Life is about learning to dance in the rain.” Then she said, “I wanted to take that thing and chuck it at her face. What dancing in the rain? My son just died by suicide. What are you talking about?” It’s so out of touch. That’s what it is. It tells me you are not trying to understand.

When a lot of people say, “I don’t want to imagine.” Correct. You don’t want to, but in this context, try. Use your imagination and try. Even when you try, you are not even going to compose, but try, because when you try, your words change a little bit. What you would have said, what you say when you don’t imagine, when your default is, “I can’t imagine.” Whatever follows that statement is extremely out of touch, and I guarantee you it will harm the person.

When you take a second to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, you will still not understand, but I guarantee you that whatever you were going to say before will shift a little bit into something more attuned to the experience. Put in the effort, please, and thank you, to try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, knowing full well you’ll never understand unless you’ve gone through the experience. We need to be careful with these platitudes, and in the case of the example that I gave, she said the religious community also used Bible verses that were very well-intentioned because it’s scripture, it is written.

She said, in the context of grief, it does not apply and if you read some of the scripture, it’s, “Jesus wept.” He had that moment of putting himself in the other person’s shoes and weeping with them or weeping for the situation, because sometimes there are no words, and it’s when you go there, you feel it. This is not to talk about scripture because I am in no place qualified. Taking it back to platitudes and general statements, it’s the same concept. It is more powerful to say nothing and hug a person and let your energy and your body do the talking than it is to say anything. There truly are no words.

It's more powerful to say nothing and just hug a person in grief and let your energy and body do the talking than to say anything. Share on X

There are plenty of us trying to update the records on these conversations. If you want to help somebody in grief, listen to the Widowhood Podcast. Listen to the Grief and Light Podcast. Do a little bit of research. One of the top things you’ll find is what not to say to grieve, and then what to say to grieve or reign, and how to help. Perhaps do a little bit of digging there and find a different way to show up, and its presence is more important than words.

Support Groups And Resources

Thank you. I was going to ask you for some recommendations. Did you say that when Joseph passed and you looked for different sibling groups, there was a grief support group that you went to for siblings?

Yes.

How did that help and why do you think it helped you?

It helped because I didn’t have to explain myself. It helped because they understood what I was saying without me having to delve into the details and there’s healing power in that. There’s healing power in being witnessed and understood and I’m sorry that they understand. I wish nobody understood me, but we are human, and so long as we are human, these things will happen and it’s wonderful medicine to connect with others on your journey.

It’s important to do it with people who have experienced a similar loss. I can talk to somebody about losing their parents, but I haven’t lost my parents yet. At a visceral level, I don’t understand. I will someday, perhaps, but I don’t understand. They won’t understand what it’s like to lose a sibling. They can empathize, but they won’t get it quite the same.

That’s not to say that we can’t help those people, and sometimes that emotional distance is helpful because you can remain centered. I don’t know if this happens to me, but I find that when I talk to siblings and if there are losses if there are elements that are too close to mine, it starts activating me. My body feels shaky. I start losing my train of thought. I become nervous, and it’s like my body’s remembering. They are activating something within me, a poor memory that is activating my nervous system, and then I’m not as neutral as I probably should be.

It’s about learning how to create that distance. I call it an emotional callus. It’s not becoming calloused. It’s more developing a little bit of a thick skin around that particular area whenever possible, and then being honest when the boundaries are blurred. Being in a peer group, I have heard this over and over again, and I have heard it from therapists who do this for a living. They said, “I trained on grief. That went out the window when I lost my mother,” or “That went out the window when I lost my husband.”

I want to pause here because I don’t want to discredit any of the research that’s been done. There are some tools that are very helpful, but the lived experience is not clinical. Grief is a natural, normal human response to loss and life-altering change. It is the human response. It is our divine programming of how to feel our emotions after a loss.

Trying to put a clinical prescription, model, or steps, or whatever it is, into a lived experience, does not work. That’s like trying to make love clinical or something like, “These are the steps to love.” It’s just it doesn’t work that way. Neither does grief. Finding people who understand is powerful medicine, and it’s one of the things I suggest people do. However, it’s an accessible thing now. Thankfully now we have online groups, so we have people literally from all over the world, connecting over their loss.

Nina’s Advice To Herself

If this version of you could speak to Nina the week that Joseph passed, what would you tell her?

You are still his sister, and you’ll always be his sister, and he is still there and you still talk to him. Life through his lens, like adopting his lens of how he saw life, will help you find joy again.

How long does it take you to learn that?

Three and a half years.

Evolving Understanding Of Grief

Explain to me what grief looked like before Joseph passed. We have touched on it, but how is grief different for you now?

Grief then didn’t have as much meaning. I had no lived experience to relate to it. After he passed, initially the first two years were awful. Upside down, nothing made sense. It was grief, bereavement, and sorrow, all in one. The third year, three and a half years later, it started to separate, and I started to realize grief is a language, and it’s a container for our lived experience of loss. In and of itself, it’s not a good or bad thing. It is. It exists.

 

 

When we lean into I when we listen not with our ears but with our heart, mind, and spirit embody and try to understand what it has to tell us. This happened. You will be grieving. There is wisdom in grief. Allow it to talk to you. When you start developing that language that you only hear with your heart, you don’t hear it with your ears, and you realize nothing is happening to you like this didn’t happen to you. It wasn’t a personal attack on life or a heavenly attack on you. It’s life, and this happened.

What now? You get to define how you make meaning. You get to define how you move forward. Whenever you find your footing again there will be a period where you don’t know left from right, up from down. After you allow yourself that time, you find your footing, and you say, “Where was I? What now?” Allow grief to transform your life in every way because it is not there to hurt you. It is not attacking you in any way. It is. It is changing your life profoundly, and what is sad will be sad also, you could use this to rewrite what your future looks like.

Your life was on one track before this happened, and your dreams and aspirations were set in stone and looked a certain way before this happened. Now that that’s no longer an option, what will you make of your life? That’s the space where we get to write whatever needs to happen. I choose to do that, carrying Joseph’s love light forward. It’s an expression from somebody who was a guest on the podcast, and she said, “We get to carry their love light forward.” I love that and I say, “Great. That’s what I’m going to do now.” I believe we will meet again. That’s not a belief everybody holds, but I believe that gives me comfort, and I believe that every day is one day closer, in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy this existence as much as possible and make the most of it.

I love that for you. I love that for Joseph. I love that for your family. As I watch you laugh, I often see people unaware there’s someone laughing and grieving. What are some dualities where people say, “I’m sure she’s sad about this?” Some people may say, “She’s always sad about Christmas,” but it may be the day to remember that Joseph stole your ice cream when you were kids and you see other kids playing. What are some ways that your grief shows up in spaces that people would not know because it’s not under the traditional umbrella of grieving?

That shows up all the time. First, apart from the premise that I learned that grief is this and that it’s not this or that. Grief is living on both ends. If we have a Venn diagram, we are living in the middle. Two things are true at once. This is how I visualize it. If you look at a Christmas ornament it’s round and it’s flat and it starts spinning. One side is joy, one side is grief. Sometimes my joy triggers my grief. Sometimes my grief triggers my joy.

I was crying and sobbing because my soul profoundly missed my brother. Sometimes, when I have interviews, when I have conversations like this I know I had this conversation in the later part of my day and I have to mentally prepare like emotionally prepared. I know I’m going to be in this energy. This is more intense. I don’t walk around every day talking this much about him. Knowing this was coming up reminds me of how much I miss him, and yet, I love it because thanks to this conversation. Thank you for this time together, I get to talk about him and I get to be in his energy. I’m happy. I will probably cry after this, and I will probably cry tomorrow morning, and all of it is perfectly fine.

Thank you for sharing that because it costs us something to be here for humanity. It costs us something to share these memories and deep dive into these conversations for ourselves and also to help other people. Thank you for being so transparent in sharing that it costs you something emotionally. When you thought about this conversation and you being the guest and not the podcast host, were you thinking, “If I were the podcast host, I would ask her this, and we would make sure that we talked about this, and make sure she covers.” Were there any items like that that came to mind to you?

No, and I appreciate your questions. Nobody has asked me, “What was your first memory of him?” I’m always like, “I wonder what question is going to come up that I wasn’t expecting.” “What was your first memory of him?” That hit me at my core because that’s my first memory ever. He was my first memory as a human being on Earth. It’s like I wasn’t expecting those questions, but I try to stay open to whatever comes up because thanks to your questions and remembering things that are out of sight, out of mind, and that was special. I wasn’t thinking necessarily like, “I need to have these answers.” It was more like, “I wonder what will come up that may take me aback a little bit.” That was one of them, but I love it. Thank you.

How was it being the guest versus the host?

Amazing. You make me feel very comfortable. Not everybody has the same tact or flow with the conversation. Interviewing is not easy. I want to give people grace as well, but you are such a beautiful energy, and you make me feel comfortable. You make it feel like this is such a natural part of the day. I thank you. You make me feel welcome and safe, and it’s a joy to be here.

This is supposed to be celebrating their life. Isn’t this supposed to be something I shouldn’t have to hide in the corner and do? Shouldn’t it be, “Joseph was an amazing brother?” You love being his sister, and I say “love,” current tense, being his sister. That’s okay. We become the memories. We are not celebrating if we don’t get to honor them. There’s a part that makes people hide and not want to be seen because there’s stuffing so much inside that they don’t get to authentically, organically, and be true to how they feel, because that’s looked at like, “Why are you still doing that?” It’s because they are still no longer here. I will grieve them in some form or fashion until I leave this world. It may not look like it did that first week. It changes, but life backs us to continue moving forward, even if we want to or not. I remember getting up the first day, and like, “The sun got up.”

 

 

I was so mad at the sun and the moon. I was like, “What are you doing?”

It’s because it’s one more day away from that moment that I spoke to them last and it’s like, “This is going to continue.”

That was very jarring. The most puzzling thing is life still moves forward. Why is it doing that? It’s very surreal.

It is beautiful at the same time.

It’s David Kessler. He says, “How long am I going to be grieving? How long are they going to be dead?” It is what it is. That evolves as we evolve. That doesn’t mean I’m going to be crying every day. That person will always be a core part of who I am moving forward, and that’s never going to change. I don’t want it to change, and that’s not going to change. I met a bereaved mother. She said, “My son passed. It has been eighteen years.” I said, “So, yesterday?” She stopped, and she looked at me and she said, “Thank you for saying that.”

In our hearts, it’s like that 911 moment. Like, “Where were you on 911?” In our hearts, they passed. When you think about that, it’s almost like you are transported to that time and everything that happens after that. There’s an element of them in it, and I wouldn’t want it to be any other way. It’s beautiful. That’s how we carry them forward.

He said that and it made me think about different social media memories that come on my phone and now, when some do not include Mark, I was like, “That much time has passed.” It has been seven years and there are still things that will happen. This may sound bizarre to some people that I go, “He died.” My daughter is engaged, and preparing to get married. The reality of that. Different things will happen, and it’s like, “He will not be here in the version and form, which I know to be there for that, and it takes forever getting used to that.

You said that it takes your breath away every single time, over and over again in ways known and unknown. That’s why we could try to foresee how it’s going to impact us. We can. There are things that are going to show up, and we are going to be like, “They are not here.” This is real. This continues. I met a woman. She says she started grieving 30 years later, the loss of both of her sisters because grief wasn’t talked about. It was something you shoved down, and you didn’t talk about it, and you carried on and marched on.

When her father passed, it unearthed the grief that she hadn’t expressed for her sisters. She said she knew for 30 years her sisters had passed, but she’s like, “This happened. I live with their granddaughters and I still can’t believe they are not here.” Time is a little warped in the context of grief and that’s okay. It’s supposed to be that way because love doesn’t have a timeline. We will feel this forever. Maybe the pain softens over time and there’s more joy, but we’ll feel this forever.

Time is a little warped in the context of grief, and that's okay. It's supposed to be that way because love doesn't have a timeline. Share on X

Grief And Love After The Loss Of A Spouse

I can relate to that. I will give you a moment to put on your podcast host. Any questions for me in this conversation?

First, thank you so much again for allowing me the space. This has been wonderful, and this is how we get to love them. My question to you would be, how do you incorporate Mark’s memory into your relationship? I’m not trying to be invasive, but what I’m trying to say is, how do you reserve a room in your heart for him as you hold the duality of the life you have now with another beloved?

You can be invasive. I’m okay with that. If you sit down and say you are going to have a conversation, we sign up to give an honest, authentic answer to the question asked. A couple of different ways. One, I still carry Mark’s last name. When we were about a month out from the wedding, and I was at work, somebody said, “When are you going to change your last name?” and I was like, “That’s a thing?” In my mind, I’m not going to be in a world where my children don’t have a parent with the same last name. Their dad is gone. In my mind, changing my last name, for me, felt like I was abandoning my children.

We never talked about it, but that was going to be a dealbreaker for me if that was going to be an issue because I know some people, that is a very important thing for your spouse to have your last name. This is not a situation where I was divorced and ready to get a name back or do something. His name sounds like home to me. That is a part of my life. I was apprehensive about what this conversation would look like with Fred, and going, “What if this is it?” I was like, “We got to have this conversation because this could be a problem.” We were out. We were doing something, getting a vehicle fixed, and we went to this place, a restaurant, and we were sitting out. I remember milkshakes and something, and I said, “I want to talk to you.” He goes, “We got to have this ‘I need to talk to you’ conversation. We are talking.’”

What did I do now?

Exactly. I said, “What do you think about last names?” He looked at me so quickly. He said, “Like your last name?” He said, “Your children wouldn’t have a parent with the same last name.” I was like, “This is the one.” Then he said, “You’re too old to do that.” I was like, “I didn’t know if I asked you that.” He was like, “Changing your name as old as you are.” I was like, “You are ruining it.”

The first one that was perfect. Leave it there.

The birds were singing, the sky opened up, and then he went, I knew already, but this was further confirmation. I’m going to save space. When I felt God prompted me to start this nonprofit for the show, he has been my biggest cheerleader. He has been, “This is what you feel like you need to do to help other people.” When we started the YouTube channel, he was contacting people. “She needs 100 followers,” and he’s getting people to take good care, less of one, and he’s like, “Send me the link.” He made sure I had 100 followers. I had like 89. He was like, “We are getting to that.”

I interviewed Fred on my show with another gentleman who married a widow and spoke about the experience of dating and marrying a widow. I know for me and from talking to other widows and widowers, that person that you partner with should have a lot of confidence in who they are. They should not have a space where they feel like they are in competition with the deceased. They should not, but at the same time, you, as the widow or widower, should be in a space where you realize that you are prepared to love two people. I will always love Mark. I will always love him, but that relationship in this timeline and this reality ended.

I received some documentation, and I thought I had processed it. I’m a retired Army officer. I put things in place, all that. It’s been years. I feel like I have done everything I need to do. I’m living life, and I get this letter. “You need to do such and such.” I’m looking at it, and all of a sudden, I’m frozen. I have to go find the birth certificate, death certificate, DD214. All those in one sentence are just tiring and I go to the president’s office. I’m telling him what I’m looking at, and he takes the paper out of my hand. He was like, “Sit here on me. It will be okay. This is another way of Mark being a good husband.” I cried a little bit. I got up and went to the safe, found the documents, and did the things that I needed to do. It was about a month and a half of processing these documents and doing things. He was like, “It’s going to be okay.”

That is so beautiful, and it takes a real partnership, real love, emotional maturity, and understanding that it’s not a competition. It’s almost like saying, “Which kid do you love more?” I love my kids. All of them and my heart is big enough for all of this. I love that you didn’t choose not to be Mark’s wife, and also that tie, I didn’t think about it that way. Thank you for that perspective of if you change your last name, your kids, lose that tie. What a beautiful way to honor him and honor that link and that forever bond, because it is a forever bond. I love that you have such an amazing partner. It’s this and that. It’s not this or that.

It is and with the work that I do with the show being a registered 501(c)(3), our goal is to have 100 families that we provide Christmas toys for. This 2024, we are doing it for the first year, Widowhood Secret Santa and we have five families that have been chosen. We are putting their Amazon wishlist on our website, and you can go there and purchase a gift for them, and they go right to them.

One of our other goals is to have an educational scholarship fund, and we will name that after Mark in some form or fashion because oftentimes, when a parent passes, either the remaining spouse needs to re-enter the workforce and may need new skills, or children’s education may have been called off because that person may have been a contributing factor to the financial stability of the family. That is another way that we will honor Mark in the work that we are doing because the bereaved are an underserved community.

When we look at the mental health impact of grief, then it goes, “Oh.” As you talk to therapists and mental health professionals, as I have done so oftentimes they can circle back someone’s mental challenges something that’s not a DNA cause or how they’re hard-wired but they can often circle that back to a moment of unaddressed guilt that has spiraled into other different things that are manifesting in other negative behavior.

The Ripple Effects Of Grief

Loss of grief has a ripple effect in ways that can be beautiful like, “We get to do this. We get to love them.” It’s like adding insult to injury. You are already going through this horrible experience through the pain and the emotional side of it, and now you have to deal with the legalities and the instability. These are the secondary losses. The instability. The new identity. It’s like if you have kids and the loss of financial capabilities, all the things. It turns everything upside down.

Grief has a ripple effect in ways that can be beautiful and in ways that can be like adding insult to injury. Share on X

We didn’t thankfully have to deal with much with my brother. He was young and he didn’t have kids or family or anything like that. I had another thought. I’m going through this with my parents now. His death prompted my family to get all the wills and the arrangements in order, and it’s not something we would have prioritized had this not happened. If you are reading, please take this as your sign to get your affairs in order. Everybody that’s left behind will greatly benefit from that.

It doesn’t matter if you have a lot of assets or few assets, it’s an instruction for your wishes, and that has to be recorded with your county, your local state, and all the things. That is one of the biggest pain points for grievers. It’s adding insult to injury that your life has been turned upside down, and now you have to deal with the paperwork, the court systems, and the money that you didn’t expect to spend, and that ripples in profound ways. That could be very life-altering in the negative sense.

I’m glad you mentioned that because it’s so true. There are two different organizations that I have dealt with. One is Buried in Work and they are great. It helps you with estate planning, and putting things in order. Just because I have the book. Pause the show. I cannot say one without the other. I was like, “I couldn’t blow that. I am so glad that you mentioned the paperwork, the mundane requirements because it’s like your brain can’t even think. Let alone think that you have to do all these things.

There are two organizations that have been supporting the work of the show. If you reach out to #BuriedInWork and you mention the code REALTALK, they will provide you with a 10% discount for purchasing their products, and they have a very elaborate system. They have a lot of resources and a lot of connections. People may say, “I only have a few things.” That’s a few things that you don’t want to probate, and people have to go through all these issues. You can make it simple.

I know it’s hard to talk about death, but you are reading this show already, so you’ve overcome that. Get out of your feelings and know that, once you do it, most of the time you may have to tighten it up a little bit. The other organization is called The Deadbook. It is the same version, but it may be on a smaller scale because she may seem like, “I have something complicated. I have a lot to celebrate.” I would recommend that you look at Buried in Work.

If you are looking at something a little bit more simplistic, easier, and compensating, The Deadbook is going to be a good option for you. You can reach out to me or them individually, and both of these gentlemen have lost parents. They started this work because of the death of their parents and what they had to go through in doing the administrative work of their parent’s estate. Excellent comment about needing to do that, and there are resources to walk you through that. Buried in Work, they have a couple of card games that you can play to ask some questions to take the awkwardness out of it. It’s something that should be looked into.

It’s important. A lot of people say, “It’s expensive.” I guarantee you, what’s more expensive is not doing it, and this is not paid. I don’t work for any of these people. I have seen it in practice. I have heard the conversations. I have held space for the people who are losing it because it was a mess on top of a mess, and on top of a loss. I guarantee you that whatever you invest in this is going to yield 10,000 times the peace of mind.

Even like, for example, something I learned that I had no idea about. I live in the state of Florida, and I don’t know if this is at a federal level or a state level, but here, if you don’t have a will, even medical care, I can’t make decisions for my parents or my husband, if they don’t have a written will. The state makes decisions for them. They get to decide in a life-or-death situation. They do the absolute bare minimum, and then the hospital says, “The hospital’s protocol is this. They don’t have a will therefore, we will pull the plug or whatever.”

I don’t mean to sound harsh or whatever, but when I heard that, I said, “What? That’s crazy.” The first thing that we did, wasn’t for the assets. It was for medical care. My parents are now leaving me instructions. I’m the sole child now. It’s like, “My dad and mom gave me their wishes. They gave me the power of attorney.” They said, ‘This is what we want. These are the assets we have.'” I was like, “You can never give me a Christmas or birthday gift ever again. That’s the biggest gift you could have given me.”

For me to make those decisions on my own as the remaining child is one of the things that gives me so much anxiety about things like, “I’m going to have to face, assuming they go before me, and natural causes or whatever happens, I’m going to be the one left behind. How am I going to make these decisions on my own?” The fact that it’s all written out is a gift in and of itself.

On the mental health side, grief, in and of itself, is not a mental health condition. However, if you suffer from depression or anxiety, or your behaviors, like you self-isolate. You mentioned this in one of your posts. If you self-isolate. That estrangement from society, friends, family, and support starts growing into something that could potentially end up being harmful or if you have some behaviors where you abuse certain substances, whether it be alcohol, drugs, or whatever. Your behavior following a loss can eventually turn into something that requires medical intervention and/or a mental illness. It’s not that grief causes mental illness. It’s that the actions you take, or don’t take, following a loss can eventually work against you. Let’s say it that way.

Thank you for elaborating on that because it is very true. Any other questions for me?

I will save those for when you are in my podcast if that’s okay.

That is perfectly fine. I want to say thank you. I know that you hold dear your story of Joseph. Just because someone asked you to be on their podcast, it’s not going to be like, “Let me see a second.” I appreciate the intentionality in doing it. Thank you for honoring me and knowing that this is a trusted and safe space to share your story and know that this is a place. It would be honored. I would like for you to close out this conversation with your final remarks.

Thank you for what you are doing. Thank you for answering your calling. Thank you for providing the space for grievers, for these conversations to take place, for the education, and this is a gift that keeps on giving. I do believe that. If there was ever a time to have these conversations, it is now. If there was ever a time to hold space for each other, it is now. You embodying your role in all of this is powerful medicine in ways. I keep repeating that phrase, but the ripple effect is beautiful.

I like to be selective with the people that I interview because it is so near and dear to my heart, and if somebody doesn’t handle these conversations with care, it could be harmful. I appreciate you handling it with so much grace, care, love, and everything. If you are a griever, you are not alone. Your unique circumstances are very unique to you, and in that regard, yes, it is a lonely journey, but there are many of us. There are communities of grievers providing resources and voicing out this real lived experience. If you don’t have the energy to get through another day, borrow ours, from our podcast episodes, from the resources we provide, and from the stories that are shared in our beautiful spaces. If you’d like to get a hold of me, it’s GriefAndLight.com and thank you. Brother, wherever you are, I love you so much.

If you're a griever, you are not alone. Your circumstances are unique to you, and in that regard, it is a lonely journey, but there are communities of grievers who understand. Share on X

Thank you for being here. Talk to you later, Widowhood.

Important Links

• Grief and Light Website
• Grief and Light Podcast
• Grief and Light Instagram
• Signs
• Buried in Work
• The Deadbook
• Grief and Light YouTube
• Grief and Light Facebook
• Grief and Light Spotify
• Grief and Light Apple Podcasts
• Grief and Light TikTok
• Grief and Light Threads

 

About Nina Rodriguez

Nina created the Grief and Light Podcast after the sudden and unexpected loss of her only sibling, Yosef, as an authentic exploration of grief and life after loss. Through each conversation, she aims to give a voice to the griever’s experience and foster a more grief-informed, hopeful world.

Beyond the podcast, Nina extends her heart-centered support through The Community, monthly circles, 1:1 grief tending sessions, speaking engagements, active presence on social media, and forthcoming in-person retreats.

She has been featured in various publications and podcasts, regularly contributes to Get Griefy Magazine, and has completed the Grief Care Professional Certificate Program under renowned psychotherapist and best-selling author of It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Megan Devine