Grief is never a straightforward concept. It is so utterly complex that it cannot be described in just a few words, and every single person has their own unique grieving journey. Nikki Boone is here to share her fair share of grief, and it is as complicated as it can be. She opens up about her struggle with identity crisis after finding out she was adopted, as well as her battle with anxiety, bipolar disorder, and PTSD. She shares how grief shaped her relationship with her biological mother, her mother-in-law, and her children. Nikki also discusses practical tips on preparing your last will promptly to avoid messy circumstances later in life or when you pass away.
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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Understanding The Complexities Of Grief With Nikki Boone
My guest, Nikki Boone, is going to talk about complicated grief. You are going to learn how to decompress, how to deal with complicated grief, ways in which to handle things for our elderly parents, and much more. This conversation is not for the light of heart, but it is a necessary discussion to help empower you as you go through your journey. Let’s get into the conversation.
Nikki, welcome to the show. How are you?
Trying to decompress. I’m not bad. I’m not 100% good, but I’m not gone.
Is that related to grief or life?
Life is lifeing. There’s always grief. Mental health is not 100%.
The Lingering Feeling Of Grief
You said something. It’s always grief. Does that mean it’s always lingering in the back of everything that’s going on?
Yeah. There is always going to be a recurrence of PTSD because something’s always triggering something.
When you say grief, because grief can come in a lot of different packages, what is grief when you say that word? What are you grieving about?
In my life, there’s a lot of woulda, coulda, shouldas on so many different angles. There is grief on the aspect of unanswered questions as well as the death of the physical aspect of a loved one.
Transparency was going to be part of this conversation. Who are the loved ones that you think of in relation to grief?
That’s a broad question.
Broad answer.
I’ve got to start with myself.
Who after that?
Then, there are mothers. I’m saying mothers because there are two in my lifestyle. There are fathers. In my situation, there is a mother-in-law. There are a few other family members, but let’s leave it at that. It’s most important.
Those are a lot of names. Those are a lot of people that you’ve lived life with that are no longer here. You also mentioned shoulda, woulda, coulda.
It’s broad. Where do we start? A tree has roots, a trunk, and then many different limbs. All of those limbs connect to one tree. All of my should, coulda, wouldas all connect to all of those people that I mentioned. That’s why it’s hard to break them down. They’re going to fall in place as we talk.
Personal relationships are like a tree with so many branches and roots. Share on XFinding Out About Her Adoption
Can you remember what your first experience with grief was?
Yeah, I can. At this moment in time, I choose not to speak on it because it falls under the label of abuse.
From that first experience with grief, how did that shape your life?
It shaped my life in a direction of a lot of years of grief, a lot of years of finding out you’re not who you are or who you thought you were. Let’s start it off like this. I found out I was adopted, and I found out accidentally on purpose. After a long line of abuse, you are finding out that’s why. A long line of not fitting in, a long line of finding out this is not what you want. It’s hard to talk about.
This is the conversation you wanted.
This is a conversation I need.
It’s hard. Take your time. When you found out you were adopted, did that give you some sense of understanding of why things were unsettled the way they were?
No. It opened up a gateway to find out more information. I still don’t know why things were the way they were. I got a picture of how things were portrayed to be, a picture that was being painted. It was, “A perfect family here. This is the way this is supposed to be. This is why it was set up the way it is,” but I still don’t know why officially things happened. I’m still looking for answers, but I can’t get these answers. You get in limbo.
The people that you would’ve obtained these answers from are no longer here.
They’re no longer here on that side. I eventually met my real mother. She’s no longer here, and I’m once again left with some questions.
How did you find your mom?
Before my 22nd birthday, I had some information that I took off of a picture out of my adoptive family’s home, which was a name and some phone numbers. These names and phone numbers I had been calling, which I had been finding out all along that they were homes I was coming from. These were foster care homes.
When I got older, I called these numbers when I was younger, under the age that I was supposed to be able to know this information. I decided to call them again after I turned 21. They all guided me to the state of Virginia’s Department of Social Services. We have a city version and a state version of social services. They told me, “Go there. The file is there. That’s where the file would be.” I went there and filled out what information I had. One of the foster care homes that was still open told me that it was my real name that was on that piece of paper.
I used that name and filled out the piece of paper. When I filled out the piece of paper, they sent it through a database. About three weeks later, I got a phone call stating they found a match. My mother was looking for me under the name that was on the back of the picture, not the name that I got changed to. They didn’t know that my name had changed.
They set up a meeting. They asked her if she wanted to meet me and asked me if I wanted to meet her. We both said yes. They set up a mutual meeting place, and we all met each other. I’m nervous. It scared me because I didn’t know that we had the option to back out. She came. One of my aunts came. They came. They met me and met my kids. Everybody hung out.
I’m looking for answers. I’m only looking for what you call medical history information. That’s the only thing that I was particularly looking for because I kept going to the doctors. I have kids. They go, “Your father’s background. Your mother’s background.” I never knew what mine was because I knew I was adopted. That’s what I was looking for.
It got deeper. I went down a rabbit hole. I got close to her. She still would not give me certain information, like how I ended up in foster care and all this type of information. Family members kept saying I needed to talk to her, but she wouldn’t talk to me at all. Certain people were still with her, still talking to her, still friends with her, hanging out with her, who knew the reason why I got taken away from her. Eventually, it was under the labor of abuse. She finally said something towards it. She asked me if I was mad. No, I wasn’t mad. I wanted to know the truth.
What would the truth do for you?
I still don’t know what the truth is. I’m only going according to what her truth is. At my mother’s funeral, my aunt said that my mother passed away with secrets.
Don’t we all, though?
Why tell me? Why say that at her eulogy? That’s my thing. Your truth is your truth. You can sit here and tell me whatever you want to tell me. I have to believe it for face value, yes or no, and the same thing with me to you for face value because it’s my truth. It’s your truth, right or wrong. For somebody else to come and tell you as part of your eulogy to your face in front of everybody else that statement, what are you thinking?
Your truth is your truth. Share on XHow Death Impacts Mental Health
It would haunt me. In this complicated grief that you’ve gone through these years, at 22, if I heard you correctly, you finally located your mother and started having this parafunctional-type relationship where you were trying to get data to make sure you can answer different things. You open up and draw closer to her, and you’re thinking that some of those answers are starting to get revealed. People who know the answers at this point of closure bring it back up to say, “You still don’t have it all, nor will they release those answers for you.” You talked about mental health. What has that looked like for you? Sometimes, people use that buzzword, but it means different things for different people.
Mental health, for me, is being diagnosed with PTSD, Bipolar I, Bipolar II, anxiety, dealing with smells and sounds, and being triggered. There are certain colognes that you can tell only came out through a certain generation. For us, there were only certain colognes that the guys wore that are not being worn now.
It brings you back to a period of time.
If I smell it, I’m triggered. A certain age group of people wear it. Our parents were the ones who were wearing it. Certain smells and certain sounds, I’m living this because of the abuse of every aspect of the word that I obtained.
Complicated Relationship With Biological Mother
Thank you for being willing to be so transparent. You mentioned grief for yourself, and that is your living in that grief from past experiences. Even though this may not be talking about the death of a person, if I’m understanding you correctly, you feel like there’s a part of you that has died in this process in dealing with all these different things.
That, as well as losing my mother and my mother-in-law in the same year.
Let’s talk about that. Who passed first of those two women?
My mother-in-law passed before Valentine’s Day.
What was your relationship with her?
It was the cutest. She treated me more like a daughter than either one of my mothers did. It was the cutest little relationship. She was the cutest soul I’ve ever met. No matter what, she loved my husband. That was her only child. The nature of their relationship would be that I fall under the perfect, cutest little relationship I’ve ever seen a mother and son have. I was low-key jealous of it, but at the same time, I was getting the same treatment, so I wasn’t jealous of it. I wish I had that relationship with a mother. Nevertheless, my mother.
Isn’t that interesting? If we allow it, life will bring us what we need. You needed the love of a mother, and that door was open. You could have rejected her. You could have stayed to the side and observed, but you received the love that you yearned for.
I set it up during the holidays that my mother and his mother were at my house to eat dinner on Thanksgiving and Christmas for a few years back-to-back so my mother could see what it looks like to love your child.
You bring up a point. Thank you for speaking about that. Sometimes, we may not know how. We may have come from one situation of abuse to another situation of abuse. We need to learn that this could be different. We’ve been in places where that’s the only example that we’ve had, so we had no concept that it didn’t have to be like that.
I had to be around it because I was never taught how to do it either. I had kids of my own.
How did you shift that pattern? Did you show up the way you had been shown before? How did that look for you in parenthood?
I’m learning how to do it. My kids had to sit down, talk to me, and give me that eye-opening conversation on how I did it. It was an eye-opening conversation. I did it the way I was taught with the strong arm of the law, aka by the adoptive family and the way they did me. I wasn’t as hard, but I was hard. I was like, “You’re going to do this my way.” I did it that way and they didn’t like it. I did not do them as hard as they did me. They all let me know, “I didn’t like this. I didn’t like that.” They’re the two that have kids up there doing theirs differently.
How is Grandma Nikki compared to Mama Nikki?
Grandma Nikki doesn’t have to deal with what my kids did with the grandkids. My grandkids love giving me hugs whereas my kids didn’t give me hugs.
Relationship With Her Children
Let me ask a tough question. Was the lack of affection something that you grew up with in that environment and that was something that you passed on to them initially?
Yeah.
The children sit down and have a conversation. What does your response look like to what they’re saying?
How else could it be but to accept it and explain?
You could have gone down and said, “This is the way it is.” There are other options you could have had.
I couldn’t because, one, they were all adults. They weren’t children when they did this. They were all adults when they did it.
Was it all together or individual conversations?
There were individual conversations.
There was a lot of love expressed in choosing to have this conversation.
I didn’t realize that they all were in touch with each other to discuss this.
How many different conversations does this look like?
Honestly, out of 4 kids, it was 3 different conversations.
Do you recall what you learned from those different discussions?
Yeah, and I enjoy it. A couple of them were hard bumps on the head and wake-up calls, but at the same time learning experiences altogether for both bodies.
I love that you made it a learning experience. I love that you let those adult children be adults and share. You took that opportunity to grow. You could have chosen to turn away. Do you guys hug more now? What does that look like?
It’s a lot more I love yous before we get off the phone. It’s a lot more, “I called to check up on you to see what you’re doing.” It’s a lot more random gifts. It’s a lot more, “I wanted to know what you were doing today and see how you are doing.”
Do you recall what age you were when you had these conversations with your children?
What age I was?
Yes.
This was a couple of years ago.
About what age?
Between 47 and 49.
Coping With Changes Caused By Grief
Thank you for sharing. We still have the ability to change. We never get to a space where it’s been like this, and this is how it has to be. You can choose to embrace the change. It may be difficult, but embracing that change gave you an opportunity to have a better relationship with your children. If you were talking to somebody randomly in the laundry room and they were talking about how life is hard and they have to make changes, but they’re afraid of change and they don’t want to do it, what would you tell them organically?
We go through changes every day. I know exactly what I would do because I said it not too long ago on my Facebook page. If asking the same question to the same person is getting you the same results and they’re not working, change the question or change the person you’re asking the question to and see what results you get.
Switch it up, huh?
Switch it up. If the same question that you’re asking over and over to the same person is not getting positive results or the results you’re looking for, change the question or change the person you are asking the question to.
If you are asking the same question over and over to the same person and not getting the results you are looking for, change the question or the person. Share on XThat can be a game-changer because we can sometimes find ourselves in a loop where we’re doing the same thing.
That is why the results are not changing.
Relationship With Her Husband’s Mother
We’re thinking, “If I come at it this same or I do this,” but it’s the same thing. If I change how I’m doing that, the potential to get something different exists. When you watched your husband with his mother and you became a part of that, how did it make you feel?
It was like I fit in. It was like, “This is where I’m supposed to be. I am in the best place. This is what families do. This is the family thing. This is what family does. This is love. This is what parenting is.” All of the above is what I felt. It was always smiles. Even when she was upset, it was always smiles when she saw us. Even at her weakest, she was still smiling. There was never a dull moment around him. The littlest things kept her content and happy. The way she said his name was cute, and she couldn’t get my name right for nothing. I had six different names.
What were they?
I was Monique. My name is Nikki. It’s not Nicole. I was Nicole. Her name was Dorothy. I started calling her Shirley, and then she realized that she said my name wrong and she switched up my name again. I got tickled back. It was the cutest little thing. She’ll look at me and she goes, “I did it again.” She called me another name. For the longest time, I was Monique.
There’s nowhere near Nikki.
He’d be like, “Mama, it’s Nikki.” I told him, “I’m Monique today. You better leave me alone.” It was a running joke. It was the cutest thing.
That’s great.
It was the cutest little thing because I was like, “I’m never going to be Nikki.” I started asking him, “Did you ever date a girl named Monique?” I was never mad. I never got mad at the fact that I was called another name. Usually, you are supposed to. I thought at one time I was supposed to have been mad, but I was like, “I’m not mad.”
In her obituary, what was your name?
In her obituary, it was spelled right because we did the obituary. It’s Monique. Why? That was my alter ego.
When she passed, how did you feel?
The fact that we had to have a welfare check that she passed in the house, that’s what hurt me because I felt like my husband was losing it at some point when he should have gotten her out of there. A lot of changing events and a lot of emotions went through that. I felt like at some point, I was getting ready to lose two people because some of the things that should have been taken care of, my husband didn’t take care of, being the only child. He was in denial about some things for a long time, long before she got to that point.
Sometimes, people, when they get older, are good at hiding things that you cannot pick up on. They’re pretty good as far as keeping things at bay. I can say from my perspective, when our dad passed, there were things that my parents were keeping from us. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but there were more things that we found out after my dad passed that, if we were aware, could have shown up differently.
I understand that part right there. It was to the point that if he had got her nurse right, she would’ve been going to the doctor. She had not been going to the doctor. She had not been taking medication. She had not been doing that. If he had kept her upkeep or done what I asked him to do, something as small as, “Go while she’s mentally there. Get her to sign the papers of power of attorney to you. You give me permission to get her facility together. We get her out of this apartment because I have the know-how to do this. My cousin, where my mother is right now, has an in-house facility. We sign her in there. They will take care of her like they’re taking care of my mother. She’ll be with my mother.”
Understanding Last Will And Power Of Attorney
You bring up a good point. People with older parents. You mentioned a power of attorney. What are some other good things that people should consider as their parents are aging and how to support them?
First of all, I don’t even like talking about this because on both sides of my family, things were done.
We don’t have to make it about people. You can make it very abstract. “For lessons learned, people should do this and this.”
I’m going to do that. I’m saying it’s so easy and important for everybody to know. When you get your paperwork done, get it finalized appropriately. For starters, get a living will done appropriately. Get it done while you’re in your sane mind. Do not wait until the person is unaware of what the paperwork is. Make sure your lawyers have all your paperwork and copies of everything in safe places.
A power attorney, a trustworthy person who knows where all your paperwork is, codes to everything in case you’re unable to sign your own paperwork, and has all your information. They get in touch with everybody. They know where everything is. They can speak for you when you are unable to speak for yourself. The only reason why that is all important is because when your will is read, that’s your first person that everybody’s going to be looking for to know anything. You know it yourself. When somebody passes away and somebody knows somebody got change, stuff gets messy.
I’ll say this, I know it from speaking to other people. That was not my lived experience.
I’m glad it was not yours.
When my husband passed, I was the only woman he had ever been married to, so there was no one to challenge that. My husband and I had been together for 32 years. My children were focused on, “Is Mom going to be okay?” We were living a life that we were knocking Abraham Lincoln’s head off that penny. They saw their parents being penny pinchers because we were saving and trying to prepare for when they were older, for college and stuff like that. My son was in the Military and then my daughter was leaving to go to the Military shortly thereafter. They were concerned about leaving me. “Is Mom going to be okay?” Mom was fine. My late husband and I had a plan that when one of us was not here how the other person would be positioned to be okay.
I love my siblings. We operate as one unit sometimes. We can get on each other’s nerves, but don’t come up in this space. That’s between us when this was going on. When my dad passed, my middle sister, who lives next door, showed up first in Chicago and started helping our mom find paperwork and different things like that.
My mom has stayed home since I was six years old. My mom had been a stay-at-home mom. Whatever my sister found out, she started texting us what we needed to do to get things ready when we got there. My mom was in Chicago when all the children and grandkids came. We needed to facilitate whatever she wanted to do.
My mom, the second day my sister was there, said, “I want to move to Virginia where you and Tina are.” We had a phone conference, like, “Is this what you want to do?” We knew that when we’d get there, we were going to be in action doing stuff. When we got there, we divided up responsibilities, who was doing what. My brother decided that he would stay in Chicago and finish things.
My now husband was watching my mom as we were doing the things she asked us to do. Watching it happen in a home she had been in for 40 years was hard. My husband said, “I don’t think your mom needs to watch this.” I looked at her and I could see the distress as this was happening. She told us what to keep and what not to keep.
My mom came back to Virginia with my sister and me. My brother stayed behind for about a month. He finished cleaning out the house and doing everything, and then I was responsible for selling the house. My mom and sister live right next door. Everything my mom needed to do, we were facilitating, giving, and taking care of that.
The trust level is high with my sibling group, so that’s not been a concern. We wanted to make sure our mom was positioned to live a life and be comfortable. I have heard a lot of stories that are horrific about a very small amount of money that people will do things that they will regret later. Oftentimes, you see the true character of a person in these situations, and that can be disheartening.
The scary part about it is that it’s terrible how I am not the type to look for anything after a person has passed. I want to get through the hard part of the grief. I’m not looking for anything. I didn’t want anything. I got caught up in the middle of it twice.
You made me think of something when my grandmother passed. I remember when I was a child looking at the China cabinet she had. There were glasses in there. They looked like they had gold etching around them. I remember looking at them all the time. When my grandmother passed, my aunt, who passed away, asked me if there was anything I wanted from my grandmother. I said two things. I used to be in her jewelry box, playing. I knew it was all costume jewelry. I didn’t care about anything of any value. Also, those glasses.
To my surprise, one trip when I was in Chicago, she gave me the glasses and a container of all my grandmother’s costume earrings, jewelry, and stuff. I’m glad for this conversation because in the backdrop of my husband’s death, I forgot about that jewelry. It’s somewhere. I need to find that because I need to pull some of those things out and wear them. I have a sense of where they can be. Thank you for helping me remember that.
That’s what’s up. This is a grieving process, a process for me mentally, physically, and emotionally, too.
Dealing With Anxiety And Going To Work
What has been the most outwardly disruptive part of your mental anguish?
Not wanting to be out in public anymore.
How have you managed that?
I am still going to work in public because I can’t find a work-from-home job. The anxiety is high in doing that. You do it afraid. You do it hard.
I do it very hard. I do it stressfully, but I do it.
When you come home, what does that look like?
I decompose. It’s different all the time, but it’s hard to the point that I’m not planning on leaving the house on my days off from work.
I want to say thank you for sharing that. As we grieve different things, we don’t always get to take a vacation from life. We don’t get to say, “I don’t want to go to work ever,” or, “I don’t want to do these other things.” We have to push ourselves to acclimate in society and do the things that need to be done. When we come home, give ourselves that extra care to decompress, stay in the house, and recover. When you recover and you give yourself time, how does that feel?
I don’t know because I haven’t had a chance to.
You said that sometimes, you stay in.
I’m doing it now, but two days, a lot of times, is not enough. It’s a small reboot, but it’s not enough. When you’re working two full-time jobs and then you’re still around people, it’s more stressful because it’s even more close quarters, the different personalities, and the different everything. The first one, you’re floating around people. You’re around people, but you don’t have to be around people. The second one, you are right there in close quarters with them. You are around them at the worst time of day. It’s the time they are getting off work and going home. They’ve had a full day. You’re coming in and dealing with it. It’s right there.
It’s not like you’re on vacation.
The two-day vacation is not what it is. It’s not enough, but you try to make it enough.
What do you do that you enjoy?
There’s not much I can do.
I’m talking about your arts and crafts, those things.
You’re talking about the trays. That’s our business. This hasn’t even got to the point. My page on TikTok is @NikkiBoone101. Those are the rolling trays. I don’t know what to call it because there are some that look like serving trays up there. I don’t know what you call it, maybe a utility tray. There are some posters up there as well but it’s made out of resin.
See how your face lit up talking about that.
It’s because I perfected it. It’s part of my business. It is what it is. I don’t get time to do that.
Talk about the business that you have and what you guys are doing and specializing in.
My husband, J.B. Productions7 on Facebook, hand paints on clothes and tennis shoes. He does giant canvases. He does not airbrush, but he hand-paints on anything. If you go on that, you’ll see that. I do custom rolling trays and ashtrays. I’m thinking about broadening it out to make custom rugs, if I can get the space at the new house and we get ready to move again. Not the way they’re doing us in this house. This house is not worth the price that they’re trying to slap on it. We did get the house that we were looking at. We’re on our way out here within the next 30 days. We’ve got to go. The next time we speak again, or if I go live again, hopefully, we’ll be in our new space.
Letting Go Of Grief
We’ll talk later, but I’m going to be up in your area, so I wanted to try to connect. I am going to be up in the Richmond area. A friend of mine who is a widow is having an event and I’m participating in that. I’ll go to her event and show up and encourage her. It’s April 2025. I’ll look at the date and I’ll text you because I have it on my calendar. When you thought about having this conversation, what were some things that you wanted to talk about?
What we pretty much touched on.
Any questions you have with me?
No. I appreciate the opportunity to even discuss it. I talk about it, but I don’t talk about it. There are still some things that need to one day fully come out, but the gist of it, most of it came out. It’s amazing how I’m still running into that particular religion and people around my age group talking about how they suffer with the same things.
I appreciate you having this conversation because grief is messy. It becomes even more complicated based on the relationships that we’ve had with the people who are no longer here. People always want to deify those who are no longer here, but it can often leave those who are remaining with unanswered questions, trying to manage that, our past, and what our life looks like. With you being able to have this conversation, there are going to be people who are reading that know that they’re not alone in those struggles, and there’s a way to manage that. It may be one day at a time. It may be moment by moment. It’s also pushing through when you’re ready to talk about it.
A lot of them need to know, too, that when you do talk about it, even if it’s for a moment, it does get a little bit easier to talk about. Those who like to write, I’ve been through the moments that made it easier when you write about it. Stop bottling it in. Write out, tear it up, set it on fire, say a prayer over it, and start letting it go.
It’s like a bowl ceremony where you put it in, say something, and start letting it go.
Pressure busts pipes. The more you hold in, the more it festers and the more it gets worse for you. That’s when those body aches, those illnesses, and the different things show up where you wonder, “This wasn’t like this a few weeks ago. Why does this hurt? Why does that hurt?” It’s because we have to let it out. It hurts, but it hurts even more holding it in.
The more you hold grief in, the more it festers and gets worse for you. Share on XEpisode Wrap-Up And Closing Words
I will let you close out this conversation with your final word or recommendations, whatever you’d like to share.
One thing, for sure. Two things for certain. We’re all going through things on a different level, but we’re all going through the same thing. One thing that we all have to remember is that we are not alone. You look to your left and you look to your right. Figuratively, literally, and wholeheartedly, grab arm and arm. Look at things as if they are like the rear view mirror in your car, in the front windshield. What’s ahead is bigger than what is behind you. That’s why they’re different in size. Take it one day at a time and one minute at a time. Sometimes, it takes a moment in time, but it does get better, from me to you, no matter what. It was nice talking to everybody. I love you. You’re not alone, no matter what.
