Deandra
Appearances
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
I have no sympathy for squirrels. But they aren't your pet either.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
Yeah, just a note on the community level in regards to the George Floyd situation and how you said, a lot of people were thinking, how could this happen here? I remember Philando Castile was another victim of police violence. That was when I was younger, but it was one of the first things that really brought my attention to police brutality, police violence, and how it does, people do die.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
And the collective grief that Black Americans feel when they continue to see Black people murdered at the hands of people that should be protecting us. I think that that is such a complex feeling that is specific to certain populations. And it just keeps happening. Like there are just more and more people in the news.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
And I think that that makes it harder to fully grieve when you see your kid or your grandson or your niece or nephew potentially being in these situations. I think it's just a more complex grief and it's hard for people that aren't like as a white person, it's just, it's harder for me to maybe understand that community's grief, but I still show up. I still try to do my piece for that.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
And I think that that helps me with those feelings of grief is literally just acting and doing something. And it's interesting that different communities will feel different types of grief, like coming from the medical community. A lot of us experience like loss of patients, loss of participants, and the grief that we feel repeatedly being exposed to these kinds of losses can, really accumulate.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
And honestly, I think different communities are experiencing different types of grief, and it's important to be respectful of those different types of grief. And Deandra, it sounds like you might have something to say too.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
I think I can just comment that grief can be felt mentally, but it also is felt physiologically, physically in our bodies. You're not going crazy if you actually feel pain in your heart because you're that heartbroken. People do experience a whole host of physiological effects. And so it's really important when we have so much stress and negative feelings in our bodies to give...
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
to get these out and go for a walk talk to someone try to exercise it probably sounds like the last thing that you want to do even just taking a shower do something that will make your physical and mental health feel just a little bit better take it one step at a time and really don't be afraid to feel the low lows and the high highs because that's what makes life life so
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
just embrace it kind of like what Stan was saying. And you're not going crazy. If you're feeling it physically and mentally, you're doing the best that you can and just keep doing it.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
Yeah, I went through a lot. I had a very hard year for grief in general because I lost my aunt in a very sudden and traumatic way. And she was one of the few people that was eligible to donate her organs. So that was a whole extra layer of grief there.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
You're grieving someone that's still alive technically, but the doctors are telling you, oh, she's brain dead or she won't ever get that functioning back. So you're grieving someone that's alive. So that's already a complex loss. And I think that is a lesson that I learned is that we can grieve any kind of loss. It doesn't have to be a death. Loss happens when you lose a spouse to divorce.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
Loss happens when your kid moves on from high school and goes to college and you're an empty nester. You can grieve periods of time that you miss, like when your baby was little or when you were pregnant. A lot of women report after having a baby that they feel grief. And it's because they're losing some part of them that they had for nine months.
Health Chatter
Grief and Health
It's really, I think a lesson for me is that loss can cause grief in so many different ways. And we have to be respectful of people. We never know what kind of loss they're going through. And I think that just ties in Clarence's point that if they're not showing grief the way that you would, that doesn't mean that they aren't grieving. They might just be experiencing a loss a different way.