In this deeply moving episode, Khloé is joined by grief expert and author David Kessler for a raw, vulnerable conversation about loss, healing, and the unexpected ways grief shapes who we become. Together, they talk through the layers of sorrow, guilt, and even anger that can surface after losing someone you love. Khloé opens up about losing her father at a young age and the emotional weight she carried for years.Episode Sponsors:Ready to glow from the inside out? Refresh your spring routine with 25% off and free shipping at https://Cymbiotika.com/KHLOE.This Spring, Fast Growing Trees have the best deals, for your yard, up to half off on select plants and other deals. And listeners to our show get 15% off their first purchase when using the code KHLOE at checkout. That’s an additional 15% off at https://fastgrowingtrees.com/khloe using the code KHLOE at checkout. Now’s the perfect time to plant. Use KHLOE to save today! Offer is valid for a limited time, terms and conditions may apply.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the goal of grief?
You are going to be helping so many people just by us having this conversation. Thank you. I think we have the illusion that grief is somehow this straight arrow. Better, better, better, better. And it really is just a big mess. What's the goal of grief? It's to remember with more love than pain, in your own time, in your own way. Grief must be witnessed. We need to witness without fixing.
There is no, let me point out the bright side, let me get you to a better place. Let me let you have your experience. And I don't know what it's like for you, but I'm just going to show up and be with you. One of the things about grief and loss and breakups and divorce and betrayals and death and everything is we continue. We survive. We're very resilient. I always say we're resilient and fragile.
Chapter 2: How can we witness grief without fixing it?
None of this is logical. It's matters of the heart.
Hi, everyone. Chloe in Wonderland is going to be taking a two-week spring break. New episodes will resume on Wednesday, May 14th. I'll see you guys then. Hi David, thank you so much for being here. You are the most renowned expert in grief and you've written so many books about it and I'm just so excited to chat with you today, so thank you.
You and I were just chatting on the side and I was saying how I'm so excited for this conversation because I really believe it's gonna help so many people. channel their own grief in whatever capacity they have it in. And I don't think grief is spoken about as much.
I think people feel a lot of shame in grieving or the timeline of what they feel like they need to meet this grieving expectations by. I'm not for any of that. And I know you're not either. But I just wanted to first dive into how you came to the position that you're in helping millions of people process grief and what what occurrence has happened in your life that brought you to this stage.
Chapter 3: What personal experiences shaped David Kessler's approach to grief?
I'm so glad we're doing this publicly, because it's so important for people to get these conversations modeled. Yes, because no one does it. So As you can imagine, I grew up with a mother who was a normal mom, but she had some illnesses and then she had to go to the big city hospital, which was hours away. Now, no one decides like I wasn't in third grade or fifth grade and everyone's talking about
police officer. Oh no, I want to be a fireman. And I'm like, is death and grief available? I mean, no one thinks that, right? So it's a profession that chooses you. So she has to go to the hospital. We're there. You have to be 14 to visit. I'm 13. That was in the day when families were like a little bit of an interruption of the healing process. Spent a lot of time in the hospital lobby.
Then, at a certain point, we're at our hotel across the way, and someone starts yelling, fire. Everyone runs out. We're all outside looking at this fire on the 18th floor. Fire trucks pulled up. I'm kind of a bored kid, so this is interesting at first. And then when they start to extend the ladders, shooting starts. It turns out it was an active shooter. It went on for hours and hours.
Oh my gosh. It's now considered one of the first mass shootings in the U.S., And I saw police officers and hotel guests killed. My father was desperately trying to get us back to the hospital. We finally get back. And then in a couple of days, my mother dies without me being able to be with her. I'm downstairs. And I even remember them bringing me upstairs to see her after she had died.
And I had been so upset about all the rules that by that point I remember seeing her hand and so wanting to hold it one last time. I came away from all of that
number one realizing there was no one there to help me back then and I've kind of tried to grow into the person who could have helped me yes and I also wanted to make end of life and grief better for people I mean we're all going to go through it it's like the death rate's a hundred percent right we're all going to go through it it's inevitable and we don't talk about it mm-hmm
I think we don't talk about it because it's so final and people don't want to accept that finality. Right.
Right. And it's a pain. You know, I often say I'm talking to people about what our great grandparents knew, how to be with the dying, how to be with people in grief, how to talk about it. You know, if you want to see death now, it's kind of. in a TV show or movies. And what do we see there? We see the first episode, someone's diagnosed or dying. Second episode, person cries.
Third episode, back to life. Right. And grief has a longer shadow than that. Yes, it does.
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Chapter 4: How did COVID change the conversation around grief?
You're just navigating the best you can. And so I think I always try to remind the people around me when they are dealing with someone else's loss and they are that person that they want to know how do they show up for someone. I just tell them to show up. And as long as you're there and yes, not trying to be like, I'm going to get you through this.
Like people have to feel their feelings and it could be so uncomfortable for that other person that's trying to be the supportive person because you feel like you're never doing enough. But just by being there, you really are.
And you're trying to find the right words and your scenario and situation is so true of what happened to you. It's not what people said that you remember, it's how they were there, that they showed up. And the other thing you mentioned that I just want to point out is... It's actually been proven with science. There's a thing called grief brain, brain fog that you get.
When we're in grief, we can't focus. We can't concentrate. We can't remember. And that's why we need people in our lives to show up. One of the things we say to grievers is, what do you need? I don't know what I need. I'm barely getting through the day. I didn't make a list. I didn't think they were going to die, you know?
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Chapter 5: What are the different forms of grief?
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Can I ask you? Of course. So you mentioned it was at 19 when he died. Grief is what's inside of us. Trauma and grief are what's inside of us. It's not really about the details. It's how we experience them. How did you experience it at that time?
It was interesting. So when my dad died really quickly, he had esophageal cancer. And I think he died like six or seven weeks after diagnosis of his cancer. So it was really fast. And my dad, I don't think was... lying to us. I don't think he could accept himself that it was terminal, but he never used those words with us. So I just thought, oh, if I don't see him, this isn't real.
So I, at 19, sort of distracted myself with my friends. And when he did die, I remember what guilt I felt for not spending more time with him. But then that guilt turned into anger because then I was like, oh, no, I need someone to blame. So I'm going to blame my dad because he didn't tell me. that it was terminal. And in my head, I rationalized it.
If he would have told me, I would have showed up more. But I don't know if I would have. I just dealt with his passing the best way I knew how. And my dad was a healthy, shaped man. And then towards the end of, he died in hospice at the house. And towards the end, he was very thin. And it was really hard for me to see him like that. And so I think I would have stayed away.
Regardless, because at 19, I didn't know what else to do. I wasn't mature enough to be like, this is the right thing to do. I want to sit with him. I have limited time. I didn't think that way. Just a dumb 19 year old. But I would say, huh, I gotta stop.
Yeah, I gotta stop you. You weren't dumb. You weren't dumb. Just, you know, we are judgment machines on planet Earth. We are. We are judgment machines. And I could maybe compete with you on self-judgment. I probably would win. But, you know, here's the thing. People say to me, My loved one's ill. I'm going to force my 19 year old, my 15 year old to spend time with them.
One of the things I say to young people and people who are adults, you're doing grief right. You were doing it in character as a 19 year old. 19 year olds don't know how to do it. And you had a father who didn't know how to die. It kind of goes right back to he was as much in the dark, too. We don't teach people how to die. Right. And so he's lost. You are lost. So what are you going to do?
You're going to be a 19 year old. Yeah, there's no dumb in that.
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Chapter 6: How can we support someone experiencing grief?
meddling around and how lucky they are to have you in your in their life because you you do know this world you get you know once we've had a loss we get x-ray vision you're like oh i know that 13 year old now i want to go back if we can to the guilt and anger because i want to make sure to give folks some understanding of this First of all, anger is grief.
I think many people don't realize it's grief. And anger, I often think, is pain's bodyguard.
It is.
The anger shows up first to protect you. And 19-year-old you had to shut down on all of that to survive. You know, I always say, if you had all the feelings of your father's death, In that day, and I had all the feelings of either my mother's death or my younger son's death, in one day, we would be on the floor and we would never get up. Right. There's a grace in denial.
You're so right about that. Denial paces things out so that we can digest it a little slower. You couldn't have taken it in. And the guilt, I always say, and this is an interesting one to think about, we would always rather feel guilty than helpless. Mm-hmm. A 19-year-old or anyone, really, when they experience grief, sometimes life is out of control. What? He died? Some more people could die?
So what happens? Our guilt gives us the illusion of control. Oh, maybe if I had showed up more, it'd be different. It would feel different. All that. And it's like a Rubik's Cube that we play with so that the feelings don't overpower us. Right. Can you go back and see that 19-year-old different now?
with those thoughts no I can completely and I think what's so interesting is how you said it comes in phases because we couldn't handle it if it was all knocked us off of our feet in one wave and you're so right about that and I think we should almost thank the phases and encourage that as opposed to yes absolutely because it's it is you get just so flooded with so many emotions
So that's how you held it then. How do you hold his death today?
I'm totally at peace with his death. I will say for about, I always say like for about three years, I was incredibly angry. And I was filming my show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. And on season one, I remember one of my producers was making me do an interview about my dad because I wouldn't talk about my dad. Because at that time, if I spoke about him, I would just break down.
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Chapter 7: What is the importance of storytelling in processing grief?
And I pictured someday in the future, teenagers riding by my house and going, who lives in the haunted house? What's that? cobwebs all that and someone would go oh it's the grief expert and then one day his son died and he never came out again chloe i knew that could happen wow and you know i thought my son loved my work so much His death can constrict it or expand it. Yes.
And all of us, after we've had any kind of grief, after we've gone through so much of the pain, so much of the hurt on our time, then have a decision to make. Right. Do we stay or do we begin to swim again? Does this event constrict us or expand us? And I love, you know, how things have expanded you and how you can get messy and show it. And, you know, I think we all need that in life.
So I'm going to get messier in your honor online a little bit more. But I want to let people know that, you know, one of the things people don't realize is all the colors of grief. People think it's happy, sad, angry. No, it's not. There's bitter. There's jealous. There's upset. There's good days. There's bad days. There's a million of them. You're right.
And not that I feel like you need to do that. I just... Because if you're not feeling that that's in you to do, then don't force yourself to do it. Just the same thing. If you're still grieving, don't force yourself to have an end date because somebody else... And there is no end date.
No. I mean, people say to me like... My loved one there, my sister, someone died. So tell me, my brother, my mom, dad, how long are we going to grieve? And I always go, well, how long are they going to be dead? Right. If they're going to be dead for a long time, you're going to grieve for a long time, but hopefully with more love. When we talk, I feel your dad's love through this.
One of the things I always say is it's talked about, Einstein, that energy can't be created or destroyed. Right. They say this all the time. And when your dad died, a part of you died with him. But a part of him lives on in you that replaced that part. So we're always still whole after people die because we have a part of them with us.
Yeah, I believe that for sure. Do you ever feel him? Yes, I feel him a lot. My sister Kim will dream about him. I don't necessarily dream of him, which sometimes I get jealous about. And I'm like, well, why does she get to see him in the dreams and I don't? But then I try to, you know, be happy for her. And I'm like, okay, it's fine. Because I feel him in ways that she doesn't.
I think we all, me and all my siblings, we do in different ways.
And you all had different relationships with him.
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Chapter 8: How can grief lead to personal growth?
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I have no fear of dying at all because I know where I'm going. I know who I'm going to see. I have such faith and confidence in that. I don't want to leave my children, but I'm not afraid of when it is my time to go. I just hope it's in a very long time. Are you someone that has a fear of death?
It depends on the day. And this is a hard world to leave. So there's been times when I'm like, oh, yeah, if it happened, I'd be fine. And one of the things I really try to practice is enough. Am I enough? Can this be it? And yet I also know from being with so many dying people. We don't let go of this body easy. We want to stay. We want to be there for our loved ones.
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