From Loss to Big Life Magic with Debra Lynne Driscoll

In this podcast episode, we talk with Deb Driscoll, an author, spiritual teacher, and speaker, whose life has been a testament to the transformative power hidden within profound loss. Deb's story is about the  heart-breaking tragedy of losing her 10-year-old son, Sage, a pivotal moment that shattered her world and set her on an unexpected path of healing and growth.

As Deb shares her personal evolution through grief, the importance of embracing loss not merely as a source of pain but as a profound opportunity for personal growth. She found solace in the idea that the healing journey is not a fixed destination but a continuous process.

Deb's work, rooted in Heart Repair and the transformation from big life loss to what she terms as "BIG LIFE MAGIC," highlights the intricate connection between significant loss and profound personal growth. She believes that our big life losses, whether through death, divorce, diagnosis, or unrealized dreams, offer a pathway to discovering the magic within ourselves.

The podcast also delves into the importance of preparing for grief and loss in advance, acknowledging the difficulty of conversations about life, death, grief, love, and joy. Deb shares a story about her sister's end-of-life journey, emphasizing the crucial role of open dialogues in building resilience when facing significant life losses.

Debra Driscoll's journey serves as a beacon for those navigating the complexities of grief, illustrating how turning loss into Big Life Magic is not only possible but a profound opportunity for self-discovery and transformation. Through intuitive guidance, spiritual practice, and storytelling, Deb invites others to tap into their own magic, believing that in doing so, they can become not only the best healers for themselves but also for others. Ultimately, her message resonates with the idea that every loss or challenge offers a lesson, an opportunity to strengthen our energetic hearts, and invite more love and magic into our lives.

Website - https://biglifemagic.com/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/BigLifeMagic

IG @biglifemagic

Book: A Series of Surrenders - https://bit.ly/ASeriesofSurrenderstheBook

A FREE resource for listeners. Heart TRepair Meditation & Journal Prompts - https://bit.ly/HeartRepairHelp

Big Life Magic Membership

https://biglifemagic.com/magic-membership/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Debra: The more that we're able to be without grief, the more that we actually create the perfect circumstances for us to experience more joy. 

[00:00:08] Jill: Welcome back to seeing death clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end of life coach here on my show. I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying grief and life itself.

[00:00:22] My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In this episode, my guest is Deb Driscoll. Deb is an author and spiritual teacher.

[00:00:39] She talks about her extraordinary journey of turning profound loss Into personal growth and magic. Deb shares her heartbreaking experience of losing her 10 year old son Sage. She emphasizes the importance of embracing loss as an opportunity for personal growth, even with the immense pain. She also shares a story about her sister's end of life journey and how she eventually faced the fact that she was dying.

[00:01:05] Finding freedom in doing so. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome to the show, Debra. I'm so happy that you're on today. We connected a couple of months. You sent me your book, so I was able to read it and oh man, I loved your book. I also cried multiple times reading your book and I'm going to give you time to talk about it.

[00:01:29] But why don't you tell us a little bit first about who you are, maybe where you're from originally. If you want to share how old you are, any of that. 

[00:01:37] Debra: Thank you, Jill. What a delight to be here with you and for everyone else connecting with Jill and I now. Hey, my name's Deb. I'm an author, spiritual teacher and speaker.

[00:01:47] And I love sharing stories about the transformation of big life loss to big life magic because I've had the big life loss. And I am now the founder and the business owner of Big Life Magic. And my North Star is really helping people to embrace whatever loss has a big opportunity for them. And I get it.

[00:02:07] It hurts. It sucks. We don't necessarily want it, but it's a part of the human experience. And I believe it's the pathway also to our Big Life Magic. Yes. 

[00:02:16] Jill: Losses can really crack us open and allow us to get very clear on what's important and what's not important and focus our energies on the important things.

[00:02:29] Unfortunately, it's also very painful, especially the loss that you went through. And I mean, we might as well just like get it out there. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

[00:02:40] Debra: So I, I believe we all meet potentially more than one big life loss. But in our earthbound lifetimes, we're probably going to have like one that is the big life loss.

[00:02:51] The one that's absolutely shattering the heart, shaking the soul. And for me, that big life loss met me 10 years ago now. I was. The single parent to an awesome young man named Sage Joseph Driscoll, and he was 10, almost 11. We'd already planned his birthday party. The birthday party was going to be all about Iron Man, his favorite character.

[00:03:13] And we were into the detail of that because detail was very important to Sage with his Asperger. And we were doing the best that we could. Single parent Deb, Asperger Sage, we were making our way in the world until the universe and all the angels intervened and said, Sage, your time is up. So one morning I woke and my son, Sage, did not.

[00:03:32] There was no warning, no pattern, no knowing that on the 3rd of April in 2013, I would wake and my whole world and universe would change. And I actually didn't find out why Sage had died in the night for 18 months. And so in that early part of my big life loss, I really surrendered quickly to the divine and the not knowing, just the acceptance of this has happened and I don't actually know why.

[00:04:01] It's going to be a long time before I know why. And there's a why in the physical, the medical, the earthbound. But for me, there was also this deeper why in why did Sage leave and why am I still here? And what does that got to do with our hearts and our souls and what we decided before we became earthbound together in soul contract?

[00:04:24] So for me, it opened up this huge narrative because I was someone who was already deep in my spiritual practice. and a spiritual teacher and working in different healing modalities. So I believe things like the universe always has your back, that angels won't take you before it's your time. Everything's working out to direct you towards your soul pathway.

[00:04:43] Like all of this is all these beliefs that I had, which were completely challenged when my son Sage literally beamed up from earth. To the beyond, and I was the one left behind. And I, Jill, I had a lot of questions, had a lot of questions, and I was deeply curious. And it was that curiosity and my wanting to know that led me to find the pathway from this big life loss to the big life magic.

[00:05:10] Jill: Yeah. And I already, I feel myself like tearing up a little. I will admit my biggest fear in life is one of my children dying. And I was reading your book, and I think like humans. Whenever we're reading, especially a story, you wrote it very much like a story. I feel like I got to know you. I got to know Sage.

[00:05:30] I got to know about your life together. And so throughout reading the book, I was like, Oh, we have that in common. Oh, look at that. Deb and I have this in common. So there was all these places where part of me was like, Oh, look, we have so much in common. We're so much alike. And then there was the other part of me that was like, Oh my gosh.

[00:05:48] Okay, but no, this isn't like me. So that means it's not going to happen to me. And I know that realistically, that's not true. I could be the mom that wakes up tomorrow and my child is not waking up right along with me. There's nothing that I can do to prevent that from happening. But yet the way that my mind kept wanting to be like, we're so much alike, Oh, but nope, I'm safe because we're so different.

[00:06:12] And that was an interesting experience for me to go through. And I know if I would have read your book a few years ago, I would have had probably a similar experience, but not been as aware of it. Where reading at nail, I just was like so much of it. I was like being pulled in all these different directions and I needed that.

[00:06:33] I think part of my soul, even when I first became a death doula, again, this has been my biggest fear since having children. I think that's a natural thing for mothers and becoming a death doula. I have to read and learn a lot. And a lot of grief books and work really does. Center around, especially mothers, not only mothers, but it seems to be a lot of it is the mother's connection with the child and I had nightmares at first.

[00:06:59] I mean, I really, I had to go through a lot of processing while also realizing that thinking about these things. is not going to make it happen any more than avoiding thinking about it is going to prevent this from happening. But what it really has done is allowed me to appreciate my children every moment that I do have them and to be a little bit more patient.

[00:07:24] And my daughter sometimes can be very difficult with me. We have a very interesting dynamic, which I think is a mother daughter thing from what I've heard in some ways anyway. And so In the past, I did not react as well as I do now, partially because I think I realize that there's a lot of mothers that wake up every day and they would give anything to have their child screaming that they hate them because at least their child's still there.

[00:07:51] And that's a weird thing to kind of think about, but it's helped me really be a better mother. Reading your book, I know I had emailed you and said, again, it was so weird because I kept trying to find the similarities and the differences. And the weekend that Sage died was the weekend I found out I was pregnant with my daughter.

[00:08:09] I went back and I looked in the photos because I was like, I think it's. the same weekend. And it doesn't mean anything, but also it was just another place where we just had this connection that I was like, all right, that is kind of interesting though. Like for whatever reason, it was just another connection that I felt with you.

[00:08:28] I don't know. I just, I really, I loved your book as much as I, My heart breaks that you experienced that, I love that you wrote the book and you shared with the world how you mothered and how you survived afterwards. It was just, it was beautiful.

[00:08:44] Debra: Thank you. When I decided I was going to write the book, It was early in the journey and I don't know if I decided or if it was a directive because I heard very clearly in my intuition, in my knowing there was writing there and I was directed to write, to write, to write.

[00:09:00] And so there's journals filled with my reflections and my discoveries, but it actually took me five years before I sat down to write the book. And it wasn't because I didn't know what to say. It wasn't because I didn't know what the story was. It wasn't because I wasn't sure if this was the direction I was going to go.

[00:09:20] It was because I hadn't found the sweet spot I knew I needed to find, which was... I am going to share this story at service to other hearts other than my own. So my intention behind writing the book was to do exactly what you just said to provide like a safe cocoon of space for people to be able to reflect on their own hearts, their own relationships, their own relationship with death and grief and their heart and their spirit and all of it.

[00:09:48] And I knew I would know when I'm ready to do that. And it took me five years. Before I was ready to write the story at service to other hearts, rather than in the healing of my own and hey, my heart is still healing. I think it always will be, but I hit a point where it was like, Oh, I feel like I can now actually share this.

[00:10:09] With that deep in my heart wish, and when I first gave the manuscript to my editor for the first time in that very vulnerable moment where you pass it on and you don't know how it's going to land like somebody else other than you was reading it in the complete form, that was one of the first things that he said to me.

[00:10:25] He said, you know, what a gift I've now reflected on my own grief journey. And I was like, Oh, if nothing else, I got that part right. And that's the part that I really didn't want to mess up. Because that's what I see the book as is yes, it's my story, but it had right from the beginning, it always needed to be something more than my story.

[00:10:44] And it's exactly as you shared that space for us all to be able to sit with. What is not comfortable? What if someone who we really, really love dies? What if we're torn apart from someone? Or what if our family dynamics change? There's so many different layers to what, how our big life loss can turn up.

[00:11:04] And a huge part of our human experience is we don't really want to talk about it. And my experience is the more that we create a relationship to it, it doesn't mean that we hurt more or go further down the rabbit hole of pain and grief. It is actually the way through to setting ourselves free to finding new nuances and layers to how we can love and the barriers that we create around love.

[00:11:31] And I think it inspires magic actually in relationship to death, just as much as we're in relationship to life. 

[00:11:38] Jill: The magic that we, I think we all want that magic. But we are afraid to face the dark. We're afraid to face the shadows. We're afraid of death and grief and pain. But that really is where the magic happens is being able to exist in both spaces and face both rather than grasping.

[00:12:01] good things, the happy things, the things that make us feel nice and pushing away the aversion to the suffering and the pain. We need to kind of exist in a space where we can feel both, not attach ourselves to either one. Cause that's sometimes what I see as well with grief is the people that get so swallowed by it.

[00:12:23] They just, they can't get out of it. I think sometimes it's fear. 

[00:12:26] Debra: Yeah. And sometimes it can become the definition of who you are now. And I remember that particularly early in my journey, the first few years was like, Oh, is this who I am now? Am I the grieving mother? Is that who I am now? And it's like, well, yeah, I am.

[00:12:42] And I'm a spiritual teacher and I'm a sister and I'm a theater practitioner and I'm a writer. Like it's a yes. And sometimes people stay with just the one end. And this is me now. Or I'll never actually get over this loss. So therefore it defines me now. And it's a slippery slope. It's easy to find yourself there, particularly because we don't necessarily have the language and the tools to help people actually navigate.

[00:13:08] Like where we're told to sit with our grief and to pass through it. And the only way is through et cetera, et cetera. I could go on with all of the throw away slash cliche lines around how we're supposed to be without grief. And my response to that is, is like, well, that's okay, but how? It's the scaffolding.

[00:13:25] What's the steps? No one actually goes into that unless you are sitting in a therapeutic situation with a counselor or a grief guide. Whereas I'm more about let's open up this conversation around literally how do you do that? Because we don't know how, which is why we don't actually help each other to do that.

[00:13:45] And it defeats the fear because. It's again the unknown. We don't know. Yeah, the relationship you're talking about with life and death and love and fear, you know, there's also a relationship between grief and joy. And when I was doing my own work in my own healing and also all the reading and the different teachers that I was following, when it became really clear that, There is this intimate relationship between grief and joy.

[00:14:09] And this is before I started writing the book. I was like, how can I share this message without people like denying it or not really understanding it? And I ended up writing this short story called grief has a soulmate and grief soulmate is joy. And they both work on the extremes of our heart. Joy is forever invited to the party.

[00:14:28] Everyone's like joy can come in. We want more joy. Absolutely. But grief is never on the invite list. And even if grief gate crashes the party, it's like seeing as we don't want you here, going back to that duality and the extremes of our human experience and our human heart is that the more that we're able to be with our grief, the more that we actually create.

[00:14:49] the perfect circumstances for us to experience more joy. 

[00:14:52] Jill: Did you ever find that you got judgment for moving on, quote unquote, for experiencing, can't even say experiencing joy? Because I think some people they're afraid of the judgment. And some people are judgy, like, well, you're a grieving mother, you shouldn't be out enjoying your life.

[00:15:12] What does that mean? So yeah, did you ever experience that? 

[00:15:16] Debra: I actually judge myself, definitely. What's happening for other people? I don't know. But I remember actually asking myself more than once, is this how you do this? Is this the correct way to do this? Because I didn't know and I remember the pains of guilt on the days that I felt a little bit freer or I was able to laugh or explore something new.

[00:15:36] It was actually something that I really had to kind of temper within myself. The hundredth day after Sage had died, I was on a very small island in Indonesia. It's called Gili Menno. There's the Gili Islands are three islands. I was on one of them, the really small islands to the point where there's no cars, like you walk everywhere or there's.

[00:15:56] Bicycles or horse drawn car that takes you around the island. And I was there with some friends and I didn't even realize I was going on this trip. I was invited on this trip and I was like, sure, I'll get out of Australia and go to Indonesia and sit by the beach. And I was early stages of my grief process.

[00:16:11] So I was looking for any out to tell you the truth. And I woke up on the hundredth day early in the morning. To the sound of the call of prayer from a close by mosque because the, the island is mostly Muslim. And I woke early with this heaviness of like a hundred days. It's a hundred days, like a hundred and one days ago, I didn't realize this was going to be my journey.

[00:16:34] A hundred one days ago, I didn't realize I was going to be back in Indonesia. I just went through this whole, like, what all of this means. It felt really heavy. So even though it was just barely the sun coming up, I got out of that bed and I started to walk the island, just walk the water with just trying to process what does this mean?

[00:16:49] How can you be here? with this hundred days. And I heard, whether it's my intuition again, or spirit, I don't think it matters actually how you want to make the meaning, but I heard the message, it doesn't have to be heavy. And so I was like, okay, well, what about if I go into the hundredth day and it doesn't have to be heavy?

[00:17:07] And so I just started to explore that through this day with these connecting. And some of these friends were not really good friends of mine. They were like the friends of friends. Some were really close friends. And as it felt safe, I just started to share with people. I'm at the hundredth day. That's what today is.

[00:17:21] And what I heard from more than one person is, wow, congratulations. You made it. You made it to triple digits, a hundred days. And so it was kind of like it opened up this space in me of like, that's right, I am actually here still heart beating, figuring it out, loving my son, but also figuring out how do I love myself through this?

[00:17:43] And I think that was one of the real breakthrough moments for me around that relationship between grief and guilt. So, you know, were other people judging me? I don't know, Jill. I don't know. I had enough to deal with. I wasn't so much noticing. But I definitely, in the first 99 days. Had moments of judging myself.

[00:18:00] Jill: Yeah, we're very hard on ourselves. Under the best of circumstances, we're really hard on ourselves. Did you have any rituals or practices or anything that really helped you work through those moments of grief, but especially when there was the judgment and the regrets and the shame and all the really icky parts that come up with grief?

[00:18:23] Debra: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And part of them, I developed in the moment when I needed them. And then some of them I would repeat because it had worked. One of the things that I found to be the most nurturing and supportive is my connection to nature. So where I lived with sage, where I was in the first year, I was kind of not always at home in Australia.

[00:18:46] I ended up traveling quite a bit for the first few months. When I was home, I would find myself every day leaving home and making my way to the river and the trees. And what I found there could actually just be without anyone else asking me if I'm okay, needing to change or fix anything for me. And I could feel supported by the river and the trees.

[00:19:06] Like literally I had my back against tree trunks. While I just kind of explored what could this mean for me? I had my feet in the river while I cried uncontrollably with missing of my son. And the thing that really worked for me is I felt held by nature. Like I felt like I wasn't alone. I really appreciated that the trees or the river never asked me how I was or if they could fix anything for me.

[00:19:29] And I felt like I was allowed and listened to. And I think we don't always find that in other people because humans are so beautiful. We do want to help and fix. We want to take the pain away for someone else. And when our hearts are broken in this big life loss way, it's not actually about taking the pain away.

[00:19:47] It's about being with the pain to travel through to what is this pain teaching me? What does my heart know now? What is my heart learning? Like these deeper questions, which sometimes people don't get to because They're either too quick to take the pain away for themselves, numb it, or deny it, or the people in their life, in a loving way, often, are trying to fix it for people, rather than be with it.

[00:20:11] So I always encourage people I work with, if you can, go first to nature. Not another person. Like trust yourself, trust your heart. It feels like you're going to fall down the rabbit hole and maybe never come out. Absolutely. I know what that feeling is like. It's like, I'm never going to be okay again. And you know what?

[00:20:29] You are. But at that moment, it was really scary. And also trust yourself and trust your heart and trust your earthbound self to be okay in completely surrendering and crumbling and breaking, because you will eventually find the way to put the pieces back together. Just gotta let yourself fully break for, and nature really helped me, really helped me, as well as writing, music.

[00:20:53] Movement, just a lot of processes that helped me to be okay with being broken and process that in some way, have it moving through me, the writing, the movement, the singing, the music, the river. So even though on the days where I felt that I was still stuck in the same emotions, stuck in the same memory, I was still moving.

[00:21:13] Jill: Do you think you allowed yourself to be broken? Do you think you get put back together? Or what does that feel like when you kind of come out the other end of, not that again, not that it's ever done, but you come out the other end of the really darkest, heaviest kind of moments of the grieving? 

[00:21:33] Debra: You've just pointed towards one of my Favorite things to speak about.

[00:21:36] So this is what I call the energetic heart. So in my work as a spiritual teacher, like I'm working with not just loss and magic, but I'm working with why are we here earthbound? What's all that about? What's that got to do with your soul? Like these bigger questions. I've always been in the bigger question.

[00:21:51] And when our hearts break, I believe it's on purpose. I believe it is soul designed in order to give us the opportunity to be with. That human experience and also to give ourselves the opportunity at the healing and putting ourselves back together, but it's not like a Humpty Dumpty where it's put back together and it's almost exactly the same.

[00:22:12] The idea around the energetic heart is imagine your heart, not your physical heart, but your energetic heart is where your soul vibrates. It's like the seat of your soul. And it's a relationship between your earthbound you and your spiritual you. And they're working together in this beautiful dance around soul expansion.

[00:22:29] And your energetic heart on purpose will meet a big life loss and it will break. It will crack open. It may go into a million pieces or you may get a big tear down the middle, whatever your big life loss. For mine, it felt like my life just went into a million pieces. It's unrecognizable. And then what happens in the process of healing is we take each of those pieces, each of those threads, And we work at the stitching back together often to put ourselves back together.

[00:22:57] But in the process of putting it back together, we are strengthening our energetic heart because it works like this. Our energetic heart works the same way as a muscle in our physical body. So an example is you want a better bicep. You want a little bit of a rip curl happening. on your arms. So you do some bicep curls.

[00:23:15] The next day, if you've done a good job, your arm is going to be sore. The muscle is sore. And you're like, I did a good job. My muscle is sore. That muscle is building. Yeah. It's sore because you broke the muscle. So when we're working out a muscle, we literally stretch to the point of breaking the muscle fibers break.

[00:23:32] Which is why it hurts the next day. And then our beautiful, amazing body says, Oh, that's broken. Let me fix it. And pulls those muscle fibers back together, which is why the day after the day after your muscle doesn't hurt so much anymore, because our beautiful body with its intelligence has put those threads back together.

[00:23:49] And then once those threads come back together, they are in turn, strengthened. Do that enough times, enough body curls to stretch. Break, then put back together those bicep muscle threads and look, over time you have this developed bicep, which is what you were looking for. Same thing happens with our energetic heart.

[00:24:11] Those muscle fibers of our energetic heart Break, smash, tear, in order for us to tend to them and put them back together. And when we do actually care for the tending and the healing and the repair, when we care for it, when we spend the time, we put it back together and strengthen our energetic heart, which means we build the capacity for maybe more loss.

[00:24:37] More heartbreak. We build resilience. We build courage, but we also build a much stronger heart, which holds more love and invites more joy.

[00:24:48] Jill:. That's amazing. I really like that visual. Like in my head, I was like, imagining myself like sewing that together. I wish that wasn't the truth. I wish that. I could avoid a lot of pain.

[00:25:00] I wish that I could make it so that my children don't have to experience pain. But the reality is we can't, we can't avoid those things. And I know in your book, you talk about having a lot of knowledge about Buddhism and meditation. People I think get confused when they hear like, Oh, well, Buddha said life is suffering.

[00:25:17] And like, that doesn't make sense. That's the go to that I've heard from people. I mean, yes, he said something along those lines, but also what he was trying to say is that the more that we can Accept that there will be suffering in life, the more that we can detach from any of the outcomes, good and bad, the less we will suffer.

[00:25:37] And so I'm hoping that the way that you were explaining it there is that each of our heartbreaks. If we can work through it, if we can heal from it, but then it just allows us to experience more of everything good and bad. We protect ourselves from pain, but then in a lot of cases, we also put up a wall that keeps out joy and love and happiness because we're so afraid of the pain that we're going to have when.

[00:26:05] Something goes away that gave us joy and love and happiness. I really like that visual.

[00:26:09] Debra: Forever chasing the love and the joy that we want. And so many people who I've worked with are just like, why do I feel like I'm never getting it? And I'm like, well, maybe let's go back over here. I also explain it with saying it's like, you can't choose just one color from the box of crayons.

[00:26:28] Our emotions and our human experience doesn't work like that. You can't just go, I'm going to choose orange joy and red love only. I don't want any blue sadness or that gray grief. I don't want it. It's like, you don't get that. You get the whole box of crap. And our heart is actually designed to be with the whole box.

[00:26:45] Our heart wants the whole box. And it wants the whole box because it's working with our soul. And our soul says, I'm here to experience. Contrast, challenge, as well as joy and love. And I'm here so that we can expand and grow. That's what it's all about. 

[00:27:04] Jill: And again, that's another great visual of the colors.

[00:27:07] Because think about it. Would we want? Even if you just look around your room, would you want everything to be one color? No, absolutely not. Part of the joy in life is all the colors.

[00:27:19] Debra: And you know what I find with people is sometimes there isn't an absolute, it's a heart repair. And sometimes it's either misguided or not quite deep enough.

[00:27:32] There's also some kind of effort, but not quite. Knowing what you're doing. So there's these almost healed hearts walking around the world is what I believe. It's like, there's some people who have a band aid. The heart repair and it's like the band aid sticks long enough until the band aid doesn't, it starts to peel off.

[00:27:50] And you know, this, when you hear people saying it's like, I thought I healed that. Why is it back? And it's like, wow, that could have something to do with the stickiness of the band aid. And there's some people who they're the work on the heart repair and then don't quite get it. And so there's still like some space between the stitches.

[00:28:05] They're happy in some parts of their life, but maybe not in other parts of their life. And they're wondering why things don't ever work out for them. Like I could go on and on, but I think that this is also a part of the human experience is, and heart repair asks us to continue to return to it. Because I say this being the woman who I put on the band aid, I put on the band aid.

[00:28:23] I also experienced months of time where I was like, Oh, I'm good now. I'm good. I can move on. And then a few months later, something experience comes to my heart and those stitches that were only just holding together, rip open again. And it took me a while to figure out. It's not that I'm doing it wrong.

[00:28:39] It's not that I'm wrong. It's that I'm just experiencing the how and the spiral of healing and that it actually does take more than one stitch. It is a journey. It is actually no destination. You just continue to arrive at different plateaus, which give you different views. Like I'm now. In double digits, 10 years since Sage died, and I didn't know what the 10 year death day anniversary was going to bring me, but I was really curious because I've known nine of them already, and every single one of them gave me a different heart lesson because I was looking for it and I was curious and I listened.

[00:29:16] So I was like, okay, 10 double digits, what you got? And the whole day I had various feelings and different experiences, but I couldn't quite anchor into what am I actually feeling? And towards the afternoon, I caught up with some really, really close girlfriends who I've known for like more than 30 years.

[00:29:31] And we got together in a story circle and just sharing stories. And someone asked me, so Deb, how are you now? And what came out of my mouth was, I'm proud of myself. I'm proud of myself for being able to be with this. And learn from this and understand more about the heart and the soul and to let my son go.

[00:29:50] I was like, wow, what a journey. And do I want my son back? Yeah, I do. But am I also thankful for what my heart has learned in the last 10 years? Yes, I am. 

[00:30:01] Jill: Yeah, both can be real. They can both exist at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'm thinking about the stitching and one of the things that I do is cross stitch.

[00:30:12] And actually I started cross stitching the day that I found out my coworker and friend had killed himself. And I had a cross stitch kit that I bought and I was like, one of these days I'm going to learn how to cross stitch. And I literally just couldn't do anything else. So I sat on the porch and I started cross stitching.

[00:30:33] I look at my cross stitch, that first one, and I look at the one I'm working on now. And with time continuing to do the stitching, it's gotten better, right? It's like everything in life that when you first. start, it's not going to be great. It's going to be kind of, in some ways you're half assing it.

[00:30:50] You're like, I don't know, this is the best I can do for right now. But if you continue to do it, if you continue to try, it gets better and it gets more beautiful and it gets to be all the things that you want it to be. Well, still also not being perfect. I mean, I would never say my cross stitching is perfect, but the improvement is significant and it's just been with doing it over and over and getting frustrated and getting annoyed and thinking I'm going to give up and then going back to it and continuing to try because yeah, that's how it works with life.

[00:31:23] Most things we're not going to be great at, especially things that we've avoided talking about, thinking about, you know, most people, we don't grieve well, any losses, whether it's friends or pets or anything. And then we also don't talk to people about it. So we have to face it almost as if it's something we've never.

[00:31:45] Thought about because in a lot of times we haven't thought about it ever until we have to. 

[00:31:50] Debra: And then that's the thing about until we have to, and that's the place where you're broken. Your heart is broken. It's hard to actually pull on resources in that moment. So it's also a tricky place in that we're actually asked to dig really deep from a broken energetic space.

[00:32:06] And so having time to have conversations with people before to have conversations with yourself around your wishes or around your relationship to life, death, grief, love, joy, they're not the easiest. Conversations to have, but I think they are necessary in creating some relationship to it. So that when your big life loss does come, you already have a few stitches in the game.

[00:32:33] You've already been at the cross stitch or spent enough time with your heart to understand at least how to work the first stitch. And that's not necessarily what everyone is going to choose to do. But I'm going to choose to continue to speak about it in the hope that some people do like my sister, Kathy, Kathleen, and I bless her on the 29th of December in 2022.

[00:32:56] She surrendered her 10 year warrior journey with cancer. 

[00:32:59] Jill: Oh, I'm sorry. I remember reading about that in the book that she had found out she had cancer. I'm sorry to hear that she's passed now.

[00:33:06] Debra: Yeah, she passed. Yeah, just recently for my heart, I must say. We had a lot of conversations about life and death and grief in our hearts.

[00:33:15] In the last, like I would say, 18 months of her life, Kathy actually asked me to speak to her about spiritual practice and the spiritual nature of life and death. Because up until that point, it was like, she knew I was here and You know, I could be a resource for her, but I wasn't going to force myself into that situation.

[00:33:33] It was her journey. And in the last 18 months, she was ready. She was like, I want to talk about it with you now, which opened up these amazing conversations and beautiful story sharing between me and my sister. Like for me, they'll be forever treasured in my heart. And one of the experiences my sister spoke about, and she actually told me about it months and months before she did it.

[00:33:53] Was this exercise called the West Wing? I don't know if you know it, Jill, you maybe do, listeners may know it, but it's about our lives being like a whole house and different parts of our lives being in different parts of the house. And the West wing is the area, the part of the house you don't want to go to because in the West wing is where you or someone you love is going to die.

[00:34:12] And in the West Wing are all the arrangements. It's the desires. It's the wishes. It's the directives. Like going to the West Wing is having hard conversations with people. And my sister was speaking about knowing that it was time for her to go to the West Wing, but she was scared. And so we spoke about that and.

[00:34:31] And she said, well, it's just scary to go to the West Wing because then I have to really face it. Like I'm fighting for my life here and they're asking me to go to the West Wing to actually face death. And I was like, yeah, but you know, the reason why they're doing that. And she was like, well, yeah, the book says it sets you free so that you can be really focused on the living.

[00:34:48] And I said, yeah, that's it. And she was like, it's still really scary. And I was like, yeah, I get it. You know, maybe tiptoe into the West Wing. Maybe hang out there for a little bit and then come back. Anyway, she had her own process of going through the West Wing and it was more than one visit. It's not like you go to the West Wing and then one day you just do all the things, have all the conversations, write all the documents.

[00:35:06] It's like, no, you actually need to visit a couple of times. But she did share with me one day, not very long before she passed. She said, I've been to the West Wing. And I said, how was that? She said, it was really hard and really painful, but they're right. I feel free now. And after she passed every single one of us in her life, we knew exactly what her wishes were.

[00:35:26] We knew how her heart was before she died. Like we knew all the details of the bits and pieces we needed when we were broken. Like she really supported us by going to the West Wing. And I know that there was conversations with her children, with her husband, with many people in her life. And she's like, I'll call her forever.

[00:35:45] She's my beloved elder. But like I said to her in her living days, I said, you are a warrior. Like you went into areas of the battle that other people don't not dare to go because it's too scary. And like Kathy said, they're right. It does set you free. 

[00:36:01] Jill: We should do it now before we have to. That's the thing people don't think they realize is avoiding thinking about it, avoiding having the conversations.

[00:36:12] It doesn't stop you from ever having to face it. It makes it so much harder when you have to, because you hadn't thought about it. You hadn't ever faced it where, again, I really like how you use visuals because now I'm thinking about, you know, area of your house that you've completely avoided. When you do go into it, it's going to be covered in cobwebs and dust, and it's just going to be a total mess.

[00:36:33] Where, if you go into it a little bit, every year, over time, you can clean it up. You can keep it nice and neat and organized. So when you have to go in, it's warmer and welcoming and peaceful and calm. It's not a total disaster. But yet most of us make a total disaster by not thinking about it or talking about it.

[00:36:55] And it's the types of conversations. That can really, like you said, it can leave you with such amazing memories of conversations with your loved ones, because this is where we get to the good stuff, like, yeah, it can be painful. It can bring up some things that might feel difficult to hear or that's. Say or to think about, but yet it also gets you to the things that aren't the superficial, like, well, what'd you do this week?

[00:37:22] Oh, what's going on with the kid? What sports are they? You know, like that's the kind of conversations most of us have. And most of the time they're not very memorable. It's just kind of, I don't know, part of what you do, where if you get into these deep conversations, that's when you get to know the people you love and you get to really touch the places that we.

[00:37:41] Hide from ourselves and from others. 

[00:37:44] Debra: Agreed. It's like when my sister shared her wishes for her children, she has twin children, boy and a girl, and they're grown now, they're in their 20s. But she shared with a small group of us her wishes for them after she died. And it was so exquisitely beautiful to read that letter because it's mother's love.

[00:38:02] And it's like, I knew that my sister loved the children, but to have that intimate, deep space around the wishes for the rest of their lives, knowing that she's not going to be around. Oh, goodness. Such beautiful, intimate space with my sister. It felt like I was invited to sit inside her heart with her.

[00:38:19] It's just so beautiful. And we deny some of that because it is scary. And when most of the time we feel like we're not allowed. And so I'm saying it, let's invite grief to the party. Let her in. She'll dance with joy and we'll figure it out. 

[00:38:35] Jill: Yes, definitely let grief into the party. I love that. And I just love this conversation.

[00:38:40] It was really beautiful. I appreciate you sharing so much. I'm sure no matter how long it's been, it's still, I'm sure not always easy to talk about. So I appreciate you coming on and talking with me and sharing this for other people to hear. And hopefully this will encourage 1, I mean, who knows how many people to have those conversations?

[00:39:04] Because yes, even with our children, why wait until we're potentially facing a terminal diagnosis? To write these letters to say to our family, this is what I am thinking. I love you. I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for all these memories we created together. Write the letter now. It doesn't matter if you're not going to die for another 50 years.

[00:39:26] You're not going to feel the same in 50 years as you do right now with your children. So write those letters, do those things now. Don't wait until we have to face this thought of, well, I don't. think I'll ever have the opportunity to say it again. Because also a lot of people die and they have no idea that it's coming.

[00:39:45] And so if we're waiting for those moments, that moment could be tomorrow, could be 10 minutes from now. I don't know. And I don't want to wait. I want to try to tell the people that I love that I love them. And hopefully I'm doing a better job of it than I used to be, but I know I can still do more. So I think now I'm going to go.

[00:40:04] I actually have email addresses for both the kids that I started, I think probably like right after they were born. And I had this like intention, like I'm going to write them an email, like all the time. And of course I haven't, but maybe now when we hang up, I'll write both of them an email and tell them how much I love them and how much I appreciate them.

[00:40:21] Just things that I. Think about, but I don't always say so. 

[00:40:27] Debra: Yeah, you are welcome. And welcome to everyone who has been listening to this conversation. I'm hoping that it's opened a corner of your heart and a possibility for a conversation, even if that conversation is just first with yourself. 

[00:40:41] Jill: Very  good.

[00:40:42] Is there any links that you want to share? Ways that people can find you? I also shared the name of your book. I don't think we've even actually said it and definitely read the book. It's not heavy, morbid. It will make you feel things, which is not a bad thing, but I really encourage people to read the book.

[00:41:01] It was beautiful. I really enjoyed reading it. I loved your book. I appreciated that you wrote that and that you put all of this out there for us. 

[00:41:10] Debra: Thank you. Yeah. So the book, the book we've been speaking about, the title is A Series of Surrenders, A Memoir of Grief. And my author name is Deborah Lynn Driscoll.

[00:41:22] So you can find that in all the places where books are sold. There's also the audiobook version with my voice narrating the book. One of the easiest ways to find the book or to find anything about me and the works that I do is at BigLifeMagic. com. If you go to the website, there's all of the options for learning about my work as a spiritual teacher where I speak, who I share my magic with, and how you might want to get involved. Plus, there's also a link to the book with the various ways that you can connect to a series of surrenders and memoir.

[00:41:56] Jill: And I'll put links to all of it in the show notes. Well, thank you again. I appreciate this. It was a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death Clearly. My guest next week is Nancy Alterman, and we discuss how losing her mother at the age of 12 shaped her perspective and set her on a unique path. Her journey led her from working with children facing serious illness to specializing in geriatric care management. She emphasizes the importance of creating a support system for those experiencing trauma and shares insights into the holistic nature of grief, extending beyond death, using her own life experiences. She offers wisdom and guidance to others and navigating aging, caregiving, and dementia care.

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