Navigating Grief and Embracing Spirituality with Dave Roberts

In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly, Dave Roberts talks about his journey navigating grief after the death of his daughter, Janine. Roberts, an addictions counselor and psychology professor, shares his perspectives on spirituality, the afterlife, and the different ways he and his wife coped with their loss while supporting each other. He emphasizes the importance of maintaining bonds with loved ones, embracing varying beliefs, and the role of community in healing. Roberts discusses how his experience has transformed his approach to living genuinely and offers tips for those dealing with loss. This insightful conversation sheds light on the intersection of grief, end-of-life planning, and the potential for spiritual growth through challenging experiences.

00:00 Introduction and Opening Thoughts

00:11 Welcome to Seeing Death Clearly

00:36 Guest Introduction: Dave Roberts

01:38 Dave's Background and Career

04:06 The Tragic Story of Janine

08:10 Coping with Grief and Loss

17:24 Supporting Each Other Through Grief

20:56 Living with the End in Mind

24:41 Choosing Our Path: Embracing Challenges and Legacy

25:33 Teaching About Death: Finding Joy and Responsibility

27:29 Death, Dying, and Bereavement

28:56 Integrating Science and Spirituality

31:15 Personal Transformations and Beliefs

41:03 Encouraging Critical Thinking and Respect

45:48 Conclusion and Contact Information

My episode on Dave's podcast https://youtu.be/_2cYKpY88bQ?si=LUDW677SjaEN82kc

Personal Website: http://davidrobertsmsw.com/

When The Psychology Professor Met The Minister on Amazon : https://a.co/d/bWzOO3n

The Teaching Journeys Podcast :  https://rss.com/podcasts/theteachingjourneys https://www.youtube.com/@daveroberts301

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/david.j.roberts1/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-roberts-56690513/

Instagram:

Transcript

Dave: [00:00:00] Don't worry about who isn't in your circle. Focus on those who are, because those are the ones that are gonna be. The most support to you at the time that you most needed celebrate who's there or not, who isn't there. 

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, that dying grief and life itself. 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, Dave Roberts shares his journey of navigating grief after the death of his daughter Janine to cancer. He discusses his background as an addictions counselor and psychology professor. His perspectives on spirituality and the afterlife and how he and his wife managed their grief differently, but also still supported each other through it.

He reflects on the importance of [00:01:00] maintaining bonds with loved ones, the transformative power of embracing various beliefs. And the role of community in healing. Dave talks on the importance of living genuinely the challenges and support systems in grief, and he offers tips for those dealing with loss.

Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome, Dave to the podcast. I am looking forward to talking to you again. We just talked two weeks ago for your podcast, so this is exciting to be back together. 

Dave: I'm looking forward to our conversation for your podcast, and I can tell your audience we had a great conversation for mine.

Jill: Yes, we did, and I'm sure we will do the same today because again, we'll see where the conversation takes us. To start us off, tell us a little bit about you, who you are, even outside of your history with grief that we're gonna talk about. Just share whatever you'd like with the listeners. 

Dave: Well, I have a multitude of different categories.

I'm a father, I'm a grandfather, I'm a husband. I'm a great-grandfather, I'm a teacher, friends. I have many categories in my [00:02:00] life that kind of crossover all at once. I've been married for 43 years, three beautiful children in my career. I started out very linear, predictable patch. I was an addictions counselor and a clinical supervisor for 27 years.

For a state run facility in New York, the McPike Addictions Treatment Center. I did that and I was a clinical supervisor. I did that for 27 years. Loved working with the clients. Addiction is such a stigmatized condition when you got to know the individuals behind the addiction. These are real people, very intelligent, very creative, very sensitive souls who just have difficulty not dancing.

With their drug of choice. I've been a teacher for 22 years. I teach at Utica University and Pratt Munson School of Art. I teach a couple psychology courses at Pratt Munson School of Art, and I teach care of the human spirit, death, dying, and bereavement, impact of addiction on children and families in [00:03:00] addition to whatever else they may need me for.

So my primary career paths have been as a. Teacher and as an addictions counselor, I love music. I love going to concerts. The music has been a big part of my journey. I'm 70 years old at this point. I don't really feel like I've lived 70 years. I feel like I'm younger than 70 years of age. My attitude about aging is age is a number, and it's basically how you embrace aging and what you do to maintain quality of life, and that's more important than the number of years that you've lived.

Jill: 43 years, you said you've been married? 

Dave: Yeah. It's gonna be 43 in July. 

Jill: Congratulations. 

Dave: You take a look at, particularly when the kids leave home and you have empty nest, and a lot of times I've heard that marriages post empty nest break up because the husband and wife look at each other and say, geez, all we had that was really keeping us together was the kids.

And when the kids go, they find out that I have nothing in common. But my relationship with my wife Sherry, has gotten stronger. We've been through. A lot of ups and downs, particularly [00:04:00] with grief and other tragedies in our lives. Our relationship has become stronger as a result of the challenges. With that, 

Jill: you had a daughter that died from cancer, is that correct?

Dave: That is correct. This was probably 16 years into my tenure as an addictions counselor. My daughter Janine, in September of 2001, who's living outside of the home with her significant other, she called me. This is part of the story leading up to the cancer diagnosis. She calls me and she goes, dad, we need to talk to you.

That was her and her significant other. Steve. I'm thinking, something's up. They're gonna break up. There's some other type of a tragedy or crisis. She goes, don't worry dad, we'll be there in a little bit. 20 minutes later, she walks in the door, she goes, dad, I'm pregnant. I didn't have much time to react other than the fact that I knew I wasn't gonna be yelling at him because I loved her significant other.

He is this great guy. 19 years old, actually 18 at the time, and he just, he had [00:05:00] responsibility beyond his years. So I knew that he was gonna take good care of Janine and their child. May 2nd, 2002, my granddaughter, Brianna, was born. Now my daughter injured her foot in a freak accident during pregnancy. It was her right foot.

Her foot continued to swell. They tried walking, boot, rest, elevation. Nothing worked. Her podiatrist wanted to do an MRI, I believe it was in May of 2002, but my daughter chose to wait until after Brianna was born. Brianna's born, they do an MRI. They find an undefined eight centimeter mass at the bottom of her foot, and they did a biopsy.

A couple of weeks later, they found out it was highly suggestive for cancer. On May 26th, 2002, we went to our local oncologist and she confirmed that Janine did have cancer. It was a rare form of cancer called the Veia Rhabdo Myar Coma in English. That is a connective muscle tissue sarcoma with her primary site being the right foot that she injured during her pregnancy.

[00:06:00] We were referred to Dana-Farber Hospital in Boston. Dana-Farber was in the best hospitals in the country, perhaps in the world for sarcoma research and treatment. In a five minute consult, they reviewed all of the tests that Janine had taken. Said she had a stage four tumor with bone marrow and lymph node involvement that her body was totally involved with cancer, bone marrow, lymph node, everything.

They said that there was not a cure for her cancer, and the only hope we had was aggressive chemotherapy in order to put her cancer in remission. I'm gonna backtrack to one other date to show your audience how life can turn on a dime. As I mentioned May 2nd, 2002, my granddaughter, Brianna, was born May 19th.

I found out that I had officially completed the requirements for my master's in Social work degree from the state university in New York at Albany. So I'm celebrating being a grandfather for the first time, completing a 25 year journey in higher ed. Then [00:07:00] a week after I got the news that I met my degree requirements on May 26th, I find out that now I'm a caregiver to a terminally ill child.

And the way that information was presented to me, Jill, there's only one way that I heard this. Then. Unless there's a miracle, your daughter's gonna die. And that's exactly what I heard. That's what my daughter, I believe that's what my daughter heard. I saw tears streaming down her face when she heard this.

She knew. What I knew, we both knew that this was not good. You take a look at those three dates and it's like life turned on a dime for me, and all the training I had as a therapist didn't even begin to help me deal with what was facing me. She fought very valiantly with grace. Grace, under pressure, integrity, you name it.

I was very proud of the journey she took after her diagnosis. But on March 1st, 2003, she as I call, a transition to a new, to a new existence. At home with hospice services. She went through six aggressive rounds of [00:08:00] chemotherapy, which only put her cancer in 80% remission. After the first of the year, 2003, her cancer re metastasized and and march she transitions.

That began for me, a journey of trying to figure out at the age of 47 my midlife crisis was trying to figure out who I am, what type of world am I gonna engage in? What is my world gonna look like now that my daughter isn't a part of it, and that. Led me on a very non-linear journey with lots of ups and downs, but at the end of it today, I can tell you that I'm at peace.

Although I do honor the grieving process, I realize that grief is lifelong and that continues to, to I something I continue to deal with. But I also realize that my daughter's a part of everything that I do, and that I've been able to maintain a bond with her. I have accepted that my life is the way it's gonna be until I see her again.

She's not gonna be a physical part of my world. Acceptance doesn't mean I have closure. Acceptance means I'm gonna make the best of [00:09:00] the time that I have left in spite of the circumstances I had to deal with. So that's my story for now, and that story is continuing to evolve every day. But that's, that's everything up until today.

Jill: So your daughter was 19 or so when she died? She was, 

Dave: she was 18. She transitioned six weeks before her 19th birthday. 

Jill: Wow. I'm so sorry. That is. Yeah, I mean, it's just tragic, you know, a daughter dying at that age with a brand new baby, and unfortunately it is part of life that this does happen to people.

It's still tragic, even though it is part of not just your reality. There's other people that have experienced similar things, but it's still tragic. 

Dave: You know, one of the things that some people have told me goes, geez, my loss seems to be so insignificant to you losing a child. I so don't even go there.

Everybody has tragedy in their lives. What is their worst tragedy? Might not align with my worst tragedy, but I can tap into the pain of [00:10:00] my worst tragedy to meet them at the pain of their worst tragedy, and that's where the alignment occurs. Everybody has different tragedies in life. I believe we came into this lifetime with this all plan, and I believe that part of that cell plan also included the challenges that we contracted to face in this lifetime.

Now, Jill, there were days that I, I looked up at the sky and said, what the hell is my soul thinking? Wanted to come into to be the experience of the death of a child? But the challenges I've experienced as a result have allowed me to create or find a better version of myself, steeped in service, compassion, and wanted to do some good in the world.

Now, could that have happened anyway? Probably, but who knows? Are there days where I wish there was another tragedy other than having to bury one of my children? Absolutely. But we don't have any control over what we're gonna face in this lifetime. It is only our response to it that we have control over.

Hmm. [00:11:00] And I've learned this all in 22 plus years with the help of some great support, some great spiritual mentors, and my wife. 

Jill: The way that you put it about finding peace, but still grieving. I think there's probably people that are gonna listen that those two things are just not gonna go together in their mind.

How could you be at peace while still grieving? I don't fully understand the depth of grief mm-hmm. That somebody would have after the death of a child. But you're right in that sometimes I'll ask God or whatever it is, and I'll think. Please don't let that be part of my path. I just don't want that. But I also know that there's not any real control I have over the situation, 

Dave: and I wouldn't wish what I went through on anybody.

And that includes my worst enemy enemy. And at the time, I knew who my worst enemy was, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody. But I would tell an individual, we can experience joy and we can experience sadness. That's all part of the human experience. Peace and [00:12:00] yearning for the physical presence of our loved ones.

No matter how much time has gone by as part of the human experience, it's the yin and the yang. I think a lot of times, as many in society get hung up on that. We have to be super happy and super positive. I don't believe total fulfillment. It's about happiness. I think happiness is part of the deal. I've had a lot of happy moments, but I've also had a lot of sad moments, confusing moments, angry moments, and all of that has something to teach me if I can't get in touch with all that's part of the human experience in my mind, that's the key to living a genuine existence.

I mean, if, if I talk to you, Jill, and you told, I said, Jill, how's today going? Well, Dave, today absolutely sucks. We're gonna have days that suck, but I'm gonna sit down with you. We're gonna have a conversation because you're just not telling me things are, you're happy when you're not. You're telling me I'm having a sucky day.

That's genuineness. I can sit with your suckiness and I can hold space for that. And maybe together, I might find the gift in your suckiness, and you might find the gift in your suckiness. [00:13:00] We can't. Make room for genuineness or growth through genuineness if we don't allow for the not so happy moments to manifest and to talk about them in safe spaces.

Jill: Yeah, talking about them in safe spaces is really important. I've talked to other people who have had children that have died and how hard it is to find. The people around you still want to be in conversation with you because they get so uncomfortable and they just can't deal with that conversation. So was that part of your experience?

Did you have a lot of friends and family that maybe were not able to deal with it? One 

Dave: family member in particular, and I had had kind of an acrimonious relationship with this part of my mother's side of the family before my daughter got sick. I remember. Her godfather came over along with her mother and sister, and Dee looked at me and he goes, well, I can't do this.

I said, well, what do you think? You think I can do this? I said, I got a choice. I [00:14:00] gotta do this. He never showed up again. Until the funeral and then they kind of made out like they were the grieving family. And the one thing that bothered me before Janine's death and still does, is hypocrisy. So I just said they couldn't handle my situation, so therefore they couldn't be of any support.

But people I thought, were gonna step up, didn't the people I never thought were gonna step up. Did one of the things that is true about grief after any loss is that. Things change and your support network may change depending on who is comfortable or who is not comfortable dealing with you as a grieving person, what I've learned now and in hindsight and what I also, you know, suggest individuals who are grieving is don't worry about who isn't in your circle.

Focus on those who are, because those are the ones that are gonna be the most support to you at the time that you most need it. The other individuals who are not in your circle, they may come back at some point. They may not just be ready to. But [00:15:00] celebrate who's there, not who isn't there. 

Jill: That's great advice because I think it is easy for us to get caught up on who wasn't there because we're heartbroken over it like we thought these people would be and they're not.

I am sure there's times in my life when I was probably not as supportive to my friends who went through the death of a parent or the death of a spouse. But I just didn't know what to do at that point. I was not doing the work that I do now, and we're all so busy in our day-to-day lives of just trying to hold ourselves together.

Then you put us in this situation where we really don't know what to do. Unfortunately, most people, we just retreat because we don't know. That's why people like us exist. We also have a mutual friend, Chris. There's a like large circle of us now connected on Facebook. We work in the grief space to get people more comfortable.

Talking about grief. This way we can support our friends [00:16:00] and our family when they're going through it because we'll have some tools. We don't just feel like we're being thrown into the deep end and we don't know what to do. 

Dave: Yeah, absolutely. I've seen a lot more podcasts, podcasts about, from individuals who teach other individuals how to support people who are grieving, make suggestions in terms of what to say, what not to say.

There's been a few more books on that now. So the emphasis has been how can we. Create a sensitive community of support for those individuals who are grieving. 'cause a lot of times people will say stuff that they think is comforting, that they've heard is comforting. That really just undermines a grief process at that time.

That person's just not ready to hear that. But they've been taught, this is what you say. I've always believed that if somebody says something with sincerity and it comes across as insensitive to the other person, person was well-meaning they just. Could not predict how that person was gonna respond to that show of compassion.

Jill: I found even with myself, we walk around with so [00:17:00] much unprocessed grief. We don't know how to work with our own grief, so how are we ever gonna know how to work with somebody else's? And then somebody near us is grieving and it triggers our unprocessed grief. And so it's bringing up all these emotions and we just get into these really.

Bad places. We need to work with ourselves first before we can really support people through grieving. What did you find worked for you, even with your wife? 'cause a lot of relationships do end after the death of a child because it's that breaking point. They can't come back from. 

Dave: I think the, the marriage wasn't based on strong values.

Communication, love and respect. The death of a child is just gonna be the straw that broke camel's back for me, I think one of the things I learned was that my wife and I didn't have enough energy to deal with our own grief, much less each other's. There was like a lot of isolation in the beginning. She grieved very differently than me.

She was very upfront with her emotions. [00:18:00] She would cry. I would try to distract myself from my emotions, try to be stoic on the inside. I was feeling just those same emotions, but I had learned to deal with those a little bit differently. We grieved just as intensely. We felt just as intensely, we just dealt with it differently.

And I think once we had an opportunity to understood stand how we grieve, we created space for that. We respected it and tried to support each other through our own individual expressions. We did a lot of talking. We talked about Janine, what was going on in the aftermath. We, you know, concern for her, her brothers.

We talked about everything. And she's also given me the opportunity to explore my own different perspectives in grief. I've given her the opportunity. You know, I've given her the opportunity to respected her right to grieve as she see fits, she sees fit, and to employ those resources that are helpful to her.

That may not necessarily resonate with me. It's about expanding on the mutual respect, trust and love that we [00:19:00] already had, and extending it to the grief space and the trauma space so that we could continue to grow as a couple. Our relationship is stronger now than it was since my daughter's transition.

And that's because of the challenges with the death due to her death directly. It's always due to the challenges as a result of what a tragedy presents us. 

Jill: And how is your granddaughter doing? So how's that been for her? 

Dave: She doesn't, but her father has tried to keep her memory alive throughout Brianna's upbringing.

Her father and Brianna lived with us for about four years after Janine transitioned. Then they went off on their own. But we still saw her regularly. He made sure of that. We would talk about her mom. She would ask questions about her mom. So we tried to make her mom as much a part of her history growing up so that she knew her.

And the other thing that we did is we had a DVD of Janine's last Christmas. I sat down with Brianna when she was older, and we watched that so she could see her mother, see how her mother interacted with her. And [00:20:00] unbeknownst to me, it wasn't just the last Christmas my daughter had. Videotaped a lot of other milestone moments in their relationship that we sat through.

Like when she first started crawling, when she first started standing up, she wanted Brianna to remember her, so she did whatever she could to document that in video so that when Brianna was ready to see that again, she could see that Jeanine, my daughter, really loved her. They were bonding, and it was surreal for me to sit through that with my granddaughter watching her mother interacting with her as a child.

Jill: Oh, that's so beautiful that she thought to take the time to do that because that's really a gift that she can have now when she needs it, especially when she needs to look back at that. And I wish, and I'm not always great at doing this myself. This is part of what I talk to people about, even if we're not.

Facing a terminal diagnosis. Even if we don't have a definite timeline, we really should be [00:21:00] doing these things now for our loved ones. Making some videos, writing letters, leaving these letters behind because none of us know. And talked to my husband about that this morning. We went for our walk around the lake like we always do.

And I said, sometimes I worry so much about things in the future, and this is what I like about Buddhism. Buddhism is kind of just like, you gotta be here now because the future may not ever come. Right? So just be in this moment now, rather than stressing, I should just look around at the beautiful colors on the lake.

I could die in a car accident tomorrow, and then this future I'm worried about will never come anyway. And so leaving that behind. I know working with death and grief has changed the way that I live and the way that I do things, and so now I do take the time to do some of those things. I just wish people could live more with the end in mind and not with a sense of fear.

Not in the sense that it's gonna make them stressed and worried, but it's reality. [00:22:00] We're all gonna get there at some point if we can live our life. Understanding that. We really can live better and leave gifts like that for our families. I've found, for me, I just experience life differently. I appreciate things so much more that I didn't appreciate before I got into this work.

I love that she did that for her daughter. It's beautiful. 

Dave: You mentioned living each day is if it's your last and you know, 'cause you never know. You know, today might be my last, I could talk to you today. I could have a brick fall on my head and, and then you're reading about me. On Facebook or something that I have transitioned or I'm dancing in another dimension as I like to call it.

But you know, it's, it's like, and I think there, I don't know if this was another Buddhist saying or something. I've read out in Maury Schwartz's, Mitch Al's book Tuesdays with Maury, that if there was a little bird on your shoulder telling you today was the last day of your life, how would you choose to live it?

Mm-hmm. And so I tell my students live every day. Like you have that bird on [00:23:00] your shoulder. Today's the last day. How do you wanna make the most of it? How do you wanna leave your mark? What legacy do you wanna leave for that particular day? Who do you wanna show compassion to? And you know, the other thing with parents, Joel, and this is another thing, and I've had this asked to me, do you, before you have one child die, do you worry about having another child die?

A kid? That thought has always crossed my mind because my safety net was permanently altered. I have not had that happen to me yet. But could it? Sure. Could it be a grandchild? Could it be another child? Sure. Yeah. I understand that Rather than think about something that I have no control over and may never happen, I choose to use that knowledge to live each day to my best and live each day as if that is my last day of my life.

Jill: Yeah, because you're right, you'd like to think that statistically if you have one child that dies, that it's not gonna happen to you to have the other one. But I have talked to people, especially with addiction, it seems like I've talked to more than one person that have had more than one child [00:24:00] die from a drug overdose.

And in one case, it was really tragic. The 20 something year old died of an overdose. And the woman and her 11-year-old were cleaning out his apartment and the kid happened to find a pill and for whatever reason took it. So within a really brief period of time, both of her children were gone. 

Dave: Yeah. 

Jill: And.

She is using that experience to go out and talk to people about drugs and addiction and prevention. I mean, that's the only thing that would be able to keep me going to be able to say, as long as I could use this to potentially save somebody else from the same experience. 

Dave: And the other side of the coin is we have a choice not to do anything.

We have a choice to. Withdraw from society, withdraw from life. That's a choice we can make down the road. But I think for a lot of people that I know, the choice they made is, okay. Let's see what I can do to, as a result of the challenges, help [00:25:00] other individuals go through theirs, find meaning, leave a legacy, leave some tracks behind that I and my future generations are going to be proud of.

Jill: Because you're right, there is the choice and there's no shame If that is their only choice, like that is the only thing they can do. They're not the type of person that could go out and do this kind of work. I guess probably just in my line, I'm not gonna see those people or talk to those people quite as much because they're not gonna talk to me.

Or I do talk to the people that are out doing the work because. I'm talking to people that are out doing the work. But yeah, it's something where for you, do you have moments, it sounds like you even teach at a college, so you're talking about death and grief a lot with people. Do you ever have those moments when it gets too be too much, or do you find that for the most part, by talking about it and teaching about it, it helps you?

Dave: I think probably the latter. By talking about it and teaching about it, it helps me more than triggers me. [00:26:00] Plus my students are, um, a source of joy for me. They're a blast to hang around, and I look at every one of those students as an extension of my daughter, most of them, plus the same age or a little older than my daughter was when she transitioned.

And so I look at them as. Part of my family, I have a deeper responsibility to them than just teaching them information that are gonna help them into their careers. I really have a responsibility. I feel I need to, to part some life lessons, to to model transparency, to model genuineness, to model compassion, to create a safe classroom for them where they can talk about a real sensitive topic.

And I also teach a FAM Addiction and family course, and that's another. Topic that is, you know, addiction, as you know, there's a stigma around addiction. We've talked about that, that earlier, and it's, it's amazing how many of my students have come from families or no, no friends or families that have, have, have struggled with addiction.

And so, you know, it's, [00:27:00] it's always creating a steady space and, you know, creating a welcoming atmosphere for them so that they can learn, but more so that, that we can connect as a, not only just with me, but they can connect as a community in the classroom. So they, they inspire me every day, so they don't, it's being, having being around them and talking about that gets really a source of comfort for me.

And in my death, dying and bereavement class, I know everything about my grief history. Including Janine. I'm very transparent with that. Right from the beginning. 

Jill: And your class, is it like one semester? What's that class look like? Because I personally would love to take the class. I think it sounds great.

Can you just tell me a little bit about that? Yeah. 

Dave: It's every semester it's a required course for the psych child life students and individuals getting a degree in education with a psych child life concentration. The class is an overview of death course. So we talk about, you know, we talk about end of life death in the medical healthcare system, the dying process, what denial is, what [00:28:00] denial isn't.

You know, we talk about denial, like responses to death. We talk about special traumatic death such as suicide, mass shootings. We talk about bioethics and aid and dying legislation from states that have aid and dying legislation that allow individuals to. Avail themselves of death with dignity laws and they qualify.

They can do their final exit on their own terms. We talk about the spiritual aspects of death. We talk about after death communication. We talk about near death experiences. We talk about the reincarnation studies of Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia. We talk about Brian Weiss's work with past life regression therapy.

Raymond Moody's and Bruce Grayson's work with near-death experiences. I've been Alexander's as a neurosurgeon. His experience with the afterlife, the spiritual aspects I bring in of death and dying these's have all been discovered by individuals who are science-based. And that now mimics my philosophy [00:29:00] in terms of an integrated philosophy where science and spirituality can coexist and integrate to give us a greater understanding of ourselves.

Our relationship to the world around us and help us transcend tragedy. I have guest speakers that come in during the semester to talk about their own journeys or own challenges. So, um, and what they've done to transcend it. Interestingly, I've had students tell me that that's their favorite course to take once they get past the initial perception of what this course is gonna be like.

They, they've actually told me, they said, boy, this is a great course. I had a student tell me I had fun in this class. Imagine having fun in a death class. Essentially it's to get them comfortable talking about a topic that a lot of people aren't comfortable talking about. Mm-hmm. And particularly if they're gonna be working with children and families, medically fragile children, they're gonna be working with any type of, of, in any type of capacity with people, they're gonna be dealing with loss.

It's unavoidable, so I want them to be prepared. We also talk about the role of mediumship in [00:30:00] the nut system and ways that you can direct individuals to find a credible medium. So we cover a lot of different territory, and that's really one of that. I love teaching all my courses, but that's my favorite because it more so the personal investment that, and I was no stranger to death before my daughter's transition, but that was the event that threw me headlong onto a different path.

Jill: Yeah, that sounds like a really interesting course, especially that you cover some of the more people consider Woo parts with the afterlife. I have found sometimes there's this disconnect of people that talk about death and dying. Even grief where it has to only be very scientific on a piece of paper that this is what happens.

And then there's a lot of people that I've talked to as well that are like, Hmm, I don't know. There's some interesting things that happen after somebody dies. So I love that you bring both of those together. And like you said, you try to find [00:31:00] some of the, there is some science behind some of these things.

I love that you cover that wide range of. The death, dying and grief experience, not just the one specific, like this is proven on a piece of paper type of thing. 

Dave: No, and there were things that happened to me after Janine transitioned that I couldn't explain, but I couldn't reconcile it with my science based.

But then seven years after Jean transitioned, I met an interfaith minister who facilitated a spiritually transformative experience that allowed me to believe in the survival of consciousness after death and got me on this whole path of integrating spirituality and psychology based on the conversations that we had.

In the 10 years following. We still connect. We still talk good friends, soul sisters. It was like our paths were meant to cross when they crossed and. That more than anything has allowed me to find peace and believe that we can transform relationships or if their loved ones create [00:32:00] continued bonds, and has gotten me to believe in the survival of consciousness after death.

And I never believed in any of that before. I never gave it a second thought. It was always what's happening in front of me that I could experience directly with all my senses. That I could touch. So 

Jill: before that, you just thought like, when we died, that was it Like lights out your thoughts before? 

Dave: I don't know if I had any really thoughts about, I just thought when you, well maybe, yeah.

When you die, you're dead. You're dead. You know? That's it. That's the end of your existence. Then after Janine transitioned, I started reading some and I read Brian Weiss's many lives, many masters, about three years after Janine transitioned. But I read us a great story. It sounds fascinating, but I couldn't wrap my head around it.

I wasn't ready to expand my rational belief system to make room for other concepts that could align with that. And one of the things that people may be afraid of in terms of embracing different perspectives, it means they might say, well, if I embrace this perspective, do I have to abandon my core beliefs?

No, you don't. [00:33:00] You can expand your belief system. And see that different perspectives can align very nicely with your core belief system and not impact how you see the world. If anything, it's going to improve how you see the world because other perspectives will give you a richer insight into to the behavior and the behavior of others.

In our relationship to the world around us, I vehemently rejected any spirituality, and interestingly, my mother was into tarot cards. She was very spiritual. She was into Sylvia Brown, one of the greater mediums growing up. She was into all of that. She would try to give me the woo woo stuff. I just, you know, basically just reject it.

I just wouldn't, wouldn't wanna deal with that. But now I am a firm believer that spiritual practices and science together can give us greater insight and fulfillment. 

Jill: Hmm. I agree with that completely. So it's nice to talk to somebody that does. So you think the [00:34:00] consciousness goes on. Where do you think it goes?

Like what's your beliefs about where the consciousness, once it leaves the body, where does it go from there? 

Dave: I think if you take a look at the accounts and near death experiences, there's an afterlife. It could be an afterlife that we create for ourselves when we transition, but it does go to a different dimension.

I do believe there's an afterlife dimension. There is a world that we experience that is full of bliss love. The contracts on the human experiences that kept people apart, kept souls apart are no longer an issue. We see each other's souls. On the afterlight. It's about light, love, bliss. Acceptance, happiness, and that's where I believe our consciousness goes.

If you look at energy, energy could be anywhere. I believe that my daughter could be like her presence could be felt here, but yet there's still a part of her soul that's still in the afterlife with her new existence in the afterlife. I read in the Afterlife of Billy Fingers by Annie Kagan. [00:35:00] Were one of the teachers that only part of the so can reincarnate.

If you take a look that's all energy. So part of my soul can reincarnate into the physical experience and the other part could stay in the afterlife or the other part. And this is one of the things I'm in my head a lot, Joel, whenever I get these things, I start thinking, what if parts of our soul could reincarnate to different people?

What if there's actually a mirror us in this lifetime? If you take a look at the whole doppelganger theory, who's to say that part of a soul reincarnates might not apply to that? If we see somebody who is basically. Our genetic twin. Yep. Or if we resonate with somebody immediately and we think, well, maybe we met in a past life, maybe we did, or maybe that's part of my soul that's reincarnated into a different physical form, experiencing different challenges that come together with me and the challenges that I experience and we learn from each other and our souls learn from each other whenever it's quiet.

And my head usually goes into these places. I start [00:36:00] imagining, I said, what if and not the what if I did this to prevent my daughter's death, but what if we expand our imagination a little bit, just about reincarnation, about the human experience in terms of how we relate to each other and who we relate to.

So my head's always gone. 

Jill: Yeah, me too. And I love it. This idea of reincarnation and the souls potentially being in two different people. I've thought a lot about that. And with this idea of like a twin flame. Where a lot of times people will say it's not necessarily gonna be your best romantic partner.

Like your twin flame is not like your soulmate. And I met somebody years ago where I was like, I feel like I met myself in a different body. We're not exactly like in every single thing, but the level of understanding and comfort and things that. We're just so much alike that now, I mean, he's one of my best friends.

Almost instantly when I met him, I [00:37:00] was like, if there's a real thing as a twin flame, I think you're it. And he was like, what? Like what is that? And I'm married like happily married, love my husband dearly. So again, it wasn't a romantic thing, but it just felt like meeting me, but in a different body. And we're still basically, he was one of my best friends.

Yeah. And so who knows? I don't know for sure. 

Dave: We probably won't know till we get to that next dimension, that next part of our existence. But I believe there's something more beyond physical life. There's been too many accounts of individuals that have near death experiences. I've read accounts of, you know, kids at three years old who remember past life situations.

There's too much of that to rule out as coincidence. It bears being investigated. I give my students every possible. Aspect of death and dying that they can be prepared for. You never know when you're gonna have a child or fam a mother come in and say, my child is three years old and they're recalling memories from World War I.

What do I do with that? A 3-year-old is [00:38:00] not gonna have that type of an abstract conceptual development and now even lie about that and come up with those specific details. So, you know, I tell my students, I want you to be prepared for anything. Even the most unlikely scenario that can happen because the more unlikely it is, the more likely it is to happen.

Jill: And that's a great way to prepare people as well. How many folks would be afraid to even talk about it? There's probably a lot more of us out there that believe these things have had these experiences, but we don't talk about it because of judgment. And I can imagine if you had a child. That was having extreme nightmares and they were remembering a death they had and giving you all these details.

I've heard about kids that know how to take apart planes. They should know nothing about how is the child gonna know this about an airplane? And so they take the child to a professional and the professional immediately shuts them down. Now the person's gonna have no support. There's gonna be no help.

They're gonna feel alone and [00:39:00] isolated and. That to me is so damaging to a family to go through an experience like that. 

Dave: I tell my students, you don't have to believe in the metaphysical or spiritual aspects of death. You can be objective by asking a few questions that will allow you to understand the person's experience without you having to to, you know, commit to your own personal beliefs on it.

And I mean, the last thing you wanna tell somebody is that, no, I really can't deal with afterlife stuff because I don't believe in it. You wanna really talk about invalidating somebody. And really destroying or sabotaging a, a therapeutic relationship before it has to, before it begins saying, no, I can't because I don't believe in that.

I can't sit and listen to you talk about it. 

Jill: Yeah. And it's so funny 'cause this is such a topic that is super triggering to people where it's like, I don't believe that. So yeah, I can't deal with it where I always put myself in the position of, I don't know for sure what I believe. And there's definitely beliefs that I lean towards.

But none of us know for [00:40:00] sure. And so if somebody came to me with some totally wild off the wall belief, okay, maybe I don't know, what do I really know? And then I think back to my time as a pastry chef where I'm like, what if somebody came to me and said, well, I want oatmeal cookies. Well, I don't like oatmeal cookies, so I'm not making oatmeal cookies.

Like why is it that in that case, it's like, well, okay, I don't have to eat the cookies. But I could still make them because people want, right. But all in spiritual beliefs, we really do have such a hard time, and I think it's partially because there's a little part of us that knows, even if we won't admit it to ourselves, that what we sometimes believe to be true, we don't really fully believe it.

We want to, but we're so afraid to admit that we might be wrong in it. That it's easier to just shut it out and be like, Nope, I'm not gonna deal with that one. You can go deal with that on your own, which to me seems like to challenge my beliefs. I like to think about them and they have changed over time and they have expanded and [00:41:00] contracted in other ways, and I don't think that's a bad thing.

Dave: Critical thinking in exploring perspectives that don't align with your core belief systems is a great way to grow. How can we develop critical thinking in our young adults if we don't encourage 'em to expand their horizons and look at things that they may not have entertained otherwise? You know, sometimes 

Jill: we don't want our young adults to have critical thinking.

If you really think about it, how often we just teach them to follow instructions. If your parents says it, you can't question it. If a teacher says it, you can't question it. If a priest or a pastor says it, you can't. We just instill in them this idea that they have to follow instructions at all times.

And rather than saying there's gonna be times when, yes, you just have to do what I tell you to do, but there's also times when if you don't agree with it, let's talk about it. There's nothing wrong with questioning and talking about it and having a conversation. My 15-year-old, there's places he is way smarter than I am.

He knows things that I have never even [00:42:00] heard of that I would've never. Even thought about, but when we have conversations, there's times when he changes my mind about things. And I kind of love that. I think it's fun. I enjoy it. 

Dave: Me too. I tell my students question everything. Don't take my word as gospel truth, question everything, but do it respectfully.

Mm-hmm. Hesitate to bring. Any type of what you believe are contradictory views or beliefs into the class. We as a community need to understand that we're not supposed to judge each other's beliefs, but simply just understand what those beliefs are, find out what resources we use to get to that and see where we align.

And we might find that there is as many similarities or more similarities than there are differences. But you can't do it if you're trying to talk over everybody and just say, no, my belief is the way to go. You have to believe in apples. You can't believe in oranges. It's whatever's gonna get you through.

It's whatever's gonna, you're gonna find peace from. And who am I to say that's not gonna work for you? 

Jill: That respect piece is often missing. And you're [00:43:00] right. So many times if we actually sat down and listened, whether it's politics or religion or anything else, if we just talk to people and listened to them without trying to convince them of what we believe we would find, we have much more in common than we do different.

Yeah. But we just spend so much time again, defending our own beliefs 'cause we're afraid. They're gonna change our mind. I guess. Maybe I don't, 

Dave: yeah, there's a little bit of insecurity in being told that your beliefs don't fly with me, or you should believe this way because that's built the foundation of who we are.

Somebody to say, well, you have to change. That in and of itself is scary. I tell my students, you don't have to do a damn thing. If somebody tells you you have to do something, you don't. You got free will. You don't have to do anything. You can choose not to, but for every behavioral choice you make, there's a consequence.

So just make sure you choose your consequences wisely, but don't let anybody ever take your free will away. Hmm. [00:44:00] 

Jill: But yeah, there is consequences to our actions. 

Dave: Mm-hmm. 

Jill: For sure. It is hard to. Have somebody come at us and try to tell us that we're wrong and that we need to change our beliefs immediately. I am gonna get a little defensive.

It's gonna be harder for me to listen. If you're just trying to tell me I'm wrong and convince me to believe what you believe versus just explaining to me what you believe and why you believe it, then I'm gonna listen more than somebody just trying to say, well, you have to believe this thing. 

Dave: No. And then it's like they'll say, well, you do.

Well, I don't. Then you just cut the conversation off. That's when I will walk away from a situation where I feel like I'm not being heard or somebody's trying to tell me, no, your belief is invalid. You have to believe this way. That's when I'll just walk away. I respect the way you believe, and I would hope you would respect the way that I believe without wanting to change that.

Just sit and understand why I believe what I believe, and I'll do the same for you, and then we can still be friends. 

Jill: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We all come to our beliefs in different ways, but in the long run. [00:45:00] We're humans and we have beliefs mm-hmm. To help us get through life. Sometimes life is really shitty. Yeah.

And sometimes life is really beautiful. 

Dave: Mm-hmm. 

Jill: We've got it all. 

Dave: Yeah. You play the same thing with grief. People aren't gonna grieve the same way. They're gonna embrace perspectives and walk a path, and it's gonna make sense for them, whether it's fate based, whether it's interfaith, whether it's some other perspective, whether it's the Buddhist perspective.

Whatever. It's what is gonna work for you, and that's all that matters. I can learn from all of it. It can inspire me to expand my own beliefs and be more curious about how those perspectives help individuals during times of trauma. So we have to be open to it. We have to not take a position where we're gonna try to convince people that our way is the right way.

That's guru stuff. I don't have any gurus in my support system, Jill. 

Jill: And that's good. 

Dave: Yeah. I So, 

Jill: well, we are coming up on the end of our time. This is beautiful. I knew it would be, can you just tell people where they can reach you? I'll put links in the show notes to everything, but if they wanna reach you, what your [00:46:00] podcast is called, anything like that you wanna share.

Dave: Absolutely. If they wanna reach me, my son calls me the world's oldest millennial. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. You just look for Dave Robertson email wise. It's Bootsy and angel@gmail.com. My podcast is a Teaching Journeys podcast. You can follow me on YouTube if you just type in Dave Roberts. It's at Dave Roberts 3 0 1.

I'm also on Apple, Spotify. And 17 other podcast channels. My personal website is Dave Roberts msw@ormsw.com, and my author website is psychology professor and minister.com. There you'll find all the information to purchase the book that. Patty Farino and I co-wrote called one of the Psychology Professor, met the Minister, which talks about the spiritually transformative experience I alluded to, and how my perspective of psychology and spirituality merging together came out through our conversations and the importance of critical [00:47:00] thinking.

So you can find me. I'm not that hard to find, and I'll be more than happy to talk to anybody who wants to listen and who needs somebody to listen. I'm available. That's how you can find me. 

Jill: Wonderful. I'll put all those links in the show notes so people can easily just click them and find you. Thanks so much, Dave.

This was wonderful. It was so great to chat with you again. It 

Dave: was great to chat with you again. I know this won't be the end of our conversations. I'm sure we're gonna be chatting some more. 

Jill: I agree. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting.

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