Megan Devine is a pioneer in the fields of grief support and emotional intelligence. Since 2009, she’s been writing and talking about grief and love, shaking up our culture’s ideas about both all along the way. In this episode we discuss these topics along with her newest book,It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand
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In This Interview, Megan Devine and I Discuss…
- Her book, It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand
- That the way we deal with grief in our culture is broken
- How grief is a no-win situation for everyone
- The fact that we don’t like to talk about grief
- How we carry losses with us
- The myth that happiness is the same as health and that if you’re not happy, you’re doing something wrong
- That some things cannot be fixed, they can only be carried
- How cruel it is to say everything happens for a reason and that you create your reality
- Our limited tools for going through difficulty
- Victim blaming
- How we can’t be 100% safe
- That we aren’t 100% in control of how we react to things
- If we think grief is a problem to be solved, all of our tools will fail us
- Sadness isn’t a problem either
- How you can’t “get over it and put it behind you”
- The importance of having pain Heard, Honored and Validated
- The power of listening and curiosity
- Thinking of pain as an experience to be tended
- The things we have to live through and endure, that we can’t escape
- Making these difficult things gentler on us
- Decreasing suffering inside of grief
- Wellness vs. worseness
- Paying attention to the cause and effect of things
- The hierarchy of grief
- Treating compassion as the abundant resource that it is
- Hope
- Meeting people where they are
- Asking: Do you want empathy or a problem solved right now?
- Asking: What do you need
in this moment? What would feel useful right now? - You can’t heal someone’s pain by trying to take it away from them
- The importance of showing yourself kindness
Megan Devine Links
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Claudia says
Thank you very much for such an intelligent conversation. I would love to make it available in Spanish to Spanish speaking grief groups and individuals. Do you have a transcription of the talk? If so, may a get a copy? I want to translate it into Spanish as part of the volunteer work I have been doing since my son died. I know Megan’s book has a Spanish version. But this conversation between “The One You Feed” and Devine has so much to offer that I want to make it available to those who do not understand English.