How to Navigate Grief During Holidays with More Ease and Grace with Barri Grant

Does your heart feel heavier this time of year? 

Maybe you're missing someone who's no longer here…or carrying a quiet ache that’s lingering and hard to name. When the world is celebrating, it can feel lonely to carry sadness that doesn’t have a clear place to land.

In this episode, I’m joined by Barri Grant, certified grief coach and founder of The Memory Circle—a woman who has turned her own profound losses into a compassionate, grounded space for others to heal. After losing her mother at 27 and later her father to Alzheimer’s, Barri has walked the kind of path that reshapes you from the inside out. Her work offers tender, tangible support for anyone navigating holiday grief and why nervous system regulation is such a powerful companion to grief work, especially during the holiday season when emotions tend to intensify.

You’ll hear reflections on being a grieving parent, remothering your inner child, and creating grief rituals that help you feel more connected.

You’ll learn:

• How to honor your grief without minimizing or explaining it to family members
• What makes somatic healing helpful when you are experiencing emotional pain
• Why the 5 stages of grief often miss the mark when it comes to healing
• How to create small grief rituals that help you feel more connected to loved ones who have passed
• How expressive writing can be a safe place for release
• What grief coaching offers that therapy sometimes doesn’t
• New holiday traditions that can support your emotional healing
  
  

However your grief during the holidays shows up—loud, quiet, messy, or soft—there is room for it here. You’re not alone.

Much love,

Laurie

Click here for a video on how to leave a review to receive a free somatic stabilization/grounding exercise. The podcast graphic is different from the current one. Once you complete it and send me a picture I will send you the video. My email is laurie@laurieejames.com

Thank you in advance. 

Click here to learn about my NEW “Nervous System Regulation Starter Kit” 

Free Resources

Click here to schedule a FREE inquiry call with me.

Click here for my FREE “Beginner’s Guide to Somatic Healing”

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Click here to purchase my book: Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go

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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL, MEDICAL OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED THERAPIST IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING SUICIDAL THOUGHTS. YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN LEGAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL WITH RESPECT TO ANY MEDICAL ISSUE OR PROBLEM.

Transcript

Laurie James: Hey there, it's Laurie. And if you have been feeling grief creeping up this holiday season, this podcast is meant for you. When grief strikes us, it sends our nervous system into a state of dysregulation, and it's so important for us to meet that dysregulation with tenderness, love, and tools that will help us process it in small, tolerable doses. Not stuffing it inside the breast of the turkey or making another pie or a bigger batch of mashed potatoes.

Laurie James: Sitting with our grief isn't easy or always fun, but it's necessary for us to process our feelings and emotions so we can be more present in our lives and ultimately find more joy. And if you need extra support, I have two great resources. My first is my free beginner's guide to somatic healing. You can click the link in the show notes, and the second one is my Nervous System Starter Kit for a low price of $29. It has three great exercises and several tools to help you get started regulating your nervous system. And there's no better time than during the holidays. So enjoy my podcast with Barri Lerner Grant, and please share this with anyone who comes to mind who could use a little extra support this holiday season.

Laurie James: Welcome to Confessions of a Free Bird podcast. I'm your host, Laurie James, a mother, divorcee, recovering caregiver, the author of Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go, a therapy junkie, relationship coach, somatic healer, and now podcaster. I'm a free spirit, and here to lift you up on this podcast. I'll share soulful confessions and empowering conversations with influential experts so you can learn to spread your wings and make the most of your second half. So pop in those earbuds, turn up the volume, and let's get inspired, because my mission is to help you create your most joyful, purpose-driven life, one confession at a time.

Laurie James: Hello, free birds. Today I am so excited that I am joined by someone who truly understands what it means to turn loss into meaning: Barri Grant, the Chief Grief Officer at The Memory Circle. Barri's journey with grief began when her mother died suddenly at 50, an experience that left her searching for connection in a world that didn't know how to talk about loss. What began as small gatherings for motherless daughters has now grown into a space for everyone navigating grief in all its forms: death, divorce, estrangement, health challenges, or simply life transitions.

Laurie James: Her background as a publicist, author, certified grief coach, and yoga meditation teacher, weaves into everything that she does. Barri's work has been featured in The Washington Post, Psychology Today, Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper, which I love, and her own Substack, Permission Granted, along with many other spaces where healing conversations live. What I love about Barri is how she helps us see that grief isn't something to fix, it's something to tend to, which is so beautifully said and so needed, even from a somatic place, and through that process, we discover our own aliveness. So welcome, Barri, and thanks so much for being here with me today.

Barri Grant: It's so good to be with you, and I love that you said that it is nothing that needs fixing, and it's such a normal, natural part of our everyday. And I think we've not done ourselves enough justice, really, in talking about it as freely as we should. It was always my dream that it would be part of the daily vernacular. That was sort of one of those very early on goals that I made, that just like we would be able to talk about the common cold, we would like be able to call in "griefy" to work.

Laurie James: Yeah, so. But do you feel like that is starting to happen?

Barri Grant: I really do. I would say just in the last couple of years. You know, it sounds funny to say, grief feels trendy all of a sudden, which has, I think post-pandemic really, we were really faced with what I called a grief pandemic, right? We saw it playing out worldwide. Our lives stopped, took a pause for a while. We didn't have the same traditions that we could or rituals for burials. And I think people were grieving out loud more than they had in the past.

Barri Grant: I know that I was part of a community on an all-audio app called Clubhouse at the time, and because we were all home, it had such a wide audience, and it was conversations about almost everything and anything. And I thought, Should I go over here in my little griefy corner and open this room and just see how people are doing? Every day I opened that room, Laurie, and I said, just the title was, "How is your grief today?" Yeah. And by the time we were deep in, we were about 5,000 as a community. And, you know, it's in those moments that we realize it really needs a better place to live in modern-day society. But we are. I do think we're getting there. Do you?

Laurie James: I do! I think in general, the topic of mental health is, I think certain parts of the country are better than others, but we're able to have that conversation more freely, and there is less shame about it, but we have a long way to go. It's so funny that you say that, and I want to get into your story, but before we do that, you talked about COVID and the grief. I lost my mom a month into COVID. She died in April of 2020, and you know, she had dementia for 12 years, and the last seven years she didn't have really much control over her body or anything. But it's still hard, and you're right, like we had to do things very differently, like we couldn't have a traditional celebration of life for her, and you know, my dad really struggled with it.

Barri Grant: Yeah, our future, and that we knew it, the common everyday things, and the people that we could gather with that would bring us comfort in a time of grief that we have become accustomed to gathering. You know, even if it's gathering at a celebration of life or a funeral. Tell me her name, Laurie.

Laurie James: Betty, yeah, short for Elizabeth. She was a beautiful woman and very full of life before she got dementia. Loved to hike and sail, and she started a preschool at a local Presbyterian Church that she was involved with. She was a special ed teacher, and, you know, she just, she was the glue of our family. So, you know, and there was a lot of grieving through those 12 years for me. But, you know, obviously, when the death finally happens, then that's a whole another.

Barri Grant: Yeah, my dad, Neil, died this past January, after 10 years of living alongside his Alzheimer's and memory loss, and it's wholly different than anything you can even imagine. There's so much loss along the way, and you're sitting in front of a very alive person, and it's so complex and so complicated, and that anticipatory grief is so hard to reckon with, because there they are, you're sort of soaking them up and all the good days and the joy that remains and the beauty that remains and the little glimmers of them still being inside there. My dad's sense of humor was really there until the end. And, you know, we just sort of knew that, you know, that there he is, there, there's Neil.

Laurie James: Yeah, yeah. Like, they'd come out every once in a while, right? Like, all of a sudden we'd be sitting here at the table, and all of a sudden my mom would have this moment where she'd say, "No, I didn't," or like she'd respond to whatever we were talking about when you don't think about her, yes, yeah. Or "That's not how it was," or "Stop it, Jim" to my dad. It was that, you know, isn't that amazing, nothing for weeks or months or years.

Barri Grant: Yeah, it really is amazing. And a dear friend said to me in the midst, she's a medium and a healer, and she said she believes that the parts that they forget are already living across the veil, and that they're very well. And, like, I hadn't thought about exactly what I believed. Yeah, right, yeah. But there was some peace in that for me, that there was part of him, that it was already connecting with whatever life was next. And I sort of thought that's an incredible adventure. And so I felt like when we did have those moments where he snapped back in, I was like, I don't know if that's like the miracle of our complex brains, or the idea that Cindy said, like he's already over there or having connected with all the others and just coming back for a little while to dip his toe back into our conversation.

Laurie James: Hey, free birds, I wanted to take a quick pause in our conversation to share something I've created just for you. If you've been curious about nervous system regulation, but aren't sure where to start, I put together a Nervous System Regulation Starter Kit, a gentle, practical guide to help you begin feeling safer and more grounded in your body. Inside it, you'll find simple daily practices, easy to use worksheets to help you track your nervous system patterns, and three guided somatic practices you can return to again and again. These tools are designed to help you show, not just tell your nervous system that you're safe in the present moment. It's normally a $59 value, but I'm offering it for just $29 because I want this to be accessible for anyone ready to begin their healing journey. Head to the link in the show notes to grab yours and start feeling more regulated and connected today. Now let's get back to the episode.

Laurie James: I think, and I heard you say this on another podcast, it's like, I think having that thought or that awareness that maybe they're connecting on the other side gives us some hope that maybe they're not suffering as much.

Barri Grant: Agreed, and she, and she also said, "When we connect with him," because I had done readings, because I had lost my mom years prior, I had done readings with her, mostly because we were going to collaborate together. So I was curious about her work. It wasn't something that I really saw early on in my loss, but when we connected and we were talking about my dad, she said, "You know, he's going to have all of his memories intact across the veil." And I was like, wow, there was, there was a, really, was a lot of peace for me in even imagining what she was offering like that. That was a possibility. It really did. It felt like, oh, good for him. That sounds a lot nicer than some of the days that I imagined what I hoped for him, right? Like you said, the vibrancy of your mom, my dad was just like incredible madman, ad man, and thought, this is not how that brilliant brain is supposed to ride out these later years. You know?

Laurie James: Yeah, yeah. Well, we got off on this beautiful tangent. Bring us back over because I would love to hear and also share with our listeners a little bit more about your relationship with grief, because not only from this experience, from your loss of your dad, but you've experienced it several times in your life. Can you share with our listeners a little bit more about that and how you came into this work?

Barri Grant: Of course. Well, in 1993, I lost my mom, Ellen, quite suddenly. She took the day off and went to the beach and had an aneurysm in her beach chair. And because it was so sudden and she was 50, it was here and gone. And at that time, no one said grief or grieving. I was really trying to think back to that.

Laurie James: How old were you at that point?

Barri Grant: I was, I was 27. So two things happened at that time, because no one was talking about grief or grieving. No one asked, "Do you need help? Do you want to talk to someone?" Like the most important person in my life was gone overnight, and because I was 27, I was treated very much like a grown up. "You're grown, you have everything you need, you're strong, you're married." And I thought, I just listened to what everyone said, and very much became in a what I know now to be a response to my grief as a trauma response, became hyper-independent. And so sure, strong as ever, I looked like I had it all together. I didn't ask for any help. I thought I needed to do it all on my own.

Barri Grant: And it really created very confusing relationships. Talk about shame. I had a lot of shame under the hood for the things that I didn't know and couldn't know. As a woman in the world without a mom, I had so many questions for her, still and from health history to marriage to motherhood. I was about to have a baby, and all of a sudden, woke up one day and thought I was going to be a motherless mother. And I think it was at that time that I sought help. I knew that it was too much for me to really understand on my own and that going it alone was really not going to be the way. I was going to have to ask for help. Having a baby without anybody near where we lived was another thing. I was in the middle of Chicago. I up and left New York, I think, trying to escape my grief, and it followed me right along. So wherever you go, there you are. There she is. Yeah, I tried to find ways in which I could help make sense of it all.

Barri Grant: And I've been a writer for as long as I can remember, and a little, you know, pink diary with a heart-shaped lock on it to try to sort my own folks' divorce way back when, in fourth grade. But I also was my grief was informed by the way I grew up around it. So while grown ups had died, grandparents, it was sort of those were all in-order deaths, and while they were certainly not into very old age, it was what was expected, you know, that those were the elders in our life, and that would happen. So it was very sad for my mom to see, to see her lose her folks. My dad lost his dad when he was a little boy, and rarely spoke about it. So really, how we become grief-informed is really by our elders and our families, and for some of us, it's maybe what we see in the movies and on TV, because nobody has talked about it as we're growing up.

Laurie James: Let's stuff it down. Let's, if we don't talk about it, then it doesn't exist, right?

Barri Grant: And you know, in some families that I have worked with, disappearing relatives overnight and never speaking their name again is awful, removing photos from the home. I've heard every story, and I was hell-bent on keeping that relationship with my mother open, connected. I wanted to talk about her. I wanted to tell her stories. And the more I did, the more I realized that others wanted to tell their stories too.

Barri Grant: And so I started my work, really, as a peer. I opened a group on the Saturday before Mother's Day, which became a really difficult day for me, after I had a child, people wanting to celebrate me as a mom, but feeling like that day just was so heavy and so hard, and I'd cursed the Hallmark aisle, and just was, like, really so angry that nobody even took notice. You know, now we have, like, Etsy sending you lovely notes and saying, "Would you like to opt out of this holiday?" There's a lot more sensitivity around the way that we are, you know, communicating about mother loss, father loss, child loss. But back then, there was none.

Barri Grant: And I thought, if I open a door, maybe I will find those that want to come and sit with me on the Saturday before Mother's Day. We'll sort of "Take Back the Night," as it were, we'll have this Saturday, and then we'll be able to meet Sunday in a way that feels like we have reckoned with our grief and allowed it space and time and community and movement. So it was always like at my old yoga studio, and we would do the movement and gathering in community and sharing our mother's name. Some folks that had great relationships with their mom, others very complicated and complex, some shrouded with guilt and shame and "what ifs." And it was just such a beautiful way of seeing one another and being heard and witnessed in our grief. And everybody would walk out and say, "There is nowhere to go for this," you know? And and then in whispers, "And do you think you could do one for Father's Day? And do you think you might do one for..." And so that's sort of how the circle grew. But the idea was a place and space, whether it was mine, or wherever we could gather in the city to sit shoulder to shoulder with others who were living with loss of any and every incarnation, and that's really where it all began.

Laurie James: And that's so beautiful, because there aren't a lot of places like that, and again, there are more now. But I can even remember when my kids were little, there was a mom in our school. She had kids similar ages, and she was a grief counselor. And I was like, I almost like, it took me a minute, like a grief counselor, like, why would you need that? That just go, you know, and that goes to show you what state I was in back then, when my kids were little, because I was in survival mode. I had four kids under the age of five, so I was like, we gotta get stuff done. Let's just do this. It's like feelings, emotions. What are those like?

Laurie James: And you talk about, you know, where we learn things. Like, I didn't learn to, I didn't have, that's one of the things that was missing with me. Relationship with my mom because of her own grief, I didn't have that open communication because some of my listeners know this already, but I'm adopted, and my mom lost her, she had a stillborn at eight months, then the cord was wrapped around its neck. So she went on to adopt my oldest brother. Then in between, my oldest brother, brother, and my middle brother, I'm the youngest of the three that were all adopted from different families, they adopted another little girl, and then six months into them having them, the birth mother came and took that baby away. Oh, how heartbreaking. Yeah, and so when I came along, my mom had already lost two baby girls, so I always knew I was loved, but it was almost like, come closer, but not that close, right? Like I'm holding one hand as a stop sign and I'm waving my other hand on for those who are watching or listening to this, right? It's like, "Stop," like, "Come, stop, come." And that's what I felt.

Laurie James: And I didn't under, I didn't really understand all that until in my 40s, when I learned that story from my dad. My dad was the one that told me that story, and I always kind of knew there was because, you know, you search in the drawers and everything. And I was like, "Who is this, baby Julie?" Like, there was baby shower cards and "Welcome, baby Julie." And there was even a picture. I was like, "Who was baby Julie?" And then, you know, you become a teenager. You don't think about it, you move on. But it was a really healing moment for me, because it really helped me to better understand where my mom, her state, because it was always a very confusing message for me.

Barri Grant: I'm sure, I'm sure. And had they had the foresight to share early on, yeah, and open that. I think those family secrets, it's like you knew when you were talking about like going through the drawers and finding the things, there's a feeling we have, there's a clue, there's something we know, there's a knowing. 

Laurie James: Yeah, and I was searching, I think I was looking for answers back then, and then I found something, but I didn't feel comfortable enough with to have that conversation with my mom about what that was. It was really my dad and her best friend that I was able to have that conversation with. So it's always so interesting to reflect back and to see how our family or of origin and how that affects how we grieve, and also back then for our parents, or at least my parents, it wasn't talked about at all, right? 

Barri Grant: And wasn't Generational, right? It's generation, generational, and that is also why I think we're doing a better job. Because, as you said, I think all of mental health and well-being and this sense of belonging and meaning-making and connection is all out in the open now. And I think again, I see a lot of it coming on the heels of the pandemic, because we also then sort of did this, like return to normal, which we know there was no returning to normal after we had all lived through what we had lived through, and yet, there we were, back to consumerism. And it's the same with grief. You know, our return to work is three days maybe, of bereavement leave. So societally, as you said, there was never a chance to say, "I am leaning on the community," like everyone would know if we were in our little, you know, circles of support of the old days, we would know if someone in our community had experienced a loss, and they would lift us up and, yeah, bring us casseroles and support and watch children and and all of that. But we're so disparate, and we're so consumer-driven that we're just back to work faster than well.

Laurie James: But that's what our society rewards us, right? I mean, our society rewards us to be productive, of course, and our to-do list, which I get wrapped up in too, and just from a somatic place that puts us up in our heightened state of activation and sympathetic, so you can't, you don't have time to feel or to, you know, kind of come down into a rest and digest place to be able to process our emotions, right?

Barri Grant: And who wants to slow down enough to really sit in that discomfort? You know, we're Yeah, to sit with it, but you know, like I said about showing up in Chicago and thinking I had escaped my very own grief. If we don't, it will find you, and as you know, we'll show up in all sorts of aches, pains, ailments. I know it firsthand. Yeah. I mean. So the list goes on and on, and we need to, I call it grief tending, and it is finding the tools and ways that we can be with our grief on purpose, with purpose that feels like we're showing up for ourselves. And some of that could just be, like I said, in the remembering of our people, in the connecting to our loved ones, still in creating these continuing bonds and making meaning of our loss. That's so hard to really imagine in early grief, just trying to find your safety in the world and your sense of identity on the other side of of a loss of all kinds, but I really believe that it is something we learn to live with.

Laurie James: Yeah. So we've touched on a lot of different things so far. Is there something else that we get wrong? I mean, we talked about the societal issues. Are there other pieces that we get wrong about grief in general? Yeah. And if so, what are those?

Barri Grant: Yeah, that it's linear. You know, sometimes we have been told in the past that we lean on stages. We Yeah, the five stages of grief, yeah, that were really made for the dying. They were made by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross for those that were living with terminal illness, and because we were so interested in finding a way I think around and through, while we do touch on anger, denial, and, you know, all the stages along the long arc of loss, what I think we get wrong is that we don't check them off and then we are done. I don't, I think we also think that we are going to find closure, and that goes for death and non-death loss. And I think we just learn, even though you know, even listening to your revelation at 40, we go back and revisit things that we couldn't have known, and we continue to find ways to explore and revisit and reimagine and redefine our grief when we are old enough and ready to look at it with new eyes, a fresh perspective, some distance, healing. Whatever that might be. So I feel very much always like the 27 year old in parts of myself, looking back with the 30 year old, the 40 year old, the 50 year old, the 60 year old, you know, really looking back and finding a lot of self-compassion for what I couldn't have known and wasn't ready to deal with, right?

Laurie James: Yeah, and I think that's, that's a hard place. I think for a lot of us, is that, and I know it's been hard for me, and it's hard for some of my clients that I work with, is that self-compassion. And I've heard you talk about earlier, you talked about, you know, you just don't rely on anybody, right? I mean, we didn't see our parents relying on anybody. They did it. They shoved it. So it's like, okay, well, I should be able to do this too. Why do I need to support, have somebody else support me? Again, it wasn't really into my 40s until I really started to respect and value therapists, my own healing journey, community. I know you have The Memory Circle, incredible community, healing, and community. And going back to the COVID thing, I mean, we had, I had my little COVID pod, and, you know, and we would sit outside in my front yard or somebody else's backyard, and we like, we needed that community.

Barri Grant: We need connection and belonging. We need to be witnessed in our grief, being heard, understood. I don't think we get that right. You know, we don't know until we know, and I see the beauty of support circles and grief retreats, where you really kind of drop out of the day-to-day life to do, as I said, to show up for your grief, which sounds to a lot of people unimaginable, like

Laurie James: A death sentence, exactly.

Barri Grant: But I watch broken hearts walk in with the body language of sort of shoulders drooped forward and sadness in their eyes. And I watch as hearts open and stories connect and we see the microcosm of the world in each other's grief stories and create this beautiful wisdom exchange. I hear something you say. I mean, we've already been doing it in this entire conversation. I hear something you say, and it resonates with me, or I've never been able to put to words exactly what you're saying, and all of a sudden it becomes a learning experience. It's almost like, to me, it's almost like watching memoir unfold in group work. Like you, you hear someone's story, and you read that one line, and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, yeah, I'm not alone." And I think that is the part. There's so much we can feel so alone in our grief. It can be so isolating, because we can't imagine that we will never be out of the pain, that acute pain. And then we play the grief Olympics. We start to play the compare mine to yours thing, and because our loved one was perhaps a little bit older, or someone seems like their loss is perhaps more traumatic, we're really good at discounting our own. And it's not as bad as...

Laurie James: Right, someone else has it worse, so I shouldn't feel as bad. Is that what you're saying?

Barri Grant: Yes. So permission. You know, I always, someone, that's how I got the name of my Substack, because people always say to me, "I feel like you gave me permission to..." You have the permission. We don't need the permission in any com, like you said, coming back to our self means, "Who am I? How can I meet myself on this side of grief, so that I feel whole in a new way?"

Laurie James: Yeah, I love everything that you said. But one of the things I want to ask you, because I know I experienced this with myself, and I see it in other people that are dealing with grief, or because I work with people that are, you know, getting divorced or going through, you know, the healing space of divorce or loss of relationship, and I've certainly had my own as well. But what is your view? Or what do you see from your side, when people fear touching up against that grief and processing that, or what I call what I talk about with my clients, is allowing it to emerge so we can experience, express, and expel it?

Barri Grant: Right? I think we are afraid of it. As you said, it's kind of like stepping back, because especially in, I remember getting divorced, a friend said, "I can't imagine. I don't know what I would do if it were me." I said, "Well, here's the good news, it's not you," but I think that is really what it is, that we can see the fragility that people realize, "Oh, if this could happen to Barri and this could happen to Laurie, then this could happen to me." So the fear lies in seeing yourself in their shoes, right? And realizing that it could.

Barri Grant: I remember thinking, this happens to other people. And then shame on me, because we read People Magazine and such and such and such and such a celebrity was getting a divorce, and we were like reading all of the details. They're human beings, right, right, going through this under the microscope of the entire world watching the horror of what we know and broken court systems and you know so much,

Laurie James: And children being pawns, and the divorce process, and then the media just ripping people apart, almost feels like without any consideration for, you know, the emotions and what's happening to the family, for

Barri Grant: Sure, exactly. And so I thought, shame on me. This doesn't happen to other people. We are all other people. This is happening every day, all around us. And I often say, what if we walked around with like, what, what it was that ails us on our shirt and met each other, and I saw all of yours on your shirt, and you saw all about what a beautiful place it would be if we could meet each other and know. But the truth is that that's going on every day in all of the people we meet. I always assume when I'm like, cut off in traffic, I'm like, "Grief. Barista's in a bad mood," I'm like, "Grief."

Laurie James: I mean, I'm laughing, but it's true, because we all are grieving or processing or, you know, we don't know what it somebody else's story is.

Barri Grant: No, we don't. And early on in my own story, I thought I would really disappoint my mother if I in any way defined myself as drawn as I was to this work, if I defined myself in any way by my loss, and also that if I talked about it, that I would become the sad girl in the room. And the interesting thing is the exact opposite. People are like, "You're, I feel like a hope dealer," like people are like, "Oh, you gave me so much hope that on the other side of this I will not feel this way forever. I will not be in this pain forever." I, you know,

Laurie James: Yeah, but, and that's so, that's beautifully said, because I'm a hope dealer, because the kind of gets to what I experience. And maybe when people come to you, they're already ready, but I come across a lot of people that are so afraid to touch into that pain that's associated with grief or associated with trauma, a past trauma, and you know, somatically, and I'm sure your work is very similar in the sense that we take small steps and we might just touch the edges of it, right? We're not diving all the way into the deep end of the pool and saying, "Okay, sink or swim." Like we just first step. Yes, titrate.

Barri Grant: So what I often will say to folks is, imagine a big, giant piece of black paper, like poster board, and I take a little pin, and I just poke the pin into the black paper. And even with that pin, I can see light come through the black paper. And that's what I imagine, that if you can see it, if you can touch it, if you can, just like you said, put your toe in the water, you will do it again. It won't come all at once in a rush, but if you know the light is there, you will touch the light again. And so many people tell me, "I have to think of that black paper all the time. I love that analogy." Yeah. "I couldn't really believe you when you said it the first time, but now I do," and they say over time, "that paper looks like a sky full of stars,"

Laurie James: Yeah, uh-huh. I love that. That is such a beautiful analogy, and I think really gets to the point of what I was trying to say. And, you know, we don't, yes, we don't need to tackle everything, but that, I think, is also a problem with our Amazon Instant Gratification society. It's like, "Oh, well, my dad died, you know, a month ago. I should feel better now,"

Barri Grant: Right, right? Or we give ourselves that year of firsts, and we think after the first year of going through all the firsts without them, we will. And I always say, "We're always at the then I will be, then you will be through the first year." I will never right-side the grief. You know, I always say, "I'll never shove a crystal up your ass." I will. I will, literally, never right-side the, the work that this is exactly as you said, will touch on all different kinds of tools that suit each person, right? I have people that are like, "Don't make me breathe." I'll do breathing techniques that don't make me breathe.

Barri Grant: I always tell people how great crying is. The first thing we do is we apologize for our tears. I'm like, "Tears are movement." I'm more worried about my folks that can't cry than the ones that cry easily. When we try to control our grief, the only control we have is how we meet it, right? We didn't sign up for this. We didn't ask for it, but we do have control over how we meet it. One of my mentors, Claire Bidwell Smith, calls that conscious grieving, and I love that concept, because we can choose to meet it with whatever tools, whatever energy, and whatever resources we can and are willing to allow ourselves to be with. And it is an

Laurie James: Allowing and what we can at any given time. You know, I've

Barri Grant: Met mine over and over and over again. It has changed shape. And if you had told me, you know, in '93 that I would befriend my grief, that I would work in this space, in any way, would find meaning in this, I would never wish for any of it again. But now that it's here, I almost can't imagine what my life would have been without it.

Laurie James: Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get that, and I feel the same way about everything that I've gone through. Right? I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but I wouldn't be the person I am today. I wouldn't have done my own work on myself. I wouldn't be sitting here having this incredibly beautiful conversation with you about grief. So I love all that, and this is dropping around the holidays. So, and I know you talked about, you know, grief is constant, and I know there's what's called secondary grief, and for me, I know that's come up several times during the holidays. For me, secondary losses, yeah. So can you touch on that, and maybe some tips of things people can do this time of the year to just kind of get through the holiday. Holidays, if, even if it's new, or three years out, five years, eight years, 10 years.

Barri Grant: Yeah, I was just talking about it this week. I think ritual is one of the most beautiful ways of meeting our grief. So that can be a playlist that reminds you of your loved one if you want to do something that's very subtle and and quiet, but know that the music that's around you honors them, their favorite foods, their favorite recipe. Some people make a place setting. Some do a toast to them each year at the holidays. Some buy an ornament for the tree. Some put a photo in a photo frame. You know, we are all digital. Sometimes I say, take the time to print the photos, favorites, and put them in frames and put them all around the house at the holidays, so that your loved ones are in the room, so that we pass by and we see them, have little chit chats with them, write a letter, write a beautiful letter to them.

Barri Grant: And I always say, if you can write to them with your dominant hand and you're seeking their wisdom and their advice, ask for what you need and write from them with your non-dominant hand. It's such a gorgeous exercise.

Laurie James: Wow, I love that. That's beautiful. It's a, it's a beautiful exercise.

Barri Grant: And for other of my clients, when the holidays really are too hard to bear, permission to ditch. Like if you really need to do something else entirely. Sometimes it's like a movie on Thanksgiving Day and then a gathering with friends on Friday, where you decide we're not going to have all the traditional foods that we usually have on the Thursday, and on the Friday, we're having like a big Italian meal or Chinese food or whatever it is that feels soothing and comforting, but you can take a break from whatever it was that might be too much to bear, and take the day off.

Laurie James: Yeah, and what about divorce? People that, you know, you and I have both experienced divorce. I know for me that second year, because I was the one that left the house. My ex stayed in the house. My kids were gone. All of them had flown the coop. So that second year, the first year, I had just left. So we all did something at the house. I still cooked, even though, which is unusual. Yeah, well, it was not, that wasn't the first year wasn't great either, because I basically all my kids were in the house. I was in an apartment, and then I came back to the house and did all the cooking, and then I went back, and I do not recommend that. And then the second year, because we hosted Thanksgiving for 26 years. And so then the second year, two my kids didn't come home, two of my four didn't come home, and we went to a restaurant. And I

Barri Grant: Was, we did that the first year we went to a restaurant, the year after my grandmother died, and we tried, and all of a sudden, we were the last there, and they started putting the chairs back on the tables. And my mom lost it. She just lost it. I think she was holding it all together, trying to do something completely different, because my grandmother had hosted for all the years, and she just couldn't bear doing the same thing. But I think for a divorce, we can volunteer. I think it's great. Like I said, sometimes that family dinner has to become something entirely new, and we can all decide to volunteer. If you have to split the day, sometimes making a plan in advance, doing certain amount of courses at one spot and a certain amount of courses at another spot.

Barri Grant: Friendsgiving is one of my favorite ever newer traditions, where we gather the family of our choice, and sometimes that includes friends, sometimes it includes a lot of other moms or dads that have nowhere to go, and you gather all the loose threads, and you make a big old potluck. You know, there's so many ways to get creative, and also it's still hard that the traditions that you imagine that you would have for a lifetime that are no longer can be hard when you're not celebrating them.

Laurie James: And the one thing I would add to that too, which was from my learned experience, is, you know, after the second year, I had such a horrible Thanksgiving. Then Christmas came and I asked for what I needed from my kids. I mean, three of them were in college. One was out. But I asked them, I'm like, "This is what I need." And I don't think that we often do that as parents or mothers to ask, ask what we need.

Barri Grant: Sure, what would be most comfortable. I think also we don't realize that. We think that our parents, you know, can lead the charge, right? And so

Laurie James: I don't think my kids think I'm actually human, but sometimes I have to remind them I have feelings too.

Barri Grant: I know. I think it's important. You know, some parents will say to me, "I try not to cry in front of my kids." I think it's beautiful to say, "I'm sad, I'm grieving. I'm having a hard time being away," not making it their problem, but coming up with solutions where we can all feel comfortable on that day can be really beautiful. I mean, I was the dessert house for a long time. I'm not the cooking mom, but I'm a good apple pie mom, and we would do the dessert house and movie nights. And I think we created a lot of new traditions. I mean, before there were charcuterie boards, I was having hors d'oeuvre night with my girls, because I wasn't in the mood to cook. I wasn't in the mood to return to try to put together a traditional evening that we used to have when it felt anything but, and I was away from all of my family, plane rides, away from, you know, doing some things that we used to do. And you have the power, like you said, ask for what you need, but you can also tell the story in a new way. And that can be for most, I would say, for most, any tradition that you've had in the past. How do you want it to look moving forward? And maybe it's a little bit of what you used to do and a whole lot of something new.

Laurie James: Yeah, and being open to that, it doesn't have to, you can create new traditions exactly in this exact chapter of your life, whether it's divorce or loss of a loved one that used to host the holidays for us.

Barri Grant: Right? And I wasn't ready to be the matriarch, you know, I was the eldest, but I wasn't ready. I was 27. I really wasn't ready. So I also had to ask family and friends for what I needed when I realized I couldn't do it. Grief is not a solo sport in any incarnation. We need to ask for help. It's not easy, it's not comfortable for all of us, but it really makes a huge difference. Find community, find one. I know that people put me in touch with a lot after I went through my divorce, would introduce people to me and so I could share with them best practices. So I always say, we become lantern bearers, right? You're teaching people what you learned, the mistakes that you made. Same as me. I think any way that we can make the path a little bit easier for others, even on, you know, sharing in a podcast that we can make it easier for others, that's the job. I think that's the gift. All of that hard-earned wisdom, if you can share that with others and make their path a little bit more gentle, a little bit easier, that's the gift in all of this.

Laurie James: Yeah, agreed. I think that's why we do what we do, right? I

Barri Grant: Know and I want to know stories. I want to know stories of your loved one at the holidays. So if you don't know how to show up for others in a season when it may be their first without a loved one, their first without the family as they knew it, ask for stories, ask to see pictures. What makes them feel comfortable? Can I make a recipe? You might not be up for it, but maybe you have a recipe that you would share with someone says, "What can I bring?" "Oh, it'd be so great if you made grandma's mashed potatoes," and you could just give that recipe over. You may not be up for it, but you can certainly assign a friend who wants to be of service and be of help.

Laurie James: That's beautiful. So as we come to a close, I know we've shared so much. Is there a confession or parting words that you want to leave our listeners with today? Yeah,

Barri Grant: I go back to 27-year-old me, and I visit with her, and I write these, like "Dear Barri" letters. And

Laurie James: Yeah, I think you wrote one in your Substack recently. Yeah, I think

Barri Grant: It's really important that we find that self-compassion for all the, we all the little Barri's that we didn't know. And yeah, this year, as I turned 60, I was like, I am 27 turning 60, there are so many parts of me that feel young, that feel like I could allow her to get rid of the shame that she had. And yeah, I write to her. I write to her all the time. And I think it's such a good practice, and also a way of connecting with our younger self. It can be for forgiveness. It can be, you know, for all the rifling through the

Laurie James: Yeah, a little nurturing that maybe that younger mothering, yeah, remothering that we didn't get back then, I think that's another huge piece as well. Nurturance.

Barri Grant: Yeah, it's sort of like going back for a hug and really re-parenting, re-mothering, nurturance, all of that that we know better now, but we can really care for that. It doesn't even have to be young you. It can be last year, you just going now and yeah, loving, loving yourself in all of the stages and all of the ages across this very long arc that we live along with grief. Beautiful, beautiful.

Laurie James: Barri, how can people find you?

Barri Grant: At The Memory Circle on Instagram, at Permission Granted on Substack, my newsletter. It's also all the paid subscriptions go to help fund scholarships to my grief support circles. So I don't believe that money should ever come between us and and grief. And so if there is a time where you feel you are in need, just send a DM, no questions asked. There's always scholarship money because of all people that subscribe and if, if you have a little extra this holiday, so you then want to support another griever, it's a great, you get a newsletter and writing groups and all kinds of perks and benefits, but you also help a griever find their way to some

Laurie James: Support. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much for being here with me today and all of us. And Happy Holidays to you. And I so appreciate your time and wisdom.

Barri Grant: Oh, Happy Thanksgiving and and you'll have to let me know what's what's on tap this year. Yeah, something new. Something new that you brought to the table. I'm going to do the same. Okay,

Laurie James: Sounds great.