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Navigating the tumultuous seas of grief and maintaining long-term relationships is no small feat. Whether it's dealing with the loss of a loved one, experiencing the invisible wounds of unacknowledged grief, or simply trying to find a balance between independence and partnership, many find themselves overwhelmed. How does one transition from anger to trust, from isolation to intimacy, while respecting the complexities of their emotions and relational dynamics?

In this episode, we'll explore practical strategies and heartfelt insights to help you navigate these challenging waters. Discover how personal spirituality, a scientific mindset, and philosophical wisdom can intertwine to provide guidance and support on your journey. Learn about the life reentry process, understand the concept of invisible losses, and gain valuable advice on shifting perspectives to unlock the potential for fulfilling relationships and personal growth. Through real-life experiences of overcoming profound grief and the transformative power of vulnerability, this episode offers a beacon for those seeking a path from survival to thriving in their emotional and relational lives.

Christina Rasmussen is an acclaimed grief educator and bestselling author of Second Firsts (Hay House, 2013), Where Did You Go? (Harper One, 2018), and Invisible Loss (Sounds True, 2024). In 2010, four years after her spouse passed away from Stage 4 colon cancer, she created the Life Reentry process. Christina holds a master’s degree in guidance and counseling (University of Durham). She is finishing her master of fine arts degree in painting and drawing (Academy of Art).

In this episode

9:49 Christina’s journey from the corporate world to grief author.

14:33 The role of intuition and the universe’s support.

19:23 Navigating new relationships after loss.

27:05 How people often remain in survival mode after trauma, not recognizing the potential for a fulfilling life beyond their past hardships.

28:20 Identifying and addressing invisible losses.

37:51 The complexities of balancing financial independence and trust in new relationships.

43:42 Long-term relationship dynamics continuous growth and understanding within marriage.

48:59 The concept of invisible loss: Unseen griefs and their impact on life progress.

50:33 Hope and transformation through life reentry: Shifting perspectives and embracing future possibilities.

Your Check List of Actions to Take

• Make a conscious effort to recognize small, often invalidated losses in your life using tools such as a journal to note these experiences.
• Trust your inner voice or intuition when making significant life changes, even when facing uncertainty or challenges.
• Engage with a therapist or counselor to navigate grief more effectively, especially when using resources like Christina's life reentry map.
• Gradually allow yourself to be vulnerable in new relationships by communicating openly and taking small steps towards trust.
• Actively work on changing your perspectives on past events and future possibilities through reflection and mindfulness practices.
• Find or create support networks with people who have experienced similar losses to share experiences and provide mutual support.
• Approach financial discussions with your partner as a form of negotiation and sharing, recognizing that money can symbolize deeper aspects of value and trust.
• Accept that personal growth and understanding within a relationship are ongoing processes and commit to learning more about yourself and your partner over time.

Mentioned

Invisible Loss (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Second Firsts (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Where Did You Go? (*Amazon Affiliate link) (book)

Life Reentry (website)

The 31-Day Kindness Challenge (free guide) (pdf)

Connect with Christina Rasmussen

Website: christinarasmussen.com

Facebook: facebook.com/Secondfirsts

X: x.com/Secondfirsts

Instagram: instagram.com/christinarasmussen7

Connect with Dr. Jessica Higgins

Facebook: facebook.com/EmpoweredRelationship 

Instagram: instagram.com/drjessicahiggins 

Podcast: drjessicahiggins.com/podcasts/

Pinterest: pinterest.com/EmpowerRelation 

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/drjessicahiggins 

Twitter: @DrJessHiggins 

Website: drjessicahiggins.com  

Email: [email protected]

About this Episode

Christina, thank you for joining us today.

So good to be here, Jessica. I can already tell this is going to be a great conversation. I love the energy and just the way I feel right now, and I'm looking forward to talking about anything that comes up that feels right for us today.

Well, thank you for just saying that. As we were just briefly chatting, your commitment to authenticity and real presence, and just allowing what is to emerge. I'm grateful for that focus, because as you know, we can all get attached to whatever goal we're perceiving. So wonderful.

Well, also for our focus for today's conversation, you are supporting so many people in navigating loss and grief. Before we pivot to the topic of how people might negotiate or navigate grief. I want to say healing, but I also know sometimes that even healing has a goal in mind, and sometimes the journey of grief looks very different for different people. But before we turn towards grief in relationship and what to consider there, what would you like people to know about you and your perspective, where you're coming from?

I want to start by saying, I grew up in a small town in Greece. So my first language, I guess I don't know if Greek is still my first language, since I spent more years. I lived in the UK for 10 years and did all of my graduate work and my undergraduate there as well, and then the rest U.S. But I've spent the first 18 years of my life in Greece. My parents live there, my sister lives there. So when I started writing books and writing for people about grief and what I call life re-entry, I never expected any of this. It was very unexpected.

So I grew up in Greece, and then I moved to the UK. I wanted to study grief. I was actually very fascinated by it before the loss of my first husband. I had no idea my life was going to change. As I share often, when I did my thesis, I chose the stages of bereavement. Because I wanted to figure out how to help people overcome losing the love of their lives. I'm sure you feel the same, we love people so much, we couldn't imagine losing them. I couldn't imagine losing someone, and all I could think about is how people get through something so devastating. So that's the way the journey started. Just, I would say two or three years later, my, at the time, 31-year-old husband was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer.

This was two, three years after your thesis?

After my graduating, we moved to Houston, Texas. Our first daughter was born in Houston. Then we moved to the Bay Area, San Jose. We were living just in the borders of San Jose in Santa Clara, and my second daughter was born in a hospital in Santa Clara. Then we moved. Literally, I would say exactly three years after graduating, we moved to the U.S. We moved to Boston, and within two months, he was diagnosed with stage four. That was so catastrophic. It felt like my body couldn't handle it. I started thinking, even during the diagnosis, that anything I knew, I studied, I researched, I learned about grief, went out the window. Because it was so much more catastrophic than I imagined. By then, when we were living in Houston, I would facilitate support groups for spouses who lost their loved ones, before any of this happened. Then, I also volunteered in hospice to sit with the dying, so their families could go home and shower, as part of the service of volunteering. I had no idea that it would've been so painful.

I remember when the diagnosis happened, he lived for about three and a half years with stage four. I was grateful. We were grateful. The girls went from nine months old and two-and-a-half-year-old to four and six years old, and they have memories of him. But I remember, the principal of the elementary school of my kids, she said to me at the time, before he passed. She said: I know it's hard now, but it will be harder when he passes. I said to her at the time, how could it be harder? We've spent over three years waiting for this to happen, and it's been just devastating. She said, it's worse. And she was right, it was much worse. It was unthinkable, and also, I really felt like an alien on Planet Earth. Like, I couldn't process it, I couldn't understand it. Of course, I was a single parent then, and I was like, I can't believe this is happening. So that's how it all started. That was the beginning of this journey.

Wow. Well, thank you for sharing, and I can appreciate just what you're capturing here. I'm so struck by, first of all, my empathy of the impact and how catastrophic, how foreign it felt to exist in that loss and that grieving. Words probably aren't sufficient. Just the disorientation of how to function as a single parent, and all the layers. I know we're going to get into the negotiating of this. I'm also so fascinated that you were already studying and working with the end-of-life phase and had all the principles in mind of what the journey of grieving looks like.

Jessica, I was angry at the universe, God, whoever is up there doing whatever contract I had. Obviously, now I understand it looking back, that this was destined in every way. I couldn't have predicted, foreseen, understood anything that happened after he passed. I remember thinking, like, I was angry. I was mad at the world. I was angry at him. Talk about relationships, this is not something I actually share very often, ever maybe. Maybe I haven't shared it before. But since this is a relationship podcast, I want to say that dealing with stage four cancer in the relationship, in a young relationship or young marriage, with two little, very, very tiny kids, was so hard in many ways. He was obviously struggling with his own mortality, and he was processing it differently. We were so different as well.

Because there's anticipatory grief. So you were both grieving, even though he was still living.

Yes, exactly. We were grieving in different ways. We were learning what to let go in different ways. I remember, one day, this was probably year two of the diagnosis. I remember I was emptying the dishwasher or something, and the kids were playing. He was in pain a lot of the time. I remember looking out the window and I remember thinking, I wish it was me instead of him, and then I just felt like running away. Just literally running. I remember reading a fiction book many years ago about this woman, it was called Ladder of Years. It's a very well-known book, a British book. This woman just left her house, not because of tragedy. I don't even remember the details, but I remember she just opened the door and left.

I mean, he was the love of my life. I would never leave. But when you are in a relationship and you're going through something so tragic, so difficult, it's such an inhuman experience happening in a human body and mind and brain. We were so imperfect and so young and so lost. But we did it, and we got through it. You forget any problems in the relationship afterwards. It's been so many years now, you forget. You just remember the courage we both had and how we navigated. We had therapists, and we went to support groups, and we did all of that, thank goodness. For anyone who's listening, please, seek help when things are hard. There's a lot of terrain to navigate in a relationship. However happy and in love you are with your spouse, these things are hard. Many things are hard. We'll talk about invisible losses too. But we were dealing with a lot at the time.

It doesn't sound like you had perhaps a lot of community yet, or maybe you did, but family. Just moving internationally, there's loss there. Even though it's not death loss, it's still loss.

Yes. We had a lot of good friends. When you have young children, the good thing is that you have all these mothers. We were going the playground together. I had to get out of the house. Whether I was driving him to chemotherapy with the babies in the car, whether he was throwing up in a bucket driving back, I had to go to a play date. Like, there's all these things, it's built-in, and thank goodness for that. Because like you said, you're right, our families were overseas. His family lives in Denmark, and my family lives in Greece. I use present tense because they're still living far away. Actually, my girls are flying to Denmark tomorrow to see their grandparents. Now they don't need me to take them, they're older. But they would visit. The parents would visit, of course. But you're all by yourself.

In many ways, even when there's people around, when you're going through something like this, it's such a lonely experience. Sometimes the more people around, the more lonely it is. Especially, we were so young, none of my amazing friends. They were crying for me, and I couldn't cry at the time. It was so hard. They were distraught for me, but they couldn't possibly understand what was happening to me. It's impossible. You can have the best friend. People say, what do you say to someone in grief? I'm like, you'll never get it right buddy. I know there's all these books about it.

What to say when someone's grieving?

There's all these books about: This is what to say, this is not what to say. You know what, there shouldn't even be a rulebook about that. I've never said this before. But there was never going to be anything right during that time.

There's nothing to make it better or comforting.

You're losing your mind. I was feeling crazy, insane. I was definitely finding wrongs with everything. Anything anyone said or did, it was wrong. Because nothing was right. It was like, I was still living in the old life, but that life was gone. So I was in a ghost town, and how I discovered the waiting room. Like, I'm a very visual person, I see everything. So when I look out there, I see a tree. But I see everything in my mind.

However wrong it is, exactly. Well, I want to pause. There's so many directions and so much you have to offer here. Just for people listening, and maybe you can help me if this resonates. As I'm hearing you describe these early years of marriage, and also the diagnosis and just the chemotherapy, and all the intensity of anticipatory grief. As you're saying, it's like, I'm living this life, but it's so different than what it was. It sounds like, with the courage you mentioned a moment ago, there was still desire to find each other, to find connection. I'm just feeling so empathetic to it. Because a lot of my work, when I work with partners in relationship, helping them work with the blocks that interfere their connecting, their vulnerability, their real seeing each other. Sometimes there is trauma and tragedy and things that they're negotiating, and sometimes it's previous loss and trauma in their life that they have their protective ways of dealing with.

People are negotiating obstacles of how to find connection and intimacy, and sometimes it's tremendous. We could put a lot of words on it, but there's an obstacle and a block. You both had a tremendous block, and you're even saying there's moments where I could feel many parts of me wanting to flee, and you stayed, because you're describing the love of your life. I mean, what a contrast to hold! The immense devastation and catastrophe, and also the choice of turning towards.

Yes, and I'm so glad you are saying this. Because I've been remarried for many years now, and we'll talk about blending family as well. We could have three conversations, Jessica. Because there's so much, what I call invisible loss, in blending a family and coming together. But you're always apart in some way because you didn't start out together, and different parenting models. Oh my gosh, there's so many things, so many things, so many things.

There's such a duality in our relationships. Often, the instinct to run away is married with the instinct of love. As long as we have that marriage, then I think we'll find a way. I don't know if that makes any sense.

Well, we're contending with enormous amounts of pain. You're describing unfathomable amounts of pain, both in the few years before his death, and then afterwards. It's just unfathomable, and contending with that pain, how to still search or how to still reach for connection?

Yeah. I'm a person that even though I'm an introvert, I actually process verbally and want to talk about things. And he was an introvert, in a different way. He was also highly intelligent. Like, he was a genius, he was number one. That's why I always say, the wrong parent was going, because he was the smarter of the two. So he was intellectualizing things in a different way. But we were navigating this in such a different way. I would be crying, and his processing was in his own a lot of time. He was quiet. But of course, looking back, the thing is, as you know, with the amazing work that you do, there's no voice that's going to come down and say: Guys, listen, this is exactly it, you're doing it. There's no other way to do this. You're going to go through it this way, and you're going to go through it that way. Of course, we had to take care of the kids, and he was working full-time.

It's like you're speaking different grief languages almost.

He was working full-time. And because we moved from the UK, we're still waiting for that green card to come through, for me to be able to make a living, to use my skill.

Wow, and the fear.

Oh my God, yes. It came through six months before he died. I mean, we were going to go back to the UK if he had passed. Because we were there with his job, while waiting for the green card to come through. If he had passed before that happened, the work visa that brings his spouse here would no longer be working with the company, who were great. But anyway, there's so many things that were destiny also. Everyone who's listening to this, I want to say.

I wish someone had come to me and said, just trust this. Just trust. It's going to be okay. Of course it's not okay, but it's also going to be okay. It's interesting, and you are different afterwards. You're someone else, and when you go into new relationships, you are someone else. You don't know who you are when you're starting a new relationship after something like this. The world has a lot to say about it as well.

Wow. So you're speaking about trusting, even in this immense pain. That it's not okay, so how do I trust? Yet, well, I think of surrender when I think of the opposite of control in these terms. Also, just the impact of someone passing, or loved one or spouse or love of our life passing, and knowing we will be different. Or maybe we don't even know that we're going to be different. But you're speaking into the experience of many people, and yourself mostly here, that we are different.

We're so different. In my work, what I always used to say, and I've said a thousand times, when we go through a divorce, for example, it is like a death in a different way. I say that the person is alive for everyone else, but dead for us in many ways.

Yeah, that's really well said.

It's a catastrophic loss in such a different way, and I've seen so many people in my work experiencing, different type, but insanity. I use the word insanity in a very nonclinical way. I'm using it more like a metaphor. You feel like the world is not yours anymore. Everything's spinning. You don't even know yourself anymore. You've lost your compass. There are no words to understand, whether it's a death, a divorce, a breakup. There's so many things.

I actually think the human experience is a really hard one. People say life is hard, but I don't think that's enough to prepare us for the many things. I'm not saying everyone's going to go through tragedy really young. I've also lost a child before that tragedy happened. It was just so many things were happening. I was being funny with God and the universe and saying, why are you giving me so much homework? It was like, what is this, don't I know? As the years went by, I went and worked in the corporate world so I can have health insurance for my kids after he passed. I went and did another postgraduate degree, thinking that I was never going to go back and have a practice or do anything that has to do with grief. You can understand. I'm like, I can't even help myself, how am I going to go help someone else? But I did say, and I've said this a thousand times too, I said: If I ever feel good again, alive again, I will go back and get everyone else. About four years in, after I resigned from my corporate job, I started writing and started doing this. Not even thinking or imagining what would've happened. The work that took place, the clinical trials of the work, the thousands of people that have been helped by this.

I have to tell you, Jessica, there's been a lot of reflecting. I have said this many times, and I believe I'm going to stay to this, this is my last book on grief, and maybe my last book ever. As I'm reflecting and I'm thinking back on this, I couldn't have possibly understood or imagined this journey that had already been chosen. I'm a spiritual person, but I'm also a scientist. I philosophize. I don't believe in a traditional God. But there was something at play here, because I don't believe I'm capable of doing all of this on my own, all of the things that I've done. I could not have. I had some kind of help, because I couldn't have done this on my own. It was impossible.

Yeah. I wonder with you, I know we want to focus on relationship, and there might be some important things you can help people to have a little bit more guidance or orientation around negotiating grief. And also, as you mentioned, spirituality and God, as you were really angry, as you described, initially. Also, as you are with us here, and then looking back, I wish somebody would've just told me to trust.

So much of what you're describing and really recognizing of what was moving through you, or how the destiny or the downloads or what's coming through you. Just even feeling as though you're looking at this being your last work in this regard. I guess I'm curious, how do you feel that, and then more the question was, is there anything you want to share around how it worked in you? To go from such anger and disorientation, to more trust and more real believing, if I can say? That there is something moving through you, that you are allowing and co-creating, if I might say?

That's a good question, Jessica. You're really good at this. You're tapping into it all. It's almost like you've read my mind throughout the years. Because when it started, and I say when it started because it's almost like I stepped into a different world when I resigned from my job and said yes to this. It was like, the universe started rolling out the red carpet.

The assistance you might have gotten. Just things were like, wow, okay!

There's so many things that happened in the beginning to show me that. My first book deal, Second Firsts was my first book, happened within one year. The book came out in 2013. I resigned from my job in 2010. But I had my first book deal in 2011.

That doesn't happen.

I had no connections and networks. I started with zero. Like, zero people, not knowing anything. There was nothing. I remember that happening, and I remember my agent at the time saying to me: Christina, sit down, I have something to tell you. I sat down, and I will never forget that moment, because I had to sit down because it was so unexpected. The way that other people can relate to something like this is that when you step into that trust, whatever that voice inside of you, whether it's to stay in a relationship, whether it's to leave the relationship, you can actually test this out.

I'm not saying, this journey was very hard, doing this work.

No. I mean, I'm imagining, quitting your job, you had to do that afraid.

So afraid. So afraid.

And when we look at it long-term, if I'm hearing you, what you're saying is, when we are tuning into the inner voice, the nudge, that there is the flow or the support, that it's not the struggle that we might feel otherwise when we resist a longing or a dream or something that's ours to do.

Yeah, and also choosing a new partner in life. There's my husband Eric, who also lost his wife. That's how we met. He sat next to me, and I would tell this to people. I would say, in the years after, if I'm ever going to meet anyone else, I would say they'll just have to come and sit next to me. Laughing at it, thinking this is how it's going to have to be. There's no other way I'm going anywhere. I believe in people going out and seeking new partnerships, so I have nothing against that. But in my bereaved state of being, I was definitely resisting that and saying they would have to come and sit next to me. And he did. He came and sat next to me in the group, the support group. That's where we met.

I'm struck. I don't know if this fits, but I'm struck by even what you were talking about, I think a metaphor and visual. But for me, just the relational metaphor of coming and sitting next to me.

Yes, he did, and he's been sitting next to me in sickness and in health, and in all the things that we had to endure. I have two girls, and he has two girls, same age, and we had to blend two families even before we got married. Meaning, we dated alone, and then at some point, you have a play date together and all that. And as I entered that relationship, I was very cold. He still talks about it sometimes, remember how it was? Like, we would have a date and I would sit on the couch, and I would sit all the way to the end of the couch. I would say to him, talk about being direct and transparent. I would say, I need us to just be talking, not holding hands at this point. I need time. That would happen for months. I'd just need time to get physically closer or be more intimate. It took me such a long time. I called it the frozen state. I was so frozen in many ways. So to be vulnerable.

Actually, I don't think I've ever shared this publicly before. It takes a lot to say yes to a new relationship, new marriage, new joy, and new love. Whether the relationship ended in divorce or death or however it is, or you are in a break or separation short-term, I think it's very hard to give yourself to someone else, to say yes to living again, to say yes to life.

Millions of people. When I made that discovery early on in my work, I'm like: Oh my God, everyone is in survival mode, and they're stuck. They think this is their life. They think this is the way it's supposed to be, and it's not. It's not that way. I didn't know that early on. I wasn't understanding this in the beginning of the journey. But it was a very conscious decision to de-freeze, to say: Hey, you can hug me, we can hold hands, then we can get engaged and we can buy a house together. It took me two years in the marriage to say yes to having a joint account. As you know, financials, in a new relationship, in a new marriage, is very hard. It's a hard topic.

It is a hard topic. It represents money as a symbol, the value we associate with it and the meaning we make around it, and how we share that. I'm so struck, Christina! Tell me if this fits for you. That yes, you're speaking about taking a risk for love, yourself, to live in uncharted territory. It isn't what it was. Perhaps you're normalizing that it's a human tendency to protect and be in that state of in-between, or maybe this is what you call the waiting room or the survival mode. What I'm struck by is, it doesn't sound as though, I'm sure it felt like a push.

But it doesn't sound like, to me as a listener, that you jumped off the deep-end and just flew. You were holding support and presencing for yourself to see, where am I? Maybe there's all parts of me that are like a no and no and no, and a block and protection. But there's a part that you could say yes to, and following that, and the courage and the bravery and the risk-taking, emotionally, physically, all the things. It takes to be willing to take that risk. Am I hearing you that it was a both and of like, how to take care of yourself and listen and be really attuned, and also find space and room to reach and be taking those risks?

Yes. In that time, I was in a place where I was taking care of my kids financially, independently. I worked really hard for that. I had a job I did not like, but great prospect for the future. My second postgraduate degree was in human resource management, and I went to Northeastern University. I actually started doing this the year before he passed, we made a decision. Imagine the type of conversations you have to have. I said, I will need to have health insurance for the kids, I want to be working full-time as soon as I can. I went to work, I looked for a job, after he died, too quickly. I shouldn't have done that. There are so many regrets. I was in survival mode of course, and I should have taken a different direction. But anyway, I did it. I was very proud.

For the children, right?

Yes, for the children. I believed in no babysitters. There was one babysitter that would come every Thursday, so I could go to the bookshop and just breathe. I love the bookshops. Just go, even a walk in the grocery aisle, just to be without children for one evening. That was the only help I had. I believed in raising my own kids. I believed in working full-time. I believed in doing it all. So I spent four years doing that.

When you are entering a new relationship, and you're falling in love again slowly and very carefully, you're holding on to your independence. You're holding on to everything. He wanted to give me everything, and he has always been like that. Like, you don't have to work, you don't have to do this. I'm like: Oh yes, I do. You don't understand, I do. For me, after we were married for a couple of years, that was the first time I started letting go of some of the financial, navigating around that and trusting slowly again, which is such a big decision. Stepping out of that waiting room and into the new life.

For anyone who's listening, even when you make the right decision in your relationship, whether to stay, to go, to nurture, there's always going to be difficult times in that relationship. Even if it's the right relationship, the right partnership, the right person, there's going to be many things that are going to go wrong. I'm laughing, maybe it's a coping mechanism. But I always said, what, this too? Along the way. Like, what is happening? I didn't really get along with his children. To share, very mindfully, that portion of a relationship, that is right. But you are in a relationship with not just that one person, you're also in a relationship with so many other people. It's complicated, and you want to make it a fairytale somewhere along the way. I want to have a fairytale somewhere. So there's fairytale in moments, but it's not all of it, and we have to allow for that to be true as well. I don't know, I've never said before.

Oh, my goodness. Well, again, I'm just really recognizing your willingness to go into the unknown and to face obstacles, and what can get created by this willingness. It's not just that it's easy and it's pretty, and it's all the convenient, super sexy, yummy things.

Here I am, re-entering my life, not in the waiting room. The expectation of perfection is actually going to put you in survival mode, and I didn't have all this knowledge then either. Being in that choice that is the right choice, but it will never be perfect. I don't know.

It feels perfect now, but not because it's perfect, but because of, oh my God, the lessons we've learned, the work we've done in our relationship, how we grew together as people. When one was growing this way and the other one was growing that way, we had to find a way to come back to each other, and that was not easy. There are so many things that take place in a relationship, even with people who have gone through tragedy. We both have gone through it. His first wife was the same. She was same age, young. She collapsed in the shower. It was very tragic, unexpected, sudden experience. So he had gone through it, so we both came in.

We are still learning about each other, and we've been married for 14 years. We're learning, and we learned so much this last year, I can tell you that. My God! I said to myself, how come I didn't know this about him? Maybe you see this in your clients, like: Oh my gosh, how come I didn't see this, you know? You're someone who is very intuitive, I can tell. You're paying attention. But sometimes in our own relationship, I couldn't see a lot of things, good and bad. I couldn't see so many things. Now I'm looking in a different way and I'm like, how come I didn't see this, and how didn't I know that he was struggling with this? How did I miss this? It's not about looking at our own flaws, but I guess we are responsible. I'm responsible for also not seeing something in him and not knowing this. How didn't I know? I believed in myself that I know so much, that I'm so informed and all that. I know people's pains and struggles. I've helped thousands of people overcome so many difficult things in their lives. Yet, I missed something in my own life, Jessica?

Oh my gosh, I am sharing your sentiment all the way. And I will say, in my experience, that it's both the things that are unconscious in me, that I am still growing and learning and the journey of that. That also fits in the dynamic with my husband, as he's also in his individual journey of understanding and growing in himself. But also, our relational pattern. So my experience of unknowing, or how did I not know this or new things, it's both in how I perceive and observe him. But it's also what I do in my capacity and how I grow myself.

So it is quite profound to look and say, what is on the other side of being willing to do this growth work? Also, I will say, I'm in a moment right now where I feel challenged. Even though I've gone through several iterations and I trust the process, it doesn't make it any easier. It doesn't make it fun. I think the human tendency is to want to seek the pleasure, want to seek the good, want to seek the fantasy. So when we talk about it being hard or the difficulty, what I'm feeling and what you're describing is that, it is, for me, a willingness to lean into what is being evoked for the interest of growth. It doesn't feel good often. It feels horrible.

Jessica, thank you for sharing that. I think when people are listening to people like us who are professionals, that we've struggled in our own journeys, I hope it validates them. To acknowledge that you could know everything and anything, and you could be educated, and you could have professional experience that gives you all these aha insights. But it does not protect you from the challenge of your own relationship.

Here's the one thing I've got to say. Again, this is definitely the first time I'm sharing this, what I'm about to say, and I'm blown away by a lesson I learned last year. If we were having this conversation a year ago, I wouldn't have this insight. If someone is listening who is struggling in the relationship, and they have thoughts as to: It will never work, or this is not going to work out, it's impossible for so many reasons because of this and that and the other thing. And you are sure about that, and you just don't know, do you love the person, and it's not working. I'll tell you this, and I was blown away by this. Things can improve dramatically and stay improved, and your relationship can take a very bright and unexpected direction that could put you in a place even better than you've ever been with your spouse. I wouldn't be saying this, and this is certainly the first time I've said this. I have to say that what a lesson this has been for me. Because I have a lot of certainty, I'm a very black and white person. I'm like, yeah, no. I know.

You're clear on many things.

Very clear on many things. I'm like, I don't think so. If that's what you do, my God, I was wrong about a lot of things, about what is possible in a relationship, and very happily wrong at this point. Because all the stuff that we did to make this work was worth it, and I can't tell you how happy we are now. We've been through, like I said, tragedies in our life. We've raised four children together, blended families, moved different locations, moved homes, moved jobs, both of us working full-time the whole time, and a lot of other things. Love is not enough, but if there is no love, then this type of change is not possible at all. Sometimes this kind of change is not possible even with love. But there are times when it is possible. It is very possible, and wow!

I'm so touched by what you're sharing.

I want to say one last thing. There are so many couples that actually get divorced and separate because they did not know, Jessica, that this was possible. Because they couldn't have known. I know I didn't know what was possible.

I wonder, as you're describing, the way I'm hearing this is, a choice to not put a bandaid on what feels unworkable. To stand in what feels unworkable and allow for something new to happen there by holding, and not cutting that off or compartmentalizing it or making it not okay.

You have to learn different ways to communicate. You have to stick to your own boundaries. But also be open to listening to the other side. I guess I'll say this, we all come in with so many invisible losses. The reason why I say invisible losses, not just invisible to others, but to ourselves. So we come in with hidden grief that comes from different relationships, different times in our lives, things that happened. We've been rejected, abandoned in so many ways, and we come in survival mode in this relationship. And certainly, we came in, in this marriage, after two very tragic experiences. And we were happy and we have had deep connection.

It's unbelievable aha moments. Anyone who's listening, please consider that. Talk to your spouse about that possibility. The possibility of what if this can feel very different going forward?

It can be a catalyst.

Yes, it can be better than anything that we've experienced before.

Yes. Well, thank you for your passion and your willingness to be an example here. You've mentioned invisible loss a few times as a concept, and I think we get a sense that it's not visible, maybe to us or our person. And you just recently wrote a book. Would you be willing to share more about your book?

Yes. I spent 14 years helping people walk out of what I coined the waiting room. The place we go to, I guess, pause, reflect, recover, heal. Then unfortunately, because we are in that survival mode, without knowing, we stay there. We stay there longer than we really need to, and we start making our life in that place. In between the life we had to leave behind for whatever reason, and the life that we can build and have. That happens in relationships as well, that we go in survival mode. We go in the waiting room in a relationship as well. So I created this process called Life Reentry. Two clinical trial studies just finished, that were funded. A group of scientists did this. Amazing work. We are waiting for the papers to be published.

Now, I say this because this was definitely even more completely unexpected than even the books I've written. So many things have happened. So this work came in as doing work for tragedy and traditional grief, or grief that we understand. Then discovering that most people actually stay stuck, not because of the tragedy, but because of something that has no label, something that is beyond the losses. Even the losses that we talk about, small traumas and big, it wasn't even like that. I started seeing patterns, and I'm sure you've seen the same thing in people, that they didn't even know they were feeling. They didn't know something impacted them. I call them moments of impact. They had these moments of impact, and because of those moments of impact in their life, they went into survival mode, not knowing that they did that. Then they stayed in that survival mode, beyond recovery, beyond healing. We see that in everyone. Everyone has a survivor self. We are all surviving. We can't get rid of it, by the way.

So I wrote this book. This is book three. I've written three different books. This book is about non-traditional losses, or losses that have no label that we experience in our life, and how to track them down, understand them, and everyone's invisible loss is very different, and then find a way out of that waiting room that you didn't even know you experienced. I mean, I just exited a waiting room in my relationship this last year, that I had no idea I was in. None, zero. I've seen this so many times in people. In the classes I used to teach, we've had siblings come in, we've had mother and son come in. The moment we start acknowledging those invisible losses and the other person can see what they went through and really understand it, things start to shift and change in the conversations. And the way that we see our partner, our child, our sister, brother, whoever that is, best friend.

So I wrote this book about invisible loss. It has the map of the whole life reentry. At the back, there's a whole guide for people to bring into. Lots of therapists are using it with their clients. Lots of people are taking in, sharing with their friends. It is written for the solo, for the person wanting to go through this journey by themselves. But I do believe it's always best to have it with a professional as well, who can help you really track those invisible losses. Because unless we do that part, that step, exiting the waiting room won't happen towards the right direction, and it won't happen long enough. You'll be coming back, because you're surviving your life in ways that you don't know, you don't understand, and surviving your relationships in the way that you don't know.

I want to add this. When people are reading this book, you're going to go in thinking of your losses in a specific way. You're going to think: Oh, I know what it is. No, that's the thing about this. It's like, we don't know, and we think we know. So be open to the things that people consider to be small, the things that you experienced that nobody would validate normally. I want you to think about those. There's a lot of homework in the book. There's no shortcut, I haven't found it. If someone has a shortcut, I'll take that, than going through this whole book.

We wouldn't be the same person, though.

No. Take your time with it, do the homework, and be good to yourself while you're doing that work. Because it has to feel rewarding. Otherwise, it won't work. The work started from my love of brain science. I did a whole year of a neuroscience coaching program, and I remember learning so much. This is 2009. This is a long time ago. That started me down that path when I was looking for what I needed to do for my own clients in 2010, knowing that the things I already had in my toolbox were not enough. I created this whole process.

I just want to say this final thing. This book, for me, everything is in it. The reason why I'm no longer doing classes is because I want people to just take this book and trust that they can do this in their own groups, with themselves, with the people in their life. Like, I'm not needed. It's nice to have, I'm not saying it isn't. But I am not needed there for this to take place going forward.

Wow. I am so appreciative of all the distillation of what you are describing that's in this book, both from the research perspective and the protocol development and how everything is so comprehensive, and to have assistance and guidance. You're saying the gentleness and the support and the container to do the work, but to be able to have the guidance to go to places that are invisible. That's hard to do. So you're really giving that protocol, that map, and then having the map towards reentry. I'm just like, everybody needs this book!

I'm about to kind of say yes to a different chapter in my own life, and living the book or living the work. Say yes to myself in the way that is important. So I hope when someone gets to the end of this book, their life will certainly feel different on the inside, even more than the outside. That makes all the difference in how we see ourselves and the life around us. Shifting that perspective of what was in the past, what happened to us in the past, and what is possible in the future, can change anything and everything.

Well, thank you for what you've shared and what you've given and offered in the book. I'll make sure to have the link on today's show notes.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. This was an awesome conversation. I trust every conversation to be what it needs to be, and I feel like this was definitely exactly as it needed to be for both of us, and for everyone who's listening as well. So thank you for having me.

It's a pleasure.

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