Let's Chat... Grieving out loud on social media (with Rebecca Feinglos)

#116. Let's Chat... about what it looks like when we use social media to show and share our grief.

These 'Let’s Chat' episodes are conversations with guests who have experience/expertise in a particular area of loss. 

In this episode, I (Claire Sandys) chat to Rebecca Feinglos in North Carolina who is a certified grief support specialist and the founder of Grieve Leave - which offers grief support, education and training for workplaces.

By the age of 31, Rebecca had lost both her parents and was dealing with the end of her marriage, these losses led her to take a year off to process them all, which is what she called her Grieve Leave. 

During this time, Rebecca started blogging about her grief and its popularity eventually led her to set up Grieve Leave as an organisation in 2021 to help others. This online community now has an impressive 30,000 members worldwide, who all share their grief, or are looking to help others who are grieving, particularly through the use of social media.

With her experience of seeing and sharing grief online, I was keen to talk to Rebecca about grief in the online world. Does it help or hinder us? How has the internet opened up new areas of grieving for us? And how do we accept those? There's a lot of ground covered in this chat, including raccoons (!) and a question I've never asked before in a Let’s Chat episode (for you regular listeners, see if you can work out what it is.)

For more about Rebecca and Grieve Leave:
https://www.grieveleave.com
https://www.instagram.com/grieveleave
https://www.instagram.com/rfeinglos

Viral video of Rebecca & Adele:
https://www.tiktok.com/@rfeinglos/video/7177076659344919850 

Transcript

Claire : 0:00

Hello there, and thanks for joining me for another episode of Let's Chat. I'm Claire Sandys, host of The Silent Why, a podcast exploring how and where we can find hope through grief and loss in these let's chat episodes, I talk to a guest who has experience or expertise in a particular area of loss or grief. And on this episode, I'm chatting to Rebecca Feinglos over in the US in North Carolina, who's a certified Grief Support Specialist and a founder of grieve leave, which offers grief support, education and training for workplaces. Rebecca lost her mother to brain cancer when she was 13, lost her dad suddenly at the start of the COVID pandemic, and had her marriage end when she was 31 and it was these losses that led her to take a year off to protest them all, which is what she called her grieve leave. During this time, she started blogging about her grief, which became very popular and eventually led her to set up grieve leave as an organization in 2021 to help others. This online community now has 30,000 members worldwide who all share their grief or are looking to help others that are grieving, particularly through social media. With all this experience of grief online, I was keen to talk to Rebecca about how social media and the online world deals with grief. Does it hinder or help us? Has it made us feel more seen or more alone? How comfortable or uncomfortable are we with people grieving or crying on their social media, and why do we feel that way? Does it make us care more or cringe? How has the internet opened up new areas of grieving for us, and how do we accept those? And why, if you Google Rebecca, do you get Adele in this chat? We covered all of this and a lot more, and through these let's chat episodes, I always want to capture something useful to help others from each conversation, a bit like the Hermans we collect on our 101 episodes. You can pop over to theherman company.com for more on that one. So in these episodes, I'm building a tool shed, metaphorically, of equipment to help us face and get through loss and grief. And at the end of each episode, I ask our guest what sort of tool their subject is to help us, and I add it to my shed. So far, I've acquired a very useful range of tools, and in this episode, I get one more that I don't already have. I'm just amazed how few duplicates this show actually has. Plus, there's a couple of bonus bits of audio I've left in for you. One, a conversation that went off topic about raccoons, and two, a question that I have never asked in a let's chat episode before. For you regular listeners, see if you can work out what that's going to be. So grab a cup of tea, a hot coffee, or maybe a gingerbread latte, since we're almost in that season now, and you might want to put a shot of whiskey in that. If you're British, if that's a thing, because this conversation is US high energy us meets slightly more reserved UK, and I think you're going to love it. So join me and Rebecca as we chat everything to do with grief online.

Rebecca Feinglos: 2:40

So I'm Rebecca Feinglos. I run an organization called Grieve Leave that is focused on grief, support, education, community and training for workplaces too. I started down this path after both of my parents were dead by the time I was 30 and I was divorced by the time, well, I was trying to get divorced by the time I was 31 before all of that, I had had a career in government and policy and education and loved it and worked incredibly hard to achieve a lot and do a lot of good. And really what I've learned now, in retrospect, is I had been trying to outrun my grief since I was a little kid. My mom was diagnosed with brain cancer when I was five, and she died when I was 13, and I didn't like, understand what I was doing at the time, but I was just trying to, like, keep that grief below the surface and keep optics up. And that was going fine. I got married, my career is going great, and then my dad died very suddenly on day one of COVID lockdown. And that reset a lot for me, and helped me realize that I was really in a marriage that was not working, and helped me realize that I needed to take time away from this career that I had built and loved, but I really needed to sit with the grief that was like here in me, and I didn't have the language for it, so I started blogging about it. I took a year off of work. Called it my year of grief leave. It's a privilege to be able to do that, and I started writing about all of these different types of losses that I had faced and how I was feeling about them, death and non death related losses. My divorce was my choice, but it came with its own grief, and that blog resonated with people all over the world in ways I did not expect. I'll just tell you this, and then I'll just like, leave this as a seed. Adele may have been involved in my year of grieve leave, and may have helped me through my divorce grief. And these days, grieve leave is now a community of over 30,000 people worldwide, and we talk about our grief, particularly on. Social media and come together to normalize these conversations and like, help you realize that you are not crazy for feeling these things. Grief is so normal and so natural, and we don't have to fix it. We can be with it. So that's what grieve leave is in a nutshell. That's who I am in a nutshell. And we'll come back to the adult story only if you want Claire,

Claire : 5:21

yeah, that was my next question. How does Adele fit in? I can't leave that there.

Rebecca Feinglos: 5:25

Okay, so if you Google 'divorce party Adele', you will find me and my friends. Oh, my God, I'm gonna watch you do it

Claire : 5:33

[typing noises]'Divorce party adele'. Ha! Yes! You're the top one. How did that happen?!

Rebecca Feinglos: 5:41

In my year of grief leave, toward the end of that year, my divorce was finally legal, like the judge was signing my paperwork, and I was like, Well, I think I want to celebrate all my girlfriends that supported me through these incredibly hard 18 months. And so we all went to Vegas because what better place to connect with ourselves, like with each other and like as a girl group, and with the iconic woman that is Adele doing her Las Vegas residency, her album 30 was about her divorce, and it got me through mine. It came out at the exact same time. Long story short, Adele ended up talking to us during her concert, and then that moment went viral, and then I made a Tiktok about it, and that Tiktok went viral, and it was this beautiful moment of social media like really supporting women who are getting divorced and reframing this narrative of like, man, you don't have to feel shame about this really hard thing that you are dealing with and that comes with its own grief. And if Adele says it's okay to be in your feelings, then like, man, is it okay? It was incredible.

Claire : 7:02

Yeah, amazing. That's brilliant. So much I love about that. Because not only you incorporating divorce in your grief, which I think really needs to be recognized a lot more, we don't recognize it as a grief very often. So I love that you did that, but also how much, like you said, online, has had such an impact across the board for good, and you know, at the beginning, just very vulnerable with the blog and everything. What makes you want to stay in this world of grief thing? Because you've obviously been through a lot, you stopped, you processed it. Some people from there would just move on. I've done that. I've got it behind me. Yes, I'll carry it with me, but I'm not going to stay in this subject. And other people do stay in it because they love it. What makes you stay in the world of grief?

Unknown: 7:37

Oh, this is such a good question, because my training, my background is in education and public policy, like I spent my career in government and working with kids before that as a teacher in creating change. And that is just how I'm hardwired. I am hardwired as a as a public servant, like I am hardwired as someone who wants to help people every single day. And honestly, Claire, I feel finally, like the most comfortable in my own skin than I ever have felt, because I'm not pretending. I'm not trying to pretend like I'm not grieving anymore. I'm not trying to pretend like my mom's, you know, not dead. I'm not trying to pretend like my marriage isn't actually falling apart. I'm not trying to pretend that I can do all of this amazing work in spite of the sudden death of my father and that I'm still performing. I get to just be honest and open about who I am and use my strengths as an educator and as someone who understands policy making to kind of and training and how to create change. Just combine all of that and live a life to me that feels so much more authentic like if all of this... can I swear on your podcast?

Claire : 8:40

I'll probably bleep it, but you can swear as much as you want!

Unknown: 8:42

Okay, great, all of this 'bleep' that I've been through, like if all of this was gonna happen, what terrible luck, what a privilege that I am still here and that I have the resources to keep working through this, right? And if I'm gonna have gone through this, at least, let me do something good for other people.

Claire : 9:02

Yeah. And so online has obviously been a massive part of that huge that's been your sort of choice of platform. And there are lots of different ways you can kind of talk about grief. So tell me a bit about what you are actually involved in when it comes to online, and kind of what you've done over the years with that area,

Rebecca Feinglos: 9:15

yeah. So what's cool is, at the beginning, my online grief work was really focused on me. It was very much like using the internet, using my blog, using my social media, my own personal social media as almost like a protest, like to speak up about grief and talk about these things that are always silent. And what I started to notice is the amount of engagement that that blog and those social media posts were getting, because actually, when we speak up about these things in public ways, it creates other opportunities for people to feel seen. And so I really felt at the end of my year of grieve leave that I wanted to keep building something i. Wanted to keep connecting people, and so that's why I founded griev as a company and focused on building grief support groups, virtually, especially, and some in person too, doing virtual workplace trainings and in person, but many of them are virtual because I work with companies globally on how to build a more grief, informed workplace. Those trainings are virtual, providing educational content, just generally for people online on Tiktok, on Instagram, on Facebook, on my own podcast too. Like the Internet is a place for people to see each other and have themselves be seen and in grief, you know it's so incredibly isolating, and there is this beautiful opportunity in social media to allow either it's scary, to allow yourself be vulnerable, enough to be seen, or to lurk on other people while they're being vulnerable and you don't even have to acknowledge that you feel seen, or you can comment, or you can participate in something like a virtual grief support group and show up and be connected. That is like a lifeline for people who are grieving. And I think it's so innately human to want to connect with each other while we're grieving, and we just our society isn't really built for that anymore. You know,

Claire : 11:18

it's a shame. You know, when I first started the podcast, I was like, oh, grief, you know, I'll follow the grief social media accounts, blah, blah. And I quickly found out that by doing that, you can get very depressing. You do need everything, and you need, you need the right ones, but it's a very fine line. I think of getting it right online. I think, you know, too depressing. Nobody really wants to be involved, or they are for a short season. I think some accounts function because they hit a certain point in the grief, like they're tackling a particular type of grief, and they're very honest about what that feels like in the raw moments, and they never go anywhere outside of that. So people connect with that for a time, but they might come away from it when they sort of start to heal a little bit or move on. Some people are just like, blah, here's my grief everything. Here's the video of me crying and everything. And then some are more educational. It's a bit of a minefield in trying to find the right stuff. So how have you navigated that? How did you decide what you were going to do? Because you've obviously got that educational background, which I suppose helps you with what content to put out,

Rebecca Feinglos: 12:18

and policy too, of like, like talking about things so grieve leave as an organization is the group is the support that I felt like didn't exist when I was looking for, like my niche of grief support. First of all, living in the South, in the United States, means that any grief support that I was seeking out in person, or even, like online too, I guess. But local was very religious in nature. It was very Christian. It was located in churches, if I wanted to go somewhere in person, and that's just not what I was looking for. It just wasn't and that's okay, if that supports you through your grief, if finding that religious and faith based community is your anchor, yay, I love that. For you, it wasn't for me. That's not what I was looking for. I was looking for my peers like I was looking for people my age. I was looking for people who like knew particularly what divorce grief felt like, and that I wasn't pitied for having lost both of my parents at such a young age, and what I had found was the grief support that exists was very Christian and very just religious generally, and skewed much older, much older, and I hated being in those spaces. The other thing that I found online is a lot of content that was very I'm just gonna use the word Woo, woo, because I don't have another word, really, of just like, and again, there's nothing wrong with it, if that works for you, and that is the type of support you are looking for, soft language, caring like really, holding you gently through your grief, talking about crystals and candles and yay for people who want that that is so helpful, and I love that that also wasn't what I was looking for. I was looking for like, that real directness. I was looking for people who I wanted to just like, chill with and have a beer with. And that is why grieve leave has grown the way that it has. Like we host Grief Support events in bars, in exercise classes, and again, on social media or on a zoom or wherever, because that feels really relevant. It feels like a much more authentic way to connect with people. And then I'm also Claire, like, I can just, I have a weird sense of humor, and I'm like, very dry and very direct. And I think in our grief, we also have to laugh. And I was really, I was looking for that kind of sense of humor, too, in grief support. And so I in grieve leave. We've built that we talk about all different kinds of laws. To not just death related grief, and that is so important to me, to kind of cast a bigger umbrella of the types of of losses and life changes that we grieve. It's all kinds of things. The only other thing I'll say too is, like my news do they even say news feed anymore? My feed on my social media is quite depressing, too. And my Thera, my therapist says I have to read happier things and watch happier things. So I watch a lot of love is blind. Oh my god, the UK season. So good people keep talking

Claire : 15:30

about that. I haven't seen it. Yeah, my my social media feed is filled with so things that are relevant to grief to a point, and then lots of like raccoon videos, loads of animals eating stuff loudly. I need that kind of balance of the two so I can get a bit of like, this is just fun, calm nature, yes. And then this is more serious,

Rebecca Feinglos: 15:47

and that resonates. What's the most common animal on your feet? Raccoons? You said at the moment?

Claire : 15:52

Yeah, because obviously the algorithm picks up. I click on one raccoon video, and then there's loads of raccoons. There was something else I had the other day list. Oh, squirrels, squirrels that have been tamed, people's houses that started. I need to go back to raccoons. I think they were more entertaining. I'm fascinated by this raccoon. Probably shouldn't put this in the podcast. We don't have them. So it's like, I can't work out. Is it a cute pet? Is it a pest? Pest? I see people being attacked by them. I see people taming them. No,

Rebecca Feinglos: 16:19

no. They are scary in the south, like a raccoon, I would just assume it's rabid, or it's like, run over in the street, or like, it's scary and going through your trash when you're

Claire : 16:27

okay. Yeah. There must be a lot of British people that have been attacked by raccoons. You could just go up to them and be like, hey, yeah, don't do that. It's amazing what you learn on these conversations. Anyway. Yeah, so I was interested. I was just thinking about what you were saying about the the age difference, which makes a lot of sense, because I've heard a lot of people, especially young widows, say they've gone into groups in person, and it's mainly all older people. And I thought, yeah, of course, online opens it up to younger people. I mean, you know, for anyone who thinks, oh, everything like this should be done in person, you mean this conversation here doesn't happen without online. None of my conversations do really so it is such a key part to people connecting. I guess there is a well, is there a danger to it? Is there a danger in it all being online? Can that leave people feeling a bit lonely in person with their grief? Or have you found that doesn't really happen? So

Rebecca Feinglos: 17:18

heard like I hear you, and I think the criticism, the criticism that I hear around more grief related things popping up on social media are like, are you gonna regret putting that on the internet later? Are you like, let's use my divorce as an example. Like having written about, spoken about my divorce quite a bit at different phases of my grief, because I would argue, we don't heal from grief, and we don't move on from grief, we move forward with those losses. It will stay true. I hope that I am divorced. It will absolutely stay true that my parents are dead like I don't that doesn't stop being true, but the way that I carry that grief changes over time. I was angry at the beginning of my divorce. I was just mad like that was the state of my grief, and all of that anger is very much on the internet. I'm grateful for the people in my life who read my blogs before I posted them on the internet, or that like read my first drafts of things to help me quell some of that anger. But I think that is a risk, right? Because you look back later, I'm not that same Griever anymore. I don't feel that way. I am not angry about my divorce anymore. That is not the place I'm at with my grief. It's been years, but that content still there, right? So to me, that's a little bit of a danger, and that impacts other people. I guess I'll just come full circle. That has an impact when that person is still alive, right? But the only other person who's really impacted by the content I put out about my dead parents is my brother, and so I have to think about like, what is the impact on him as I share things and I talk to him and but I think your your question before is interesting to me, like, is there something jarring, maybe, about just connecting with people online and then going back to your regular life and feeling alone? And maybe I'll use the example of the only people I know with two dead parents who are my age, I can think of two real life people I've met in person that I've like hugged, but I've met them because of the internet. And I can think of just like half a dozen people rattle them off to you that I know because of the internet, who have lost two parents by whatever age, 20s, 30s. That's crazy, right? Like I could have gone my entire life without knowing someone else who had experienced a tragedy like that, and so sure, maybe there is kind of a come down of having connected with people online and then going back to your your workplace and feeling isolated. But I don't. I don't buy that. I don't think that's true. I think that social media in grief support helps fill our cups. Like we feel less alone. I feel less crazy, because I know I can text my friend and be like, Hey, I am really stressed about my brother's wedding. This was a year ago, because both of my parents are dead and I'm playing the maid of honor role, and she did the same thing at her sister's wedding. And so we can talk about that. You know what I mean? That is from the internet. That's probably

Claire : 20:30

where the difference is. When you were talking, I was thinking, there's probably a difference between engaging with people online around grief and then just consuming because the danger, I guess, would be that you're just watching other people grieve and consuming it, comparing your own grief, judging other people, and what, maybe what they're going through, and whether you would or would not go through that. And then you could get quite bitter and lonely, I guess. But if you're actually engaging with people in communities, in chats, on social media, even podcasts, you know, amount of people have messaged me just to say I've been through this, and I'll reply and say, Oh, I'm so sorry that you've had to go through that. And that might be the only conversation we have, but I love that they heard something and reached out, and there was that tiny bit of communication that says, You know what, you're not on your own with this. You know, there are other humans out there that you can connect with. So maybe that's the difference. If people are feeling that way, it's kind of like, well, get involved with other people. Don't just watch it, but

Rebecca Feinglos: 21:18

you've but you've got me thinking, like, lurking is fine too. I think, like it is, I think it is fine to lurk. Like, maybe it is too. Let's go with divorce grief. It might be too scary for you to engage with me, particularly like publicly commenting on something. Maybe DMing me is even too scary to be like, Hey, I am thinking about getting divorced and I'm freaking out. Or I just went through my divorce and going through it, and I have so much disenfranchised grief about that I feel like I can't talk about it. Like just watching someone else talk about their grief can make that person feel better. Just lurking, being a creepy Lurker in the background, is fine, and we love Oh my God. My favorite posts, Claire, you'll see them sometimes on our social media feed, on Tiktok, or on Instagram especially. And I'll just be like, we'll post something that says hey to the people who can't like this post right now, to the people who will never follow grieve leaf because it's too scary. We see you. We know you're here. We love you like that is game changing to somebody, you know,

Claire : 22:23

that's nice. So then it's takes me on to the next level. I'm thinking, it's not just about whether you watch or not. It's what you do with what you watch. If you're doing it to help yourself and you're getting something from it, great. If you're using it to get bitter about what you're going through, not great. So interesting. It's down to the individual.

Rebecca Feinglos: 22:39

What does bitterness mean to you. Like, what was what would that and like, to me, that's not even a bad thing, okay? Like, you want to be bitter, be better. Like, be mad.

Claire : 22:50

You guys over the pond, you're so much more, like, open with your emotions, comfy with that, than we are. I can just feel the Brits like, bristling with the whole like, is that okay? We allowed to do that. Can we feel that way? Yeah, that's

Rebecca Feinglos: 23:02

so interesting. But my Grandma, I'm a quarter British. My grandma was from Birmingham. My grandma outlived everyone in her family. She died at 98 really raised the average age of death for my family, thank God, someone had to live a long time. She outlived both of her daughters. She had a daughter who died young by suicide. My mom died of brain cancer, and then she lost her husband at like, a normal age. But still, did I ever hear my grandmother have an emotional conversation with me about anything? No, not once. I never saw her cry, not once. And my she was 98 and from Birmingham. You know, it's just a different mindset, particularly that generation, yeah,

Claire : 23:41

oh, it is. They're really tough. And it's it's interesting, because they didn't engage in emotional conversations, they didn't go to support groups. They went through some of the worst grief the country had during the war. I've got an auntie that lived through it like an adopted auntie. She's 105 now. That ass like tough old bird. And we asked her, once I did an interview with her about her war stories, and at the end, we asked her, How have you coped with all this loss? Because she'd lost her husband, her sister, her mother over the years, and she didn't actually understand the question. She didn't understand, what do you mean? How do you cope? Like just couldn't even give us an answer. It didn't compute that you wouldn't just cope. And I was just like, Yeah, this is a completely different brand of person to our generation. You

Rebecca Feinglos: 24:19

just keep going and you just pretend like it's not happening, right? My grandmother never talked about her daughter who died by suicide, my my aunt that I didn't even get to meet like she just wouldn't just shut down those conversations. I don't judge that, right? Like you are a product of your environment. You are a product of what you have permission to do, permission to feel. And it's not to say that my Nana didn't grieve, of course she did, but I don't think she felt aware maybe of the depths of her feelings because she wasn't allowed to. And I think now we live in an age where we can see examples on social media, even if it is like not culturally appropriate in our neighborhood or our community, like watch the Americans be big. In their feeling, work on them and let it be hard.

Claire : 25:04

Yeah, no, it's so true. I you know, I think when people are really, really open about their grief, like the crying stage and they're filming it, that for some people, maybe especially Brits, but I'd imagine all over the world, for some people, there's something very uncomfortable about that, because we're not used to looking at it. But I think it's worth questioning why. And I think for some people, we're uncomfortable with it because we feel like we can't do it. And maybe there's something in us that would like to be that free and open, and we just, even if it's not anything to do with filming it, just in just having those emotions and allowing ourselves to do that, we don't really allow ourselves to do that very easily, especially the British. So I think it is something that's worth rather than just like, oh, you know that shouldn't be done, or that's online forever, or whatever. I think it's worth questioning. Why does that make us feel uncomfortable? Because it's probably something in us that isn't healthy, and why does it matter to us if someone else is doing that? Yeah, it's

Rebecca Feinglos: 25:52

so cringe to watch someone film themselves. And I'm like saying that as someone who has filmed myself plenty while I cry, because I see it as an educational tool. I'm thinking of the other day, I had had this, like, really beautiful moment, and I was basically very personal moment. It was a nice achievement. And I was very overwhelmed with grief suddenly to be like, damn. I wish my parents were here. Oh, damn. And I, in that moment, was like, let me film this. Like, let me just like, talk out loud, post it on my story of how I'm feeling, tears and all, to just be in it and hope that it helps someone else. And of course, it does, and that's not my ego. I swear I like, I don't think I'm like, the best Griever in the world. I'm just a human right, like feeling. But if I post that on the internet and I'm like, Man, I talk about grief every day for a living, and I still get really overwhelmed when I'm not expecting it. Here's how I feel right now that someone else seeing that can feel safer in their own feelings. You know what I mean? I think that has such value, and so I don't judge. I don't know. I don't think it's that cringe anymore. Like, I get it. I get why people film these things that you might like, make fun of them for. You're like, oh, really, you set up your camera so you can cry in front of it. Like, okay, but I I think that has a lot of value. I think it's so much value for our society if

Claire : 27:21

you don't see those kind of emotions, and you're having them yourself, but you're having them in private, and you're thinking to yourself, at any point, is this just me, my only person? Then there is something about seeing it that someone else has got the bravery, because it's brave to do it, and then think, Oh, my word. Okay, it's not just me. I might not, I might never film it and put it online, but it's just really nice to know that other people get overwhelmed and are willing to put it online for us to see. So, and I think it's just new, isn't it, social media is new to a lot of people still, and the whole putting emotions on there feels quite new to a lot of people. So it is a bit scary. It'll probably get to the stage where it feels a bit less, kind of, you know, there'll be more of it. We'll see a lot more of it. And, I mean, you can see anything now, can't you? I don't think I'd be surprised by anything on the raccoons. Thank goodness for raccoons.

Rebecca Feinglos: 28:06

There's one other thing that I just want to say. I think human beings are hardwired to want to connect with each other when they are grieving. And I truly think it is only the modern Western era that has tried to shut that down right because back in the day, back in the day, day before my grandmother, you know someone would die at home, or your neighbor would die, and you would know that they died because you would see the wife wailing on her porch or wearing black or signaling something. There would be community rituals. The community would come together. That person would get buried in the backyard, and people would see it, they'd be there. And it is, to me, just this very it's like we've tried to shut down our humanity over time, because it feels inconvenient to a society that is focused on production, if we are focused on getting back to work so we can make money for our families that leaves no room for feelings, that leaves no room for grief. But now with social media, we get to connect again in ways that I think are just deeply human in the first place, and so I don't find this like, Sure, maybe the medium is new, but the idea of connecting in our grief that is as old as humanity itself.

Claire : 29:23

Yeah, definitely. I love all those old rituals. I really I'm so sad that we've lost just even wearing black for a while or something to show I'm grieving right now, just again, that in itself, for me, would be like, oh gosh, I'm not alone. There's someone else through something. Or I did a talk recently, and just saying we do grief such a disservice when we just hide it away and just mark it as bad, because there's so much beauty that comes through watching people grieve, even it's a weird thing. I think the beauty in grief, it comes out in lots of different ways, and we miss that by not seeing it, hiding the funerals away, hiding away all the you know, the coffins, even the bodies. You know, some countries still have an. Open casket and things we don't have any of that we just, you know, all dead person quick, cover them up and push them away, like, don't have them anywhere near. If we'd have seen that more, if we saw more death, I think we'd be less frightened by it. But that's all quite cultural. You mentioned in other cultures there. Do you? Have you seen a difference between how it's how grief is dealt with online, across different cultures and countries?

Rebecca Feinglos: 30:18

You know what I was gonna tell you? Like, where I know we're talking about, like, British spirit, maybe being more like, keep calm and carry on. But that said, like, I'm thinking about my friend Amber Jeffrey, who is in the UK and her community, the grief gang. She is a young British woman who is talking about feelings that are hard, and I think she sees that as, like, counter cultural in some ways. I'm thinking about Australia and the Good morning podcast and like other communities in Australia that are lifting up these conversations. I look to other countries as like, Oh, they're talking about their emotions so much like there are these grief conferences globally that I'm like, Ah, I want more of that in the US, but I see that just because of the internet, like I see these communities, I see these conversations happening, and I'm jealous of y'all. I don't think we have, we don't have those communities in the same way in the US, and I think we're starting to build them now.

Claire : 31:18

It'd be really interesting to see how countries where they have the very outward, showy ways of grieving, I guess, at funerals and stuff like the rituals, like where they're, you know, actually wailing in front of the body and things. It'd be really interesting to see what that is like online in that country, whether it's needed in the same way, whether it's handled in the same way, whether they don't engage with the conversations much. But then you see it more in day, I don't know, but be really interesting to see how that kind of differs across the

Rebecca Feinglos: 31:45

board. Seems like a good study. Let's speak that into existence like someone who is listening to this. Let's study like we need some PhDs and some university folks to study social media trends on how grief support like looks and feels in different countries. And I think your hypothesis is very interesting, right? Countries or cults, cultures within a country where you have more time, maybe, and space and more of a ritual process to grieve in person, with the body, with your community, you probably don't depend on social media as much that others might be right like that makes that makes a lot of intellectual sense to me. So someone studied that.

Claire : 32:24

Do you think, like all these so these things we follow where people are talking about loss and grief and things they're going through right now? Do you think that kind of content is helpful for people who aren't grieving right now? Because one of the things I talk about with these episodes is tools to help us prepare. Because some people are interested. How do I prepare for this? How do I make sure I do this well, and I want to give people those kind of tools if they need them. Do you think this kind of stuff is is helpful for people to get into before they're actually

Rebecca Feinglos: 32:48

there? Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I think about the grieve leave audience in a few different buckets. One is people who are going through loss themselves, people who are facing the death of a loved one, or are going through divorce, or who just got diagnosed with something freaking terrible, or who just moved, or job loss, whatever it is. Second bucket of our audience is people who love, people who are going through loss, people who want to support people who are going through a loss, and they're looking for ways to help them. The third bucket is people who don't know they're grieving, or people who aren't, quote, unquote, grieving yet. But I would argue everyone is grieving something, and it is the people who just come across a post, or come across a reel, or come across a Tiktok that someone else has shared, and they see that those are our posts that are like you might be grieving. If I'll give you an example. We post content that is about anticipatory grief, so meaning grief that you might feel as a caregiver for someone who is dying or who is just very, very sick and you are watching them suffer, and that you, as the caregiver to that person, feel a lot of grief. I think there is a lot of gender bias in who gets to claim that they are a caregiver, and that I think women more often have more social permission to talk about the emotional weight of grief overall, but particularly in caregiving. And so I have built content for us, educational content. It actually doesn't use the word caregiver at all and says something like, Are you helping someone to go to doctor's appointments regularly? Are you learning a lot about insurance policies? Are you helping a friend who needs a place to live right now and needs someone to drive them like just kind of listed things like that next slide in that carousel is, you might be caregiving for someone, right? Like, so it's like, it's, that's the educational content for people who haven't even thought about themselves as someone who is grieving. And I think that is going to change the world, right? Like, when we can all open up our minds. A little bit and be like, Let me think about myself as someone who is experiencing loss or who will and let me be emotionally and intellectually prepared for how heavy that is going to feel. And I the biggest compliment to me that I love getting is, oh, I was just thinking about you, because the post that I saw of yours last year just became super relevant to me because the colleague died, and so I knew I had ideas of what to say. You know, that is exactly what I want grief to be able to do for people. Yeah, I

Claire : 35:31

love that. It's so important that we see these stories of of hope as well, and people getting through grief, especially even if the actual grieving bit feels a bit awkward, if you're not in it, you're like, Well, I'm not there seeing how people get through it. I think for me, is really important. When we were in the beginning stages of infertility and stuff and looking at childlessness, for me, it brought me a lot of comfort and hope to see couples that were on the other side of it, that were childless, that were just getting on with life and doing okay. That, for me, was like, Well, if that's the worst case scenario, then I feel like I can go through this, because I can see someone on the other side. But I met a lot of couples when we were the couple on the other side that didn't want to engage at all because that was their worst case scenario, and they didn't even want to look at it. And I used to say, you know, but if you look at it, look at us. Look at our life. It's not what we want it to be, but it's not horrendous here. It could be far worse. If this is your worst case scenario, I think it helps you to go through all the stuff in between, knowing that even if that's where we end up, it's not horrendous, and that really helped me. So I want people to you know that aren't involved in specific grief right now. And you're right. You could argue that there's nobody really that's not grieving something, even if it's just a tiny thing that day. I want people to see that, to see that. Look at all these people who have got through all these losses, and then just listen to how they did it, because they've all done it completely differently. And I want people to see that. You know, I've been helped so much in my grief by listening to people talk about grief who've been through something that I've never been through. I will never go through some of them, like baby loss, I'll never go through that. But I've been helped massively by watching how people have done it. And the first episode we did was divorce, and the lady went and spent a year on a canal boat. I was like, brilliant. It's not for everybody. Canal. Oh, really. Forget what kind of words you guys don't have. Like, I don't even know what you would. It's like a bar, just like a long boat that goes around our canals, which are, like, thin waterways that are man made just

Rebecca Feinglos: 37:18

to, like, go beyond the boat. Yeah. So people live on these things you can and,

Claire : 37:23

yeah, so she went and just lived on one of these boats with her cat for a year and just spent it grieving. It was her grieve leave. Basically. She spent a year grieving her divorce. And it's like, well, nobody would really necessarily think of that or even give themselves permission to that, unless you heard someone else did it. And then you're like, oh, I can do that. Like, I can just take myself off and actually properly grieve this. And another woman I had on had a smash pile. She, like, gets crockery and has a little cellar area out the back that goes down some steps, and she will just buy this cheap crockery, or, second hand, I'll just pick it up from wherever, and when she's having a really hard day, she will just throw it down and smash it into this pile. Oh, yeah. And I was like, brilliant. They're all completely different ways of dealing with grief, but they've helped me so much in mine to think look at all these ways, look at these things, these tools I have I can reach for if I need them. So I think that's probably where online can do that better than anything else, because if you meet in a group of people, you might get five or six other experiences. But if they're all similar age British people, they're probably not going to be that varied, but online gives you a whole bunch of stuff of how people are dealing with these whether it's different cultures, different like emotions, different practical ways of doing it. You

Rebecca Feinglos: 38:33

just made me think so many freaking things. There's one thing that I wanted to say that came up that was like an adjacent thread, oh, you only haven't talked about is celebrity grief, like Liam Payne just died. What becomes really interesting about the internet is you develop parasocial relationships, and this is true of celebrity culture, even before the internet, but especially in the age of the internet, where you're watching someone's Instagram story, you are getting glimpses into their life all the time. You feel like you know them. And for so many people, Liam Payne was someone people felt like they grew up with that they knew him, and his sudden death has wrecked people. I'm a tiny bit too old. It hasn't wrecked me in the same Yeah, like, few years too old here, but

Claire : 39:22

I was more Matthew Perry. That was my parasocial.

Rebecca Feinglos: 39:25

Let's talk Matthew Perry Lee and Liam, perfect examples of a sudden death that you feel silly. Maybe for grieving. You feel like you were the only person who like you. You think it's ridiculous. Maybe you've been through I'm going to put this in quotes, quote, unquote, bigger losses, real losses in your life. Maybe you're a parent has died, maybe you cannot have children. Maybe there's some other kind of loss in your life that makes you be like, Why is this? Matthew Perry news, why is this? Liam Payne news, rocking me right now. Why do I feel? Like, I can't stop crying right now, and I just want to normalize that. Say, like, yeah, that's heavy stuff when you feel like you've lost someone, that that grief still matters, that grief is still real, and it can also stir up grief that you have around other losses that you've had in your life, when you see someone you respect, or you know in celebrity world, die of a similar way, it can stir up existing grief for you too, and compound it, it all matters. I think the internet is creating space for that type of grief as well.

Claire : 40:35

Definitely and we've had and you know, things like Jennifer Anderson, when she started talking about not having children, things like that. I'm not in any kind of online communities as far as grief goes, I mean, other ones for like, you know, I'm in surgical menopause. I'm in groups for that, and that has just where the NHS hasn't really been able to help medically, those groups of women with experience of things, sharing in those groups has been huge for me. I've learned so much stuff just from that. So I would imagine, if I was going through a specific grief and I'd gone into an online community just searching for some sort of help, comfort, support, that they would have the same sort of sort of response. I mean, do you see that in all you're involved in 100%

Rebecca Feinglos: 41:15

I think that when we think about grief support, maybe we immediately go to a place of therapy, like, maybe in our minds, we're like, oh, I need a therapist to support me with this awful loss, and I'm really, really struggling, and I need clinical support. Fine, maybe you do, and only you know that, and only the people who are closest to you know if you need clinical support right now, I just would argue that therapy is not the only it can't be the only type of grief support that exists. And I believe that that community support of just people sitting with you virtually or in person and listening and seeing you and just saying, I hear you, I see you, that again, is life changing to someone who is grieving, because, like grief is you feel so isolated and alone while you're going through your own pain. Like grief tricks our brains right. It makes us think that we are the only person that has ever gone through this amount of pain, and the only thing that can make that feeling, that heaviness of grief, feel a little bit lighter is talking about your grief with someone else, or hearing someone else talk about their grief. That helps lighten your own load. That's the only thing, and just to come full circle, I think that's because that's how we're wired as human beings. We are not supposed to carry grief alone. We're supposed to carry it together. It's really heavy. So yes, let's let online support groups be these tools of community to help lighten the load for us. I love that.

Claire : 42:55

I think everyone would admit it's not, it's great, it's not the ideal. We'd love to do this in person. We'd love to be in a room full of as many people are in the online chat all here from all different countries, and we're all chatting about our loss, and it's face to face, and we can hug each other. And, you know, I think that would be the ideal, but it's not what we have. We don't have that. You can ping a message out into a group and say, This is what I'm really struggling with today, and get a whole bunch of people just give you support and say, I see you. You're not on your own. You go out of your front door and say that nobody's gonna come running to sort of say hello, and kind of, let me help you, it goes out to the ether. You're alone. So even if it's not the you know, the ideal, which I think older generations especially will be a little bit skeptical of that. But surely that's better than nothing. Surely that's better than people having nothing at all. And the fact it opens it up around the world is even better the fact that you're speaking to people, Oh, my word. It's not just me that deals with it. It's like 1000 other people in all these different countries. I mean, what a better way to find out that, you know, grief is universal, and that we're all going through something a bit similar. Really preach.

Rebecca Feinglos: 43:56

I mean, perfectly said, perfectly said right. Growing up, I was the only kid with a dead parent that I knew me, my brother, actually my one of my close friends in my elementary school. Her dad died young, too. Just the two of us. It was just us, no one else through high school even. First of all, if I had had, like, any kind of grief support, it was just a different time. You know, we weren't really talking about mental health in that kind of way. But if I had had an online grief support group, or, oh my god, an in person grief support group, that would be amazing. But it's so rare to go through loss that young. So to assemble an in person group is cost prohibitive and time prohibitive. You can't but I can connect with people online and feel so much better. I think also maybe that is one gift the pandemic gave us, as that was, you know, yeah,

Claire : 44:47

I mean, I was thinking about earlier, actually, when you were talking thinking about how much that opened up, just even attending funerals. Beyond COVID, people can still attend funerals from other countries because we learned how to live stream them. Yes, that's huge. Each week.

Rebecca Feinglos: 45:00

So where it gets sticky is I would always rather someone go in person if they want to go in person to something. But if the alternative is not attending that funeral, not seeing that funeral, not having any grief support at all, then, of course, the internet is exactly what we want. We want it to facilitate connection to me that is just absolutely beautiful. But yeah, I understand the skepticism, like there is a worry that that replaces, quote, unquote, authentic human interaction in person, human interaction. But yeah, I think the pandemic taught us we can do both, and we can, oh, my God, when we were cut off from other people for so long, and maybe made us appreciate hugs even more. You know, when we do get to spend time together, we really value that everything's

Claire : 45:48

got a good and bad side, hasn't it? It's just trying to find, find them both, and kind of weigh them up. Yeah. So I have a question for you. Now, those are regular listeners to the podcast. Will not expect me to ask this question on this type of episode, but you came to the interview having one prepared. So I'm gonna ask you a question that I've never asked before. Now let's chat. I'm gonna ask what's your Herman?

Rebecca Feinglos: 46:07

Okay, and like, now I'm worried that I'm doing it wrong, so I think my Herman is that I'm not crazy. You're not crazy for feeling your grief. And I want everyone who is grieving to hear that, and I want to pass that on. You are not sick, you are not crazy, you are not a failure because you're grieving. And like, whoever needs to hear that, I want you to hear that that is like the biggest thing that helped me was realizing I'm not a crazy person because I've gone through loss. These are normal, natural feelings. Grief is not something to be ashamed of. That's my hermit. Did I do it right? Perfect.

Claire : 46:47

You did do it right? Perfect. Herman. And now I get to ask you the other question. You don't only just get to do the hermit, you get to do the tall one as well. So yes, we know we were talking about, like online social media, how they're useful tools for people that are going through grief or preparing for grief, even so, if I went into my metaphorical garden shed and picked out a tool that represented online, really, for helping people with grief, what kind of tool do you think it would be?

Rebecca Feinglos: 47:11

A pully or like a lever, like something that helps you lift something that is heavy? I think that is what social media can do. It can facilitate the lifting, it can't do it for you, right? Like, social media can't replace the hard work that you need to do. You still have to lift the thing. You still have to do it. You still have to build the thing. But like, Let's lighten that load. Let's share that load a little bit. So, yeah, a pulley or something,

Claire : 47:39

A pulley or a lever, or lev-er, if you're American, this is especially handy when you're only just over five foot tall, like I am. So I've added that to my shed, and it is yet another useful tool that I didn't already have. And you'll probably notice that the question I asked that I've never asked before in a let's chat, mostly because I pointed it out, was What's your Herman? That was for the first time ever since Rebecca has said to me beforehand she prepared one. And since it's my podcast, and I can bend the rules every now and then, I just couldn't not ask the question, especially as Chris usually gets to ask the question on our 101 loss episodes. Anyway. Thank you so much, Rebecca for helping us to further the ways technology is shaping how we communicate in grieve. If you want to find out more about Rebecca, you can check out www.grieveleave.com and I'll put links in the show notes. And a quick shout out to our newest venture at The Silent Why, since he snuck into the episode. Anyway, Herman is new in 2024 you can now buy and send physical Hermans to people who are struggling or grieving. These are small crocheted companions made by yours truly and posted to you or someone you love to let them know they're not alone. They're the perfect way to show someone you care and that you're thinking about them. They last way longer than flowers, and they're a great Christmas present if you know someone that's going to be finding Christmas especially difficult this year to get a look at these cute little fellas and to find out more about the words they come with to help you express what you might be finding difficult, pop over to www.thehermancompany.com Again, all the links are in the show notes. This podcast is entirely funded by the sale of Herman's and kind donations, either one off or monthly through www.buymeacoffee.com/thesilentwhy. So if you've been blessed, encouraged or helped by anything I'm producing, please consider donating to help the podcast continue long into the future, and thanks for listening to The Silent Why, if you've got a subject you'd like me to chat to an expert on, please get in touch via our social media or the website, or you can email thesilentwhy@gmail.com and let's chat....