#52 — Can You Grieve Without Suffering?
Content note: This conversation talks openly about suicide, including details of the caller finding their son after his death and the caller's own thoughts of ending their life. If today isn't the right day for it, that's okay.
This week's caller is a psychic medium who spends their days holding space for other people's pain. Ten months before we spoke, they lost their 21-year-old son. For the first five months, they cried every day. Their brain still scans the house for him, and it's only now starting to slow down.
Every morning, before their feet hit the ground, they make a choice. The way they see it, you can get better or you can get bitter, and they refuse to get bitter. They still grieve and they still cry, but to them grieving and suffering are two different things, and they refuse to suffer.
We talk about what they believe happens when we die: hovering over your own body, then a review of your life that shows you how you made other people feel. They also see Earth as a school where the soul keeps coming back to learn. They talk about growing up in Catholic school afraid that their gifts would send them to hell, and about knowing things about their clients back when they were a 22-year-old esthetician. Now they say nature is their church and love is their religion.
They didn't get through the last ten months alone. Their husband, their other son, their friends at the salon, and other mothers who had lost children all gathered around them. Their son still sends signs: a bee, a flickering light, a song coming on. They're taking the love they had with him and loving other people more deeply than ever before.
Topics covered
08:20 What the caller thinks happens when we die
12:53 Choosing better over bitter, every morning
21:42 Why grieving and suffering are two different things
26:16 The first ten months, and the village that got them through
35:13 Finding deeper compassion through loss
Related episodes
Anonymous #14 — Is It Possible for a Father to Make Peace With the Death of His Son?
Anonymous #44 — What Do You Lose When You Carry Other People's Pain?
Anonymous #45 — How Would You Know If a Message From the Dead Was Real?
Ask Me Anything: On October 8, I'm doing my first-ever live Q&A on Substack. You can send in questions ahead of time by text, email, Substack or Instagram. Add it to your calendar here.
Book recommendations: Finding Meaning by David Kessler — see the full list of Anonymous Recommendations here.
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