Grief Companionship
10/29/21 - Grief can come in so many forms and impact us in unexpected ways. Illustrator and designer Ngaio Parr knows all too well, having lost four family members in four years. Retreating from family and friends? Strange physical symptoms? Suddenly seeing things everywhere that echo a lost loved one? All these normal forms of grieving can be confusing in a world that's all too ready to have you move on.
To help, Ngaio has designed and illustrated The Grief Companion, a deck of cards with beautiful abstract watercolor images with prompts, insights and actions, for the moments when you can only do a little bit at a time. Plus, we discuss how to be there for friends who are grieving.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Executive Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
TRANSCRIPT: GRIEF COMPANIONSHIP
[Ads]
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend
Ann: A podcast for long distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I’m Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Ann Friedman, what's up this week?
Ann: We sort of have a heavy agenda today. We are going to have a conversation about grief, which maybe it's just my people or like this still in a pandemic pervasive heaviness that is going on, but grief just feels pervasive right now. Ngaio comes to grief from a really harrowing experience of having four family members pass away in the span of four years. Um, one of whom was her dad who was like super, super close to her. And so we'll be talking about grief in that sense of grieving a loved one, someone who was really core to you into your life. The impetus for our conversation is to talk a little bit about The Grief Companion, which is an illustrated deck of cards that Ngaio created. She observed when she was grieving that she didn't really have the energy to sit down and read a linear book, which is what a lot of people were recommending to her to support her. Um, she didn't have the attention span and also like books are inherently linear and she wanted something that reflected the fact that the grieving process is not linear.
[theme song]
Ann: She put together this deck of cards. She hand painted them by the way. Um, and the cards can be used a number of ways. You can pull an insight card and action card or a prompt for your journaling. You can do it every day at the same time or every week as part of a mindful intention that you set, or you can just keep them on hand to be there for you in a difficult moment. The cards are designed to approach the topic of grief from several different angles and really hopefully be something you can use to support yourself and feel a little less alone as you grieve. Um, I mentioned that Ngaio hand painted these cards herself. They're beautiful watercolor illustrations. She is by trade a designer, author, artist, and curator. Um, we first met in 2017 when I was a speaker at Make Nice, which is a conference that she created for creative women. Um, it's no longer, uh, still it's no longer going and its conference form. I mean, what is, but, um, the work really lives on in the community that she created. So Ngaio was also a recent transplant from Australia to the United States. So we were able to do this interview in person, which was a real treat. Anyway, here I am with Ngaio Parr talking about The Grief Companion.
[interview begins]
Ann: Ngaio, welcome to the podcast.
Ngaio: Thank you so much, Ann. I'm so excited to be here.
Ann: I know quite literally here, we're in the same room, which is such a treat.
Ngaio: I know it's such an exciting thing to do on an afternoon.
Ann: I was about to say, how are you doing today? But then I realized that watching my favorite dating reality show Love on the Spectrum, which is set in Australia has made me realize, I should say, how are you going?
Ngaio: Oh, really?
Ann: I noticed, cause I liked it. I think like, how are you doing is maybe my default phrasing of that question.
Ngaio: It’s very active, I guess, as opposed to going, yeah. Maybe that's like fits in with the more relaxed, Aussie way of life.
Ann: Instead of like, how's it going? It's like, yes, for you going.
Ngaio: How am I going, I'm going well, thank you. Thank you. How are you going?
Ann: It's funny because I was about to add some caveat about keeping it light today while we talk about grief, but I do kind of feel that like it's all an emotional mixed bag, so we're keeping it light and heavy at the same time. Yeah.
Ngaio: As is the human experience.
Ann: I mean, I know part of the whole reason for this project is grief is not a static moment or one thing, but is there like something that comes to mind when I'm like, what has it been like for you grieving?
Ngaio: My first thought would be unexpected because I had no comprehension of what grief was other than watching films that are always getting it completely wrong. You know, like the next day they're like totally fine going back to work. So I think just unexpected and not knowing at all how to grieve, which is why I did what I do for any kind of project being a perfectionist, which was just reading every single thing I possibly could about it and trying to process it.
Ann: And that way, what do you mean how to grieve, like maybe explain what that felt like you were like, am I doing this right?
Ngaio: I think so. And I feel like in the moment I felt, you know, this is maybe the biggest thing that will ever happen to me. And I don't know if I'm doing it correctly or if there is a way to do it correctly, which again is maybe that perfectionist bent, trying to understand with no previous knowledge like how to get through it. It felt very difficult.
Ann: The grief experience that you're talking about is, um, your dad's death?
Ngaio: Yes. Super lucky. I had four family members die within four years, but the most horrific of them all was my father, who was my best friend. And really, we were mirrors of each other. He was a super healthy, wonderful man who was diagnosed with cancer and passed away less than three months later.
Ann: Wow.
Ngaio: So it was a really quick process and a really big learning process over that time. And after he passed, of course.
Ann: And so I'm trying to understand that moment where you were like, am I doing it right? Is it because you were like, if I were doing it right, it would be less painful or?
Ngaio: Yeah. It just, it was so consuming. You know, every single thought I couldn't eat properly, I couldn't sleep properly. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I personally would just kind of retracted into my shell. I felt like everything I've ever heard about grief, didn't look like this. It didn't look this all-consuming and maybe I'm not doing it right. I guess that coupled with the fact that I do like to research things to the nth degree, ended up in me trying to figure out if I was doing it right. Which if anyone has grieved before they know is a stupid question to try and answer.
Ann: Well, I don't think it's stupid because I think about what we are taught about grief, other than it will happen. It's hard, you know, when someone you love dies, you'll grieve like basic facts. Other than that, I feel like the main sort of point of knowledge is the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Like that's like the next thing that comes to mind for me did, did that factor in, at all, as you were trying to like figure it out, I'm air quoting.
Ngaio: The first thing I learned in researching them is that they have both since said that that was not correct when they went through grief themselves. And you know, if anyone has gone through grief, they understand that there is no linear path of these seven steps. That would be actually really easy to comprehend that like, oh, I'm on this roller coaster, it's going to go in this one direction and then I'll get to the end of it.
Ann: Right. I like the idea that if there are these stages, then you would know that you were like on the right track. Like now it's stage three of seven and then it'll feel better.
Ngaio: Like oh halfway.
Ann: Yeah. Was there a moment when you realized that that was kind of?
Ngaio: Yes and no. I think, um, one of the books that I first read that I really, there was segments of that really helped me was Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking and in her writing makes it pretty clear that that's not the process and also discusses a lot of like physiological things and psychosomatic things that you go through that don't fit into those stages. That made me feel a bit less alone and identify with that a little bit.
Ann: Right. Like something that couldn't be even remotely labeled like these Kubler-Ross stages.
Ngaio: Yeah. And also helped me feel a little bit more saying that it wasn't in a flow, you know, like it was back and forth. And sometimes between days or hours or minutes, I would go from being relatively okay, slash numb to being really angry, being very upset. And it was a bit of a ping pong ball situation.
Ann: And what kind of support did you have during that period?
Ngaio: I had my husband with me the whole time. He was extremely helpful, but also just as clueless as me is how it worked. I had to try and be cognizant of the fact that he was also grieving in a different way. I tend to isolate myself when I'm feeling upset or not sure how to be in public. So I really pulled away from most of my friendship group and family, which was probably not the easiest mood, but it's also just the way that I naturally did that. And that's maybe also why I kind of dove into books and other ways to figure out how I was processing. The other thing that I personally found very useful was removing myself from environments that reminded me of my father and also getting into nature as much as possible. The flip side of that is that my father and I had really similar tastes. We loved the same food. We loved the same places. We love the same activities. So sometimes it's really nice to do those things because you're reminded of them. And sometimes it's kind of like being mocked a little bit, cause it's like, oh, everything you enjoy also reminds you of the fact that you don't have this person anymore.
Ann: When you look at work you made in maybe like that first year or when your dad's death was still really, really like a raw, active life thing. But maybe when it was, you were still in that shock phase, what was different about your creative life?
Ngaio: I'm quite privileged and lucky that I didn't have to do anything that I didn't want to do. I started journaling, but I also kind of felt guilty about that in those stages too, because you also get this narrative that, oh, you need to like siphon your grief into your art form. And the silver lining of going through this terrible experience is that you can turn it into art. I felt pressured to do that, but also had absolutely no want to do that at the same time. You know, obviously I, in a way have with The Grief Companion.
Ann: Amazing transition
Ngaio: A really long time to, you know, feel comfortable doing. Yeah.
Ann: I'm thinking about a lot right now as someone who is friends with a lot of people who have had a parent die recently, I think some of that is because we are still in a pandemic. Some of it is like just, you know, I'm approaching middle age and some of my friends, my friend's parents are passing away. I mean, it's just, it's become more of a fact of my life than maybe it was five or 10 years ago. And I have found myself faced with the kind of specifics of each friend and friendship as they're going through that process. So, you know, I had a text exchange recently with a friend whose dad died a month ago. You know, I was asking if she wanted to hang out. And she said something to the effect of, I'm not very good company right now. And I really struggled to suss out whether that was sort of a request for some space or whether it was maybe just insecurity or not wanting to be a burden or something like that. I would love to hear your thoughts about navigating grief from a supportive position. And as the person who's grieving in terms of asking you for what you need, what have you learned about that?
Ngaio: Obviously everyone has different needs, but I think one thing that I found when I was grieving is I actually didn't know myself. So you often get people saying, oh, if there's anything you need, let me know. I was like, that's kind, but A that's putting it on me to know what I need, which I don't even know. And B it means that I have to contact you to ask for that help, which I'm not going to do because as your friend also said, like, I don't feel like I'm good company. I don't maybe feel like I deserve to be spending time with people when I'm feeling this low or that, you know, people are so awkward around death and grief that unless they are specifically and consistently asking me, I'm not going to take them up on that. I found in the long run that people and friends messaging me saying, I'm thinking of you, you don't need to respond to this, but I'm just letting you know, you know, I love you. And if you'd like to go for a walk next week, I'm free these days, or I've made this big batch of whatever meal. I'm just going to drop it at your door. You don't have to come to the door. In fact, we had a few really lovely family members doing that when dad was even sick and I was caring for him, they dropped off these beautiful meals. That there's no way I had the capacity to be cooking at that time. But I also would get very anxious about having to be like a good host if someone was dropping something like that over, I think in, in general, telling people that you love them and that you're there for them, but they do not need to respond just very important and helpful because they don't need to feel pressure and gently, you know, suggesting specific things that you can do for them, I think is really helpful. Like with your friend, I feel like it's probably a bit of column A and column B and maybe it's writing back and saying, you know, that doesn't matter. I'm here. And these are the days also, if you don't want to, that's completely fine too. I think it's just giving people the option to opt in.
Ann: But yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely a consequence of being raised in a culture where death is still very much taboo, I think leads us to having not enough narratives or not enough ways into this question. I just want to go back to what you were saying at the beginning of like, okay, I had this idea based on movies or TV shows of what it might look like. I want to talk about, you know, you, you said earlier that you eventually did want to make art about your experience of grief and the result is The Grief Companion. Let's talk about it.
Ngaio: It's not a book, um, much to my publisher's dismay originally. Um, yeah. I, you know, after reading every book under the sun on grief, I felt like there was something that I wished I could have read. Um, that made sense for the nonlinear way that I was grieving and that old people grieve in that I really just wanted to be able to pick up a little bit of information or something to make me feel slightly better when I needed it when I was having a bad time.
Ann: So why a deck then, like, how did you, how did, how did you hit on this idea of actually, maybe it doesn't have to be a book.
Ngaio: I knew that I didn't want it to be a book because of, you know, they exist and I wanted to be able to dip in and out of something in a way that I didn't have to reread things again and again, to understand that concept. And I also found that going through all of the books and websites and interviews and podcasts that I listened to, there was often like one nugget that I took out of each book that I found incredibly helpful. I wanted to be able to compile all of those and curate all of those into a little pack that was portable that you could take with you when you were having a breakdown in the produce aisle, because a song that reminds you of the person that you loved comes on the radio, and no one understands why you're crying over the tomatoes. You could pull it out then, or you can use it in a weekly sense to, you know, have something to think on each week when you're going through that grieving process in the first year or so. And I also just wanted it to be beautiful, which a lot of grief content isn't, it's not like the key reason to make the contents that's often overlooked. I also wanted The Grief Companion to be something that you're happy to have out on the table using.
Ann: Is it all water color?
Ngaio: Is that this all watercolor? Yes. Again with perfectionist tendencies, I think I did like 400 artworks, but it ended up being about 70 cards. So each one has a different illustration on the front in watercolor and then split into three sections. One is action. Onen is insight and one is prompts. So there's different information on the back of each card.
Ann: I love the watercolors so much. They're these beautiful, bright, abstract kind of geometric shapes to me, I'm just like, oh, their feelings. It's not like a painting of a house.
Ngaio: That was a hard thing to land on because how do you paint grief? You don't want to be peppy talking about grief, but you also don't want to be too sad because there are elements that are beautiful about grief.
Ann: Yeah. I mean, talk about a difficult balance to strike. Um, I'm going to pull a card and just read it and we can talk about it. How about that?
Ngaio: Let's do it.
Ann: And then you can pull one and we can talk about it.
Ngaio: Excellent.
Ann: Okay. I've pulled an insight card. It says frequency illusion. You may notice things relating to your grief popping up much more frequently in life than beforehand. This is known as frequency illusion or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. All of a sudden you won't be able to get through a movie without a surprise terminally ill cancer patient, or a sweet father daughter relationship, no matter how hard you screen for triggers, it can become comical. How much the world reminds you of your loss in the most banal ways.
Ngaio: Yes, my partner and I joke about this, that every single media we consume has surprise cancer or surprise dead dad in it. But a great example, when my father was still alive, we decided to have a nice like family movies session with his two brothers. And we chose without watching the trailer, a movie called Going in Style, which is actually about a terminally ill cancer patient and his two best friends, which was just the perfect example of frequency illusion. Didn't think to check the trailer.
Ann: I thought it was about these elderly gents. Just stepping out, looking good.
Ngaio: Exactly. Exactly. Morgan Freeman has to be exciting. No bad choice.
Ann: So this is an interesting card too, because it's not really advice. I think that's really interesting about this deck that you've made is it doesn't say, and here's what you do when it feels like the world is full of reminders of this like pain that you're experiencing.
Ngaio: Yeah. I tried to be very careful with advice because no one grieves in the same way and no one wants the same things out of their grieving process. I know that when I was in sharp grief, I would have just really appreciated being aware of these things. Um, it would've made the process, you know, maybe 2% easier and knowing that this was going to come up constantly would have made it a little bit easier to process at the start. When I was turning on every single TV show and seeing a cancer patients.
Ann: You just used the term sharp grief. Yes. No. I mean, I'm really interested in it. Do you think about that as like a sharp grieving period? You know, like when you're right in the very beginning and then, you know, grief, maybe it changes further away or?
Ngaio: I don't know if it's a term or if I just randomly use it, but I think right at the start, you know, up to the funeral maybe is you're just in shock. You're not really feeling anything. Well, I wasn't feeling anything. It was just organizing things, having to go through those processes. And that's where most people think if they haven't experienced grief, like, oh, that's the hardest day the right funeral, you know, but I think it's that point where you can't live life in an even very basic way, which is, what's kind of shocking about how Western culture works through grief is that no one cares after the funeral, you know, you need to get back to work and why are you so sad still? Like it's, it's a very strange phenomenon.
Ann: Yeah. I mean this idea that there may be a period or there may be several times when you are impaired by grief or when you cannot live, like the way that you would, if you were not grieving is something that there is absolutely no acknowledgement of. I mean, even people I know who are lucky enough to have a kind of job that might offer bereavement leave are rarely supported in actually taking it.
Ngaio: Yes. Obviously my main understanding of this is American and Australian work culture, both pretty terrible. So that's where my knowledge is coming from. But people who are in industries where maybe there is more leeway than, you know, executive jobs, they're still often being told you've had the funeral, we've given you the time to do that. What two days, three days after a person dies, which is a remarkably strange way of processing grief or understanding grief because yeah, that's when it's just getting started.
Ann: Okay. Do you want to pick another card?
Ngaio: I really love this one. It's an insight that's called physical symptoms. All the systems in the human body as susceptible to the effects of stress and grief. So grief often affects us physically. Some documented physical symptoms include circulation issues and temperature related discomfort, including over perspiring, the chills or sweats while sleeping, low energy levels and physical exhaustion, migraines and headaches, changes in sleep. Patterns changes in hunger levels, less or more impacted cognitive function for basic thinking and memory retention, shortness of breath, nausea, and digestive issues, body aches, and a generally weaker immune system that makes you more susceptible to illness. Some of these symptoms can be managed by eating well, sleeping on a regular schedule, exercising and staying hydrated, make sure to seek medical assistance. If symptoms persist or become unmanageable,
Ann: I can see on your face this, like I wish someone had sat me down and said this.
Ngaio: Yeah, this is one that I found a little segment of this in Joan Didion's book. She talked about some physical symptoms that she had. And I was so cold that I was sleeping with three or four blankets over me. I was just constantly cold. Could not get warm. I couldn't eat very flavorsome food. So it was like all beige food, basically, which for anyone who knows me, I have never not haven't had an appetite in my life and I just generally couldn't remember anything like even just lodge segments of that initial grief period. I have almost no memory of which things that you should really know going into it because otherwise you feel like you're going insane. You know, I truly couldn't understand why I was so cold until I read this book. And I was like, oh, oh, that makes sense. Okay. I don't need to add that to my things to stress out about. It's a normal response.
Ann: It's interesting. Also hearing you read that list of symptoms. It was like the end of like a pharmaceutical commercial. [laughter]
Ngaio: Exactly. I should have said it faster.
Ann: Yes. Read it super, super fast, like seek medical help if systems, if symptoms persist.
Ngaio: At the end of that, I, you know, I say sleep eating healthily exercise helps. It's like, well, that's great to know, but like the reality of doing those things when you are feeling so terrible about yourself is, is another thing altogether.
Ann: So it exists just to remind you that grief has a physical effect. I'm going to pick another one. Okay. Here's an action card. It is called shared joy, doing something you shared together. It can be difficult at first, but the joy and connection it brings over time is often worth the uncomfortable push. To start again, do something that you both found joy in. Did you both like cooking, make a dish? They would love, did you both love the outdoors? Go for a hike? Were you both into mystery novels? Start a new book from your favorite series? Oh, this one breaks my heart.
Ngaio: I know we talked about this slightly earlier, but when you lose someone that loved all the same things, as you love, that is an unfortunate side effect that everything that you love reminds you of them. As I say, initially, it can be really hard.
Ann: You know, you have this line in it about how over time is a positive source of connection.
Ngaio: Yeah. Well, I have found that I'm hoping that people generally would find that I found it really difficult to listen to the music that my dad and I both loved listening to at the start. It felt wrong to cook things that he would have cooked for me originally, but now cooking those things is a really nice thing to do to remind myself of him, my husband and I, we've just moved to LA and we take photos of weird cars and strange plants all the time. And we joke about the fact that all texts that to can things like plants or, or strange stores or funny little things, he's the person that we would text them to. And he would always love it. So we basically have this like giant stockpile of photos that we still have to send to him.
Ann: Of the things your dad would love?
Ngaio: Yeah. Yeah. So it's nice to be able to slowly get to a point where you feel comfortable taking those photos, knowing that it is actually just going to sit in my photo real, but I would have sent that to him. Yeah.
Ann: And you probably think about him when you come across those things in your camera roll.
Ngaio: A hundred percent. Yeah. And it's nice to be able to talk to my partner about that and we can bring him up in conversation when it's not about him. It's about something that we shared jointly.
Ann: How did you walk that line of essentially like saying these are things that have helped me, but I don't want to tell you how to grieve.
Ngaio: Yeah. Well, you'll notice there's lots of, you may find, but the initial writing process, I sent out a survey in my newsletter to ask people who had grieved to answer a couple of questions because I needed to know if some of the things that I had gone through were universal or like totally not useful to put into a deck. I had hundreds of responses over different countries, different cultures, and the responses were remarkably similar. A lot of the answers correlated to what I was already writing. So that was a really nice check that I wasn't the only diluted griever.
Ann: Yeah. I was wondering if there's anything that really surprised you that you thought was maybe specific to you or that you hadn't seen depicted in cultural conversations about grief that people were instantly like, oh, me too.
Ngaio: Physical symptoms was one. Yeah. That really across almost everyone that responded to the survey, that was something that they didn't know about also, sadly, which I didn't experience was not being able to have time to grieve, you know, not being able to take time off whether they were working and their workplace wouldn't give them time off, or the fact that it was during a pandemic and they have children and they just don't have that time to give themselves to grieve, which hopefully some of these cards might be able to help in that half an hour. They have before bed where they can think about it or a day where they can go and do something that might relate to their grieving process a little more.
Ann: Right. Like instead of feeling the pressure to crack open a whole book about grief, just say like, okay, I'm going to pick one card tonight. And that's what I have the capacity for.
Ngaio: Yeah, exactly. I'm hoping that the format gives a little more flexibility so that depending on your situation, you can use it in a way that suits you.
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Ann: Okay. You want to pick one last one?
Ngaio: Okay. This one is a prompt called feel good list. Prepare yourself with a feel-good list for when you need a bit of joy, but don't have the bandwidth to think of what to do, create a list of things that bring you comfort and make sure you can access it anywhere. Write it on your phone, or take a photo of a handwritten list. Try and keep the majority of the list on the feel good and constructive side, like fresh sheets or listening to a particular song instead of the feel good and destructive side, like a liter of ice cream or sleeping all day, make sure they range from quick and easy, like standing in the sun for five minutes too long and allegedly like going for a big walk or rewatching your favorite TV show. When you need to make yourself feel a little more human check in with your feel good list. This is really helpful when you are in that numb kind of stage where you can't really process anything or figure out how to make yourself feel much. I found that I often needed a reminder like, oh, I like a cup of tea. Like that can help me feel slightly more human. Like having a list of that helped me kickstart that a little bit. And I did it more often than I would have had. I had to think of it myself at the time. Obviously we are all going to have the days where we do the feel-good and destructive ones and that's completely understandable. But with the prep list, it's kind of nice to try and sway it more to the constructive side so that you're not going through an entire freezer of ice cream every day.
Ann: And you know, I mean, I think different definitions of feel good, right? The difference between like helps me numb out when things feel too hard and like actively makes me feel something that feels good is maybe a meaningful distinction.
Ngaio: Yes, that is true on my list. There are things that do burst things that I kind of have to make myself do. Like I didn't feel like going for a walk. I didn't feel like standing in the sun or changing my sheets, but those things always made me feel better. I could also rewatch Law & Order for 10 hours in a row. And that would also make me feel better. Depends on the day.
Ann: What if you and your loved one shared Law & Order? That's really the question. I feel like there are some loopholes here.
Ngaio: Yeah. This is true. Crossovers.
Ann: Yeah. We have kind of an early copy of this grief companion deck that's sitting between the two of us, but it's not out in the world till January,
Ngaio: December 1st for Australia and January 4th for the rest of the world.
Ann: Well, the timing is really something. I've had several conversations with friends, also read trend pieces about this moment, just being so steeped in grief, even for people who haven't lost, someone close to them, haven't experienced a death or a trauma. You know, it just seems like we're in a time when we are surrounded by pain and there is not a lot of big cultural acknowledgement of that happening. I think it happens for me frequently in private conversation, but like, you know, sometimes I'm like, I can't believe we're just reading the headlines like normal. Like everybody isn't feeling some form of grief. I'm wondering what you think about more like ambient cultural grief related to the pandemic and climate destruction. And you know, the fact that we live in a society that doesn't care for the most vulnerable, where does that come into contact with maybe the more acute grief of someone close to you dying, but this deck is more geared toward.
Ngaio: I think it's highly unlikely that anyone who is leaving the house or turning on the TV does not have some kind of grief coursing through their body at any one time. And then as you've been grieving, the things that you thought were going to be happening in your life and your people that are graduating and not being able to celebrate that. I think that hopefully the one upside to this is that maybe it will help everyone be a bit more understanding of the sharper kind of grief process. I'm hoping that it also might change some kind of workplace policies or at least understanding of how the grieving process works. And the fact that it is not something that you can like shove into a week-long timeline and then check off your list. It's also important to think about the fact that there are people who are in what we've called sharp grief right now with a loved one that they've lost. Plus also all of this cultural grieving that they're going through. And then they probably have a job. They might have kids, they might have all of these things layered on top of each other. So as cliche as it sounds, I'm hoping that it helps people understand that any person you walk past on the street is probably going through some kind of hard time and it might help people be a little bit more understanding and kind of that.
Ann: I'm wondering if there's anything you want to say to people who are listening, who are in that sharp grief right now, the really specific loss of a loved one and not this kind of big ambient cultural grief.
Ngaio: Yeah. The thing that people told me over and over, which I did not believe was that it will get better. It won't be this horrible all the time. I think an important part of the grieving process for me to understand was that it also will never go away. You will be happy again, you will experience joy again, but you will not be the same person. And that's okay. You know, you've had this experience that will fundamentally shift who you are as a person.
Ann: You can't unexperience it.
Ngaio: You can't unexperience it. And you don't want to unexperience it as painful as it is. One thing that helped me a lot when I was basically just lying on my bed all day long was the amount of grief that you're feeling is equal to the love that you felt for that person. And that gave me a lot of comfort at that time. As strange as that sounds.
Ann: You walk the line when it comes to the wide range of beliefs, about what death really means. I just think about my experiences, supporting people. I love through a loss and just being like, oh, you know, sometimes we believe radically different things about what, if anything happens after death. And so I'm wondering about how that came up with these cards.
Ngaio: Yeah. Quite easily, because I don't think it should matter when you are helping someone go through grief. The most painful points that I had when people were trying to support me is when they tried to put their beliefs of what happens, what they believe happens after death, onto me, whether they believe the same thing as me or not, it didn't help largely it doesn't inform how you can support someone that's going through grief. I think whether you are religious, atheist, believe in, in any, any different kind of narrative of what happens after death, you're still feeling those same feelings. It shouldn't really matter at all when you're trying to help someone through it and would generally advise them not to bring that into the conversation. Yeah. Unless it's guided by that person maybe.
Ann: Right. I would also love to hear you talk about what grief is like for you now that like this sharp grief period is a couple years in the past. What feels surprising?
Ngaio: That's a great question. And something that I noticed changing daily, moving here has made me miss my dad in a different way. I really want to be able to tell him what I'm doing. And I really want to be able to, you know, send him those texts because I'm going through a lot of change. It makes it more apparent that he's not there to celebrate it with me. But then when I was in my hometown just before moving here, that's also really difficult because I haven't lived in the same town. I didn't live in the same town as him for a decade before he passed away. So being there is a really sharp reminder that he's not there because I haven't spent that much time there without him, depending where you are geographically or what you're going through. It really changes how you miss the person. And now I'm wishing I could send him a lot of texts and wishing I could show off the things that I was doing here. Cause I just know how excited he would've been and not being able to have. That is a real bummer.
Ann: What do you think he would think of the grief companion?
Ngaio: I think he would love it, but also he would just be like, yeah, good job. Good job. Good girl. And he'd be proud of me, but he's also not someone that would be, you know, shouting from the rooftops. He'd just have known. I had it in me the whole time. Yeah. So I think he would love it. Read through it, put it on the shelf and then just continue reading his mystery novels.
Ann: Oh, I love that. You list a bunch of resources. I mean, there's a lot of things quoted and cited and you've mentioned the Joan Didion book. I'm wondering if there's anything else in particular that you have found yourself recommending people who are grieving.
Ngaio: Yes. One thing I've found very helpful. Strangely was Nick Cave's Red Hand Files, letters and website that he has. He's very accustomed to grief and...
Ann: The white Nick Cave, musician to Cave, right?
Ngaio: Yes Musician, Australian Nick Cave. He answers letters that people write in about an often they skew towards grief and pain and he is such an eloquent, beautiful writer that I've found myself scaring them, not in day a great TV show. I think that gets quite close to maybe some of the similar experiences is Ricky Gervais’s Afterlife. Because something that I think people find off putting maybe is that you can make jokes. And it can be really funny that you're going through grief. Like my dad passed away on the 30th of June. And we just often talk about the fact that it's a really neat financial year in Australia. Like if you, if you'd lost it one more day, we would have had to do another tax return for him, which is like, people think is really horrible when I say, but it's funny. Like you can use humor. It's, it's a normal part of coping mechanisms. There's a really beautiful memoir by Dr. Paul Kalanithi called When Breath Becomes Air. That is heartbreaking and just absolutely beautiful. And please have at least two boxes of tissues. So, you know, be in the right mood for that one warning. And I'd also recommend the podcast. Terrible, Thanks for Asking by Nora McInerney. She's great at mixing humor and grief interviews, people that have been through horrible ordeals and really hard times, and there's always a risk of having a like, and here's the silver lining of going through that process and she never forces that it's never a part of the conversation. And I really appreciate that about her podcast and books. She's written books as well. And I'd also say if you buy The Grief Companion and send in the receipt, you also get a card to help gift it to someone with other resources that I've kind of gone through, that wouldn't fit on a card card format, some playlists for different grief moods that you go through and a kind of sheet about how to support someone through grief as well. And some ideas for that.
Ann: I love that I can talk to you about grief all day, but okay, well we'll link to all these things in the show notes so people can pre-order and then in the future, also, if you're listening to this out of sync, get one for yourself or for someone you love who's grieving. I've been thinking about the thing you said about silver linings and well, this is not a silver lining. I think of you and all of my friends who have experienced this kind of great loss as like emotional elders in a sense like, and again, not a silver lining, but just that, like, I really recognize that there is this huge facet of being a human who's alive, which is experiencing loss at this scale. You know, like that's just what it means to be invested in people. I'm really grateful for this resource, for those of us who are not yet emotional elders when it comes to this stuff. Cause I, it really is nice to know that there is like a place to go, a thing to have.
Ngaio: Thank you. That's very lovely. Yeah. I also do have to mention that without Ann’s gentle and consistent prodding constantly, these probably wouldn't exist in real life and I'm very grateful for that as well. So you can thank Ann, that these actually exist.
Ann: For just for just reassuring you, that you had a really brilliant idea, but I also just love printed cards of all kinds. Like I just, I think it was such a brilliant format for what you're offering. Like it really is.
Ngaio: I'm glad the publishers got on board.
Ann: That is verbatim. What I was about to say. No thank you so much for being on the podcast
Ngaio: And lovely to be here.
Ann: You can check out Ngaio: work at NgaioParr.com.That's spelled N G A I O P A R R dot com. And the grief companion will be available in Australia, in December and everywhere else in the world in early 20, 22, God, why is 2022 such a tongue twister? You can pre-order it and see more of NIOS work and sign up for her newsletter, which is excellent on her website, links her in the show notes, see you on the internet.
Aminatou: I will see you on the internet, my love.
[outro music]
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our producer is Jordan Bailey and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.