Episode 138 - Grief Isn’t Linear: Learning to Carry What You’ve Lost with Krista St-Germain
Many of us know that grief isn’t linear, yet so much of what we’re taught still has us trying to get it “right.” In this conversation, I’m joined by Krista St-Germain, life coach, grief guide for widows, and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast. Krista shares how she helps women navigate grief with self-compassion, gentleness, and kindness, and stop making themselves wrong for what they feel. This episode isn’t just for those who’ve lost a spouse, but for anyone navigating loss and learning not to “fix” their feelings, but to create more capacity to hold them. Here’s what we cover:
Why grief can’t be defined by the familiar “stages” and why it doesn’t end with acceptance
How healing comes from increasing your capacity to support yourself, not from trying to change what you feel
What secondary losses look like and how they reveal the ongoing nature of grief
How to stop making yourself wrong for what you feel and practice meeting your emotions with compassion instead
Why we sometimes feel uncomfortable around grief and how to show up for others in a way that is truly helpful
How mentioning someone’s loss shows you remember and why that can mean so much
The importance of normalizing sadness and modeling healthy grief, especially for children
Find Krista here:
https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/happier-holidays-for-widowed-moms/
https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/podcast/
https://www.instagram.com/lifecoachkrista/
Find Sara here:
https://pages.sarafisk.coach/difficultconversations
https://www.instagram.com/sarafiskcoach/
https://www.facebook.com/SaraFiskCoaching/
https://www.tiktok.com/@sarafiskcoach
https://www.youtube.com/@sarafiskcoaching1333
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Transcript
Sara Bybee Fisk 00:58
True story, Krista St-Germain, you are one of my very most favorite people on the planet. If you're watching a little clip of this, we match today, so I feel like there's...
Krista St-Germain 01:09
Well, it's so ironic because you are one of my favorite people on the planet. So it works.
Sara Bybee Fisk 01:15
It works for us. Krista, we've had a couple of conversations before. One on this podcast about how helpful you were to me during a time of intense grief and how much coaching helped me. You're a coach for a living. You work with women who have recently lost partners. What do you want people to know about, like, why were you drawn to that? Why do you do that work?
Krista St-Germain 01:39
Well, yeah, I mean, I wasn't, it wasn't part of any sort of long plan. No. So my husband died, right? So in 2016, swimmingly life was going swimmingly. And then we took this trip and we came back from that trip. And on the way back, he was trying to change a flat tire on my car and was hit by a drunk driver and he died, you know, less than a day later.So I didn't really even have grief on the purview at all until I just had my own grief experience. And so much of that was so much harder than it needed to be. And there was a lot more suffering than there needed to be, because what I later learned was that, you know, what I thought I understood about grief was pretty outdated and not very helpful. And so really it just came from this idea that if I could help people with that, they could have an easier experience. I had no idea that the five stages of grief wasn't the way that grief went. I really thought that's what it was going to be like. And, you know, there's a lot, a lot of other things that I learned too, but yeah, that's why I just wanted people to have better experiences.
Sara Bybee Fisk 02:52
So interesting because, man, we humans love some stages, don't we?
Krista St-Germain 02:56
Well, yeah. I mean, I didn't get that because it would be nice. It totally would be nice.
Sara Bybee Fisk 03:01
Yeah. Yeah. It was very linear. You complete stage one, then you go to stage two, then stage three, you can have a sense of like, I'm making progress, this makes sense. I really understand it. How do you think it impacted you to think that there were stages and then to then realize, oh, maybe it doesn't work like this?
Krista St-Germain 03:27
Well, I definitely felt some resistance to the idea that it wouldn't work like that because if it, if there is no end place called acceptance, then what is there? What does that mean? What does that look like? And so it just felt a little too wide open.You know, I would have preferred that it be clearly defined and objective and it kind of, well, it was not super comfortable for me. And also personally, I was the type of person who wanted to get the A, you know, and be the star in the class. And I kind of went into grief, like I'm, I'm going to show them, like I'm going to, I'm going to do this and, and it's going to be the best it's ever been done. And I'm going to read the books and do the things. And, and so that was kind of disappointing too, because that was where I had found safety in the past was kind of that performative, validated sense. And it just wasn't available. So fairly uncomfortable.
Sara Bybee Fisk 04:24
Yeah, and I just can't help but think about like grief itself is this unwieldy, it feels endless, it feels for a lot of people, I know it felt like this for me, just like this black pool of bottomlessness that once I go in there, I'm never coming out. And so if there isn't this place called acceptance where I just get to go and that's the end of it, those two things together, like there's no stages where I'm just going to get to some kind of quantifiable clearly defined end, that would make grief a lot easier, I think, to at least conceptually go into because you're like, okay, there's this end to it.I'm almost to the end, I'm getting there. And so if there isn't the end of it, what is there?
Krista St-Germain 05:18
Yeah, I think there's a capacity that gets built. There's a capacity to carry it. There's a capacity to feel it. There's a capacity to think about it with intention to decide who you want to be in it. And there's an integration that happens. So we go from not, not from being sad to being grateful or sad to being happy, but we go from being sad and
believing that we'll fall into the pit of sadness and never come out to, to realizing that, Oh, I actually can allow the sadness to be there because it will always be, but we kind of develop a relationship with it, make peace with it. And I do think it gets less intense over time, typically. And then we also go from a what the hell even happened to me. And I am completely powerless in this to recognizing that, yes, there are many things I'm powerless about, but also I get to choose what I want to think about this, what I want to make it mean in my life and who I want to be. Given that it happened, I get to use what I went through as a way to kind of inventory my life and the way that I'm living and make sure I like it. And if I don't align with, you know, what I value, so it can be a still brutal and also a beautiful opportunity to reconnect with what's important to you and make sure that you're living what matters to you.
Sara Bybee Fisk 06:49
I think that is really beautiful, especially because grief usually happens because of something that you didn't choose. This thing that I didn't choose has now changed my life forever. And I do think it makes a lot of sense that there's a feeling of maybe powerlessness or what the fuck? Or just like how did this happen? And so to be able to find a place even in that where there's a choice, deciding who I want to be, having some intention about even how I think about it, that's such a beautiful place to even think about getting to. And I think a lot of the women that I work with who are experiencing grief, it actually brings out at first a lot of their people pleasing tendencies like performing and pretending and overdoing as a way to cope with it when they're still in that powerlessness of it.
Krista St-Germain 08:02
Oh, 100%. And yeah, I think about conversations I've had with clients, especially clients who have been in like higher control faiths. Oh, the performative nature, the, the, I remember somebody telling me a story about having somebody from their ward over to the house. It was like someone in leadership and I don't remember the position. And I mean, her husband had just died and it was all about is the house clean enough and what are they going to think and you know, holding it together.And just the Ike, you could just feel the amount of pressure that was in her body of trying to make sure that other people were, were pleased with how she was grieving. And that's pretty sadly common.
Sara Bybee Fisk 08:47
Yeah. I'm thinking about conversations that I've had with clients who are in grief where, you know, this performing or pretending or like we just, we just got to keep going, got to keep marching on. And a lot of times it actually just amplifies all of kind of the
freneticness because there's this grief underneath, right? Kind of this like constant underground movement of grief. And then they just try and cover it up and cover it up and cover it up and cover it up with a clean house, with being put together so they look like they're grieving well or showing up for their kids with lots of activities and distractions and all of this from a place of like, I think this is the right thing to do. I think this is helpful.I think my children need to know that there's still things, you know, to live for if their father has passed away or I think my children still need to know that there's things to live for if we are no longer going to the same church we used to go to or if there's been some other kind of loss in the family. And so it ends up creating just this soup of pressure and exhaustion and overdoing because I don't think, well, I'll just ask you, why do you think that happens?
Krista St-Germain 10:17
I mean, I think it's because we're coping and we're doing the best we can with what we know in the moment.Like nobody taught us how to do it any other way. And so it makes a whole lot of sense that we would try to outrun the grief or avoid it with, you know, keeping ourselves busy or distracting or any, any, any other number of things that work temporarily.So it's like a survival strategy.It's a coping strategy. And you know, for a while it might be more helpful than not for some people, but I think most people reach a point where they realize, okay, I, part of me sees that if I don't slow down and let myself feel some of this, I'm going to burn out, it's too much.I'm running myself into the ground.And then there's another part that is quite afraid of slowing down long enough to feel it or deal with whatever's inside.And, but you start to see the scale kind of tipping in one direction where it's like, uh, I better learn this skill.I better figure this out for myself. Otherwise, you know, the trajectory of burnout and depletion is not good. And then, then it's time.
Sara Bybee Fisk 11:24
I also just want to name that I think sometimes, well, first, just in my own experience, I didn't know that what I was feeling was grief, right? I think with the loss of a spouse, that's very obvious. With other losses, it's a little less obvious about why I have this feeling that, you know, maybe feels a little sad, but I shouldn't be feeling it because, like, in some settings, grief makes a lot of sense. Like, somebody died. Grief, yes. But I think other types of losses, we, it's like the grief is a little harder to identify. Does that make sense?
Krista St-Germain 12:03
Yeah, it totally does. So there's the, you know, someone dying as bereavement, a type of grief. Then there's the broader definition of grief. So a natural human response to a perceived loss, perceived loss. So you could be on the tail end of something you absolutely wanted. Like maybe it's been super hard for you to come out to your friends and family and you finally do it and you are so proud of yourself for doing it. And, and so you think, well, I should be happy. I should feel relief and maybe to some extent you do, but then also what you might find you also feel is grief. You might feel grief because you, you, you think you should have done it sooner, you know, or for all the years where you didn't do it and now you're doing it. Right. It wasn't the way you wanted your life to go. And now you see that it did and you lost all of these years where you being, you were being, you know, not your authentic self, right? You expect something to go one way and it goes another and that's so many things, but, but the important part is that to you, it feels like a loss.
Sara Bybee Fisk 13:16
And I think we're that, I love that you said it that way because I think that for a lot of like my life, people outside of me told me what was valid and not valid, right? I had all of these kind of external authorities and I think a lot of women can kind of identify with like needing to check with someone else. Is this a valid loss for me to feel bad about? Is this, am I allowed to feel sad about this? Because there is such a habit, a way of life of just making sure that it's okay with other people that I feel this way.
Krista St-Germain 13:54
Isn't that wild that we're taught that? That's crazy. It's wild and it makes me sad and angry.
Sara Bybee Fisk 14:02
It does. It does. And I think that the needing to check with someone else to see if it's okay that I feel this way just adds another layer of separation from it, anxiety about it. And what I would say, and I'm just interested in any of your thoughts is that if I feel like this is a sad thing, it gets to be a sad thing and nobody else has to agree with me.
Krista St-Germain 14:30
100%. Sometimes people will say like, what's the thing you really want people to hear? And that's it for me is like, if you could just not ever make yourself wrong for how you feel. I mean, that would solve so many of the challenges that we have, especially as
women, we feel something and we make ourselves wrong for it or we feel something and we don't believe it's okay until somebody else says it is. Or we feel something and we think, well, it was okay for me to feel it for a certain amount of time, but I've passed that time. And so now it's not okay. Now it's a sign of dysfunction or me having done something wrong or something being wrong with me.
Sara Bybee Fisk 15:08
Yes. And I see that with grief, right? Like this thing happened x number of years ago, I should be over it in a different place.
Krista St-Germain 15:20
Yeah. Accepting. And if I were accepting, I wouldn't feel sad or I wouldn't have feelings about it, which is ridiculous. Grief is the natural human response to a perceived loss and we can't go back and undo the loss and we're always going to have a response to it. Doesn't it then make sense that we would always have feelings about it? Yeah. So we're not trying to change the feelings that we have about it. We're trying to create a greater capacity to support ourselves when those feelings are present so that we can have an easier experience of them and the energy can shift and move. And secondary losses will keep happening forever. Right. And a lot of times we can't plan for them. And so if we're trying to measure our success in grief based on how we feel and we're buying into the idea that we're supposed to feel the emotions on the higher end of the scale, but not the ones on the lower end of the scale, well, then we have no space to have secondary loss experiences, which are such a huge part of grief for most people. It doesn't make sense.
Sara Bybee Fisk 16:21
Yeah, give me an example of a secondary loss and what you mean by feeling the feelings of the higher end and lower end.
Krista St-Germain 16:28
Okay. Yeah. So second, so the primary losses, you know, for my clients that their spouse died for somebody else, it could be whatever the main loss is. So let's say somebody didn't want to lose a job, right? They wanted to be in that space and they lost that job. That would be the primary loss.A secondary loss would be now I don't get to go to lunch with that one coworker that I love or our relationship changed because I don't get to see them every day. So that loss, that secondary loss wouldn't have happened without the primary loss having happened. And the thing about secondary losses is that
for most people it's experienced kind of as a death by a thousand paper cuts because yeah, the primary loss, we expect that one will hurt and other people give us support around that hurt. But then we keep coming across scenarios in life that are secondary, but still involve grief. So, okay, the spouse died. Now it's wedding day. Spouse isn't there, right? It's the birth of a grandchild spouse isn't there. It's all the things that keep happening where in our mind and in our heart, they should be there and they aren't, or it shouldn't have been this way. And it is. And so that's, those are secondary losses.
Sara Bybee Fisk 17:41
I'm so glad that you said that, because I think that when we don't understand not making ourselves wrong for whatever that we're feeling, you get to the wedding day of your daughter and spouse isn't there. And instead of allowing what you're feeling to just be right, you beat yourself up. It's been 30 years or why am I like, I need to focus and be happy. What's wrong with me? We're doing this.
Krista St-Germain 18:10
Yeah, sometimes it's not even just the day of right. It's all the lead up of worry about, you know, I'm going to be a burden to people. I'm going to be a downer. I don't want, you know, it's so-and-so special day. I don't want to bring them down.I don't, we associate a display of emotion with some sort of character weakness or flaw, which is also so sad.
Sara Bybee Fisk 18:32
Yes, and that brings up something I want to get into in just a minute. But before we go there, one of the things that I think is misunderstood about not ever making yourself wrong for how you feel is that that is not the same thing as saying, I want to stay in this feeling or that this feeling is okay.Or it's like somehow I live here now. You can not make yourself wrong for how you're feeling and still learn how to choose how you show up in that feeling. Choose to be intentional in how you act. Like for example, if I'm super angry with my husband, I don't want to do this. If I'm angry, then making myself wrong is the only way I know how to get myself out of it.
Krista St-Germain 19:32
But it really doesn't even work.
Sara Bybee Fisk 19:33
It really doesn't even work.
Krista St-Germain 19:37
Yeah. Because then it's still there. You know, so we just might cover it up or switch gears, but really it's, it didn't actually go away. It didn't get digested.
Sara Bybee Fisk 19:51
So how do you help clients learn how to not ever make themselves wrong for how they feel?
Krista St-Germain 19:59
I mean, I don't, well, I don't know that I, anybody's bat in a hundred here. Yeah. Um, because we're humans and so perfection maybe doesn't need to be the goal. But it is a lot of practicing of just noticing the subtle ways that I make myself wrong and then like, right. Noticing it and then being prepared in advance with something that helps me kind of write that. So of course, like my favorite thing and I say it in my hand just goes to my heart. And it's like, no, of course, of course I feel this way. Of course, this is what's going on. Not to say that it will always be, but it makes so much sense that it is. Right. So however it is that I'm feeling, if we can make it make sense and then treat ourselves like it makes sense, that helps.
Sara Bybee Fisk 20:52
And then, weirdly enough, this is the counterintuitive part. The feeling almost relaxes its grip just a tiny bit. And I find that that's the space that I need to be able to decide how do I want to show up here? Because when I'm in the grip of it, and it's really tight, and I'm fighting it or trying to distract myself from it, it's like I don't even have the space to even be with myself to ask myself, okay, you're angry. How do you want to show up here? What would feel good right now?
Krista St-Germain 21:28
For me, it's, it's, yeah, it's space. It's cognitive ability. Like I can't even really get clarity on what's going on, let alone decide who I want to be in it. If the emotion is super intense, I need a way to make sure that I feel safe in my body and I need a way to, to normalize what I'm feeling and let it, let it flow through.So, you know, tapping is a huge
tool that I tend to gravitate towards. And, and what I love about it is that, well, I mean, I love so many things about it, but one of the things I really love about it is that as you're speaking, you are normalizing what you feel and saying it and, and following it up with a statement that is accepting of how you feel. And then that energy gets to shift and move and you can think again, and you can decide then now, now what, and who do I want to be? And what do I want next? And it feels completely different than trying to white knuckle your way through talking yourself out.
Sara Bybee Fisk 22:30
And you're talking about EFT, emotion, freedom, tapping. We both have our favorite tapping practitioner, Melanie Faye. We love some Melanie Faye. We love some Melanie Faye.So if tapping is, if you're curious about that, check out Melanie Faye, F-A-Y. When you were talking about the secondary losses and kind of how they stack up and the wedding and kind of that scenario, one of the things that came to my mind is how often I am with someone who's in grief and I feel like I don't know what to say sometimes. And I think we all want to be of comfort. We all want to be loving, well, maybe not everybody, but I think the people listening to this podcast want to. And so what is it about our experience of grief, of other people's grief that makes it so uncomfortable? And then how do we actually show up for other people in a way that is helpful? I just remember I just read a blog post by a woman who just lost her wife and she said, please do not ask me, how are you doing? Please do not ask me that. It's such a hard question. And so first of all, what is it about it that makes it so uncomfortable for us? And then how do we show up for people we love?
Krista St-Germain 24:01
Yeah, actually just recorded an episode of my podcast, um, called what to say and what not to say to a new widow. And it has blown me away the feedback that I'm getting on it because it is such a struggle that people have.And it's such a frustration when they are the one in grief, um, to, to have so many strange things that are usually well intentioned, you know, be said to them. So some, some general ideas. I think one, we weren't taught. Nobody helped us, right? So how we're expected to exercise a muscle that never got developed. It's such an unfair ask. So we should show ourselves some grace about that. We also have been taught to believe that emotions are problems that need to be fixed. So we often don't have a very big capacity to feel uncomfortable or to be with somebody else who feels uncomfortable. We perceive that as a problem and we have a writing reflex that says, I need to make them feel better. I can't feel good until they feel better or something has gone wrong if they don't feel good. Many of the things that people say that are received as dismissive come from that space. They're in a better place. At least they're no longer suffering. You're young. You'll find someone else be grateful for the time that you had. At least you know, know what love is like all of these things that I
know the look on your face is priceless. People mean well, but wow, you know, so if we could come from the approach that says feelings aren't problems to be fixed, they're just experiences to be allowed or witnessed and we could be with someone as they feel, however it is they feel because we aren't deciding that it should be some other way. That's what most people respond well to. It's just someone who's not, who doesn't believe they're broken and isn't trying to fix them, who believes that no, this is what grief is like. And of course, and while I'm so sorry and I love you, this sucks and I'm not going to try to take it away from you or minimize it or make you find some sort of silver lining because it just doesn't feel right.
Sara Bybee Fisk 26:17
I think, hopefully, I've never said it. I mean, who knows? Back in my super religious days, I think I heard a lot of crazy things like God needed them in heaven and that kind of thing. I think where I kind of get tripped up is I want the right words that are not going to make it worse or not going to remind them of something painful. And it just feels, yeah, it feels...
Krista St-Germain 26:44
Yeah. I think we want to, I think we want to reframe that and say that they, your words about their loss did not remind them. They did not forget. Your words remind them that you did not forget. And typically that is well received because they are probably feeling much more alone in their grief than you expect that they are.And they might be looking like they're doing really good and, you know, they're putting on the brave face or they look okay. And so it's easy to think, well, they're doing so great. I don't, I don't want to remind them. No, no, they didn't forget, but they might think that you did.
Sara Bybee Fisk 27:24
I chuckled for just a second, because when you said, Oh, no, they didn't forget, it was kind of like, yeah, like, I like I could, like, I would think that my words would suddenly just remind them out of the blue of this horrible thing that's happened.
Krista St-Germain 27:35
I used to think the same thing too though. So, you know, I think that's a pretty human thing. And I also encourage, if we're talking about somebody who actually died, I encourage people to say that person's name, you know, bring them up. Because again, it's a way of saying, I didn't forget and showing interest.People typically like to talk about,
not universally, but often they like to talk about their person or tell stories. What were they like? Or what would they tell me a funny story? Or if there's a moment where it reminds you of that person, yeah, say it. That used to happen to me all the time at work because Hugo and I worked together. And so everybody at work knew him. Some of them had worked with him for 10 years longer than me. And there would be the perfect moment where they could crack a Hugo joke, but you could see the hesitation, right? Because they're afraid of hurting me. And so I just decided, okay, maybe I need to crack the joke. Maybe I need to bring it up. And then it's like, okay, you know, now that's what she wants. She wants to talk about him. She wants us to say the obvious thing.
Sara Bybee Fisk 28:42
I love that there's so many things that feel almost counterintuitive because we've been taught, like, don't talk about it, don't say it. But I just had a friend who posted on Facebook about the loss of her dad, who was well known. And she just said, I'd love to hear any memories you have with my dad. I just want to keep all of that alive and present.And so, yeah, they are feeling likely much more alone than we might guess. And I think I love what you said that our words remind them that we haven't forgotten. Yeah. Is there anything that you haven't gotten to say during our conversation that you really want to make sure you include as part of this?
Krista St-Germain 29:23
Well, you know, we had talked a little bit before about showing grief, especially as a parent and how sometimes we have this inclination to hide our grief from our kids. And I get that and I actually had some of that myself and what I've seen in my clients is part of the reason grief is so hard from the get-go is because it wasn't normalized for us. And so then we come into our own grief experience and if we haven't had some good role models of how to actually cry those tears and be okay or do what we need to do to process those feelings, talk about it, you know, be okay, it's not the elephant in the room, then we might think that's the way to do it and without really realizing that we're perpetuating accidentally the cycle that's made our grief hard. And so I think if we can show and be honest, maybe not like tsunami style wailing that might scare a child, but to actually show them that it is okay and healthy to have feelings and to cry and to be sad and to articulate that, you know, if it's a mom, I used to tell my kids all the time, mommy's sad and it's okay to be sad, mommy's crying and it's okay to cry. It's always okay.And I'll be okay. I am okay. And I'm sad. And so if you're worried about doing damage to your kids because you're having an intense grief experience and you're inclined to hide it, I would offer that sometimes more damage is done by hiding it and can we find ways to let them in on it so that we can role model it in healthy, healthy ways. My daughter, she was home for the weekend and we were playing this little card game and the question was something like, when did you first realize that I was human towards a parent? And she
made a comment that it was her walking into the living room and seeing me crying and I was watching a TV show or something and I said, what happened? And she said, well, you said something like what you, you know, like very, you like what you would normally say. And I'm like, Oh God, what's that? What would I normally say? And she was like, well, like, it's okay to cry, you know, like, and I'm like, okay, good. That's what I want to do here. I'm so glad, you know, she's 22, but I'm so glad that back then I normalized that for her because it's obvious, it feels so obvious for her to say it to me now. And if we could do more of that, you know.
Sara Bybee Fisk 31:57
so good. When you're talking about that, it's just bringing up for me. Like when I talk about people pleasers, everyone kind of thinks of the very classic people pleaser who's maybe very high strong and anxious and checking on everybody. Are you okay? Can I get you anything? And I think those, if we're speaking in just broad generalities, that type of person doesn't want their feelings to inconvenience anyone, right? They don't want to have any needs that are inconvenient for anyone or that take up any space or that take up anyone else's time because you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to be inconvenient or a burden for anyone.And I think there's another maybe personality profile that is also doing some people pleasing, but it looks very different. They're very strong. They're very armored up and they're like, I don't need anyone. I can do it all myself. I don't need help. I can rely on myself. And they might be more inclined to push those feelings down in the name of being strong, being sturdy, being super resilient because that's kind of the way they've gotten through everything is by only relying on themselves, not needing any other help. And so whether you're listening to this and you feel like I'm more of the strong, independent, armored up, or I'm more of the anxious, checking in on everybody all the time, being able to feel that and to not gloss over those feelings is what is going to be the thing that ultimately counterintuitively helps you feel so much better.
Krista St-Germain 33:40
Yeah, to a certain extent, I still feel myself going through some of that. Enneagram three, I'm not hugely familiar with the Enneagram, but have been using it as a tool lately and just realizing, yeah, a lot of my, you know, validation from others has been because of independence and accomplishment and achievement.And it's not super comfortable to, to be vulnerable and, you know, to, and to find spaces where I feel safe enough to do that. And I, I, the more I see it myself, the more I can see it in others too, you know, I don't think it's
Sara Bybee Fisk 34:17
uncommon at all. No, it's not.Enneagram is a really fascinating way of just kind of learning more about what motivates you, what scares you kind of what, how you like to move through the world, how you like to be seen. And yeah, I'm an Enneagram eight.
Krista St-Germain 34:32 Oh, the challenger.
Sara Bybee Fisk 34:33 Yeah.
Krista St-Germain 34:34
Yes, that doesn't surprise me actually knowing you. Yeah.
Sara Bybee Fisk 34:38 As it's ups and downs.
Krista St-Germain 34:42
Well, I bet, I bet people know, you know, they know what they're going to get around you.
Sara Bybee Fisk 34:48
the time. It's weird though because being an Enneagram eight who is a people pleaser, I think that just created tons of that pretending and performing that we've been talking about.So if people are interested, Krista, in what you've had to say, which is brilliant and you should be interested, take it from me, where can they find out more about you? What do you have coming up?
Krista St-Germain 35:13
Yeah. So I have a podcast as well. It's called the widowed mom podcast. And I realized that people are listening and going, but I'm not a widow. It's totally fine.If they're
interested in learning about grief, you know, just forget the widow part and you can just come and listen for grief also on YouTube with that now these days, and then if you know any widows, I'm doing a free online event on November 18th, it'll be three days, three, three days, three tools that I will teach to help make the holidays easier. I realize we can't really make the holidays easy, but I do believe that the right tools can make them easier and so they can register for that.
Sara Bybee Fisk 35:51
Awesome. All of that will be in the show notes so you can find it there. Krista, you've just been someone who I have relied on for lots of years to be a voice, uh, not just of wisdom, but just like so much compassion. And that's what I hear coming through this is just not ever letting yourself be wrong for what you feel and treating yourself with so much gentleness and kindness. And of course I'm feeling that way with your hands on your chest. And I just really appreciate knowing that you are there as a friend and there as a guide for women who are experiencing a lot of grief over the last.
Krista St-Germain 36:27
But the more, the more I do this work, the more convinced I am that compassion is what we need. 100%.
Sara Bybee Fisk 36:35
Thank you for this conversation.
Krista St-Germain 36:37 Yeah, my pleasure.
