The Practice of Therapy

Krista St-Germain: This is Krista St. Germain, and I am so happy to be on the Practice of Therapy podcast. I am a widow. I host a podcast called the Widowed Mom podcast, and I love talking about grief, so I'm so happy to be here.
Gordon Brewer: Well, hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. And I'm happy for you to meet maybe one of my new favorite friends, Krista St. Germain. Krista, welcome to the podcast.
Krista St-Germain: Thank you. Even as you were saying you're welcome, it sounds a lot like how I welcome people to my podcast. So I'm having similar vibes.
Gordon Brewer: Okay. Good. Well, as Krista, so people can get to know you, tell folks a little more about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah. Totally by accident, if we're being honest. So doing grief work was not on the five year plan. It was not on the, it was not on the 10 year plan. Basically.
I ended up in a place where I had gotten divorced. You know, not the best of endings there, but found this wonderful man, married him. We'd only been married for a few short months and we were coming back from a trip. We had driven separately in our cars and I had a flat tire on my car. We pulled over to the side of the road.
He stubborn man that he was, did not want to wait for triple a. Right. Baby, I'll just change the tire. You know, I can get it done faster. And so he was trying to change the tire in my car. And a driver who we later found out had meth and alcohol in his system just didn't see us and didn't see our hazard lights and crashed right into the back of his car.
And within, you know, less than 24 hours, everything that I thought was in front of me just felt like it had been ripped away. And. I very quickly realized, even though I had a wonderful therapist and she had been such a great help to me when I was going through my divorce, I very quickly realized that what I thought I knew about grief wasn't really very helpful and it wasn't really reflecting my experience.
And I came to a place where I felt pretty hollow and empty and, and I knew I'd be okay. Right. But I didn't really believe I could be great. And so then I just kind of put it on myself to start doing my own research and my own studying of grief. And thankfully discovered a lot of things that really did help.
And once I got to the other side of that, decided this is what I want to help people with. So I certified as a coach. I did, you know, a lot of grief work and then quit my job and the rest is history. So now I host a podcast called the Widowed Mom Podcast and I work exclusively with widowed moms so that they can love life again.
Yeah, I don't want them to struggle as much as I did.
Gordon Brewer: Wow. Wow. What a great, what a great story and sorry for your loss and all of that. Thank you. I just as as many people in this audience here know I'm in a similar, not, no, no grief experience is the same. But I had lost my wife after a 13 year of breast cancer in 2023.
And so Different, different kinds of grief there. I mean, it's just a total, totally different. It's like you know, comparing apples and oranges. They're both fruit, but they're much different. So, but yeah, so, so thankful for your, for your work. So, what would you you know, with this whole, maybe this whole topic of How grief differs and the fact that you said that kind of the traditional things that you learn about grief.
And I think most of us in this field, think of Elizabeth Kubler Ross, which I've got some thoughts on that as well, and her initial stages of grief. What are the things that you would want people to know, particularly therapists and just thinking about working with, with grief?
Krista St-Germain: Yeah, I mean, I think you hit on one of the first ones that just is kind of like fingernails on a chalkboard to me so much respect and appreciation for Elizabeth Kubler Ross and her work and how important it was in 1969 when she, you know, started with it, but I think it seems like we just kind of stopped thinking about grief theory.
Unless we're really interested in grief and it seems like that that is what most people have heard of and I find a lot of times I didn't know the backstory of that being about hospice patients and not really being about You know what? It's like to lose something or someone that you care about but what it's like to actually come to terms with your own terminal diagnosis and so yes in her later work, I think, you know, it's also noteworthy that she didn't really intend for people to take her work and make it linear or stage based.
So it's just so common that it feels uncomfortable when your only understanding of grief is that it's five stages and then your lived experience doesn't match that can be really frustrating. And there are so many other grief theories out there that have come along since. So I wish I wish we talked about those more.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. So what are the ones that resonate for you most?
Krista St-Germain: My favorite is the dual process model. And so the dual process model essentially says that you can take all the things we do and divide them into two buckets. So there's the grief oriented activities, right? So thinking about the loss, feeling the feelings of it, dealing with the logistics of it, like all things loss related.
And then there's a restorative activities, right? Respite. So anything else, which could be, you know, gardening and laughing and, you know, Netflix binges, really just anything that isn't. Yeah. You know, the, the grief oriented and that healing comes in the oscillation back and forth, back and forth. Between one to another and I think as someone who had tendencies to be a people pleaser and as someone who very much got sucked into productivity culture that if you know you're trying to get the A in grief, it can be really easy to not let yourself take a break from it or judge yourself when you do and so I love that theory because it gives permission for something other than right and Yeah.
It's just, it's so, I think it meets people where they are. I think it's nice and open and, and compassionate and yeah, that's probably my favorite. Just, yes, I do need to attend to what has happened and how I think and feel about it and also healthy breaks back and forth, back and forth.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. Yeah, it's, it's I couldn't agree with you more and I I love that model and it's you know, there's some also interesting, and I can't, I can't recall the names of the particular models, but they're really have to do with attachment theory and in terms of, you know, kind of the process of grief is learning how to detach and retouch in other ways.
And yeah, yeah.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah, for sure. Continuing bonds, right? I mean, I think so many people that I work with. Don't really understand that the the bonds that they had with their loved one are still Available to them and malleable and you know can be created Sometimes they tend to think that that's over and gone and lost and we know that's not the case.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah, you know, so yeah So what are some of the other things that you've learned along the way with just all of this and I know We could probably spend all day talking about this. But
Krista St-Germain: yeah, I know right gosh, yeah, there's so many things that we could talk about. So one of the things I have learned that I really wish I would have known so much before my husband died, because I can think about all the times I've put my foot in my mouth without doing it on purpose.
But I know now that, that emotions aren't problems to be fixed. And I didn't know that for a long time. And I think a lot of people don't know that. And so when we are approaching someone who is grieving, we tend to want to. You know, right, the wrong that we perceive, and that's what makes us say all the things they're in a better place.
They would want you to be happy, you know you'll don't worry, you'll find someone else. Those things where they're trying to make us feel better because they have very little capacity to be with us when we don't. And I, I wish more people knew that. And I wish I had known it sooner. And I have found that it's, it's so powerful, not only in being with yourself and how you feel and not trying to.
Fix how you feel, but also in, in what it gives you in terms of being able to connect with other people, even if it's not in an official role with a client. Right. But it's, it's in a role. It's just as a human being able to witness. Someone's emotional experience without perceiving it as something that you need to fix.
Gordon Brewer: Right. Right. Yeah, that's, that's so true because the, the truth of the matter is there's nothing, nothing that can be done to fix it. And you know, I think thing Another, you know, another helpful metaphor that I've found is, is this whole whole idea of getting over it. You know, you get over your grief, and the truth of the matter is, you don't get over it, you get through it.
And It continues with you the rest of your life, in different forms and fashions. Yeah. You know, there's that, I like to think about it
Krista St-Germain: as like integration.
Gordon Brewer: Yes. Yes. Huh. You know, that
Krista St-Germain: you just kind of, eventually you, you, you, you're weaving it into the fabric of your life and you're making of it, right, what you want to make of it and you're being in it who you want to be, right, given that it's happened.
Gordon Brewer: Right. But yeah,
Krista St-Germain: you, and you, you kind of in that way carry it, but there is no getting over it.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah, yeah, it's like a, it's like a, you know, a wound that is, you know, that heals eventually. But there's always a scar there and sometimes that scar gets really tender.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah, yeah. I also wish I had known, pardon me, about.
I wish I had known the full body impact of grief. I wish I had known about grief fog. I wish I had known about secondary losses and had language for all of those things. I wish I had known earlier about post traumatic growth. Yeah, there's so much.
Gordon Brewer: Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah. And so the, the different, different kinds of griefs, I know just you and I, just in a little bit, we've shared so far, you're, you went through the traumatic.
death of a spouse, and I can only imagine the, the, I guess, for lack of a better way of putting it, just PTSD like things that have, that have maybe occurred for you, whereas in my case, I had a lot of anticipatory grief and just a long, because of a long term illness and, you know, just kind of getting prepared for that and that sort of thing.
So, two totally different. Different things. Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm . Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And so with your tell, tell us more about kind of your, your podcast and I can't wait to listen to it. I mean, it sounds like you know, you know, grief , it's kind of funny. Go, this grief is great stuff, you know, but I mean, it's just , but I know, yeah.
Yeah. It does sound
Krista St-Germain: so weird to say that, right? Uhhuh? Yeah. But I, yeah, so it's called the Widowed Mom Podcast. Lots of people listen that aren't widows or moms but you know, it's just designed to be, to be helpful. And what I am really passionate about, because I almost got stuck there, is I'm really passionate about helping people see that you really can love life again, you know, no matter what happens to you.
And that doesn't mean you've got over your grief. That doesn't mean you're no longer, you know, sad that it happened or that you wished it happened or any, you know, none of that. It's not. Toxic positivity. It's none of that. It's just this idea that, that we as humans are so resilient and that we get to create, you know, whatever it is that we want.
And we get to take every lesson that life hands us and decide what we want to make of it and who we want to be in all of it. And so that's what, that's the kind of stuff that gets me fired up. I, I remember, you know, hearing that phrase new normal and then using it against myself. And I don't want people to do that, right?
Which is this kind of way of saying, Okay, well, wah, wah. I'll get used to it. I'll be okay. But I won't ever probably be truly happy again. Like, my shot at that is over. But I'll be okay and I'll make sure the kids are okay. And so I kind of internalize that new normal for a while there as just get used to this.
And that, I don't think, is the intention behind. The phrase, but I see a lot of people getting stuck there. And so, yeah, those are the kinds of things I love talking about.
Gordon Brewer: Right, right. And yeah, you know another experience that I think a lot of people may be experienced with grief is, is as things, as things start to heal and you start to find that kind of more positive new normal, There's a bit of guilt that kind of lingers there for feeling that way.
Yeah. Yeah.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah, for sure. I see it all the time. I was just having a conversation with somebody about it yesterday. There's all these shoulds, right? You know, all the ways that we should feel, how long it should take, what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing, all these, these external, you know, rules that we just pick up and then put on ourselves and then they make us feel bad even about feeling good.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah, yeah, I always say if you, if you listen to those shoulds and ought tos too much, all you get is should on, so.
Krista St-Germain: I like
Gordon Brewer: that.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah, yeah, I like that.
Gordon Brewer: I, I, I
Krista St-Germain: also see too that there's this point I love Gay Hendricks book on upper limits it's the name of the book is escaping me, but anyway, I see it a lot too, where even after you you know, you get to a place where you are really feeling good and maybe you're not feeling guilty anymore, but you're kind of approaching that threshold of good that is uncomfortable for you.
And so then fear starts to creep in, right. Or worry or anxiety because it's just simply not where your thermostat has been set. You know, when you start wearing, maybe the other shoe is going to drop or, you know, people aren't, I'm going to be too happy, you know, it can actually feel scary on the upper end, which I find.
Pretty common, too.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So what I guess one thing I'm curious about You know as a mom that had kids and how old were your kids when your husband passed away?
Krista St-Germain: Twelve, twelve and nine.
Gordon Brewer: Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah, so what? What insights could you offer around just helping children with grief? I mean my my daughter was is an adult.
She was an adult at the time that my wife passed away, but still. Yeah. Yeah. As a father dealing with her grief and my grief and all of that. All of that. So, but yeah.
Krista St-Germain: And Hugo's son, who was my stepson, was 17 as well, so my biological kids were 12 and 9. So you know, all kids grieve differently. And there's no right or wrong for anyone in grief.
And we have to keep reminding ourselves that with kids, I think, sometimes, because we have this idea of what is quote unquote healthy, and how you should express your feelings or talk about things or, you know, whatever. And Just every kid follows a different path. I think we want to remind ourselves that that children are more resilient than sometimes we give them credit for.
I find oftentimes people are asking themselves questions like, is this typical childhood behavior, you know, child behavior or, or is this grief? And I find that is absolutely not a useful question because really, once you've lost a parent, there's nothing that isn't impacted by that. And so it just, it kind of loses its usefulness.
Honesty, especially when you're the only surviving parent, that is the basis of your relationship, right? That trust that you have is being honest. And so sometimes I see parents really trying to protect, they think they're protecting the relationship by providing maybe some myths, mistruths, or they, they think they're gentle lies.
And then the child finds out and it's, you know, so can we deal with something honestly that's also in an age appropriate way? Such that we don't jeopardize the trust that we have. I see that a lot of around, around like suicide losses. And then with really little kids, language is important too. Like, how do we talk about, how do we talk about the death so that we don't scare them?
But so that they can understand, so
Gordon Brewer: right, daddy died
Krista St-Germain: and, you know, daddy went to sleep and died. Okay. Well now, now we've got a child who's scared to go to sleep,
Gordon Brewer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, another thing that I've read or maybe I heard from it was years ago when I would first started into therapy practice.
And as I shared with you, I guess one part of my story, which is some would find it interesting. Some would find it morbid, but I was a funeral, funeral director several years before I went back to school and got my master's in, in counseling. But I remember at some point in there, there was a Lady that was a widow and her again, smaller, smaller Children when her husband passed away and her talking about each time their Children would kind of hit these new developmental milestones.
They would maybe kind of re-experience a gr their grief at that developmental level mm-hmm . And so I thought that was, that was interesting. Mm-hmm . But again, going back to the resilience of that and just really you know, helping, helping children or teens or whatever kind of understand their, their own experience of it.
And, and, and normalizing it for them.
Krista St-Germain: Mm hmm. Yeah. And, and we are better positioned to do that when we normalize our own.
Gordon Brewer: Yes.
Krista St-Germain: You know, and yeah, and I see that a lot too of, you know, the best intention to try to protect your kids, but then it doesn't really help them so much when you're always hiding how you feel and what's going on for you and it can be so normalizing when you're age appropriate but honest about it so that the child hears that they have permission to be the same.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah. And it's also the, the both and I have a lot of a lot of my clients have, you know, eventually gotten remarried and it's been really interesting to watch their families go through that transition of kind of figuring out how do I, how do I let, let the both and be there? How do I let myself have the joy of this new.
You know, family situation or whatever, and also honor that it feels like a secondary loss. And I still have some sadness around, you know, my dad's not here, you know, and I really wanted that too. How can I, how can I feel that kind of conflict and is it okay for me to want both the sadness and the joy and normalizing that within ourselves first, I think is what makes it easier to do that for the
Gordon Brewer: kids.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, just I don't know what your experience has been, but getting I was, I was married to my wife nearly, oh, well, we were just two months shy of our 30th wedding anniversary. And so. Here all these years later, now I'm out dating again. And so that's weird. That's weird.
Yeah. That's a new, that's a new, new milestone and just all the, just learning all of that just again is just is, is, it's exciting and fun and that, that sort of thing. But it also can be quite intimidating to some degree.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah. For sure.
Gordon Brewer: I
Krista St-Germain: find, since I typically work with women, I also find there's, there tends to be this pressure.
You know, a lot of women have just bought into the idea that the only way to be truly happy is to be in a partnership. And so there can be some of that. Learning as well, like how do I, how can I feel good just in my own skin and with myself and get myself to a place where I'm okay, you know, and then when I do want to date, it becomes, it becomes an extra thing.
It becomes because I have love I want to give as opposed to a hole, you know, that I perceive that needs to be filled. And right. Yeah. I can make it extra challenging. Yeah,
Gordon Brewer: there's, there's all these different things yeah, just with all of this, that just you, you take you you just muddle through it and you just kind of walk through it and you figure it out as you go and it's okay.
Yeah, that
Krista St-Germain: is exactly it. Yeah, yeah. Grace and compassion along the way and maybe a little laughter if we can.
Gordon Brewer: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Well, well Krista, I, you know, I've got to be respectful of your time. I'm sure we, like I said, we could have a day long conversation about all of this, but tell folks more about your work and your podcast and how people can connect with you.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah, so the Widowed Mom podcast, you can find me on all the podcast platforms, and I primarily have two programs. One is called Grief Essentials. It's for widows who are in early grief, and then my flagship program is called Mom Goes On. It's a little bit more intense, and it's for those who have kind of gotten the hang of grief, and they're feeling stable and ready to love life again.
So all online, I work with, you know, people all over the country well, all over the world, really, as, As the interwebs allow us to do and it's just a great, a great joy and privilege. I love it so much.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Well, you're doing some very in my mind, very sacred and, and noble work and I appreciate.
Thank you. I admire that.
Krista St-Germain: Yeah. Thank you. I feel that way too.
Gordon Brewer: Yeah. Well, that's great. So we'll have links here in the show notes and the show summary for people to connect easily and. Krista, I'm sure we'll be having another conversation here soon.
Krista St-Germain: Yes, I'd love that, Gordon. Thank you.
Gordon Brewer: Thank you.