Grieving, Growing, and Gratitude with Author Annie Gudger

Hello and welcome to In the Rising a health and wellness podcast for those going through and those supporting those going through cancer. My name is Bettina Brown and I'm board certified in physical therapy, wound care and lymphedema and you know, for me cancer is very personal. It's affected my friends, my immediate and my not so immediate family and therefore I created this podcast and fit after breast cancercom to address the multiple dimensions of our lives during and after recovery. Thank you so much for being a part of today's episode. I am so blessed and honored to have Annie Gujur on this episode because she talks about her memoir of losing her husband while she was pregnant and how she transformed a really sad event in life which is still a sad event in life, but really carried on the legacy and the memory of this person into the lives of her children and into the lives of their children and also to empower everyone to accept this loss and grief and go through it in their own pace, but really to come out on the other side just honoring a life, honoring an experience and yet still able to celebrate and really enjoy life for what it is right now. Annie, thank you so much for being on In the Rising podcast. I've read the Fifth Chamber. I have your book here and as a healthcare person, I was like, yes, the Fifth Chamber. I love all the ways that you incorporated the four chambers of the heart into the Fifth Chamber and that extra space. What you wrote also, first thing that came across was took a lot of courage. How do you feel about your experience writing this book?

I feel really good about it. I mean, all memoirs will say there's this point that we feel a little cringy, right Like it's a lot of opening up. But for me, that's my humanness. The more I am vulnerable, the more other people feel comfortable to be so also and we get to connect through story. It's what I do. I've been doing it for a while.

You share a really hard time. I can't imagine I literally cannot imagine it in that moment Pregnant, losing your husband. You also lost a dream. You lost a vision of a future. Looking back now, what is something that you would have said to yourself in those first few days?

That almost makes me cry. I've written about it too. When I look back to my younger self, what I would tell her is like it's going to be okay. Even though people were saying it to me then it was so hard to believe. I was so devastated. I lost everything. People would say you're going to be okay. I just thought they have no idea, I'm not going to be. Now I know that it is, that it's going to be okay. It's going to be really hard and you're just going to get through it, a baby step at a time, but you're going to be okay. Eventually, you're going to grow into a person whose heart is even bigger.

You said you described in your story how people would tell you it's going to be okay and you thought who are you talking to? Who are you kidding? It's also one of the first things you would say to yourself what do you think it's here? We don't talk a lot about death dying here in the US. It's because of the taboo, pretty much. What do you think would be helpful to understand about death so we can learn to live better?

Oh, I just think that it's part of life, right, that it's not this, it's inevitable. It's inevitable. Everything, everybody dies, right? Nothing stays the same. Change is the only constant. We know that and I think the more we talk about it with our children from the time they're small, so that there can be an acceptance and understanding, the better off we'll all be. I mean, when I hear my daughter say that she grew up in a family where grief was talked about regularly, it makes and they both do. It makes me just so happy to hear that because that was part of my. I remember when so Jake's my oldest, and then my daughter Maria, and when Jake was kindergarten, first gradish, I just remember other parents, so they had a teacher at school who had breast cancer and died, and the school handled it very well. There were definitely parents who, just like, kept saying they didn't know what to say to their kids, and it was a moment where I realized, oh, this is something we talk about in our house. We talk about it. I had that loss. My beautiful husband Scott lost his dad when he was only 16, and then his brother shortly after we met. So grief has impacted me and my family in a huge way, and if we didn't talk about it it would. I mean, if you internalize it, it just eats you up, right? I didn't want it to make me sick or anybody else.

Yeah, and you share how often you talked about Jake's dad and you had this box that when he was ready to talk about and to hold and it also moved. It moved different places and I thought that was also. It was still special, but share a little bit about where it moved and where it ended up and what that actually meant for you yourself, annie.

Thank you and I for people who haven't read the book yet, I'll say that I packed a box like that. I still think of it as the radio size box, a small moving box. I packed it full of objects of Kent's and I did it when Jake was a baby so I honestly didn't really remember what I'd put in there. But I was really intentional about objects so Jake would have a better sense of his dad, and objects from his lifetime. So I put in his kid baseball mitt. I put in report cards and pictures and diplomas. Kent loves silly t-shirts so I put silly t-shirts in there and he shaved with a straight edge. So I packed that and his slide rule and I think the most important thing I put in there although I didn't know it at the time that it would be important I packed his wallet and when Jake eventually unpacked the box, it was an opportunity for us, another opportunity to have this deeper conversation about who Kent was and how much he loved him and had planned to be there. And then the wallet. Jake looked at me in there too and just said I wanna carry it. I need to feel close to him. And he still carries that wallet.

Yeah, yeah, and this box was in different locations in your home. Share a little bit about that.

It was, so it is. It was a funny thing to write about that because I had to really think about it. So when I first packed it it was like this it was this precious you know, I put all these. I made a memory box for you and I initially put it in Jake's room. It was in his closet and then the first time we moved from that house I was like it doesn't really need to be in his room anymore. So then it got like moved to a guest room and then at some point it got moved to the basement. Right, it kept like moving into the house of. It became less at a less important object in our home. But every time I moved it. So, literally, when I packed it, I sealed it and I wrote do not open till 2003 or later, because Jake was a baby when he, when I made it and I wanted him to be at least a teenager. So when he finally, when he, when he finally wanted to open it, it was. It was tucked away on a shelf in the basement, which that's never lost on me. It had less power for me at that point than it did when I made it. Yet the opening of it and Jake going through that box. That was a. That was a huge day for both of us.

Yeah, it was not less important. It was just it had a less dominating part of your life, like it was still. It still went with you and I thought that was really important to share, that things are not less important when we move them away and kind of move on with things we haven't left it behind. Do you feel, you know, with some people in their grief that they feel it would be a I don't even know the correct word, I'm losing my word that would almost be a shame or an insult to move on to the person that left? Do you feel that with any of the grief that they don't, they're afraid to let go of grief because that means they've moved on?

Oh, I think that's true for a lot of people. It is this, it is this thing like I. It becomes such a part of your life, it was such a dominant part of my life and I would say, like that grief was had become a companion and like open the door and I got really like okay, it's happening again. So how about if we just invite grief in and how about if we sit down and talk with grief instead of trying to push it away? I do think for a lot of, for a lot of people, it's we. You can stay attached to it, because that's also a way to stay attached to your person. And for me, I felt like I like Kent isn't here physically, but you know, energy is never lost, right, he still gets to be around us. I didn't need, I didn't need to stay super attached to the grief to have him still be part of my life.

I think that's an incredibly powerful statement that you said. You also wrote in your book. What if the heart had a fifth chamber? The title of your book, or more? What would be stored? More love, more hurt, or more of what makes us us? Looking back on that, because you know it always takes time to write that what do you feel would be in that fifth chamber?

Oh yeah, I know for me, like what I, what I store in there, it's more love, more compassion, more grace, more kindness. You know all those the beautiful aspects of being human that I get to shine in the world.

Yeah, and I think what I have come across with people that I've talked to, especially those who experience vulnerability and walk into it and share it and do all the stuff that Bernie Brown talks about they feel stronger afterwards. What do you feel would help? Because you brought it into your family. You talked about grief, but you also never let Kent pass away, really like he physically wasn't there, because energy was. What is something that you would suggest for people to hold on and experience a person's light and not let the darkness of the experience take over.

That's such a good question. I mean, I really think that when we embrace the beautiful memories that we've had and when we keep those alive, that is a way we keep people in our lives and that's a way that we have the grace of it instead of just the sadness around it. If, over time I mean in the beginning, of course, I was super focused on the tragedy in the beginning If anyone had said to me like, well, I told you know, when people were like it's going to be okay, I'm like they don't know what they're talking about. This is not going to be, that's part of it. But then, as you're progressing and as you learn more about it and you experience more about it and you talk about it, I joined a support group. Those people were, oh my gosh, those were my lifelines. My family was wonderful. My friends were incredible. I made new friends just to really look at the, to remember the beautiful parts about Kent's, and also for my son. I've always stayed part of Kent's family. They live in Colorado and it was always important to me that Jake know them and that they're still my family. I wanted Jake to have these relationships with people who knew Kent. I only knew him for five years. I wanted to be sure that he was in relationship with people who'd known him his whole life and that he could ask things to Aunt Sherry that I couldn't answer, and that he knew his grandparents. That he now has this lovely relationship with one of Kent's best friends. That just does my heart so much good, because your college friends know things about you that your wife, who marries you after college, doesn't know. It gives it takes access to more stories and just more people in his life to love him.

I think that's a beautiful way of honoring that space for your son as well, keeping that entire family in unit together. I know we don't have much time, but I wanted to say something that where I actually did cry was at Jake's wedding, and Scott made two toasts. I really felt for one. I thought well, scott is an incredible person just with that, but also to honor his relationship with Jake, because Jake once said this is my dad, this is who I know. When that happened, what did you feel in that moment when you heard Scott say that?

Oh my gosh, you can see I'm tearing up. Just you're saying it because I didn't know. I have to the tiny backstory. When our daughter got married two years before Scott, when he went to give a toast he, I think, was so overwhelmed he's normally good at toasting he was like thanks for coming and kind of didn't say anything else. So I stood up in prom to and did all the things, said all the things. So before Jake got married I had asked him really pointedly, like are you good, Are you going to do the toast or do I need to be prepared? And he's like I've got it. And he didn't tell me what he was going to do. So I'm sitting next to my daughter and he starts and as soon as he said so many of you don't know, but Annie was widowed, before I met her, Even like my chest just got all hard and gooey and I could just feel those tears coming up and it was just so beautiful and tender and sweet. And there are people at a wedding who you just have met, so so many people from the bride side of the family just meeting us, just meeting Scott. Everybody was so moved because it was such a beautiful way to honor Kent's and and just to see like this this is what we've done. We've just made our family bigger instead of smaller.

Yeah, and it also really brought Kent into the special moment. He's not left behind, he's still here, and so that that was super touching and I thought, you know, if there ever was a time where I would describe someone being really open to someone else's hurt love, but really welcoming that, I felt that was the perfect representation of that, so that was really beautiful. Last question for you what do you feel out of this book, the fifth chamber that you can walk away with now, like do you feel like it's out there, or? you know, what is next for you with regards to this story?

I know I've wondered that, like I've lived with this story for so long it took me a long time to write the book I've had that same question for myself, like now how is this going to be? It's been such a thrill to see it starting to be out there in the world and how people respond to it, like what you just said. It just does my heart so much good. It's why I wrote it, and so I know that it's a huge part of my story. I'll keep telling it. As I said, my daughter and I have a podcast called Coffee, grief and Gratitude, and we I share my story. She shares her every time before we interview people and I'm very clear that like it's that being vulnerable right Like this is what happened. It doesn't define who I am. It's what happened to me and I can embrace it and let other people share their stories too, so that we can talk about grief in a bigger way, so that all that taboo shame put it under the carpet that that can be less, because that is really my hope in the future is that people have more language around grief and more comfort talking about it.

Thank you so much for listening today. I think this is an important show and an important topic. Just understanding that in 2020, to 60,000 children in the United States were living with a single widowed mother. This is something that impacts their lives and their friendships they make and the legacy continues affecting their children and their children's children. I think it's okay to openly talk about death, it's aftermath, and normalizing that tragedy. Pain and grief are part of the human experience and they don't have to define you in a negative way. I really enjoyed reading the fifth chamber. I really applaud someone opening their heart and being vulnerable, and if you experience this yourself or you know someone who would really benefit from this book or this podcast, I encourage you to invite someone to listen to it and share. I also invite you to leave a five-star review. It does so much for this podcast to put it in the hands and ears of those that may need it the most, and until next time, let's keep building one another up.