Hi there, friends. Welcome back to the Tamsen Show. I am so glad you're here. So, we hear a lot about the stages of grief, but very little about what grief actually does when it becomes a part of your life. A lot of you know my mother died when I was young, and I learned that grief doesn't only make you sad. It can literally change your body, your memory, relationships, and the way you move through the world. My guest today is Dr. Laura Berman, who I've known for a long time.
She has written a new book called Crying Out Loud: A Path Through Grief Into a Life Reimagined. Laura brings more than 30 years of experience as a therapist, but along with that, her deeply personal story of losing her 16-year-old son, Sammy, in 2021. Today we're talking about what grief actually does to us and how to begin living again without leaving the person we love behind. If there is someone you think that would be helped by this episode you're about to hear, please share it with them.
And now let's get into it with Dr. Laura Berman. Laura, thank you so much for being here today.
I'm so grateful to be with you.
Well, I feel like we have a you know, a lot to talk about, a lot really personal to talk about. As I was looking through everything we've known each other for a long time on and off throughout the years, and you've written a lot of books, but this book in particular is extremely personal. Can you talk a little bit about you know, this one and the how you did it? Because I think I had to imagine this is a very difficult one to write and to relive.
Yeah. Well, I mean, as most people know cuz it the news went pretty viral when it happened almost 6 years ago now, which is crazy. My 16-year-old son, Sammy, was killed, was murdered through fentanyl poisoning. So, he we were at home sheltering during the pandemic cuz we live in LA. We were sheltering at home, and I had let my kids who, you know, he was a junior about to getting toward the end, you know, second end of his junior year, getting ready to go into his senior year.
And his little brother was still at home with us, too, who's a year younger. And he some drug dealer got in touch with him on Snapchat. I had no idea back then. This was 2021. Most of us, I mean, I was a pretty educated and informed parent, and I talked to my kids about drugs and everything else, and I really thought, and I know I'm not alone in this back then, that you needed to know a drug dealer or find a drug dealer or know someone who knew a drug dealer or be in a place where drug dealers were to get drugs.
I did not know that basically the algorithms on social media, in particular Snapchat, because it's like the dark web for kids, everything disappears, that the algorithm, allows to push these dealers, So, a dealer who got in touch with Sammy, and I let them be on I said, "As long as you keep your grades up, you can be on so, you know, cuz that was the only way they could connect with their friends or anything else." So, a drug dealer got in touch with him and sent him a colorful menu of drugs that he would deliver to the house, one Percocet, one Xanax for a few dollars.
And the only reason I knew that is because Sammy had taken a screenshot before it disappeared and sent it to his friend. And after his death, his friend, when I reached out to his friend trying to figure out what had happened, his friend said that Sammy had received this and a screenshot and said he was going to order something. So, basically the dealer came to our house in the middle of the night, delivered our son some drugs like a pizza. And on that horrible day, Sammy decided to try one.
He just said to me, I was leaving the house with our youngest to run some errands, and he asked me to come into his room when I came home so we could work on a resume, cuz he wanted to do an internship that summer to try to beef up his college applications. He wanted to go to NYU Business School. And, so I went upstairs to do that when we got home, and unfortunately his little brother was ahead of me cuz he was going to bring him some candy we'd picked up when we went out.
And we found him gone on the floor. He had taken something that was pure fentanyl. We didn't know back then that fentanyl is in 65% of the street drugs. It only takes a few grains of sand worth of it to kill you. And that's what happened to my boy. So, you can imagine, you know, anyone who's a parent and even anyone who's not a parent can imagine how my heart and brain and soul and being imploded in that moment.
Laura, I can't imagine. You know, I can't even imagine the pain and the shock and the fact that we're sitting here talking today shows your bravery and also the message that, you know, that you're trying to get out there. I mean, you spent years and years talking about so many different things, but this new book, Crying Out Loud, is really helping people through pain. And you know, I know we hear about the stages of grief and we talk about those kind of things on paper, but what have you been through these past 6 years to get you to the place where you are today to be able to write about it and talk about it as bravely as you are right now because I don't know very many think of myself and I don't have children myself, but I you know, I think of the young people in my life and I can't imagine how I would get here today.
Yeah, well, I couldn't imagine it back then either. You know, it was and I was no stranger to grief when Sammy died. I had already lost been by my both my parents' sides, held their hands when they took their last breath, my grandmother's dear friends. I mean, I had ushered thousands of people through the most painful points of their lives as a therapist of 25 years at that point. But this was obviously deeper and wider than anything I could have imagined.
And I went under for a while as is to be expected. But what I discovered, and it was through a whole series of, you know, intentional and also kind of unexpected and coincidental events that I, you know, explain in the book. But basically, what I discovered is really a path to healing. And you know, you mentioned the five stages of grief, which are important, right? And they aren't stages. You can experience all five in 1 hour. And they backtrack and zigzag, and it's a lifelong, you know, unraveling.
I kind of struggle with that stage idea. What I found is that's really only one part of, you know, understanding sort of most of what I found, and this is what has happened to me my whole career, is that because I always have, you know, I heal, learn, teach. Everything I do is tends to do that. And so as I was trying to heal, I was also aware that like, A, nobody knows how to grieve. And B, what is out there for grief support is mostly in the mind, which is important, super duper important.
However, it is not enough. Because grief is trauma. And that is held as much in the mind as in the body, maybe more so. And in the digestive system and in the cells, you know, and in the muscles. And so what I do in this book is really lay out the path that I've discovered for myself and now led hundreds, if not thousands, of other people through with my retreats and online communities and everything else. And that is really about the somatic piece of grief, too.
About attending to the body and attending to your community and the spiritual piece of that. Whatever that means to you, you know, a quarter of the book is really dedicated to you how you continue a relationship with the loved one that has, you know, transitioned or died because you absolutely can.
How do you continue your relationship with Sammy today?
Oh my gosh, there are so many ways. Now, I tend to be a little bit of a more metaphysical person. You know, so I'm very loud and proud about, you know, I'm a scientist, as you know. I've, you know, I don't even know, hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles, you know, I'm professors at three different, you know, universities through my career. But, I also know, you know, even from quantum physics, we know that we are pure atomic energy. You know, if you were to look at us through an atomic microscope, we are pure vibrating atoms.
We aren't solid. We are energy. And energy can't be created or destroyed. It can only change form. And thankfully, I really understood that before Sammy died. I even wrote a book called Quantum Love. So from for me, it's really about attuning to the essence of his soul, the energy of him. I get messages, I see signs. He visits me in meditation. You know, that's for me, but I and I get into all of that. I, you know, I have all these things that I share about how to really connect, if that's what you want to do.
But, many people don't believe in that or it doesn't align with their religious values. And this is where the whole concept of continued bonds comes in, which is so powerful. So, even through ritual, through doing things to honor your loved one, through activities you can do that where you're thinking about them or making their favorite recipe or creating something in their name. You know, all of those things allow you to continue a connection to them.
And to me, that's one of obviously the most painful parts of loss is that you think that relationship is over. And it really isn't. And to me, that's such an important part to figure out for you. And I show you all sorts of ways in the book how to cultivate your ongoing connection to them is so unbelievably healing.
What happens when people feel that? I mean, you have now taken so many people through their own journeys, but what happens when somebody actually feels that versus feels like that relationship is over and they have to put it into its box or put it aside. I mean, I lost my mother at a early age. I was there. I watched her take her last breath. I remember every moment in slow motion of that and I was, you know, 20 at the time. But I thought that I needed to put that aside and that was my mom, right?
And that was the relationship I had with her up until I was 20. And it took a maybe honestly, Laura, it probably took 30 years for me even just recently to realize that I still have that relationship with her. What happens when people, you know, have that realization? Do you feel that there's a peace that comes over them? Do they
Huge. I mean, huge. I can't stress enough what it what a power like that is when I never really understood the word grace before. You know, you do it in theory, right? But that is grace. Like it is a softening, an opening, a peace, even a joy in a way. You know, it's so powerful. To me, it cannot be ignored when it comes to healing because once you understand that the relationship isn't over, there is you know, obviously, I'll never be able to squeeze his little man hands or hear his voice or smell him or laugh at with him or watch him get married or meet his children if he ever had those or whatever, you know, all of those things don't go away, those losses.
But I can still commune with and connect with the essence of him and keep him alive in my heart and even in my regular life is such a comfort and a connector. And I do feel like I mean, he helped me write this book. Like I really feel guidance and connection and communion. And that's just me. Like, my husband isn't up for you know, he's he thinks that you know, that's crazy like not crazy. I mean, he doesn't criticize me or try to convince me out of it, but he doesn't operate that way.
He you know, for him it's very different and his ongoing relationship with Sammy, I think is found in all the advocacy work he does in getting Sammy's Law passed, which is trying to make social media danger you know, online harms less prevalent for children. And you know, I think that's his way of continuing his connection. So, there's so many different ways. But it's really important to find it and it's so key to healing. And when I watch people cuz now, you know, I do retreats and I do meetups and support groups and blah.
When I see people connect there, there is a light that turns back on in them.
Well, I think about a grief how it affects an entire family, obviously. You know, my dad was in the room, my brother was 14 at the time. You have you, your husband, Sammy's younger brother.
And older brother, yes. He was already out of the house when he died, you know, he was already
How did losing Sammy affect you know, you talked about your husband, but relationships with your other children?
Oh, yeah. I mean, we're all affected and in all different ways. Now, thankfully, my youngest and I have a whole chapter in the book about your kids on grief and your relationship on grief because I feel like we don't talk about that enough at all. You know, we all grieve very differently, which is normal. And one of the keys to your relationship surviving grief is letting that be okay. You know, I support
Yeah, and also, you know, we I don't need my husband to grieve the same way I do as long as he doesn't make my way wrong and I don't make his way wrong. And for my youngest, I forced him cuz he was still you know, 15. I forced him into therapy, regular therapy, grief, you know, with a grief counselor and somatic therapy where he cuz I knew the body part and I made him do it for 3 months and I said if after that you want to quit, that's okay, but this is non-negotiable and you can just sit there and say nothing, you know, I don't care, but you're going to do this and he ended up staying with the grief counselor for a while afterwards, but he, you know, he does it very quietly.
He shared with me recently through a different conversation. It just kind of came up and it really surprised me cuz he you know, he doesn't talk much about it other than in passing is now is that he really that's become a filter for him. Like he thinks I'm so luck you know, I'm lucky to be alive. I'm going to take advantage of life and when he messes up instead of beating himself up, he says, you know, I could be dead. And it's changed the way Yeah, and it changes your perspective.
My eldest became really depressed. He had a lot of regrets. He felt, you know, he and Sammy had fought a lot when they were younger and they were just kind of reaching that post-adolescent rapprochement, you know, and he didn't really get a chance to do that. So he was beating himself up a lot and he became really, really depressed and he's worked through that you know, with support. So everybody kind of handled it handles it differently and grieves their own way.
You know, my eldest who was a con you know, a con conservationist. Like he did environmental conservation. Now wants to go back to school to become a therapist to help young adults.
Wow.
So you know, it changes you. But I do think this is what one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about working with grievers and in particular grieving mamas. I do, you know, we my husband and I started a foundation and I raise money all year to take mama's on retreats and I do free meet ups because the mother even if she works full-time and isn't like you know, I don't not I don't mean she has to be a stay-at-home mom necessarily, but we are the nervous systems of our family and I absolutely know that when mom can be okay, everyone else can be okay.
You know, and in the case like yours Tamsen where the you know, your mom was the one who died your father you know, and that's what the data shows is that when a young adult young person loses a parent you were 20, but like that's still pretty young and especially if younger how the other how much the other parent is able to keep parenting and stay stable is such a huge predictor and how they do and the night Sammy died. I was on the literally and figuratively, but literally on the floor.
I lost time. I think I was rolling around and wailing like I don't even know. I was not human anymore and it went on for I don't even know how many hours and I by that point the police the coroner had everyone had left our house and my husband came and peeled me off the floor and said Jackson is in our bed and asking for you. He really needs so I pull myself up. I go in there and I share this story in the book and I lay down with him and we're crying and he says to me, I am really afraid I'm going to lose you, too.
I am afraid that you're going to go crazy cuz he had never seen anything like this before. I'm afraid you're going to go crazy and I'm going to lose you, too. And you know, I made a promise to him that I didn't even know how I was going to keep, but I was going to keep and I said, I am going to go crazy for a little while like I am, but I'm going to be okay and we are going to be okay and you are going to be okay and we're going to make sure you're okay.
And you just have to be patient with me cuz I am going to be a little crazy for a while. But it's going to be okay. And that really was a lighthouse for me to keep healing.
Laura, I want to ask you a question. You know, anger and guilt, and you were talking about your oldest son. I know they become this huge part of grief. With the questions, whether they're externally or internally, of what if or why didn't I or could I have stopped this or that? You talk about it in the book, but how do you work through those yourself, and then help somebody, a mother, a father, a an a sibling, older or younger, help them work through those kind of questions.
The what if questions are I those can be very detrimental.
Yeah, and they're universal. I mean, the book is about all kinds of grief. I share all kinds of stories in there, not just child loss, but as you can imagine, you know, with child loss, you're But it doesn't even matter. There's things we will find something to beat ourselves up, you know, I didn't advocate enough for them with the doctors. I we had a horrible last conversation. I didn't tell them I loved them in the last time we spoke. We had an argument.
You know, there's so many things that we make ourselves feel guilty about. I believe that one of the things that's the ways that serves us is that it's a way for us to keep ruminating and replaying a different outcome. And if we keep replaying a different outcome, we don't have to sit with the truth.
It's okay to be having those questions in your mind.
Oh, yeah, it's okay, but it can be debilitating and cause so much pain. So, we want to honor that's what's happening, but also, you know, recognize like the key for me, cuz I replayed every second of this boy's life from like, oh, I should the way I sleep trained him was one of the factors in the dominoes that eventually, you know, fell to lead him to want to experiment with drugs. Like, I you know, good kids make bad decisions. They I certainly did.
I tried things when I was a kid that just didn't kill you like it does now, you know? But I share a lot about this idea of recognizing that we're all doing the best we can with what we know at the time. And I also believe, back to my more metaphysical beliefs, only because I have so many friends now who have had near-death experiences where they died and then came back to have some crazy miraculous recovery, and many others who kind of, you know, spent time there, that the perspective that they have on the other side, I really believe they are seeing us through the lens of the whole picture.
Like they see the whole picture in a way that we can't. And they are pure love. I felt this when my mother died, that and my dad 3 months later told me he was going to start dating again. And my immediate thought was like, "Oh my god, my mother would is so pi- would be so pissed about this." And then I immediately connected with this idea, like the perspective that she has now is just love. Like we leave our ego behind. We leave our heaviness behind. We leave our insecurities behind.
So, I really hold on to this idea and stand for this idea that, you know, from their perspective, there is no judgment. There is no They see everything. They see our wounds. They see their wounds. They see the whole picture. And that gives me a lot of comfort.
Do you think that time makes grief smaller or do you think that life grows around it? I had seen I had seen a image one time where it was like, you know, the center of it and this is the grief and then you know, the grief the size never goes away and I don't know who did it, so I can't even
Well, I have that in my I don't know if you saw it. It was I think in chapter one or
The image one of the images.
I have it's like a bunch of jars and the first row is three jars and a ball of grief and it says, "This is what people think grief looks like." And it's a big old ball filling up almost the entire jar and then it slowly gets smaller. And what really happens during grief, and this is kind of the second row of jars, is that the ball of grief stays exactly the same size. We grow and expand around it. And what that means is that, you know, we stretch our capacity.
This is why the somatic thing is so This is why I call it a path through grief because it is a path of transformation. I really liked myself. I would have said I really liked myself before you know, before Sammy died. But the person I am now for having gone through what I went through and all the healing I've done and all that's burned away and all that doesn't matter and the way my boundaries have changed and how to you know, for the better and how I've tapped in and tuned in a different way to all my intuition and my inner guidance system and my communication with the natural world.
Like I love this version of me so much more. Now, I would have given it all back in a hot I will give it all back in a hot second if I could have my kid back, but there are so many gifts there. And so part of that expansion that allows us to hold the grief comes from healing, comes from time, and it also is about learning, you know, I call it learning to surf the waves cuz the waves are going to come on a milestone or on an angelversary, you know, the anniversary of their death or on a random Wednesday, you know, when the supermarket when you hear a song or see their favorite cereal or whatever, but you ride it.
And then it's gone, you know, it eases off. And sometimes it's a beautiful visitor. Sometimes it's painful, but each time you allow yourself to feel it and I teach you how to do this cuz we don't know how to do it. We usually numb it or push it away or try not to feel it, which leads to a lot of issues. It some it sets you more and more free. It is really a you know, I didn't learn until adulthood that when the butter when the caterpillar goes into the cocoon it doesn't just kind of morph a little bit and grow wings and become a butterfly.
It turns to complete mush. It completely decompensates. And what is so cool is that the imaginal cells, scientists call them the in the DNA for the butterfly are there, and slowly the butterfly forms. And to me, that's such a beautiful metaphor. And even more recently, there was this huge study that was started by a young boy, this genius little boy, and then they ended up doing this big study, I think at Georgetown, that butterflies, even though they turn to complete mush, there was no brain in there, no nothing, and they reconfigured to a butterfly, the butterfly has memories of what it learned when it was a caterpillar.
And I think that's makes the metaphor even more beautiful, because we do become a new, even more beautiful version of ourselves, still ourselves, but more tapped in, tuned in, free, grounded, and alive in many ways. If we allow ourselves to go into that portal of healing or through that doorway, you know, which can be scary for people.
If someone listening right now loves a person who's grieving, what do you do after the phone calls and the flowers and the check-ins have stopped?
Yeah, show up. Show up. I mean, it's grief is like a it shakes up all your relationships, and you really see, you know, people who you thought were your ride or dies turn out to be not, and people who maybe you knew randomly in the carpool line turn out to be your best friends in your inner circle. And you know, the key we people don't know what to say. I even created a free guide on online to support, you know, how to support grievers. They So, they think they're going to say the wrong thing, or they think if they mention the person you lost, that they're going to remind you.
You aren't going to remind us. We know. We are always It's always there. You're not going to remind us we lost them. Just show up. Do not ask, you know, let me know if I can do something. We don't know how to even take our next breath, much less what we need. Like, say I am a target, you know, and here is a multiple choice. Let me know if you want any of these things or if there's something else you can tell me. I'm going to drop them off at your house. Or I had one friend who just left me a coffee, my favorite coffee on my friend's stoop, and would just text me and say, "I'm leaving you a coffee.
If you want to come out and say hello or give me a hug, I'm here, you know, if not, I'm coming, you know, and I'll be here. If not, no worries. Don't take it personally, you know, when they aren't necessarily texting back or calling back. Just keep showing up. One person just sent me a green heart on text every single day for a year. I don't even know if I could remember to do that for someone, but boy, was that powerful. And someone else sent me a beautiful plant 3 months after Sammy died.
And I loved it because all the flowers had died by then. And it was just a reminder that I hadn't been forgotten. Is it that we're afraid to make mistakes? Is it that we're
Just don't know what to say or
And we're uncomfortable.
Afraid to be around grief.
We're afraid, yeah, both. We're afraid of saying the wrong thing. And many of us, because of the ways we've avoided our own pain, can't face and be around that kind of pain in someone else. It does take a My friends who were able to go into the darkness next to me, you know, and just sit by me while I was in the dark, those friends are priceless, you know, and that requires someone who's really comfortable with that and has done their own stuff, you know, and that most people haven't.
So, I don't think we can expect everyone to be able to do that, but I do think, you know, people get uncomfortable with pain. And I'm not saying you have to sit with some But you don't have to say the right thing. If you can just sit next to someone and put your hand on their back and not try to make it better. And definitely don't tell them they're in a better place now or everything happens for a reason. I hate when people say that.
Those words. Weird. It's awful. Dr. Laura Berman, where can people find you? If there's somebody that needs to be on one of these retreats with you or needs, crying out loud, where can people find you?
Well, you can follow me at the I have a social media page, The Grief Healing Collective, which is also my online membership platform. So, that's for all grievers. We do all kinds of live healing events and things. So, you can follow that on social media. You can go to doctorlauraberman.com, and I'm always There's all kinds of content there. And I put information about the retreats and events coming up there, too, as well as on social media. And get the book cuz I really poured my heart into it, and I really do feel it spells out a path to healing that I really needed when this happened and couldn't find.
Thank you for being brave enough to be able to write that book.
Thank you. Thank you for giving me a platform to talk about it, Tam, and I so appreciate it.
