Loss, Death and Grief꞉ Including Kids in the Conversation
How do we talk to kids about loss, death, and grief? Why is it hard for people to talk about death all the time? In this episode of Superpower Mommas, host Tatiana Berindei and guest Jennifer Cormier speak about the importance of involving kids in conversation about death. The more we know that death is a natural occurrence, the better we can take care of our family by preparing for it. Please tune in to learn how to assist your child through loss, death, and grief, especially in handling their emotions during these times.
Tatiana Berindei:
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Superpower Mommas podcast show. I’m your host, Tatiana Berindei, and I have a dear sister with me here today, Jen Cormier. We’ve got a heavy-hitting topic again for you all, but it’s a good one and an important one. We’re going to be talking about loss, death, and grief, and including kids in the conversation. I know this is up for a lot of people right now. How do we move through this ourselves if it hasn’t been modeled for us? And then how do we talk about it with our kids? So we’re going into that today.
Let me tell you a little bit about Jen before we get started. Jen Cormier is a grief guide who brings 20 years of experience in the healing arts to clients who are moving through life transitions and loss. Jen is committed to the evolution of how we relate to death and walk with our grief. She’s the creator of the Transform Your Grief Immersion Program, a unique holistic group program that addresses the physical, emotional, cognitive, creative, spiritual, and communal layers of each person. “When we shift our perspective to include our body and spirit in our grieving process and see grief as our creative collaborator, we open the door to healing, transformation, and peace,” says Jen.
Jen brings a diverse array of voices and perspectives on living and loving after a loss on her podcast Walk Through Grief with Grace, which I had the good fortune to be on yesterday, which was fun and hard and good, and all the rest. So, I just want to welcome her with a really warm heart to the show. Thank you Jen so much for coming and sharing your wisdom with our audience this way today. I’m really glad you’re here.
Jennifer Cormier:
Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction, Tatiana.
Tatiana Berindei:
There’s a lot to talk about here when we’re opening up this doorway into loss, death, and grief, and bringing our kids into the fold. Jen and I, for those of you who don’t know, actually lived together for a little bit of time out in San Diego together. And our kids got to be in the house together. And so we will be talking about sort of how we have talked with our own kids about this topic, but I don’t really want to open up the doorway for that and then have to cut it off because of time. So, Jen, I’m going to ask you your superpowers question, and then we’re going to go to a quick break, and then we’re going to really open up the conversation so we can really drop in and not have to cut it short. So before we go to break, will you share with our listeners what your superpowers are in this realm of grief and loss?
Jennifer Cormier:
What my superpowers are in the realm of grief and loss? Let’s see. I think for me, it’s coming to grief and loss as an artist. And as a body practitioner, I think that is my superpower because I approach it from that particular angle, whereas a lot of practitioners and experts are approaching it from a cognitive place, a scholarly place, a therapeutic place, and a psychological place, which are all beautiful and valid and needed. I’m coming to the table as a ceremonial artist, as a performing artist, as a dancer, as a mover, as a creator. And I’m bringing my background as a somatic healer, through therapeutic Pilates, through yoga therapy. I’m trained in four different lineages of yoga. So I bring to the table this energetic energy moving through the body perspective because that’s a missing piece I think for a lot of people who are stuck suffering in their grief process. It’s been years and years, and they’ve gone to bereavement groups and they have a therapist. It’s been eight years and they’re still suffering.
And what I’ve noticed over time with folks, is I’ve been part of bereavement groups that are mainly talk-based and I think story medicine is so important. Being able to share our stories is so important and we can really get stuck in simply that layer of speaking and being in our minds. And what I notice is there’s a common thread through the people I’ve noticed who are really still heavy or feeling empty or feeling a lot of suffering on a daily basis many years later. The common denominator is they don’t have body practice. They’re not moving, they’re not getting bodywork and the message. They’re not creating in their life. They haven’t found the support to really move into their own next chapter.
Tatiana Berindei:
They’re in freeze mode.
Jennifer Cormier:
They’re in freeze and they’ve been in freeze for years. I think that that is my superpower, is really seeing the energetics in the body and bringing in also the creative element to yeah, we have to shed through the body. And then now it’s time to create. And we can honor our grief process, we can honor what’s been lost with our own creative capacity.
Tatiana Berindei:
That’s so beautiful and so needed. It’s been awesome to watch you in your journey into this work and how correct it has felt every step of the way.
Jennifer Cormier:
Yeah.
Tatiana Berindei:
I had the good fortune to be living with Jen when she took her first course on how to prepare a body after death and green burial and all of this, and just watch her come alive from that work. And then to watch you really like to dive into it has just been so beautiful and so profound. I do think that all those gifts that you bring into it, it’s like you’re so needed. The medicine you bring and the way that you bring it is so needed in this space and this time right now. So I’m really glad that you’re doing that work.
Jennifer Cormier:
Thank you so much. I think that the word that bubbled up when you were just sharing that is a joy because when you would think, “Oh, she’s gone to a home burial, conscious dying, green funeral. Oh, she’s doing final passages training.”
I talk to strangers and I say, “I’m doing mostly grief work now.” They’re like, “Oh.” They’re like, that sort of looks on people’s faces kind of cringing and that must be dark, or that must be hard. And it’s like, no. Actually, there’s a lot of joy in it because people move from really being, like you’re saying, in that freeze or that stuck place. And when they start moving that energy through, there’s a lot of creative potentials. There’s a lot of energy for living and for being in joy. I find it to be really joyful work. So I think that that is my superpower, is to weave in all the things into grief and to see it as a tapestry or a basket that’s not just dark and deep and sad and terrible, but it’s got all the joy and the life and the gratitude and the creativity woven in there as well.
Tatiana Berindei:
Yes. I love it. Okay. So we are going to go to break. Before we go, will you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you and your work?
Jennifer Cormier:
If they want to listen to the Walk Through Grief with Grace podcast, you can find that on Spotify, Apple, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. That would be a great way to find me. You can also find me on my website, which is the same name as the podcast. It is walkthroughgriefwithgrace.com.
Tatiana Berindei:
Awesome. Thank you for that. We are talking with Jen Cormier about loss, death, and grief, including kids in the conversation. And yeah, we’re going to dive in when we get back. So stay tuned. We’ll be right back.
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