Podcast Episode: Jodie Atkinson, speaker and author, discusses her grief as a widow

Jodie Atkinson Transcript

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:03)

Hello Jodie, welcome to the show.

I'd like to dive right in and explore your perspective. So basically, you talk a lot about grief. What can you tell the audience about your understanding of grief?

Jodie Atkinson (00:33)

My understanding of grief changed significantly, like overnight, when I landed in a hole and really learned a thing or two about grief firsthand and the hard way. Yeah, well, my husband died in 2019 after a really short period of time from diagnosis to his death, and it was just horrendous, and grief showed up for me in the form of panic attacks, fear and anxiety, and I would not have thought that would be the case. So I started to share my story and share what I was experiencing, and discovered that a lot of people were learning a lot about grief through my experience because of what I shared. And that is kind of what prompted me to write the book. I had a lot of people saying, ‘You should write a book about this.’ Yeah, that's become my new pathway now. My passion is to create grief literacy. Understanding and a more compassionate society by understanding how grief can impact us.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:01)

Amazing. So, let's talk through the story and the journey of what happened, and how you found the lighter at the end of the tunnel after what happened.

Jodie Atkinson (02:16)

Yeah. So you know how life is just going along nicely and you think you've got it all relatively mapped out and you kind of have a sense of where you're going and what you're going to be, you know, where you're going to be in 10, 15, 20 years. And then suddenly, life has other plans for you and delivers a stage four metastatic pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (02:16)

Yeah.

Jodie Atkinson (02:46)

Out of the blue. And when I say out of the blue, my husband had been experiencing very vague health symptoms like a sore back and some indigestion. So, fairly generic kind of things that you would equate to life in your 50s, right? We've all had a sore back at some point, and we all probably suffer from indigestion from time to time. But it wasn't going away. And finally, going to a doctor who listened and sent him off for a scan showed that he had cancer spots all over his pancreas and liver. So he was stage four, and we didn't even know.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:33)

Stage four means… what's involved in stage four?

Jodie Atkinson (03:37)

Well, there's not a lot that can be done. This treatment, but the treatment we were given was basically to give us more time, because survival rates with pancreatic cancer are incredibly low. I think it's around about 10 % will survive after five years, and most people will die in the first 12 months after diagnosis. So it's a very aggressive, silent cancer and again vague symptoms present, which you may not think are related to cancer. So I'm always very quick to say to people, if you've got a sore back or you've got something that's not going away and seems to be problematic, don't take no for an answer from your doctor. Push and push and push and ask for a more thorough examination because you just never know. So Craig took on chemo treatment to give us more time, but we ended up with just 37 days, and it was really just from the moment we started treatment things just went downhill really quickly and changed and he, yeah, he just became quite, like really unwell, out of breath, a strong, fit, healthy, active man, not, and deteriorating like over that couple of weeks. And then he went into the hospital ⁓ after a temperature spike after chemo treatment, and we were supposed to get married on the weekend. We had to bring our wedding forward, and we were married in a hospital. Yeah, and the next day he died.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:48)

You got married the day before your husband died.

Jodie Atkinson (05:51)

Mm. Yeah. We... Sorry?

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:53)

With that as a headline or that should be the caption of something, your book, that blows my mind. You got… you married your husband the day before he died. Let's look at that. That's a big thing to do.

Jodie Atkinson (06:09)

Yeah, look, it was something we wanted to do and we did because we'd been together for a really long time and we weren't married. I had been married once before, but you know, things ain't broke, you don't fix it, right? And we were quite happy with the way things were, but you know, things like this throw all your priorities into a completely different lineup. Things that you thought, well, we will do that one day, suddenly became, no, we need to do this now. And I can't even tell you what I was worried about at that time. There would have been something that I would have been, something pressing, but I couldn't even tell you what it is because this just came out of the blue and became our whole life became about medical appointments and medications and planning and making sure our fares were in order and all of that kind of stuff. So we set a meeting date, and of course, because it had to come forward, we're just really glad that, well, I am really glad that we got to do that. We achieved a lot in 37 days.

Yeah, and I'm really grateful. The downside of that is that you celebrate your first wedding anniversary on your own. Did not think that through, but

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (07:29)

He did.

Jodie Atkinson (07:46)

Yeah, very grateful that we got to do that, and, you know, he's the love of my life. Yeah, I wouldn't change anything in regard to that if I had to do it again. If I had my time over again, I think we would do a lot of things very differently, knowing if the outcome was going to be the same.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:13)

How did you handle the anniversary?

Jodie Atkinson (08:17)

Because of the anniversary, our wedding anniversary and his death anniversary the next day, I pretty well think I took the week out of life. think I just said I'm pretty well just tapping out for a week because it's going to get a bit tricky. But the anticipation of those days I found was quite worse than the actual days themselves. You know, the lead-up to it, knowing that it was coming. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:53)

So the anticipation, are you saying that the narrative in the mind can be part of the pain?

Jodie Atkinson (09:01)

Yeah, I think it's just like the first of everything coming up after someone, you know, dies is always a tricky space because it's like, you know, it's not reliving it, but you are, you know, it's an anniversary. It's another year. It's a, you know, it just keeps time keeps going. And, but for you, it kind of feels like it's a long time and a short time at exactly the same time, and it's quite weird. Yeah, it's really bizarre.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (09:30)

I can really understand that. And also, I have a question about this. And this is really interesting, just exploring, exploring grief here. Because a few years after someone is gone, do you find that everybody else has just got on with life? They're all just in their own worlds, but you're still thinking about it.

Jodie Atkinson (09:54)

In their own worlds, but you're still thinking about it. That happens a lot. Find, you know, I talk to people all the time that say, you know, everyone's moved on and or they say things like, oh, are you not over that yet? And that's sort of like, you know, one of those things that is really hard to hear when you're in that space, because yes, you're right, their life has moved on.

But your life is full of the potholes left behind. So all the little things that people don't get is the morning routines, the evening routines, the weekend stuff that you did together, know, their jobs, your jobs, like it all becomes your job. And there's a lot of things that, like layers and layers and layers of the intimacy of that relationship from cups of coffee to, you know, walks on the beach or, you know, and, and since nights on the couch watching a movie, just those absence, those moments of where you feel those absences, like people don't feel that unless it's their situation. So when people say, ‘Are you not over it yet?’ You know, it's like, yeah, I can't even watch TV the same way anymore. And my whole routine has changed. And I don't do things that I used to do, and I don't like things that I used to like. So yeah, like, is it any wonder that I'm not quite, you know, put together again the way you might hope that I would be. And I'm saying that on behalf of, you know, every person that's going through this stuff because I lost Craig to cancer six years ago, and I've been really passionate about trying to change the conversation we have around grief.

And people now who are just brand new, landing in this space, are hearing the same things. So there's a lot of work to be done here. Melanie, a lot of work.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (11:56)

There is, there's a lot. And I think the common thread that I'm seeing is that when you have a severe experience and your whole life changes, then people can't see from the outside the little details that accumulate to form a completely different life that you're trying to navigate.

Jodie Atkinson (12:04)

Is that when you have a severe experience and your whole life changes, people can't see from the outside the little details that accumulate to form a completely different life that you're trying to navigate?

It's just impossible because you're put back together a little differently when you go through something like that. And from the outside, you probably look the same and you probably sound the same, but things are different. And I think when you know yourself intimately, you'd like, you know, you have a really good sense of self. You are aware of those changes and those shifts. But I really think that an important part of

of the grieving process is grieving the you that you lost when that happened as well because you know I had a really I had a I was you know I had a pretty good sense of self and then suddenly I'm questioning my identity so I think there is it's you know it's a really valid thing to grieve not only the person and the life you had but the loss of your self yeah

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:30)

And the identity, it goes beyond the abstract because did you find that in wondering who am I now that things have changed? Did you find that you were wondering, okay, how am I going to make decisions as a totally different person when I barely even know the purpose of the next step? Was it trying to feel your way in the dark?

Jodie Atkinson (13:53)

Trying to feel your way in the dark. That's a really good way of putting it, I think, because you are literally going, well, who am I now? And I remember saying to my mum, What am I like? Because I had the W word floating around in my head, right? The widow word was in there, but I hadn't let those words hit the air yet. And so it wasn't real, right? And I sort of said to my mum, ‘So what am I?’ She said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, I'm not divorced. I'm not single. Am I still married? Like, what am I?’ And, you know, then the ‘widow’ word came out, and it was like, ugh, like, I'm 46 years old, you know? Yeah, well, that's what I said. I was 46 years old. I never, never thought I would be a widow at 46. So it, and you know, my...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (14:39)

Did it make you feel old?

Jodie Atkinson (14:51)

And my vision in my head at that point was, you know, a very different image of widowhood. You know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not old. I'm not, I'm not cloaked in black from head to toe. I'm not, you know, I just didn't, it didn't match up with my, my version of, of what the widow brought up in my mind. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:20)

And for those who are listening on audio, I'm seeing a confident-looking, well-made-up, strong woman with funky hair who does not look like the stereotype of the widow. My gosh, those nails, that is the best pink on those nails.

Jodie Atkinson (15:24)

That saying - confidence. strong woman with funky hair. My, yes.

Yeah. So.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:44)

And yet we think that someone will just be a widow when they are probably in a nursing home. There are stereotypes about what we're going to become, and we don't know how to perhaps shape ourselves beyond the stereotypes.

Jodie Atkinson (15:50)

Yes.

Yeah, that's it. And I think, you know, trying to navigate that space and thinking, well, there's big decisions that have to be made, and I don't trust myself to make them. I don't think I'm in a place to make these big decisions. So I'm not going to. I'm just going to do what feels comfortable and safe right now. And I don't have the pressure of, you know, maybe some other people might have in this situation. Someone 46 years old being widowed, there are still people at 46 with kids in school and probably have a lot of different financial commitments and things. So I was in a position where my children were grown up. didn't have them; they weren't dependent. And I probably have a very different situation to a lot of women my age who might have had the same scenario. Saying that, it doesn't mean that I didn't have my own challenges with that. So I'm not trying to diminish my loss because I'm thinking other people might have it worse than me, but it's just looking at, you know, the broad different types of scenarios that play out.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (17:16)

It sounds like you were in a different life stage than other people your age. And I think that other listeners will be able to relate to that. think the equivalent that I can relate to is that it was very odd for me becoming a single parent in essentially my early thirties, knowing some people were only just thinking about settling down then and … me becoming a single parent in my early thirties, knowing some people were just thinking about settling down then, and your version of this is that in your forties, in your mid forties, you were in a lapse stage as a widow that maybe the other people around you, the other people around your age, maybe it's hard to...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (17:45)

Your version of this is that in your 40s, in your mid-40s, you were in a life stage as a widow that maybe the other people around you, the other people around your age, maybe it's hard to, did you find it hard to find the common ground then because people are having totally different life experiences?

Jodie Atkinson (18:07)

I found it interesting, I think amongst my friendship group, I, you know, I was the first one that this, this, this had happened to, really, you know, friends are bad. As I said, I've been divorced before as well. like I'm super fun chick over here, but I, but I think, when you've got like people who can connect with you from a divorce scenario, is a little bit, it's a bit different, and some widowed people would really push back and be quite emphatic about it's not the same. And it is a different type of loss, but it is a loss after all. That's, I guess, where I sort of sit ⁓ in all this time. can see that. No loss is what one greater is greater than the other. Like everyone's loss is 100 per cent, and whether that is the death of someone close to you, it could be a parent, a child, a spouse, or a divorce, or the loss of your beloved pet. You know, people grieve this stuff, and it's not up to anyone else to say, well, that's not as bad as dot dot dot, because in that space and time, it's just the same hole we all fall in.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:29)

Grief is grief, and you're having different experiences, and I want to know, and a lot of people want to know what it's like for you to have a spouse die, and yet well, because everybody dies eventually, we're all going to have that feeling of someone we know is gone, and how is life going to look after that?

Jodie Atkinson (19:33)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I guess a big thing that I encourage every single person going through any form of loss is to spend some time processing that in some form of support, therapy, counselling, whatever you want to call it, that works. Don't just go find something, find what works, because that will make the difference between feeling like you are stuck in this space and being able to actually see, okay, I can lift my head and see a way forward here. Because if you're doing something that doesn't feel right and is not aligned with you, you're wasting your time, your energy, your money. And if you're just feeling like it's adding to your emotional space in a negative way, it's not helpful. So finding what aligns and what works for you is incredibly important, and I am so grateful I found the thing that worked for me, and I certified in that program because it was so effective and powerful. And I think that is also a reason why I can do the work that I do in this space. Because if I was still, yeah, yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (21:09)

Two questions around that. So what did you certify in? And I'm really curious, what types of therapies did you explore to realise that some things work and some don't work for you?

Jodie Atkinson (21:23)

So I was in such a state of complete meltdown, and I had big emotions, Melanie, I was scared of. I've never felt anxious, had panic attacks, or things like that before. And I've never felt this overwhelming sense of falling, like just literally the devastation. And I needed help, and I knew I needed help, and I told people I needed help. And it was sort of like, well, after the funeral or after, you know, and I was like, no, I don't want to wait. Like, I know that I need this now. I'm scared to be by myself with these big emotions. So I went to see my GP and she referred me to someone, and I'm, you know, I don't brand every type of clinician or therapist in this way, but this was my experience, so I just be really clear. And it just felt like I wasn't listened to, I was rushed. They fidgeted on their desk the whole time I was in their office; they didn't even look at me. It was quite horrendous. left that appointment in tears and sat and held my eyes out of my car because I couldn't drive. I was that upset. And I just thought I never want to go through anything like that again. It just felt like on top of what I'd been through, it literally felt like, you know, someone had cut me and squeezed lemon juice in the wound, you know, like it was on what you needed and actually listening to you with attention.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (23:15)

Sorry, it’s like literally someone wasn't giving your giving your issue the focus. weren't. So to rephrase this, it seems like someone wasn't focusing on what you needed and actually listening to you with attention.

Jodie Atkinson (23:30)

No. And the parting words were along the lines, well, there's no way, there's nothing. There was a few phrases that they used and I couldn't tell you exactly all of them because I just remember, you can't drink it, you can't outdrink it, you can't out drug it, you can't out something, something, you just gotta get through it. And they were my parting words, and I just...

Yeah. You can imagine, I was already pretty emotionally vulnerable ⁓ and raw, that really, and I was scared because then I thought, well, how do I go out and look for support if I don't want to have that happen again? So it made me a little apprehensive and quite scared that I'm going to find it very difficult to find the support I need if this is the type of thing I'm going to come up against. So I don't blame anyone for not feeling like you want to go out the window shopping for a therapist when you've just had treatment of that kind. So I did have some ⁓ connection with the palliative care nurse that looked after Craig and I, because she did support me too. Yeah, and she was beautiful. And she put me in touch with a social worker through the palliative care unit. And we had phone sessions. I never met this person.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:47)

Good.

Jodie Atkinson (24:59)

Lovely, lovely person. It was more supportive, but our time got cut short because I think he was sort of filling in a role temporarily and had to go back to his other space. So I was given another person to work with, and I must have said something quite profound because the response I got then was, well, ‘You're making good decisions, you're backing yourself, and that's how we kind of see that. Yeah, you're probably good to go.’ Like, you know, we can probably call this our last session.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (25:35)

Yeah.

Did you feel ready to stop?

Jodie Atkinson (25:43)

That was just what I was going to say. What that felt like was like a little life raft suddenly just had the line cut from the mothership and sent out into this, you know, big wide ocean full of, you know, big waves and there I am, you know, rolling around in it again. Yeah, so, yes, it was a little bit like, now what, where do I go now? Because I don't still don't feel like I'm completely on board here. And then one day, was Father's Day in September 2019 of all days and I was meeting a friend for brunch and while I was waiting to leave, think I was just, I had a few minutes up my sleeve and I was scrolling on social media and I happened to be on one of the widow pages that I was following at the time because I was looking for anything. They told me I was experiencing normal something normal, somebody on there said, I'm a grief recovery specialist. And I was like, ‘What is that?’ So I got out of Facebook and jumped on Google and looked up what this grief recovery specialist was. And I discovered this program called the Grief Recovery Method. And everything I read about it, I just felt it just spoke to me. It just aligned. It was like, I felt like it was literally everything that I wanted presented, here you go, this is what you need to go forward.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (27:27)

What does that look like?

Jodie Atkinson (27:29)

The grief recovery method. It is an evidence-based program. It is a process of tools and actions that you take to process your grief, your relationship. And it addresses all of the things that people say to you that are really unhelpful. And it addresses all of the things that push back on everything we're told about grief and what we should or shouldn't do and how we should or shouldn't feel and what we should or shouldn't say or behave like. And it was just like, how is this the first time I'm learning about this? Because this makes so much sense. How is it we don't know more about it? And it was these, I have to say, it was the second hardest thing I've ever had to do.

Right? Second hardest, the first hardest, obviously losing Craig and being with him at that time, and the second hardest was making the decision to actively heal from it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:32)

Second hardest.

So it sounds like a big part of your journey and recovery has been overcoming other people's misunderstandings about what you're experiencing and what you need.

Jodie Atkinson (29:02)

Yes, but I'm not alone in that. You know, a lot of people go through the same stuff. Like I said, six years later, I'm still having conversations with people who said, ‘This person said this to me, can you believe they said that?’ I go, yes, I can believe they said it because I know that's what they say. But I am, you know, I'm trying to chip away at making changes to this space as best I can. And, you know, the more we talk about it, the more we educate, the more we inform, the more we take away that discomfort and that taboo and that stigma around it, just like any ⁓ other condition or mental health or anything where people find it, they're fearful of it because they don't understand it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (29:55)

You think people are fearing what they don't understand. That's opening my eyes a lot because I think that with any experience that's not every day, I think that it can be a little bit isolating when people think that they know, people are just assuming based on their own frame of reference, based on what they are familiar with. And if they haven't seen what you've seen, then

Jodie Atkinson (29:58)

That's opening my eyes a lot because I think that with any experience that's not every day, I think that it can feel a bit isolating, people just assume based on their own frame of reference, based on what they are familiar with, and if they haven't seen what you've seen then I think the risk of when people are telling you this is what you're dealing with, this is your solution but they haven't even seen it. So that's where the mismatch is. Yeah, it is because I think it was a Shakespearean quote. I've used this in my book, like anyone can cure grief, but he who has it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:23)

I think the risk is when people are telling you this is what you're dealing with. This is your solution when they haven't even seen it. So that's where the mismatch is.

Jodie Atkinson (30:43)

And it's about, you know, that intellectual comments that people make about, you know, well, they're in a better place or at least they're not in pain anymore. And intellectually, we might know those things, but emotionally, we are not in that space. We are in a world of pain because the person we've lost is not here. And we don't think they're in a better place. I think we think they should be here, and we don't want them to be in pain, but we don't want them to be gone either.

So sometimes there's lots of things that are said that are, you know, coming from that intellectual space. And when you're dealing with someone grieving, they are in an emotional space. So their feelings and their thoughts and their behaviour are going to be fluid, erratic. They're going to jump from one thing to another. One day, they might feel quite calm and, you know, together. The next day, they're probably manic, and they could be angry and sad and laughing all at the same time. So, trying to give someone in that space intellectual advice or suggestions is other than strategies for how to manage it because most people will want to know how do I just cope when I go to the shops and I have a panic attack or how do I cope if I've got to go to a social function and I don't feel up to it? 

They want strategies for managing those things, but the intellectual stuff around how to deal with the feelings and the thoughts and behaviour they're experiencing, best to just listen to them and let them share that and let them just have that experience and that express them rather than trying to judge them and ask them lots of questions about why they feel that way, to feel emotions, but we are human beings who will...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (32:33)

And let things not be completely logical. What I'm saying here is it is so countercultural to feel emotions, but we are human beings who will feel something and the whole concept of relating to each other, a relationship is emotional. It is, and it sounds like what you're doing is reconnecting with that part of your humanity because I personally think if we were only thinking and not feeling, that's what robots do.

Jodie Atkinson (33:08)

Correct. I know. And Melanie, I feel like we're in a world right now that is pulling us away from compassionate empathy in such a big way. We are seeing horrific stuff play out in our world. And we're seeing a lot of things that dehumanise and make us sort of point the finger at difference rather than leaning into empathy and compassion for people. And that just makes me more determined to continue this conversation because I think, you know, we have a lot of AI telling us how to do things. We can punch in, you know, a question and get all the information we need. But there are some things that I think we just can't replace humans for.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:00)

The thing about being a human is we're messy, and that doesn't have to be a bad thing. It means that we explore new solutions and new paths by making it up as we go along and not going with the predictable answer. And AI only goes by what it has been fed. But we can be so much more original than that, can, there's just something different about being a human being. And it sounds like what you're doing is reconnecting people with that.

Jodie Atkinson

Correct.

Jodie Atkinson (34:40)

I think it is sharing our stories. One of the authors, podcasters that I loved, her books, Nora McInerney, she did a TED talk about moving forward from grief, not moving on. And I really loved her language because it was like, yeah, moving on implies that we just shut the door, forget that it happened and move, get on with life, which is such a typical stoic kind of representation of, you know, pick yourself up and get on with it. Whereas when you're in it, that sounds so much easier than it is. And I think moving forward is a much more palatable thing for me because it's like all our life experiences is accumulation of what shapes the person we are or who we are. And

I didn't forget that I went to school, and I don't forget that I learned to drive a car, and I don't forget that I have two children. Why would I forget that I had the love of my life die? And all of those experiences have shaped who I am, and losing him has shaped the person I continue to become. So moving forward with it, you carry it. And I don't know, I've kind of spent a lot of time trying to outrun my grief and fight against it, push back on it, back in the very early days. I just, you know, I could feel panic attacks coming on, and I would I'd get anxious, and I just got angry with myself, and I get, you know, I just felt like there was this thing, this...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:08)

How?

Were you mad at yourself for feeling something?

Jodie Atkinson (36:25)

I was mad that I couldn't, I just didn't have the capacity to deal with stuff. Like I'm sitting there going, who am I? I'm losing time staring into a cup of coffee. Like an hour passes, and you think I've been sitting here for an hour staring into a cup of coffee. You'd not, I don't even have that awareness. And I could look at people speaking to me and see their mouth move and not hear a word they said, and sorry, can you repeat that? Because you're just completely... Yeah, it's the weirdest scenario.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:37)

Yes.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (36:58)

You know, I think part of the problem is that we live in a culture, especially having the nine-to-five culture and the workaholic trends, where we're expected to just get on with things. And I think that manifests in so many ways. Let me know if you've seen this. I think that when I was processing things years ago, there were phrases like the show must go on and just show up.

Jodie Atkinson (37:14)

And I think that meant this in so many ways. Let me know if you've seen this. I think that when I was processing things years ago, there were phrases...

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:27)

And now I think that there's something similar now. Well, things just, you just have to get on with your day, but there's no space. People don't want to, I know that right now, it'll be careful about how I word this, but people want to basically just be sometimes bureaucratic about things, or it's like your moral property if you're just, it's like you're more proper if you're just pretending that nothing has happened.

Jodie Atkinson (37:28)

Yes. And now I think that there's something similar now. Well, things just have to get on with their day. But there's no space. don't want to... I know that right now, not all people care about their word this, pretending that nothing's happened.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:58)

But what you have needed is the space to just take some time.

Jodie Atkinson (38:06)

Just take some time.

Yeah, the, you know, and I speak to people all the time. Go, I just want to get through this. I just want to be on the other side of it. And I go, I get it. I hear you. But your grief is a beast of its own. It won't be outrun. It won't be told to shut up and be quiet. It won't sit in the back seat and not be a pain in the car. Like, it goes everywhere with you. And I've always, you know, there's a beautiful, I don't know where I could have heard it from, but it stayed with me. And it's like, if you invite someone who's lost someone to your house for Christmas or, you know, a birthday party, set a place for grief because that's coming with them. Because they're not going to suddenly just turn up and go, well, I just left it at home, you know, with the babysitter.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (38:51)

Yes.

Jodie Atkinson (38:58)

for a couple of hours, and I'm, you know, it doesn't work like that. It goes with you everywhere. It's relentless. And I think when I started to actually go, well, okay, this is who I, this is what's happening. This is who I am for the next however long. I'm going to be an emotional, unpredictable, highly, you know, strong kind of individual. And I have no control over it. I will cry at the drop of a hat. And then suddenly it will just stop like a tap turns on and off.

I can't control that. So I'm just going to have to go with it. And if I just be okay with it, everyone else is going to have to be okay with it too. Because, you know.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (39:38)

I am so grateful. Sorry. I'm so grateful that you are being honest about your emotional reactions because I think there is stigma around even having that reaction. And my response to that is we can end up wondering if we're going a little bit crazy when really we're just, you felt that way too?

Jodie Atkinson (39:53)

Bye!

It's absolutely, everybody says like, not everybody, but so many people have said to me, my God, like, that's me. And I said, yeah, well, how do we not know this? It's because we haven't talked about it. And, you know, and we just need to have these conversations to normalise this.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:16)

Yes.

Jodie Atkinson (40:22)

Because it is, you do feel like you're losing your mind. I thought I'd lost my husband, I'd lost myself, and now I'm losing my mind? Like seriously, what, who is this mess? I've just, everything just felt like everything was broken. And I thought I was going mad, but it's not, it's actually quite normal to have these feelings and these thoughts and behave that way and to be numb and foggy and forgetful and to be emotional and to be… to be feeling like today I can't get out of bed. And then the next day, no, I feel like I want to go and do that thing today. And then the next day going, I just don't want to talk to people today. I don't want to be around people today. I'm just going to shut up shop and stay in my pyjamas and cuddle my dog on the lounge. And that's what I'm going to do.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:12)

Absolutely.

Jodie Atkinson (41:12)

And I think it is about acknowledging that that is what a lot of people may go through, and going back to work is tough if you're in that space. So having a supportive workplace that understands, okay, we don't just treat this person like they've just been on holiday, and we don't just avoid them in the staff room so that we don't remind them of what's happened, because, spoiler alert, you can't remind them. They don't forget. You're not going to remind them. So actually talking to them and saying that, you know, maybe they want to hear their person's name. You know, sometimes that's the thing. When someone dies, everyone avoids talking about them.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (41:53)

It's always.

Jodie Atkinson (42:11)

And all you want to hear is their name. So, you know, sharing a story about a memory you have or something that you remember about that person, or maybe they've told you a story about it. You can say, you know, remember that time you told me that story about that, you know, and it just gives them that feeling that, you know, you actually care and they were here and they did matter.

And that's acknowledged. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:44)

So talk about it. Jodie, I really, really appreciate the honesty, and I can tell you that so much of what you have described, I've experienced things like that in smaller experiences of grief and also in processing trauma as well. It was very similar things. The, can't I remember these basic things in my day? Why am I staring at a coffee cup? And what you're doing.

Jodie Atkinson (43:07)

Yeah. Yeah.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (43:14)

Seriously, hearing those same things coming from someone else, I think that's going to be really powerful because you can hear all the experts in the world, but when you just hear a lived experience of you're not crazy, you're not broken, you're just reshaping yourself, I think that you're really encouraging people.

Jodie Atkinson (43:35)

It is, you know, it's such a tough space to land in. And no one ever chooses it, right? It's not a thing. Any trauma, any life experience that lands you deep in a hole, dealing with a whole lot of fallout and trying to work out where it all fell apart and trying to, you know, regardless of what that is, Melanie, I think, you know, we don't have a choice about landing here. But we...

At some point, and this is certainly for me, I got to a point where I was like, okay.

I think I have a choice about how I navigate this. And I have a choice about where I'm going to go. And I do have a choice about what my life is going to look like from here. And when you get to that point, I think that is when you start saying, well, what do I want? Who am I? Where am I going? Do I even still like the things that I think I like?

Do I want to do this particular job for the rest of my life? Do I want to live in this house? Do I, you know, what do I want to do with this new existence? And yeah, you do, you do have a choice. And it may not be something that some people are ready to hear because, you know, I know there was a time when I felt like that, but I think, you know, I'm talking to the people who are a few years down the track when the dust has settled and the friendships have either moved away from you or new ones have formed or new relationships have come in and you're in a different space and you're just kind of finding your feet and feeling like, okay, I've got all these opportunities, what am I going to do?

It's quite an empowering place to land when you get to that point because you realise that you do have a blank canvas in front of you and you get to create that thing that you want, that existence, that life.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (45:51)

There's a creativity in your next chapter of shaping, so you're empowered to shape your next chapter.

Jodie Atkinson (46:00)

And it's just a reframe from like, this is where I'm stuck. This happened to me. This is, you know, my life is dot, dot, dot because of this. Or there is this option, an opportunity to go, yes, that happened. And I can't change that that happened. And I've made peace with the fact that that happened. Doesn't mean that I'm forgetting and moving on and saying that, you know, it doesn't matter. It's never okay that someone dies or something terrible happens to us. It's never okay that we go through that stuff, but it's what we do with it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:33)

Absolutely.

Jodie, thank you so much for guiding the next steps. And I'm curious, what are three things I love, picking three things that everybody can do if they know someone who is grieving or processing something? What are the three things they can do to be supportive and help for the next step to evolve?

Jodie Atkinson (47:02)

Yeah. Don't think that giving them space and time is what they need. Don't think that, oh, look, I see you’re going through a really tough time. I'll touch base with you in, I don't know, a month or two, see how you're going. Don't do that. Check in. If you have trouble trying to, you don't know what to say, you don't know what to do, it's not actually about you. Okay? No one expects you to have any answers and a diploma in psychology to go and show support. So showing up and saying, ‘Hey, let's go for a coffee or let's go for a walk, or shall I come over and just sit with you?’ And if they start to talk about what they are going through, that is your cue to stop and listen. Don't ask questions, don't judge them, don't ask them what happened next. Just let them talk and just give them those supportive kind of, yep, I hear you kind of responses. If you also struggle to find something like a gift, something about grief that they might find helpful, a magazine or an article, something off the internet. found like I was trolling through the social media looking for anything.

And then it's how I found Nora's TED Talk, which was incredibly powerful and very, very helpful. She also had a really cool book, a friend of mine bought for me, which was called The Hot Young Widows Club. And it's got a lot of dark humour in it, but it was exactly what I needed. So you could find something that you can gift them that might be helpful as well.

There's so many things that you can do in that regard. And I have written a book that has chapter five is all about the things not to say and not to do, but also the helpful things that you can do when supporting someone. I must admit, if I may, Melanie, like, quite often people will buy my book as a gift to someone grieving because there's a lot of stuff in there that talks about the thoughts, feelings and behaviours we might experience and some of the strategies that I adopted to cope with those things.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:18)

Good.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:32)

Amazing. So people can buy the book and listen to someone without having all of the solutions.

Jodie Atkinson (49:35)

It's.

There it is in the background. You're on the visuals, it's called Have You Met My Grief? And it's got a couple of blue butterflies on the front.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (49:49)

Awesome. And Jodie, I'm sure I can get some links from you so people can find it very directly. Thanks for writing your book. Thanks for sharing your story.

Jodie Atkinson (49:55)

Thanks for writing your book, thanks for sharing this story. Thank you for having me. It's been a wonderful conversation, and we talked about some stuff that I haven't discussed with other presenters in the past, too.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:09)

I appreciate that a lot. Yes, I think I opened up a little bit as well because I love it when we can see ourselves in someone else's story. That's powerful.

Jodie Atkinson (50:20)

Yeah, absolutely. Our stories are incredibly wonderful connectors, and I think not only to each other but connecting to our own stories in a way that's like, my gosh, you know, the gift of words is sometimes one of the best gifts you can receive because you think, I didn't know how to articulate how I felt until I heard or read that. And that's certainly been my experience, you know, learning.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:49)

You must hear from so many people about grief and their experiences. I'd love to a while from now hear about the conversations that you have with people. But look, I feel like we could talk for hours, but thank you so much for being on the show.

Jodie Atkinson (51:05)

Thank you for having me. It's been wonderful.