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The A to Z of Healing From Grief and Trauma With Susan Hannifin-MacNab

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Summary

In the realm of grief and trauma recovery, author and social worker Susan Hannifin-MacNab brings a wealth of knowledge and lived experience to the table. Recently featured on the LightAtTheEnd.com podcast, Susan delved into her profound journey of healing and shared insights from her book, “The A to Z Healing Toolbox: A Practical Guide for Navigating Grief and Trauma with Intention.”

A Personal Journey to Healing

Susan’s path toward authoring her impactful book began with an intensely personal tragedy when her husband Brent died in a car accident. With a young child to care for and a world utterly turned upside down, Susan channeled her grief into action. As a social worker and educator, she utilized her skills to gather resources, eventually morphing a personal binder of strategies into an invaluable public resource.

The A to Z Healing Toolbox: A Practical Resource

The book is structured alphabetically with each chapter focusing on different tools—from “L for Laughter” to “M for Meditation” and “C for Counseling.” The beauty of this approach is its flexibility; readers can delve into any chapter that resonates with them. Susan emphasized that these tools aren’t just for the grieving but can benefit anyone looking to enhance their mental health and well-being.

Understanding Grief and Trauma

An essential part of Susan’s book is distinguishing between grief and trauma—often interrelated yet distinct processes. Susan explains these are like Venn diagrams overlapping; each has unique and shared characteristics, which require different therapeutic approaches. Her own experience elucidates these complexities and offers clarity for others navigating similar emotional landscapes.

Valuing Community and Support

Community support emerged as a critical component in Susan’s healing journey. Initially hesitant to engage with widowed support groups, she eventually found solace and understanding among peers. The shared experience of grief, she noted, created a bond that was both healing and empowering, underscoring the importance of group support.

Therapeutic Modalities and Ecomapping

Susan advocates exploring a variety of therapeutic modalities, such as EMDR and sandplay therapy, which can assist particularly with trauma elements. Additionally, she introduced the concept of ecomapping—a tool to visually assess and manage relationships and activities in one’s life, prioritizing those that provide support and minimizing those that add stress.

A Holistic Approach to Healing

Incorporating both Eastern and Western healing modalities, Susan encourages readers to try various approaches, identifying what suits them best, whether it’s through journaling, therapy, or physical activities. Her message is clear: healing is deeply personal, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.

Conclusion

Susan Hannifin-MacNab’s journey and insightful resources serve as a beacon for those navigating the turbulent waters of grief and trauma. By sharing her tools and experiences, she offers a lifeline to individuals seeking solace and strength. To delve deeper into her work, visit her comprehensive website, a2zhealingtoolbox.com, and consider exploring her book to discover paths that might resonate with your personal journey.

Through action and intention, Susan’s guidance provides hope and empowerment, reminding us all that healing, though complex, is indeed possible.

FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

“The A to Z of Healing From Grief and Trauma With Susan Hannifin-MacNab” (Jan 03, 2025)

Susan Hannifin-MacNab’s Book: A to Z Healing Toolbox

Kevin Berk: So, over the holidays I finished reading [your book] the A to Z Healing Toolbox: A Practical Guide for Navigating Grief and Trauma with Intention, and I really appreciated and respected it. Very, very easy to get started with. I. I had it delivered on a day that I had other things to do and I was like, “well, I’m not really going to have time to give this it’s due.”

And yet it was so easy to pick up. And go through chapter by chapter. I mean, I think you say right at the beginning that you can kind of go through it in any order. And then just every, every time I had a little downtime I was picking it back up. And, and as I say, I managed to get through it in like 24 hours.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Well, I appreciate you taking a read through that and actually the book was written out of my experience with grief and trauma and wanting to give back in some way and help others that were also experiencing that. So the book’s actually written for people who are experiencing grief or trauma, and so I’m glad that since you’re… I hope you’re not in deep grief or trauma mode right now, which is why you were able to get through it, but for people who may be listening to this, you can pick it up, open it to whichever chapter you want, start on any letter. L for Laughter, M for Meditation, C for Counseling, and just read, you know, those five to six pages regarding that particular tool and then open it to something else the next day.

Kevin Berk: There are a lot of mental health providers who use it for their clients. You know, they have a copy, their client has a copy and they kind of move through chapters. I’ve also gotten photos of coaches, life coaches or mental health practitioners who buy stacks of, you know, 10 to 15 of these books. And if they’re running a group, like a grief group, they might pass the book out to each one of their participants and they move through it together. So it’s a great resource for mental health practitioners who are working with grieving people, but also grieving and traumatized people themselves.

Sure. I was surprised at how much of the book is also on the website and not behind a paywall and just right there with the resources, everything A to Z. There’s certainly a lot more once you get into the book, but the skeleton of it… In fact, more than that, a lot of the muscle and the meat of it is up there on the website, available freely.

So as much as I think personally that everyone would do well to have a copy of this, I think that there is zero reason not to take a look at the website and familiarize yourself.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Right. Well, social workers become social workers because we want to help, right? We don’t sign up to be social workers because we’re going to make a ton of money. We want to help, and so that was my first priority, way before the book, that’s what I had… well, way back before the website even was a 26-page pamphlet or booklet that I put together to present at a conference. And then I had a friend who was a website designer who said, “Well, hey, how about, you know, you really want to help people. How about if I put this together for you on a website?” And I said okay. And then he said, “well, you know, is really good information, Susan. Are you going to have people pay for this?”

And I said, “no, that’s not what I’m here for.” And then eventually the book came to be, but my first priority was #1, help people going through something similar to what I had gone through. And, #2, just get it out there. And the best way to get it out there these days is having a website and then a book is often secondary.

Kevin Berk: Well, it’s a fantastic website. He did a great job! So, forgive me.

The Tragic Loss of Brent

Kevin Berk: I’m gonna have to ask about the, uh, the impetus for this whole thing, knowing that it was a tragic loss but, I think that that really needs to be the place that we start to give the context for anyone who’s listening to this.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Of course, yeah, and now 12 years after the impetus for all of the A to Z Healing Toolbox things, I can talk about the experience without reliving the experience, which is what I do now.

So, I was a social worker by training, and an educator by training, I had no desire to write a book. I was working with children, youth and families, mostly at-risk youth. Everywhere I lived, which was Canada, Australia, Hawaii, San Diego… and I was in all those really cool places because I married a Professor of International Business named Brent who was a professor but also a musician and an athlete and just kind of a jack of all trades. What happened in 2012 is that Brent died in a car accident here in San Diego. We had a five year old son who is now almost 18, believe it or not, Jacob. And so, Brent died in the local mountains here in San Diego, but the trauma piece of that that he was missing for two weeks before we knew where he was and what had happened. There was no grief initially, there was shock, there was horror, there was fear.

There were all of those things that come with a trauma experience, hiring a private detective, getting the police involved, filing a missing persons report. And then finally, two weeks later, I got a knock on the door from California Highway Patrol who said that there was a nature photographer, and this is so Brent, he was from the Northwest and loved surfing and nature, and he was driving and went down to see a local lake, and nobody knows what happened, but the car went off into this ravine, and he wound up dying. So I get this knock on the door, and this is laid out for me by California Highway Patrol.

So in that instant, my world went careening sideways. Well, not even sideways, upside down and around and round. We had just moved back to this country from Australia where we had been living and our son was born. So our items, like our life, was on a container ship, hadn’t even gotten here yet. And here I am now suddenly widowed, I’m 41 years old, I have a five year old and I have a massive bucket of trauma, which I didn’t know about at first, I just thought, “okay, well, this is grief. Oh, I’ve read about this, right, in my graduate program for social work.” No. I got those files eventually and I threw them all away because this was nothing like I’d ever even read about only later did I realize, “oh, okay, well, this is grief because my person died, but also I have this bucket of trauma that I need to handle.” And so that’s. the story that began a slew of other things and finding people and resources and connections, to birth, eventually, A to Z Healing Toolbox.

Kevin Berk: So, so tragic.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: And yet, 12 years later, right? I work with bereaved parents and I work with widowed people and, and everyone has a story. That’s what I know now. Right? My story is the worst for me. Their story is the worst for them. And it’s all same end results, right? Our person died. Maybe some of us have grief without the trauma. Maybe some of us have more trauma than grief. There are all these different feelings, and I know also that grief and trauma affect people in every way possible – socially, emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially, psychologically – just not one ounce of me remained the same, even though I looked the same.

“Okay. She’s athletic. She’s got brown hair. She’s tall…” I was completely a changed person.

And that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize because we’re the walking wounded. Right?

We’re wounded, but sometimes it’s unseen.

Kevin Berk: Yo

Understanding Grief and Trauma

Kevin Berk: u bring up the sort of, blurred line between grief and trauma. And you said that you thought, “Oh, oh, this is just grief. No, no, it’s trauma as well.” It was one of the things in the very early pages of the book, you go into the sort of separation of grief and trauma. And I feel that as much as everyone knows what grief is, you know, and everybody feels it when they lose a job or they lose a loved one or, they have a breakup. I think trauma ends up, I don’t know, at least to me, feeling a little bit more abstract and you hear people throwing it around more to be like, “oh, I was so traumatized. and in a lot of cases, it’s like, “mmm, no, not really.” But

 it’s definitely a thing and it’s definitely different from grief. So, what did you come to understand about the difference between those two and the sort of interrelation of them?

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Well, what I came to first was just the feeling in my body of something that wasn’t just grief, but nightmares, flashbacks, night sweats, my nervous system being completely derailed, right? The parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems just completely off kilter, on high alert all the time, not being able to settle. these were things that I was feeling and talking about and lo and behold, my friends who were combat veterans also had, but my widowed friend, whose husband died of pancreatic cancer, and it was a six year journey and she didn’t have that. So I was doing this, “why do I have what these combat veterans have and not what’s over here?” And so I dug around a bit more into, to trauma. And I realized that trauma and grief. They’re not separated, but they’re, they’re like a Venn diagram. So if you are a math person, right, the Venn diagram is a circle here and a circle here, and there’s this overlap, right? So we have the grief circle, we have the trauma circle, and then we have this overlap.

So there can be some overlapping, similarities, but there are also some differences. My friend whose husband died of pancreatic cancer over a six year period, she didn’t have night sweats, flashbacks, her nervous system wasn’t off the rails. There were some very different things happening on top of “my best friend just died. The father of my child just died.” The grief of “how can that be? I will not ever see this person again, physically. How is that even possible?”

And the book, the first two chapters, as you mentioned, are talking about… one is on grief, what are the common adult reactions of grief – spiritually, physically, socially, behaviorally – what does that look like? And then there’s a chapter on trauma separately. All right. What are the common adult reactions for trauma – spiritually, mentally, behaviorally, physically? Some overlap, but there are some differences and Chapter C in the book, Counseling, talks about some very specific therapies that are used for, for trauma specifically.

Therapies and Tools for Healing

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Now, if people are grieving without trauma, can they still use those therapies? Yes, but there are still some very specific therapies and things in the book that are geared toward folks who have a lot of trauma embedded with their grief story. And that’s a lot of people.

Kevin Berk: Whether your person died suddenly and tragically and with a horrific story like mine, or whether your person died of a six-year pancreatic cancer journey So, we all have a story, I say, and the tools in the book are really foranybody, and any time, because all of these tools decrease depression, they decrease anxiety, they decrease stress, they increase the positive neural pathways in the brain. So, this book I’ve used with teenage girls who are just stressed out and all of them work. Right? So, it’s really, a book written for the grieving and traumatized, but the tools are for anybody. So, given your background, one might think, “Oh, you’re super prepared. You have all of this knowledge that you can put to work on your own situation when tragedy befell you”, but it seems pretty clear from nearly every chapter in that book, which ties, you know, ties back to your particular situation that that just isn’t really the case. It’s one thing to have some of this knowledge beforehand or understand it academically or theoretically. At the point that you’re in the midst of it and trying to cope with it, it’s a completely different thing.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Yes, and as you’re talking, I’m thinking the very first therapist I went to see, he was the head of a hospice, and I said, “listen, I know you have interns. I don’t want an intern. I’m a social worker. I know about grief. I know about trauma. My husband just died. I want to see you.” And he said, “okay, fine.” So I went in and I sat in his office and I was like, “Joe” (was his name). “What the heck, right? I, I, I, don’t…” And I sat there with my arms crossed like “I know because I’ve read about all the things” and he said, “Susan, you are overcooked and underdone”, meaning you have read so much, you have all this knowledge, but you haven’t lived it. You just started living it in your body, in your mind, and I thought, “ohhh, right.” To your question, more specifically, Kevin, I had zero experience with death and dying. I knew all four of my grandparents. They lived until their 80s or 90s. No one in my family died young, died tragically, died before we expected them to. My vision of death and dying was, ” well, you die when you’re 99 years old, and you’ve lived a wonderful life.

 I had a very, blessed, I will say, childhood. I grew up with, you know, two parents in the suburbs here in San Diego with a dog and an older brother, and things were pretty much fine. And then I married a guy who really grabbed all of life. He grabbed surfing. He grabbed art. He grabbed travel. He grabbed adventure.

And so, great – we grabbed all that together. There was no stopping to think about what’s going to happen when one of us died. We were 40 years old. Like, what? That’s not even on the radar, right? He was getting a PhD. I was getting a Master’s. We were, we were living, we were doing the business of living. So when he died, tragically, there was an abrupt halt, obviously, to all of that.

And I felt like I literally fell into a pit of darkness down, down, down, down, down, down.

Kevin Berk: No tools, or so I thought. No one to help me. And I explain this in the book, I felt like I was down in that pit forever. Until I realized something, it was bumping against me and that was my, my child who was five. And now I didn’t care about me. I didn’t care about anything. I didn’t care about living anymore. I had, I was in a room I knew, and all of a sudden the room went up like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, spun around 500 times and landed on Mars.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: I had zero idea where I was, what to do, how to even get out of this hole. But I realized “I’ve got to do something for this kid.” Because I had an awesome childhood and this is the only one he’s going to get and now I’m it. What? Like I am it? How is that possible?

So I realized eventually that, “alright, I’m an educator. I’m a teacher, K-12. I got all the credentials, right? I have a kid. I better figure this out and I’m going to figure this out for him. I know he needs security, stability, love, right? I’m going to do that. I’m going to make his life stable from here on out. And then I’m a social worker, so I know how to go gather resources…” And that’s what I set out doing, little by little by little. And I was angry. I was so angry at Brent for dying, at God for letting it happen.

I was livid and that anger actually fueled a lot of this because, you know, depression is turning inward and not being able to move. I was so angry that I was moving a hundred miles per hour. And that actually aided me in pounding the pavement here in San Diego and finding all of these tools and finding all the people who could do the therapies and getting my child in… you know, occupational therapy, physical therapy, mental health therapy, like… all the therapies we, we accessed because I was so angry and I was so determined to give this kid a life.

Kevin Berk: it

Creating the A to Z Healing Toolbox

Kevin Berk: seems like you must have started amassing the resources for yourself and for Jacob, and at some point you must have said, “if this is going to help me, it’s going to help other people. I should really turn this into something. But was that years and years later, or was it something that you, you recognized early on?

I had zero intention of writing a book. I was just trying to dig us out of a hole, and because I am a very linear thinker, right, that’s what teachers do, especially when you’re working with kids, right? You got you have your binders and you’ve got everything alphabetized and the books on the shelf are in alphabetical order and That’s how my mind operated.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: So every time I gathered a resource, it went into a three ring binder with a tab. A – Animals. Oh, okay. My child’s therapist has an animal. It’s a therapy dog. What’s the story here? Like, let me do a little research on therapy dogs. What’s the story with animals and humans and human physiology? That was A.

Then somewhere down the line, I went on a retreat and it was with a grief therapist and a yoga instructor. Meditation, letter M. What is that going to do for me? Let me, gather some more resources on that. So eventually I had this alphabetically systematized binder. Somewhere in there, I, I met a woman at the gym, where I actually met Brent at a gym and I met this woman at the gym and she said, I’m also widowed. There’s this place called Camp Widow I want to take you to. And I said, “there’s no way I’m going to something called Camp Widow.”

But I did go a year after Brent died. And I sat in on all these sessions. Camp Widow is run by Soaring Spirits International, and it’s a professional conference for widowed people. And I sat in these sessions and I thought, “you know what? I need this right now, but I could also present about things because I, I’m a teacher.”

So that was my first “alright, well, maybe I could help people in that way. What would I talk about? What would I present?” And shortly after that Camp Widow conference, I reached out to the CEO of Soaring Spirits International, Michele Neff Hernandez, and I said, “Michele, I just went to your Camp Widow conference. You know, now I’m back in San Diego. Where are the widowed people now, they’re all gone. They’re all over the nation. They went back home” and she said, “well, I don’t know where your resources are in San Diego, but we’re starting a program called the Regional Social Groups and we have, we’ll have about 6 pilot programs and it’s basically a peer support group in your local community. Would you like to start one?”

“( Ugh) No…”, but… I did, and I grabbed that girl at the gym and we started this peer support program together. So widowed people started coming and we met for dinner or bowling or something social twice a month, and we all were sharing resources. And I found that I was sharing a lot more than most people because I was already on the road to gathering resources and I had the social work background to know about different therapies.

And so, when I reconnected with Camp Widow the next year, I presented this 26 page booklet called, at the time, Alphabet Healing Toolbox, and it was A – Animals, B – Breathwork, C – Counseling, D – Doing Your Homework, one page of each tool. And that’s what I presented at my first conference. And it was the women in that conference who took that booklet and looked at me and said, where did you get this? I said, I just put it together because this is what I’ve been doing for my son and I and two of them said, “this needs to be a book.” And I said, “absolutely not. There’s no way.”

So not until, you know, two months later, one of those women actually emailed me and said, “I want to encourage you to create a book out of this because this material is so needed and then, of course, all the right people showed up, people to help me: a publisher…

 and then the book eventually came to be out of that first group of women saying, “you’ve got to do something with this” and me finally saying, ” okay, fine,” and then the people showing up to help with that process.

Kevin Berk: So was the website up before you even wrote the book, then?

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: The first iteration of the website was already up and that’s what I was going to do… here.

Kevin Berk: That was your, that was your pamphlet, basically.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Right. Exactly.

Kevin Berk: That was your three ring binder.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Yes, yes. And I actually gave that 26 page booklet to the web designer and said, “here, do the thing. Here are my 26 tools. Make it look how you want.”

Now the website has gone through a few different iterations, but the piece that most people access is the online toolbox, which is what you’re referring to. Anyone who is listening to this can go to a2zhealingtoolbox.com and click on letter A through Z and get information and resources, and the why. Why does Breathwork help with grief and trauma healing? The why for letter P – Peer Support. Why does peer support help with grief and trauma healing?

Kevin Berk: I like how basically: you have [The Topic]. You have Why to Consider Doing [This Thing]. How Does it Potentially Help. And then it has, like, Small Steps – here are specific things you can do to get started and then a space to, to write things down for making a commitment to, to yourself, to your family…

and then healing stories of, of here are people who have tried this, had success with it. and then actual, resources, I think,

and a space for notes. So I think it’s a genius way to have really structured it because it makes it so accessible and really hits any given topic succinctly, but yet still thoroughly and from from a lot of different angles.

I think that was a really, really smart way to do it.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Well, thank you. I just knew what I what I wanted and needed and what I thought other people could benefit from and a piece of that was action and intention that matter, right? We, we can have an experience and people, the old school way of dealing with things is, Oh, well, time will heal all. That is not true. there are people whose person died 15 years ago, but there’s not… there’s no action or intention behind rebuilding a life or creating something new, bringing your person with you. And they’re still spinning in what they were spinning in 10 years ago. So for me, action and intention are huge.

And there’s a space and a time for the storytelling and, and the horrendous emptiness and grief and loneliness… I mean, all of that. Yes, we’re feeling all of that. And at the same time. “OK, and now what, like, what am I going to do to make sure this kid has a life?” Baby steps. In the book there are single, small action steps, tiny things that I did, that people can do that people can do to just move. Right? Sometimes it’s two steps forward, Something small,

Kevin Berk: Under C for Counseling you touch on a bunch of different things. You, you touch on animal assisted therapy, art therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, play therapy… Recognizing that everyone is different and different things are going to work for different people. Do you think that there are any of those that would be more powerful or relevant to people to start with as kind of like a, a general? Yeah, I don’t know if that’s even a fair question to ask, but I’m going to ask it anyway.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: The beauty of therapists is… or therapy is that there’s so many different types, right? You can have a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who also has a bag of tricks with EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, sandplay therapy, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy . So one therapist can hit, “boom-boom-boom”, like, three different types of therapies. Maybe another one over here is an expert in narrative therapy, or animal-assisted therapy, or equine therapy.

So, I can tell you about what has worked for a lot of people who have trauma embedded with their grief, and that would be EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, which is the process of bilateral movements that move images to a further part of the brain that are harder to access. And this type of therapy was coined in the 1970s by Francine Shapiro who was working with a lot of Vietnam veterans that came back with major trauma. So EMDR is a trauma therapy that has worked to move images, distressing images that basically hurt or harm the daily routines of people, moving those images to a different part of the brain. EMDR is wonderful for trauma, sand play or sand tray therapy is another wonderful modality for anyone, but especially traumatized folks, because sand therapy is nonverbal, it’s accessing the right side of the brain, the creative side. We’ve got color, light, sound, imagination, is all happening on the right side of the brain. The left side of the brain is where reason, order, and logic house themselves.

 Well, when there’s a situation of trauma, the left side can often shut down, so we need to access the right side, and you can do that by using imagery in a tray of sand. And this, for those of you who’ve not heard of sand play or sand tray therapy, give it a quick Google or get on YouTube and Google “sand play therapist”, and you’ll see videos of a therapist and the therapist’s room, picture the shelves behind me filled with hundreds and hundreds of figures, everything from butterflies and trash cans, from monsters to, archers to rocks and shells, everything you can imagine.And then there’s a big tray of sand in the middle and the clients… me, for instance, I’ve done a lot of work in the sand, will choose, you know, five to seven images that call to them. No words. You’re just looking. You’re using, right, you’re on the right side of your brain, now you’re looking at images. “Why does that one call to me? I have no idea, but I’m putting it in the basket. Oh, here’s another one. I don’t know, I like that. I’m putting it in the basket.” Pretty soon the images start to tell stories, and you don’t have to talk about it, but the therapist knows the symbolism of each item you’re putting in the tray, and over time, you’ll be able to find the words to, you know, to link your left brain/right brain again and access those feelings in a very safe space. Great for kids who don’t have the verbal capacity anyway to describe traumatic experiences, but great for adults, too. I’ve used it many times. So those two are fantastic modalities for the trauma piece.

Finding the Right Therapist

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Everyone needs to find a therapist that they’re comfortable with. It’s the relationship that is key. And then when you get a relationship with that person, then they can use their bag of tricks. And I will say that finding a therapist is like shopping for pants. They’re not all going to fit. So I’ll tell you my story, right? I saw four different therapists. Went to number one, this gentleman, Joe, that I told you about, who was head of the hospice and said, ” you’re overcooked and underdone”. He eventually transitioned out of hospice, so I could no longer see him. Plus I didn’t have a hospice story.

So I wanted somebody who could handle or had a lot of experience with tragic, traumatic, profound loss. Then I went to, this woman that my mother happened to know and had seen a while ago. And she was a psychologist in the local community, very well known, but I could tell right off the bat she had zero idea what to do with me, because that was not her, her bag of tricks wasn’t grief and trauma, it was marriage therapy and maybe youth that had depression. I mean, there are specific therapists for specific issues. And then there are people that kind of can do the, all the things, right? But like a general practitioner doctor, right? There’s general practice, there’s pediatrics, there’s dermatology, there’s podiatry, right?

You have to go to the person who really has a skill set in what you’re looking for. I asked that particular psychologist if she knew anyone who did EMDR and she referred me to her colleague and I stayed with her colleague, Christy, for a year. We did EMDR and also talk therapy (so cognitive behavioral therapy). Then I felt like I was kind of using up her skill set and I just happened to talk to a gentleman in my regional social group for Soaring Spirits that I started in San Diego, and he was talking about this woman he had met and he was doing stuff in the sand and I said, “Oh, are you doing sand play therapy?”

And he said, I think that’s what it’s called. I said, “give me her name.” And that woman, Gail, has, I have stuck with her now for 10 years. She is a grief and trauma guru. She does sand play therapy. She does talk therapy, but she’s got, an enormous bag of tricks that she has learned professionally and also personally. So those are four different people that I’ve mentioned, and they all had a little bit of a different skill set. So I will say to people, finding a therapist is like trying on a pair of pants, right? If that one doesn’t fit, go to the next one. If this one doesn’t fit, go to the next one. You might find somebody that you want to stay with for two years and then move on. It’s totally fine.

Questions to Ask Your Therapist

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: And in that chapter, C for Counseling , there are a list of 10 questions that people can use when they’re trying to find a therapist. Things like, “do you take my insurance?” right off the bat… how are you going to pay for this? Right? “Do you take my insurance? Do you ever have other clients that have had my experience”, right?

 “Do you lead the sessions or do you want me to lead the sessions?” Like “what’s your usual modality?” Right? So, anyway, there are 10 questions there that people can use.

Using Online Resources to Find Therapists

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: And then there’s, there’s a website that I often refer people to called PsychologyToday.com. So if you were to go to psychology today, there is a therapist finder. You can type in your zip code and in your zip code, boom, you get a whole list of therapists in your area. Then you can filter. Filter by gender, filter by do they take your insurance, filter by what’s their expertise, and then maybe you filter down and you’ve got your seven people that maybe you want a male, you want it obviously in your zip code, he takes your insurance, and oh, lo and behold, he does grief, he does depression, he does anxiety, he does family… you have all the things and you have kids in tow. Well, give him a call, Give him a call. See most therapists do either a virtual or an in person consultation. Give it a try, right?

You’re not, you’re not signing a contract. You’re looking for someone. He might be looking for more clients, but ultimately you’re paying him. So you want to be sure that he’s a good fit for you.

Kevin Berk: Sure, those rich resource directories can be so helpful, especially when you can be certain that the reviews are, you know, legitimate and there’s enough of them Yeah, I’ve worked on building those in the past, PsychologyToday.com does a really good job.

The Importance of Group Support

Kevin Berk: How do you feel like group support, fits into the picture?

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Oh my goodness. Well, if I had a group of 1 to 20 widowed people here that have taken part in any SoaringSpirits.org or Soaring Spirits International resources or programs, they would all say that community support has been the number one factor in their healing. It’s in the book, G – Group Support, because it is such an important part of healing for, everyone.

Why do we have AA [Alcoholics Anonymous]? Because people who are recovering from alcoholism need to be with other people who get it and are traveling that road. Why do we have widowed support? We have multiple resources for bereaved parents, right? We need to be with other people who get it.

There are some amazing resources out there for bereaved parent community, bereaved sibling community. I’m involved with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. So firefighter families, beautiful resources there. Of course, the military has wonderful resources for their gold star families. It’s a huge piece, if people can hook into it, so that’s why that’s included in the book.

Kevin Berk: Yeah, it makes perfect sense.

Personal Journey with Group Support

Kevin Berk: I, uh, I was wondering how you went from, being like, “oh no, no, no… I wouldn’t want to take part in something like that with a widow’s community” to being like, “oh, this is tremendously valuable, and of course I want to be involved in this.”

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: When my girlfriend from the gym invited me to Camp Widow and I didn’t want to go, I showed up and I went to a session and then I would go back to my car in the parking lot, scream, yell, cry, go back in for another session, go back to my car, scream, yell, cry.

I hated it, but every single person there understood. I didn’t have to explain myself. It was amazing. Just to be around 250-300 other people who were living this. Many of them young, many of them with kids, you know, all of us deer in the headlights. What are we… what is this? Like, what are we doing?

And just to know that other people had survived. That’s what I needed. I looked for the people who were ahead of me two years, three years, four years, five years. I looked to Michele Neff Hernandez [founder of Soaring Spirits International] and her key volunteers who somehow had survived the death of their spouse. “Okay, well, if you guys have figured it out, I have to figure I’m going to figure this out because I have this child here.”

So much of this stuff is accidental. I mean, I had an accident that, that’s how my husband died.

The Power of Saying Yes

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: But then all of these experiences and the people that showed up, they, they were either accidental or “on purpose”, many would say, and that led… the action piece of that is “okay, I’m going to go to Camp Widow. Okay. I’m going to say yes to that regional social group, starting that for Soaring Spirits. I’m going to say yes to that retreat with a therapist and the yoga instructor. I’m saying yes, like saying yes when you can. There’s also resting because it’s exhausting moving through grief and trauma, but also saying yes to things that feel safe and comfortable and could lead you to people or experiences that that are valuable in your own healing.

Kevin Berk: And if you don’t feel like doing it that particular time, then don’t. Right? There’ll be a next time. There’ll be a next time. But take you take one of those times. Do it once. Right? Try it once. Try it twice. I forgot who it was… Woody Allen or some famous actor or director says, you know, ” 90 percent of life is just showing up.”

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: You to show up because if you’re in your house, hope isn’t going to knock at your door. Joy isn’t going to knock at your door. Healing isn’t going to knock at your door. You have to go get it sometimes. And that could be… now we have so many virtual options. It’s clicking a button. You can be in your pajamas with your camera off. Click the button. Right, just listen to the podcast, click the button, connect on that class. You don’t even have to leave your home if you don’t want to for a while. That’s the beauty of the virtual world that we’re in now, is if you feel like crap that day, you’re allowed. Click the button, feel, feel badly, stay in your pajamas, get your cup of tea. Just click the button.

Ecomapping Your Environment

Kevin Berk: In the section Knowing Your Environment, you had something really, really interesting, which was, what you called ecomapping the positive, negative and stressful relationships or activities that you normally interact with. And that was something I’d never really considered, but you indicated that it’s a tried and true social worker technique.

 You have it, fortunately as kind of an activity on your website.

So, for decades, social workers have been using what we call an ecomap.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: So, if you, you know, we all know what a map is, right, a diagram. And then eco like ecological, it’s environment. So we’re mapping our environment and on the website under letter K on the toolbox is, is a diagram of what an ecomap looks like. Anyone can do it. Social workers use it, when we’re working with clients but I turned it and used it for myself. So, it’s very simple, All you’re going to do, for those of you who are watching or listening, you’re just going to grab a sheet of paper, right, and then you’re going to get your marker or a pencil. These are the two tools you need.

And in the center of the paper, you’re going to draw a circle [or square] and you’re going to put your name there. Around that main circle [or square] in the middle you might put 6-8 other circles. And in each one of those circles you’re going to write down somebody, something, or somewhere that’s in your current map of life.

So if we look at my life back then, who was in it? OK, well, Jacob [my son], I’m going to write his name in a circle.

OK, my parents were five miles down the street in my life, I’m going to give them a circle. I was still trying to go to the gym, because that’s the only thing that made sense to me, I’m going to write “Gym” in a circle. I was doing lots of hiking in the outdoors because it was quiet and no one would bother me, and I could move, and that made sense. I’m going to put “Hiking” in a circle..

So you’re going to diagram your current life. Do you go to school? Do you go to a church? Are there certain friends that could have their own circle? You might have 10 or 15 circles around your name in the middle. And then the point of this is to denote by drawing lines, positive lines, or stressful lines between you and that thing in your environment. So for me, and there’s an example of the ecomap I did for myself that I did for myself in the book.

And then there’s a blank one people can do right there in the guidebook. For me my son was positive, I got positive energy from him even though we were both, like, flailing around, we didn’t know what we were doing.

My parents, mostly positive, but sometimes they didn’t know what to do with us. And that was a little bit stressful, but mostly positive.

And then, the gym became horrific because I would get stares, I would get people watching me, I would get questions as I was half naked waiting in line for the shower. It was not a place of refuge anymore.

Church was the same. I used to attend and it became a very stressful place. I got 20 questions every time I went. It was very uncomfortable. I couldn’t do the music. I had a lot of trauma with so many things and people were one of them. Like, I couldn’t do all the people.

So, if I were to go back to my original ecomap, I would see positive lines between me and my son, me and my parents. I would see stressed lines. And there’s a way to do this and you can look in the book, but you can do it however you want. As long as you know that that’s a stressful relationship, me and the gym, me and church, those were stressful.

And then you look at that and – I’m, I’m simplifying this for the sake of time, but – ultimately you look at that or you look at that with someone, you can even bring it into your therapist and, “okay, what am I going to change here? Or what am I going to keep the same?” Ultimately, you want to keep the same what’s working, right?

I’m going to keep my parents. I’m going to keep my son. I’m going to get more of that, right? Who feels good for the soul? They do. Spend more time there. The gym and church, those are stressing me out. I need less of that. I need to change those. Okay. Action plan. How am I going to change the gym? I still want to work out.

I still need to move my body. Okay. Action plan: I can find a different gym. I can create a gym in my house. I can find a girlfriend to walk with. I can just hike. What’s it going to be? Something has to change because this is too stressful. The church, same thing. I can leave that church, I can find another church, I can take a break from church, I can listen to church in the car, I can access it on TV. Something’s got to change.

So, that’s a simplification of what an ecomap is and what it can do. It’s really a visual. It’s a fantastic visual. What is working in my life? What is not? And I still do them for myself, maybe every six months or so, just as a check in. What’s working and what’s not?

And let’s, let me get rid of the not.

Kevin Berk: …and it seems like it serves as like, an easy point of reference to be able to go back to it and just, As your brain gets muddled with just life things to be able to look back at it and say, here are the things that I’ve identified are working or stressful or not working.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Yeah.

Organizing Your Support System

Kevin Berk: So similarly, I think then you had the, I think it was O for Organizing Your Supports where you had BE-ers, DO-ers, and people you would put on the shelf.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: “Shelf-ers”.

Kevin Berk: So essentially you’d have the people who can, can just… well, in fact, I shouldn’t, uh, I shouldn’t put words in your mouth. But again, I’d love for you to describe that a little bit.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: No, you read the book. You know, Kevin!

Kevin Berk: I know, but I won’t do as eloquent of a job as you will with explaining it, so I’d love it if you would.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Oh gosh… Well, again, with the action, right? So those of you who are watching or listening, you get another piece of paper and you fold it into thirds. Right and there’s there is a, a diagram of this in the book and the book is meant to write in. So, if you do have a copy, or you, or you get a copy, you can write in the book, but you just want your paper with 3 sections and section 1 is BE. Who are the people that can be with you. Section 2 is the DO the DO-ers who can do things for you. And then section 3 is the I call them the ” Shelfers” who needs to just sit on the shelf because they’re taking up too much of your headspace or energy and it’s not a good thing.

And this kind of came to mind because… well, I’m action-oriented, but also I had a woman from the church come over right after Brent died, and she said, “I’m a Stephen’s Minister, Susan. My name is Laura”, and I was like, “OK, I don’t even know what you’re doing in my house. Who are you and, like, what do Stephen’s Ministers do?” and she said, “If you want me to come over once a week, I’m the BE-er. I will be with you in all of your pain, in all of your sorrow, in all of your anger. Whatever you have to dish, I will sit with you and be with that.

Somebody offering to be with me and hold the space for whatever I had? Wow. There was a piece of paper in my mind and I was like, da, da, da, da, my mom is not a BE-er.

She’s a DO-er. To this day 12 years later, “Susan, what can I do for you?” She will go to Costco. She will drive my son. She will do all the things but she doesn’t love to sit in the pain and sit in that space. So what I found really helpful was to work with people on, “all right. Let’s get real with what we need.” This could be at any time of life, not just grief or trauma times, but any time of life. “Let’s get real with what we need, and let’s get real with what people have to offer.”

My mom is a fabulous, wonderful, giving, supportive person. Her nature is to do, do, do. She’s like that Energizer Bunny that keeps going and going and going.

She wants to do stuff. That’s her skillset so let me put her in that column, and I’m going to ask her to do things, I’m not going to ask her to sit with me in the pain. So let’s put people where their skillset is, really. And then it’s a win-win situation. I’m not expecting people to support me by being with my pain if that’s not what they’re called to do. Maybe they’re called to get my groceries, or drive my son, or mow the lawn, you know, whatever it is.

There are some people who can sit on the line, and I talk about one of these people in my book, my friend Ev. She sits on the line of BE-ing and DO-ing. She, she’s wonderful at both.

And then the last column, of course, if you look at the shelves behind me are picture shelves. Some people, you just need to take a break from them. They need to take a break from you. It’s the whole boundary conversation. Just because your life has exploded doesn’t mean that everybody gets to weigh in on what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, when you’re doing it. No! So sometimes it calls to just put people on the shelf. Like, it doesn’t mean they have to stay there forever, but just like you gotta just [say], “I can’t do this right now. I can’t do the friendship. I can’t do your anxiety. I can’t do your expectation. I can’t do… whatever it is.” It’s OK to take a break from people and care for self. And then when you have a moment, right, you can, you can take them off the shelf and, and try them again.

Kevin Berk: I was just going to say that it struck me, that it was like either people who cannot stop trying to give you advice and they’re, they’re doing it maybe from a well meaning place, but it’s not what you need. And so you’re just, you’re just like, “I don’t need this right now. You’re getting the shelf!”

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Yes! And the truth is that this is a whole other podcast conversation, but navigating social change after death is a huge topic for bereaved parents, for widowed people. Relationships change, dynamics change, family dynamics, friends dynamics, social dynamics, it changes. We have to change the way we’re doing things and it’s uncomfortable, because we don’t want those relationships to change, but they do because we’ve changed.

It’s definitely a conversation, excuse me, with the widowed community, with the bereaved parent community, with the bereaved sibling community. We’ve changed. and also our Western world expects that, right, we maybe get two weeks off, bereavement leave, maybe, and then it’s back to “business as usual”.

And you maybe have 365 days to be, you know, be kind of sad about the person that’s not here anymore. And then you should definitely be over it. And that’s just not how it works.

Anyone who is in a community of peer support or group support with like loss, individuals knows that it’s a constant conversation. It is. It’s a whole other podcast, Kevin.

Kevin Berk: it’s sort of a Western thing, right? The whole time limiting grief or attempting to time limit it.

Integrating Western and Eastern Medicine

Kevin Berk: Going back to probably the W chapter about sort of Western versus Eastern medicine, and it

seemed like you were advocating for both of them being important.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: So I’m of the opinion similar to finding a therapist: look at all of it and see what works for you.

Look at the whole book and see what chapters work for you

I went to a center for integrative medicine here in San Diego, and it was the best thing I ever did. I sat there with a medical doctor, a western medical [doctor], and I said, here’s my story. I had all my symptoms written down from the DSM 4 that mental health practitioners use to diagnose, and I knew I had PTSD, and I highlighted all the things and I said, “here’s my story, here are my reactions, here’s what I’m living with. I want to sign up for every single program.”

And he kind of laughed and was like, alright well let’s see, let’s tackle sleep. Let’s look at Western ways we can help you, let’s look at Eastern ways. Western medications, maybe supplements. Let’s look at all of that.They had at this center, they had caridologists, they had physical therapists, they had bio feedback practitioners (which is very interesting), they had acupuncture and acupressure. It was very much a mix of East meets West and these, these physicians and these practitioners all worked together for the betterment of their patients. There’s so many options out there, but pick something or some things.

Starting Your Healing Journey

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: Try, just try one thing first and see if there’s something else that would work as well.

Kevin Berk: Start where you’re comfortable. There are 26 letters in this book. Okay. Well, I didn’t do all 26 at once. No. What did I do first? I went therapy. Right? So counseling and exercise. S is Slide into Exercise. C is Counseling. I did those, for a long time. Nothing else. That’s where I was comfortable, that’s where I’m staying. Cause nothing else makes sense I’m staying right here with these two. And then eventually “Oh, maybe I’ll try… Hmm, what’s the story with animals? Can I integrate that at all?”

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: But I would say “start where you’re comfortable.” Some people are writers, right? Go to Chapter J, start with J – Journaling. Some people are very social… Peer Support/Group Support. Something. Start where you’re comfortable because we’re already, as grieving or traumatized people, we’re already super uncomfortable. It is hell, what we’re going through. So don’t add more “uncomfortableness”. Start where you’re comfortable, and then slowly people can branch out from there when they’re ready. If and when they’re ready for something new. But again, there’s no timeline.

When you’re open and ready, other things will present themselves.

Final Thoughts and Resources

Kevin Berk: Well, it’s a fantastic resource. I would suggest that everyone take a look at a2zhealingtoolbox.com ( that is a2zhealingtoolbox.com) because there is such a wealth of information that can be gleaned from the website, but also pick up the book, as well, because it can be tremendously helpful whether you’re trying to get ahead of when these things do happen, or you are, you’re in the midst of trying to cope with it.

So I think it’s just terrific.

Susan Hannifin-MacNab: I just really appreciate you having me on and, and being open to the discussions. And hopefully something that we’ve said has resonated with somebody out there and, and that’s, that’s makes it worth it. Thanks so much, Kevin.