How to live fully after something bad happens | Alice Foeller | TEDxNewAlbany

[Applause] when I was a little girl I was the youngest and my siblings were much older than me I didn't have a lot of friends at school so I was always kind of hungry for attention have you ever been so desperate for attention that you wished for something bad to happen so people would notice you that was me I remember reading this children's book mateline where mateline gets appendicitis and her school friends March over to the hospital to visit her I used to fantasize about something like that happening so everyone would gather around and notice

me my childhood was pretty Charmed though nothing like that ever actually happened it wasn't until I was 46 years old that I got my bad thing I had been away for part of the weekend and and I became very worried about my husband Daniel I tried texting and calling him on Sunday morning and none of my texts and calls went through so I jumped in the car and I drove straight to the house as soon as my hand touched the doorknob I thought this is not going to be okay I opened the door and started

calling his name and took a few steps into the house and I I could see through the doorway into the next room I could see his head at the end of the couch where it usually was if he was watching TV or taking a nap and part of my brain said see there he is it's okay the other part of my brain said he didn't answer you I broke into a run and by the time I rounded the end of the couch I could see that although he could have been taking a nap peacefully with

his winter hat pulled down over his eyes he wasn't asleep he was gone I found a yellow poit that said note in phone and I opened his iPhone to read his suicide note Daniel was a wonderful and sensitive guy but he was beset by anxiety and depression he had been laid off from his job and he just couldn't see the possibilities that his friends and I could see so he drank a poison so he could fall asleep and never wake up again suicide brings its own kind of grief journey is very shocking people have big

reactions to it many of you might have had a reaction from me telling the story my friend Gina is also a widow as a result of her husband's suicide we tend to find each other it's it's like a very exclusive club that no one wants to be in uh Gina said to me when I tell people someone died of cancer they lean in and kind of open themselves when I say someone died by suicide they lean back and kind of protect themselves I had noticed that too in the times when I was delivering the bad

news which I was doing a lot in the first couple of weeks it it felt like it ricocheted off the other person and hit me again with the added force of their emotional reaction Daniel's death was certainly not something I wanted but I learned some incredibly valuable lessons about how to be with people and different times on their journey through grief the first of three lessons I'll share with you is how to hold space for someone in those early days when they might need to process or they just don't want to be alone so before

this if I heard that something happened to a friend of mine I would say I should call them but I didn't really want to call them I knew it was not going to be a fun conversation and I was very concerned about what I was going to say I would rehearse the whole thing in my head before I pressed the call button if I worked up the courage to actually call them now I guess I've just been in so many of these conversations I'm not scared of it anymore so when I heard that my friend

Julie from high school had witnessed something awful a violent crime a murder actually and that she wasn't doing very well I said I'll call Julie tomorrow and I did a few things I texted ahead to see if it was okay to call and I set up a time I called exactly when I said I was going to and when Julie answered I said hey you know you can tell me about the thing that happen to you or you canot talk about it at all it's completely up to you I just want you to know that

whatever you share with me I'm going to listen and I'm going to talk just in this calm tone of voice I'm not going to raise my voice or do anything dramatic and she did end up sharing with me what she experienced and then we went on to talk about our kids and then we talked about how awful high school was sometimes and it was a fun conversation I'm happy to report that Julie's doing much better these days certainly not due to anything I said and I believe she's here in the audience with us which makes

me super happy so I didn't read about those things in a book I didn't Google how to talk to Julie about a traumatic experience you know it was just with my newfound wisdom that I was not going to die from being on the phone with someone I was able to focus on her and when I did that the first thing I realized was here's a woman who's been through a terrible shock the last thing she's going to want is any more surprises so I am going to be the least surprising person I can be and

that's how I knew how to hold space for Julie lesson number one for lesson number two I'm going to take you back to my childhood again I was not only the youngest in my immediate family I was the youngest in my whole generation of cousins and there were aunts and uncles and great aunts and great uncles and as you can imagine at the top of that stack you know people were starting to pass away now we were just a funeral homegoing family anyway it's what we did by the time I was eight I knew to

sign in at the guest book and take a prayer card we were Catholics so I'd walk over to the casket kneel down and say a prayer I also knew that there were free cookies in one of those side rooms if I could sneak away and find them it was just a place where I was kind of comfortable I can't count how many corpses I saw by the time I was 16 you know but the interesting thing was if we saw that family the next day at the grocery store we did not talk about what happened

life marched on so it was a huge surprise to me what life would be like as a suicide Widow I felt kind of like a cartoon villain like a woman with a set jaw and fiery eyes and a big black cloak spreading out in all directions with clouds of Doom coming up off the cloak and when I walked into a room it felt like the lights dimmed a little and the cheerful music came to a screeching halt and the people in the room there were people who were understandably kind of freaked out to talk to

me and they would sort of Glide away and then there were other people who would catch sight of me and they'd say oh Alice and their face would get all scrunched and they'd come walking over and they'd say I'm so sorry and give me a huge hug all dramatically now when I had read that book about mateline I was thinking this part would be great all the sympathy and attention but when it was happening to me in real life I kind of wish I could turn invisible see by this time I was out of the

shock part and I was planning Daniel's Memorial and going through his personal effects at the house which was no fun and dealing with paperwork and police and probate when I went out into the world to go to an event I was kind of looking to escape from some of that so it was really great when people could just be neutral that's lesson two be neutral my favorite thing was when a friend would walk up and say hey I heard about what happened I'm really sorry are you okay how you doing it in a normal voice

it let me know that they knew what was going on so I didn't have to brace myself for that blowback if I told them but it also made space for me to talk about an upcoming camping trip or an interesting new client at work I was really lucky that I had loved ones and family who could just be up for any place where I was on the emotional roller coaster that day and I was also fortunate that I have a ton of responsibility in life I have two sons at the time this happened a year

ago they were a Junior and senior in high school I have a business with employees who expect to be paid on time I have a nonprofit I co-founded that needed my guidance so I was super clear that I was going to be doing whatever it took to get past the guilt and the consuming anger and the irrational thoughts because I had stuff to do which brings me to lesson three being a resource for people who are at that point where they're ready to move forward and try some things and start to heal for me that

required resources intention and movement even when the steps I could take were tiny I am a distance Runner and a triathlete I am not fast but I can go for a very long time when I travel to other cities I go running in them it's tourism for me so about three years ago I was in Long Island on business and I went for a run and I was looking at all the beautiful houses and I was looking at the spring flowers and I tripped on a crack in the pavement it wasn't one of these trips

where I was like whoa I'm falling you know it was just one second I was running the next second bam my knee was smashed into the pavement I was on the ground I remember calling Daniel crying and he talked to me while I limped back to the place where I was staying put ice on my knee and then I limped to the airport the next day and when I got back home I went to physical therapy and at Physical Therapy there was a doctor standing over me saying you know hey you need to like stretch

your knee like this and you need to do lunges like this and you need to put 100 PBS on the single leg press machine and I was like whoa are you sure and he was like yeah I was like so I put 100 pounds on the single leg press and what do you know my knee got stronger now it's not the same it's not ever going to be the same at this point it's been three years it's kind of sticks out a little bit funny compared to this one and there's a purple splotch and the

skin is kind of thick and scarred but later that same year I ran a full Iron Man Triathlon on that knee so I know thank [Applause] you thank you I know that my weird crooked purple knee is strong as hell with physical injury it's common knowledge that if we sit around and don't move it's pretty hard for it to get better with emotional injury it's easy to forget that or we're just overwhelmed and don't know where to start there is a treatment plan but it's not commonly known but I was determined to get better there

were days when I did not want to get better and there were days when I honestly didn't feel like I deserved to get better but when I was clear-headed I signed up for everything I had people around me who were amazing who could recommend the best large group awareness training who knew the location of the local indigenous sweat lodge I had a friend who was a trauma-informed counselor I had someone who could refer me to an affordable hypnotherapist it was great so that's lesson three if you can be that kind of resource and help people

find things that will help them depending on what it is they need which is different you know it was great when someone would say hey I've heard support groups help but what was amazing was my friend who said I know of a support group for exactly the thing you're going through and I personally recommend it let me make an introduction and then they backed off because you know it might not be the right time but that stuff was super helpful now I didn't have to do any of these things there was no requirement the world

was happy to have zero expectations of me at this time people were happy to drop off dinner on the porch and then run away before I opened the door so they didn't have to talk to me but I chose that brings me to my favorite word that I would like to share with you today volition I will use it in a sentence everyone who was gathered here today came of Their Own valtion It means that I choose for me not because of some outside pressure I have my life back a year later because I chose

to have a triumph over this thing and because I was open to the kinds of opportunities that show up when everything falls apart as Leonard Cohen Sayang there is a crack in everything that's how the light gets in Daniel's suicide and the challenges that came after opened up more than a single crack for me but I tried really hard to embrace all the light that could get in now I kind of secretly had wished that I could be Ray Charles or Johnny Cash where some seminal tragic event flips a switch of creative genius and I

became a rock star but my singing voice is sort of hot and cold and my guitar playing is like a C+ so that is probably not the kind of rock star that I'm going to be what I do get to be is a rock star at being with people when they're going through something difficult in a moment I'm going to ask you to stand if you've experienced any of the things on the list I'm about to name I'm going to name the things off kind of quickly so it won't be a privacy issue for you

if you hear something that applies to you you can stand kind of slowly and no one will know which thing you're standing for if you are unable to stand today well you're already on the list so you can put your hand up if you like so please stand if you have experienced the death of someone close to you if you have experienced the loss of a job if you've lost a beloved pet if you've been in a bad car accident if you are estranged from a family member or other loved one if you've had a

failure at work or school that you just couldn't really fix if you have a physical ailment that won't get better if you've witnessed war or violence if you have a family member is very ill thank you for standing with me now sit down if you want that to be the end of your story yeah me neither I choose to live of my own valtion [Applause] if you're standing right now you know that you have the strength to be in a difficult conversation with someone who needs your support be that gift listen so hard you forget

yourself if you're standing right now you know that human beings were designed to heal stronger at the location of the wound even on your worst day when you can't lift your head know that you will mend make no mistake you won't be the same you won't go back to being the person you were before but there will come a day when you won't want to be the person you were before the hurt because you will know yourself to be someone who emerged stronger of your own valtion thank you w [Applause]