A Season 2 Episode 2: Rollercoaster Marriage: Navigating Loss of a partner with Dr Louise Lomas, Educational and Child Psychologist

Season #2 January 28, 2025

A Rollercoaster Marriage: Navigating Loss of a Partner with Dr Louise Lomas, Educational and Child Psychologist

Overview:

This episode dives deep into the turbulent waters of complex grief, exploring the unspoken truths about marriages and loss when relationships are far from perfect. Dr. Louise Lomas, a child & educational psychologist, shares her personal journey of love, loss, and the intricate challenges of grieving a partner with serious mental health problems. This raw & honest conversation unpacks the rollercoaster of emotions experienced when navigating grief after a complicated marriage, offering solace & validation to those who find themselves grappling with similar experiences.

Key Insights:

The Unspoken Truth About Marriages: Marriages aren't always picture-perfect. This episode acknowledges the messy realities of long-term relationships and the unique challenges faced when grieving a partner after a complicated marriage. The importance of honest conversations about the complexities of love & loss is highlighted. ([00:01:06])
Loving Too Much: The concept of "loving too much" is explored, delving into the dynamics of codependency & the challenges of disentangling oneself from a relationship where personal needs become intertwined with the needs of a partner. ([00:38:59])
The Inner Child & Grief: Dr. Lomas discusses how unresolved childhood issues can manifest in adult relationships, impacting how we grieve and the intensity of our emotional responses. ([00:34:30])
The Stigma of Mental Health & Addiction in Grief: The added layer of stigma surrounding mental health & addiction is addressed, emphasizing the difficulty of processing grief when a partner struggled with these issues. ([00:05:07])
Rewriting the Narrative: Dr. Lomas suggests the possibility of rewriting the narrative of a complicated relationship after loss, offering a path towards healing by reframing painful memories and exploring alternative outcomes. ([00:57:15])

Notable Quotes & Moments:

"Sometimes you love somebody so much that you can let them go because it's not healthy for either of you." ([00:03:12])
"We were physically separated, but not emotionally separated." ([00:04:36])
"Codependency is about the kind of love and support that you give for each other because you're the only ones that can really understand what is broken in you." ([00:33:09])
"Grief needs no reason... it cradles you and strokes you, tears at you with its strong teeth, warms you with memories...cruelly loving so that you want more and dread its coming." ([00:49:39])

Timestamps:

Introduction of Dr. Louise Lomas: [00:00:52]
Dr. Lomas's Background & Experience: [00:02:15]
The Rollercoaster of Their Marriage: [00:06:59]
The Decision to Separate: [00:16:57]
Sam's Passing: [00:22:31]
Processing Complex Grief: [00:35:05]
Rewriting the Narrative: [00:57:15]
Dr. Lomas's Poem on Grief: [00:49:39]

Louise’s Poem:

Grief needs no reason.

Catapulted into consciousness it becomes your unpredictable companion,

walking silently and raging tumultuously,

keeping pace and stumbling blindly beside you.

It cradles you and strokes you,

tears at you with its strong teeth,

warms you with memories.

Memories that bind you to it.

Lovingly cruel, cruelly loving

so that you want more and dread its coming.

Bio:

I am an educational and child psychologist currently living and working in Australia in private practice as part of a paediatric psychology clinic. I trained at UCL and worked for a Local Authority for a few years before setting up in private practice in 2016. In July 2021, I moved to New Delhi where I worked as the psychologist for an American international school - I absolutely loved living in India! While there, I was offered a great job here on the Mornington peninsula, which is just south of Melbourne, and I moved here in September 2023.

I have two adult sons, one in Melbourne and one in Sheffield. I was married to my husband, Sam, for 32 years.

Resources:

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Find out more about grief support

Your Host’s BIO:

Dr Monika Wieliczko, Chartered Clinical Psychologist D.Clin.Psych, MSc, MA

Psychologist by profession, and a widow, in private.

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Episode Transcript

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\f0\fs24 \cf0 Full Transcript\
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[00:00:07] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Welcome to Guide to Afterlife, your go to podcast for young widows. I'm your host, doctor Monica Velitko, a psychologist and your fellow widow. Each episode brings you insights from world renowned grief experts and authors discussing complex grief issues and their personal experiences of loss. My aim is to challenge the way you think, empower you to face your feelings, and help you develop resilient ways to grief. Move beyond surviving each day and visit guide to afterlife.com to take part in the Grief MOT, your first aid program for grief.\
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[00:00:52] Dr Louise Lomas: In today's episode, I've got a very special guest with me, doctor Louise Lomas. She's a child and educational psychologist who's currently living and working in Australia in private practice. And someone I've met on social media, I think he was on a Facebook group, and we very quickly found a common ground, which is about this very unspoken truth about marriages and loss. Something to do with what happens when we suddenly find ourselves in a situation where talking about certain aspects of marriages is not so easy. It's not so kind of straightforward, and something I really felt very strongly about in my own kind of experiences of grief.\
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[00:01:42] Dr Louise Lomas: But also something that me and Luis thought that it would be really important to talk about to kind of maybe make it a bit more accessible to people. What happens when your relationship wasn't that perfect or when relationships are generally quite complicated in their nature? So we really wanted to talk about a rollercoaster of a marriage, which is often what happens. So welcome, Louise, today. It was really nice to have you here today, and and I would like you to introduce yourself and say a few things about why you're here.\
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[00:02:15] Speaker 3: Thank you, Monika, and and, and thank you for having me on the show. Yes. I'm a education child psychologist. I, trained at UCL, qualified back in 2,012. I trained quite later on in life. I was 14 too when I did the when I started training. I've been a teacher before that and had various other you know, raised children and done different jobs, other job before that as well. Sam and I were married for 32 years. We have 2 sons, nearly 33 year old, and a 29 year old. My oldest one lives in in England still, and my youngest one lives, just up the road from me here in Melbourne. Say just up the road, but that's a long way in Australia. It's about an hour drive. But, things were complicated. You know? Life and love can be really very complicated. And when love is complicated, it doesn't mean that you love the person any less. Sometimes you love them incredibly deeply and sometimes you have to love somebody so much that you can let them go because it's not healthy for either of you. And that was the case that that was the situation that Sam and I found ourselves in. He had very serious mental health problems, so we separated eventually. And I moved to India in 2021, July 2021, right in the middle of COVID. Phenomenal experience in so many ways in the most incredible country. I worked there for an international school in in New Delhi. And then while I was there, I got offered a job out here in Australia. I just realized how strange it is that I just went through. Yes. I left my husband, so I moved. So I moved to India. Most people would just go and get another house down the road, but no. I haven't moved to India.\
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[00:04:02] Dr Louise Lomas: But maybe that's quite telling, Louise, you know, in itself that sometimes we need that kind of distance, a quite extensive distance just to be able to separate ourselves from, you know, relationships. I mean, absolutely. You know? And know what it's like, you know, immigrating from Poland to the UK. So there's always something you kind of leave behind when you make those decisions, isn't it?\
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[00:04:28] Speaker 3: But it's\
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[00:04:29] Dr Louise Lomas: it's it's it says something.\
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[00:04:31] Speaker 3: It does rather, doesn't it? Yes. That's right. You do have to and we did. We were physically separated, but not emotionally separated. You know, we'll talk about that a bit more later on. But then I got offered a really good job out here, and, this is why I was after being in India only a year, so I they agreed to hold the position for me while I finished up there. And then we moved out here, and I'm looking here in, in private practice in a p well, pediatric clinic, a private clinic. Yeah. So it's been an adventurous few years. So why did I feel the need to want to do this? Really, I think that it's such a there's such a stigma. There's such a taboo around death anyway. And there is such a stigma and a taboo around mental health and around addiction But when you combine those 2, it is it's almost impossible to reconcile. And particularly with the the depth of love that can still exist within those difficulties, even with those difficulties. And the way that it makes this incredible whirlwind, this roller coaster, this storm of emotions creates this complex grief, which is incredibly hard to process, to live with. And it was actually listening to one of your podcasts. I can't remember who it was. It was on and they're talking about executive functions and grief. And they would just say some of the things like, oh, you know, Linda, it's great to you know, if you've been grieving, you need to minimize change and be around friends and community.\
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[00:06:07] Speaker 3: And I did exactly the opposite. I moved country moved continents twice, closed up a house of, you know, a whole 32 years of marriage within that home, which had become like a family member itself. Lost, you know, separated from all my friends and my community and started a new job.\
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[00:06:26] Dr Louise Lomas: I can't think of a more kind of, in some ways, alienating experience than that. Just completely removed from everything that's familiar to you.\
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[00:06:36] Speaker 3: Yeah. That's a good way to describe it. Alienating. I think I have felt like an alien in many ways. Mhmm. Always in one.\
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[00:06:44] Dr Louise Lomas: Yeah. And, you know, the there's there's so much there already that you're already unpacking. But I suppose I wanted to maybe start with thinking a bit more about Sam and what was he like? What was the marriage like? The ups\
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[00:06:59] Speaker 3: and downs. Yeah. Yeah. Sam was amazing. He was he was an alcoholic. Alright. He was an alcoholic, and he had some heavy duty mental health problems. I didn't realize this when I met him, but he was almost certainly an alcoholic when I met him. But I was young and didn't realize it. But we were best friends. He was also brilliant. He had a brilliant mind. He was witty. He was an incredibly talented artist, probably even a genius, really. He was a phenomenally loyal friend, and he could be a really wonderful, kind, loving, generous soul. He was a beautiful soul. I think in many ways, he was almost too sensitive for this world, and he just didn't cope with it very well. And he had a lot of adventure. You know, when we first met, we traveled to Australia together then. We were planning on moving here, but recession and things like that messed it up. We lived in Cyprus for a bit, but my parents lived. We lived in Athens with our eldest son when he was a baby, but we had to go back to England. I think that was hard for him. Hard for him to accept going back to the village where he was born and where all his family have lived for generations.\
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[00:08:06] Dr Louise Lomas: Yes. Yeah. And I suppose that so that was 32 years you were married?\
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[00:08:11] Speaker 3: 32 years. Yeah.\
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[00:08:12] Dr Louise Lomas: Obviously, you a huge chunk of your life, and, obviously, it always makes me think about what what happens when we establish, almost lifelong relationships early in life and how much history there is. As you said, we're talking about the house and how much the house was holding for you, but also, you know, how these things change and develop over time as you said, you know, you were you were both very young when you get together. How old were you?\
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[00:08:39] Speaker 3: I was just turned 24 when I met him, and he was so he'd have been 26. 27.\
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[00:08:46] Dr Louise Lomas: Yeah. It's a completely different mindset and\
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[00:08:50] Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. Completely. Experience. Yeah. Completely different. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And, you know, things do change over those times, and you do grow in in different directions as we as we know. And to have responsibilities of a baby, you know, a young baby and no money and no actual neither of us had properly completed our education at that point, both sort of drifting around, still trying to figure things out.\
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[00:09:15] Dr Louise Lomas: Like you do in your twenties.\
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[00:09:16] Speaker 3: Exactly. Like you do in your twenties. Neither of us had gone to university at that point to be suddenly thrust into adult world and responsibility in the most beautiful, wonderful way. I mean, best decision we have made was to have our sons.\
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[00:09:30] Dr Louise Lomas: Yeah. And, you know, it just bonds you together, babies do, don't they, and, solidifies everything and makes it much more complicated to make changes in life when there's so much that holds you together as a couple.\
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[00:09:44] Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. That's right. And for and for Sam, the responsibility, especially as we were bouncing around abroad, I think became too much from he'd he'd actually had depression since his teens, but that came back really hard when we moved back to England. He got hit early with depression.\
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[00:10:03] Dr Louise Lomas: So how old was he when you moved back?\
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[00:10:05] Speaker 3: So this was, like, a a year, 2 years later. So Mhmm. Yeah. It was very quick. We were kind of whirlwind. Yeah. So he was, what, 27? Between her 20 9.\
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[00:10:19] Dr Louise Lomas: And when you mentioned his mental health problems, can you say a bit more how that was perhaps manifesting or what was how that was affecting the relationships you were struggling with?\
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[00:10:31] Speaker 3: Yeah. So in the early days, mental health problems were depression, mainly depression. Mhmm. And depression doesn't always look like somebody can't move or get out of bed. Sometimes depression, in them particularly, can look like anger too. And there were times, not always, he was not he was not by nature an aggressive or a violent man. He was a very, kind and gentle soul. But there was anger there too. And then self medicating with alcohol, His family drank a lot, always had done, going back generations too. Mhmm. So this is what he'd been brought up with as well. Mhmm. And then, over the course of our marriage, he he separated once when the boys were small for a couple of years while he because he really hit the boobs hard. He sobered up, stayed sober 4 years. Then, unfortunately, as often happens, thought he could just have the occasional drink, and that doesn't work or didn't didn't work for him. Mhmm. Did for a while, but not for not for that long, a few years. And he very quickly spiraled. We went for couples we went for therapy together with a fantastic therapist who I still see who's been incredible support to both of us the whole way through. But his mental health deteriorate continued to deteriorate in line with his drinking. And he also smoked a lot of marijuana, to self you know, self medicate with that too. And it didn't do his none of this meant did his mental health any good. We tried everything. We tried absolutely everything. And then, 2,000 and late 2017, he had what I could really describe as nervous breakdown, and he absolutely fell apart. And then it just got worse from there. And by end of 2018, he was very, very mentally ill. And I might have some of those dates wrong. It's all become a bit of a blur. But, to the point where he was begging to be admitted to an inpatient psychiatric ward, and it just got worse from there. You know, people in them, I'm sure, do their utmost. Everything's been horribly underfunded for years. It just got worse and worse and worse. We got pumped for drugs. We developed all sorts of accompanying illnesses, akathisia, which is where basically overmedicated and they can't sit still. He walked 20 miles a day just in his room in the psych ward. He became an old man very quickly, stooped. Sometimes when he was very medicated, he'd be shuffling and not able to speak properly. He was in and out of there. He they he was diagnosed with a couple of personality disorders, developed a binge eating disorder. That was from psychiatrists. Our therapist said, she thought it was dissociative identity disorder, which is used to be called multiple personality disorder. I would agree with that because he would switch very, very quickly, like, instantly. And there were several different versions of these characters, and and some of them were quite disturbing. Most of them were very frightened little children. But it's terrible to see somebody that you love so much, and we did. Sam and I loved each other very deeply. We fought, and we were hard on each other many times too, but gosh we loved each other very deeply and we were each other's best friends. That never left. That never ever stopped.\
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[00:14:02] Speaker 3: And his anxiety became extremely intense once we got him off he was off all the medication, and he started to make a bit of improvement in in as much as he could perform basic self care. He started a 9 month residential program, but that got stopped because halfway because of COVID, so I think he did 6 months. And in that year during COVID, before I went to India, he, he became extremely overweight. He was binge eating, Became extremely overweight, but got into a state where, I mean, his his anxiety was through the roof. My cousin, who's a very experienced psychiatrist, said he'd never seen anything like it. And it was on repeat as well, you know, the intrusive voices, the altars of different characters. It was quite extraordinary. But even within that, when we got into the stage where I knew that he would be able to just about care for himself at with home deliveries from the supermarket and all the bills set up so that it was all on direct debits so that all he had to do was to and I had a cleaner going in. And I was moving to India because it was not healthy for me or for him, and it was not safe for me actually either because one of his personalities was threatening. But even though, who didn't know the story of that, even though this sort of his terror of me leaving and the pain of us having to separate, even then, he was able to say, knowing how I am about going to new places, and I need to know what it looks like and what it's gonna be like and what I can expect, and I've relied on him for so many things over the years. He was looking things up on Google Maps and showing me that this is where you're gonna be living, and this is what the walk's going to be like. And here are the parks you'll be able to go to, and, you know, don't worry about it. You'll be absolutely fine. And, you know, he was still able to do all of that for me.\
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[00:15:56] Dr Louise Lomas: So the friendship and care was always there on both ends. I'm just kind of struck how much you both cared about each other and and that kind of sense of you being so heavily involved in both managing his mental health, but, like, being like his carer, really Yeah. For such a long time. But what I'm also hearing is that you're also getting a lot back from him even though it was complicated, as he said, a real roller coaster of emotions and events. There's something almost like, say, intoxicating, but really difficult to get out of, Like you said, you know, I think at some point you said you had to draw the line and say, well, this is not safe for me. I need to move somewhere else, which you can imagine must have been tremendously hard to get to the point where, you know, you can you have to say, okay. I can't I can't live like this anymore.\
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[00:16:56] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. It was an incredibly hard decision to take. Incredibly hard decision to take, but it was an absolutely necessary decision. I'd actually started to take the decision about a year before I did it. 1 of his family members was making things rather more difficult for us than they needed to be. We've always had a very fractious relationship and it just intensified, And I think some of that was meeting their needs too. But then COVID hit, so I so I was gonna go to New Zealand, but then COVID hit and, you know, put everything on the back burner. And then then I realized that some, you know, was actually starting to get to a point where he could just about look after himself. That's when I decided to take that very distant difficult decision.\
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[00:17:37] Dr Louise Lomas: That was the kind of the opening to leave. Yeah. Getting him back into shape. And how long after you left he passed away? How did that kind of came about?\
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[00:17:49] Speaker 3: Well, it was, gosh. That was so I I left in July 21. That whole first year I was away, we spoke on the phone several times a day. I mean, I had already had to, put a block on him because in the 2 or 3 years leading up to me going away when he was very mentally ill, I was getting over 70 texts a day from him when I was at work and over 70 well, more than that with the phone call. Actually, it was about over 50 phone calls a day from him. And I'd had to already block his phone. And, and some of the techs were like, I'm gonna kill myself. You know, you have to come home and all of this, and I just had to learn to ignore it. And then when I went to India that 1st year, he was, he was still doing that, but I just managed to get into it. Yeah. I had to block his phone and say, I will phone you when I can. And I spoke to him. I said, I'll phone you every morning before I go to work, every lunchtime and every evening. So I was speaking to him 3 times a day.\
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[00:18:49] Dr Louise Lomas: So you had to set those limits?\
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[00:18:51] Speaker 3: Absolutely had to set them in. So it was it was just impossible. Absolutely impossible. And, you know, I did things like whenever I was out on adventures, and I would sort of phone him up and say, hey. Look. You know, this is where I am. This is what we're doing. Trying to involve him in some of Louise things too. And he's was also supportive. When I was having a hard time, I could talk to him and and say, oh my gosh. You know, this happened to me today. What do I do? How am I and he would be fantastic. You know? He he was just lovely. He was very loving.\
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[00:19:22] Dr Louise Lomas: Yeah. So he's he's he's saying there there's different parts of him, different personalities or different kind of parts that were playing different roles or depending on presumably depending on what time you called or which kind of person or answered the phone, you would get a different version.\
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[00:19:40] Speaker 3: Well, you could it it it was weird because you you could get to that core person by asking specific questions.\
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[00:19:50] Dr Louise Lomas: I see.\
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[00:19:51] Speaker 3: And it was if you could talk in a certain way, if you could say something about politics or if I asked him a direct question that I needed help with, then that person would come online.\
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[00:20:00] Dr Louise Lomas: Right. Right. So you knew how to access those different parts of you.\
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[00:20:04] Speaker 3: Yes. That's right. It's just that it wasn't, yeah. That's not who was there all Yeah. Always. And sometimes you have to work to get past it. And that's why I yeah. So I'm sitting there for a reason. So that first, it was like that. And then just before I came home for the summer holidays in June 22, I've been concerned about him being very sleepy and other things that he told me, and he was refusing to go to the doctors. And then his therapist our therapist called and said, he was really worried. I think he has diabetes. And I said, well, actually, I think he does too. He said, I've just got off the phone to him, and it it's not good. He's really not good. He keeps falling asleep. So, I called him, and I got him to phone the doctor while I was on the phone. And I spoke to the doctor, and the doctor was brilliant. They got him to the hospital the very next day. He they wanted him to go in that evening, and he had diabetic ketoacid doses. And they said that if he hadn't gone in when he did, he would have been dead that day that day. And he spent, nearly 5 days in hospital, and it just flicked a switch. And there's a whole I've I've got a whole hypothesis about what happened and it, like, sort of the nerdy trauma, but I'm not gonna go to that now. But it flicked a switch, and his mental health improved dramatically. But he was enormous. He'd gone from being a very healthy fit, muscular, 13 stone, 6 foot man to being, I think, he went up to 18 stone. Mhmm. And he shrunk quite a bit as well. Mhmm. So he then spent the next year sort of trying to slowly get himself better physically by simply by eating better. He was still not moving. He was still not going out. He wasn't really he'd become quite agoraphobic, extremely anxious still. And he was in very, very, very poor shape physically and started drinking very heavily again. He had started in the March of 23. He had started to see his ex girlfriend his first girlfriend, sorry, his first girlfriend from when he was 17. Again, she'd started coming around he said she was coming about 3 times a week maximum. So it was 2, 3 times a week. And I was delighted. It's like, this is this is really good. You're getting a second chance. What happens is this this is fantastic. But it it was sporadic, I think. And then, I was coming back for the summer holidays before I flew out to Australia to start this new job here. And I was flying back on the 3rd June. He'd arranged for friends of ours to come, our best friends to because we were just spending the whole summer together. We were gonna go to art galleries and museums and visit friends. I'd arranged to book the tunnel, the Surrey tunnel. What's it called? Channel tunnel, that's it.\
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[00:22:47] Speaker 3: Euro tunnel.\
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[00:22:49] Dr Louise Lomas: To\
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[00:22:49] Speaker 3: go to France. Yes. Euro tunnel. It's been a while since I've been there. To take him away for a week. And, he picked me up from the airport on 3rd June, which was the Saturday. He was not looking good. I have never seen him look he was only 59, and he looked like a very, very old and doddery 17 something man. He was shuffling. He was out of breath. He was very, very stooped. It was a tremendous shock to see him like that. I went home. I went upstairs and packed. He sat in the garden. I had dinner, having a drink. I went down. I said, look. I've been up since, well, 5 o'clock in India. So it's since it was since, like, 1 o'clock in England, and it's now, like, half past 9 at night in England. I said, I'm absolutely beat. You know, I'll see you tomorrow morning. We gave each other a really, really big, warm, loving hug. He said to me, I'll always love you. You'll always be my best friend, and I said, yeah. Me too. That's never gonna change. I'll always love you. And I went to bed, and I heard him all through the night sort of snoring very heavily. He had sleep apnea. I could hear him moving around. He had got, obviously, quite drunk, very drunk. I got up in the night, and he'd obviously sort of passed out in the bed when his lights were on. So I switched him off and closed the door, went back to sleep the next morning, got up. My friends were coming around in the afternoon. I could hear him snoring and moving around and getting up to go swimming and back to bed. But, you know, when he when he got very drunk, it was often it was not unusual for him to not come down all day. He would just sort of, you know, be too hungover and stay in bed. Our friends came around at 3, and they said, oh, you know, where's Sam? I said, you know, go a bit drunk last night. And they said, oh, yeah. Because, like, they're used to it. And then it's I think it was about quarter past 5, just after 5. I turned to my friend, and I just suddenly felt like there was a power cut. It that feeling, you know, when there's a power cut and it's like, there's nothing.\
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[00:24:51] Dr Louise Lomas: Something stops.\
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[00:24:53] Speaker 3: Mhmm. And that's exactly how it felt. There wasn't a power cut, but that's what I felt when I just suddenly turned around to her and I said, but what if he's dead? We hadn't been talking about him. I said, well, what if he's dead? And I ran upstairs, and he was. Gosh. Oh. He'd, he'd obviously got up. He'd tried he'd obviously decided to get up because he was laid back across the bed, not not in the way that he would sleep, but, you know, like, as though he'd been sitting on the edge of the bed, and then he just gone back. The paramedics came. 3 paramedic teams came in total. So it must have been just happened because they could detect something faint. They kept working on him for an hour, which I found really hard because he'd gone. I knew he'd gone. He wasn't there. I just knew it.\
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[00:25:42] Dr Louise Lomas: But I can imagine of anticipation and just waiting and the medical intervention, which often is very brutal and unpleasant to witness even if you're in a separate room. I mean, it's kind of really quite shocking.\
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[00:25:58] Speaker 3: I was in shock. I was in complete shock. I mean, it was wonderful that our friends were there. We stayed with him. We stayed with his body, and we all sat around while the paramedics went, and we had to wait for the undertakers to come, which was several hours. We all sat around, holding his hands and just sitting like he was lying on the floor or just on the floor in the bedroom, telling stories and laughing and crying.\
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[00:26:22] Dr Louise Lomas: And I can imagine all of that in the context of you just coming back to the country and seeing him, and then it's almost like, obviously is it like he was waiting for you to come back or something? I don't know. Like, that was the thought that was going through my mind. It's not like you obviously had anything I mean, it's not like you can decide where you're gonna die, but I think to some extent, I often think that people do sometimes stay longer life when they are expecting someone. It's not uncommon, isn't it, to Yeah.\
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[00:26:56] Dr Louise Lomas: You know, when you were describing him, obviously, the the alcohol and and all of the ways he was in looking after himself is a form of self harms. You know, it's it's knowing with diabetes in particular and all of that that was in the picture. And he knew he wasn't helping with such complex mental health problems. It's just a vicious circle, isn't it?\
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[00:27:22] Speaker 3: Yes. Yes.\
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[00:27:23] Dr Louise Lomas: I was kinda struck by what he said, how much he loved you, that you were his best friend, and that kind of warmth. And, you know, I'm kind of left with this feeling, intense feeling of how much he struggled with life and what a terrible battle that must have been for him and for you just being alongside him. And, you know, I can't imagine I mean, I can imagine in some to some extent thinking about my own marriage and, you know, the difficulties with decision whether to stay, whether to leave, which is often part of any marriage that you reach a point of crisis and you wonder about these things. But for you, I'm kind of struck by the intensity of the situation and, you know, almost like needing to keep him alive or being invested in trying to help him, especially as a psychologist. You know, I know that myself, you know, we often are positioned in those roles as, you know, trying to help, trying to rescue,\
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[00:28:26] Speaker 3: just not always helpful, like\
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[00:28:27] Dr Louise Lomas: you said. And\
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[00:28:28] Speaker 3: that that's right.\
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[00:28:30] Dr Louise Lomas: You needed to set that Lomas. And, you know, I'm just kind of thinking what you were left with afterwards. And, you know, in a way, that's what I wanted to maybe talk a little bit more about today is how your perception of him changed over time and, you know, what, first of all, what allowed you to step away from from the marriage and kind of go go away, in terms of men you know, what what has changed in you that allowed this to happen, but also how, I suppose, how his death then changed the way you were thinking or looking back at the marriage. So that kinda supposed 2 things I wanted to to think with you today. But starting with the first one, which is what made it possible, I suppose, to step away from that. Yeah. Jesus.\
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[00:29:19] Speaker 3: I mean, it's a that's a really good question because, really, even if it's just for for our son's sake, I should have done it years ago. I should not have taken him back that first time. Mhmm. And I'm you know, there's all sorts of reasons why I did. The main one being love. Mhmm. But I shouldn't have done it. It wasn't there on kids. But also the belief that he could change. Unfortunately, I'm cursed with optimism, and, I always believe that, that some people can check, mate. I mean, maybe that's a wonderful thing for maybe a sponsored psychologist. But,\
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[00:29:56] Dr Louise Lomas: We've got some magical powers that if we try hard enough, I know that feeling very well. Like, suddenly\
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[00:30:02] Speaker 3: That's right.\
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[00:30:02] Dr Louise Lomas: Yeah. We're gonna do something, finally come up with a solution.\
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[00:30:06] Speaker 3: But if you just do this Yeah. It'll be fine. Yeah. Just do the thing. And unfortunately, the thing is, is too hard for some people to do however much they want to. It is just almost impossible, and I tend to be quite dogged When I get an idea, I find it very hard to let go until I've explored every possible avenue. I'm very tenacious in that way. Some would say stubborn. And we can be quite fixed around that. And I think that it got to a point where well, first and foremost, I knew that both the boys were settled and happy and would no longer be have to be responsible for their dad. And secondly, it became intolerable. The situation became intolerable. It was actually kind of dangerous for me. It was no longer safe for me to be at home, really.\
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[00:31:03] Dr Louise Lomas: So it's when it started to escalate, that's when you kind of, you know, fell behind?\
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[00:31:08] Speaker 3: Before that I mean, before he had his breakdown, I'd said, you know, you need to make a decision. I can't be married to an alcoholic anymore. I said, I'm not saying you have to go drinking. I just can't be married to an alcoholic anymore. And real and he said, I can't do that. And I think realizing that that wasn't going to change, he couldn't change it and I couldn't change it. That was the main that was the big thing. I guess we both grew up a little bit. I grew up a little bit there.\
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[00:31:37] Dr Louise Lomas: So something allowed that change internally for you? That kind of Yes. Maybe because I I I definitely felt that in my own marriage that there there came a point. I mean, a lot of that through my own therapy that I started to see him in a different light, like, actually see myself more on the outside of what I wasn't perhaps getting from the relationship that made me kind of question some of the things. And then I wonder about that kind of process when it comes about, you know, obviously incredibly difficult because as you're saying, you know, it was kind of back and forth. It was the kind of, is it gonna work? Is it not gonna work? And I was just thinking also about the timing of it, you know, and when he was talking about him having a mental breakdown and things kind of getting much more intense. And and did that coincide around the time when you were thinking of separating, or did that come after?\
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[00:32:36] Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah. So we decided to separate, and and we said, oh, can I just have a few more months? And then as it got closer, he just had a break. Don't just cry.\
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[00:32:46] Dr Louise Lomas: So it actually says a lot about your role in keeping him going and keeping his sanity and how much work you put into that mentally, you know, emotionally to kind of keep that together. It's just often the case, isn't it? Yeah. Codependent relationships.\
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[00:33:04] Speaker 3: And this is what I was just gonna say is that codependency and learning now. It's only really learning since he's died. Try actually understanding that codependency doesn't mean that you are liking what the other person is going through because you want to feel needed, but the codependency is about the kind of love and support that you give for each other because you're the only ones that can really understand that what is broken in you. Yes.\
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[00:33:31] Dr Louise Lomas: And I think another side because the way you talk about Sam feels very warm and caring, and you've got this real compassion for him, which obviously you're in seeing him as a a bloody alcoholic who was just not getting not having his shit together. You know? I don't really get that.\
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[00:33:52] Speaker 3: Oh, I have my day.\
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[00:33:53] Dr Louise Lomas: Yeah. I'm sure. But that's not the narrative. I'm sure there is that side too. No. Angry, you know, kind\
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[00:34:00] Speaker 3: of what\
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[00:34:00] Dr Louise Lomas: the hell is this? Pull your shit together kind of thing. But overall, I think this kind of caring, compassionate side of you that was obviously able to see this little kid in him that was so traumatized or had his own kind of story behind it, which, you know, especially we as a a psychologist, we know that very well that, you know, we're not just dealing with an adult. We often are acutely aware of the inner child that is there, that is struggling and where that comes from. And I think that makes it much harder to step away. And so, as we're saying, you know, that's the whole point of this episode, that relationships are very complex and you've got this ambivalent feelings. And the closer you are with someone and you are incredibly close with them, the harder it is to to separate yourself out and and have been an independent person. But also when they die, it's just makes, I think, the whole grieving process this much more complex and difficult to disentangle.\
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[00:35:04] Speaker 3: Yes. It certainly does make it incredibly, incredibly different to to figure out. Complex grief is just the most horrid thing. You know, there's there's something about relief. You know, people often talk about relief when somebody has had a prolonged illness and they're in a lot of pain. They talk about how awful they feel, acknowledging it, but but that there is a relief when that person dies, and and and they're released from their pain. And, you know, that's absolutely true, but it's not it's not actually as as simple as that. For me, it's been about holding that space of this sort of ultimate cognitive dissonance. You know, your your heart your heart is aching. It's aching to see them, to hold them, to talk to them. You want them to be alive again. You know, you want that so deeply. And then your rational mind is going, yeah, but actually what you're what you're longing for, what you're hoping for is not the reality. It's your it's your new rhythm of how you wanted it to be.\
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[00:36:07] Dr Louise Lomas: So that fantasy of, you know, holding that kind of almost Yeah. I think what you're alluding to is this kind of idealized picture of the person that you want to preserve in your mind that it's so difficult, as you're saying, to let go of and and perhaps to, in some ways, to explore, is that really what it was that you're saying? And that dissonance that you're describing is a very difficult place to be in. And I I I don't know about you, but I hear that a lot on social media When people generally talk about the person who died, especially I'm thinking about widows, you often hear this kind of, the good things. The the the and it's not like they weren't there, but I think it's almost imprinted somehow in the definition of grief that we put people who died on a pedestal in a way that isn't always helpful. I mean, it's important to hold onto those good bits. It's incredibly important. But it it often creates this kind of, yeah, idealized picture that hasn't got much to do with reality.\
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[00:37:13] Speaker 3: Yes. That's right. And and I think that we do it not just as well, certainly in my experience, not just with the person, but with our relationship with them as well and with our part in that relationship. You know, there is this need to and I don't know if this is easier in non complex grief, just grief, I suppose you'd call it, ordinary grief, where things at least on the outside have appeared to be perfect or appear to be, you know, ticking along quite nicely in a very sort of normal kind of way. I mean, everybody, everybody has difficulties in their marriages. It's not possible to not. And if they say they're there aren't, then they just have to marry them.\
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[00:37:55] Dr Louise Lomas: Or whether they want to admit it or not, just pretending that everything is perfect and everything is lovely.\
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[00:38:03] Speaker 3: But when it is so obviously a difficult rollercoaster marriage, obvious because it's impossible to keep something like that from other people, you know, you can't you can't hide it. I mean, I've I've never seen a point in hiding those things. Anyway, you know, we would have blazing rounds and things would be very difficult and really, really quite awful and and unpleasant. So then when when you're grieving that person and you're deep in grief because you had a difficult relationship, it doesn't mean that you love them any less. And it certainly doesn't mean that you grieve them any less.\
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[00:38:42] Dr Louise Lomas: You know, you stay in\
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[00:38:44] Speaker 3: a marriage with somebody like that There are multiple reasons why people say marriage is like that. In our case, it's because at the bottom of it, we just loved each other too much. And it's possible to love somebody too much, and it wasn't healthy.\
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[00:38:59] Dr Louise Lomas: But when we well, if we were able to kind of think a bit more about that, because I think this is really crucial about this loving too much, which kind of, you know, for me instinctively goes into place thinking about my own marriage is about I don't know what it means to you. I really want to hear that, what you think of that. But but perhaps what my kind of thinking goes into so if we feel like we're loving too much, we kind of it's almost like we're putting more into that person or into that relationship than it should be as if it represents more than just marriage. It's not to say that marriage is less, but it kind of becomes about something else often. And, you know, that we there's something maybe unresolved from our other relationships, especially in from childhood that, you know, we kind of the marriage becomes this kind of primary attachment. The wife or husband becomes this kind of primary attachment figure, and and that means that a lot gets located in that person. And it means that, you know, that sometimes these relationships get more intensified because of something that another layer perhaps that gets pushed into it. And for me, it was definitely this kind of responsibility for trying to make him better in my marriage. Like, I'm trying to kind of not necessarily to fix him, but to rescue him, to support him, to help him with his own anxieties, with his own kind of insecurities at my own cost. And that's something I've, you know, I've had unresolved from my childhood. That when you kind of then translate it into an adult relationships, you know, that's when it becomes really complicated, and it becomes heavy Yeah. And dysfunctional on some ones. Yeah.\
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[00:40:52] Speaker 3: Yes. That's that's it exactly. When we try to get our needs met in the other person. And then within the marriage, you know, the marriage becomes, an entity of its own. You know, it the marriage almost becomes the 3rd person in the marriage, in the relationship. You know, it takes on a life of its own in that way. And it has a meaning of its own in that way. And that's when I think it becomes unhealthy because there's a commitment, not just to the other person, but also but also to the marriage rather than a commitment to oneself. And perhaps that's where the shift happens is when you can start to detach and and see that commitment as being located in the wrong places, located in the in the not so helpful places rather than locating oneself. Yeah. Showing ourselves that commitment and that compassion that we do for the other person. And I think that sometimes, you know, being doing that distracts from doing the work we have to do for yourself.\
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[00:41:59] Dr Louise Lomas: Yes. Because we often give people what we really want for ourselves. And, you know\
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[00:42:06] Speaker 3: That's easier.\
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[00:42:07] Dr Louise Lomas: Oh, yes. Absolutely. I mean, when you think about the choice of careers, like, I always laugh about it. Like, what makes us become psychologists is obviously, you know, we want to give people what we've never received, which is this love, care, understanding, compassion. And, paradoxically, it just comes around in this awkward ways. You know? But yeah. But I I really kind of that really resonates with people. So I was just thinking about the the impossible task that you've been describing of, you know, needing to pull away from the marriage in order to somehow rescue yourself, to to protect yourself. And and the same, I think, is true in some ways, I think, in grief. But when we're grieving, especially at this acute state where it just feels really raw and as you were describing that state of being, you know, completely shocked by his unexpected death. And in some ways, unexpected because I don't think you were kind of it's not like it was an illness that you would think, oh, it's gonna result in death. It's a bit different, isn't it? Even though that kind of threat of suicide or that he might die was obviously there for a long time from what you're saying. But but it's different, isn't it, when someone just unexpectedly dies?\
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[00:43:31] Speaker 3: Yes. You don't expect you really do not expect that to happen. That\
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[00:43:37] Dr Louise Lomas: real roller coaster.\
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[00:43:38] Speaker 3: It was such a shock. And that shock cushions you for quite a few months. And it certainly cushioned me for quite a few Monika, Got me through those first difficult three months where I was having to frantically pack up the house and get rid of all our belongings and suddenly put in place a cobble together a shipment to send to Australia and, you know, sort out everything here and move out here. And shock gets you gets you through that. And then when the shock wears off, wow, that's, that's unexpected.\
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[00:44:10] Dr Louise Lomas: Can you say a bit more about that kind of process of not necessarily sorting out the house, the belongings as such, but the mental belongings? I often refer to it as, you know, the things that you're left with, the feelings, the memories, the because it kind of, I suppose, relates to this previous question of, you know, how do we reach that place of condensing those good and bad aspects of the relationship and the person who died and how that kind of came about for you.\
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[00:44:46] Speaker 3: Yeah. Gosh. It was really hard. Doing the house, like, clearing everything out, Sam was a bit of a hoarder. Sam was a lot of a hoarder. He was a brilliant artist, And, you know, what most of his a lot of his paintings here, Beuys took some I\
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[00:45:01] Dr Louise Lomas: can see one behind you.\
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[00:45:02] Speaker 3: Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. Beuys took some. We gave a lot away to, family and friends. Some bought some as well. And then going through his studio was so hard. It was so painful. Coming across boxes of sketches and realising just how brilliant he was, how much work we put into all of these things. It was and we've got, I remember, all the boxes of sketches here. Oh, it's sorting through all of those memories. It was bittersweet, I think. So part some of it was lovely. It was really beautiful to be able to do that. And, be able to go through it with the boys and to remember some of the happy times where some of the the hard stuff an awful lot of hard stuff came up, an awful lot, particularly for them. Mhmm. And it's a very close knit community as well. Our friendship group is very close. So I had to say goodbye to all of that. As I said, Sam has fallen bread in the village.\
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[00:46:00] Dr Louise Lomas: There were a lot of things you had to let go of.\
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[00:46:03] Speaker 3: Yeah. And also India. For me, I was already grieving leaving I was already grieving India, and I still am. I don't miss I don't miss England at all. Not a bit. I do miss India because that's where I was last really happy, I think. Mhmm. You know, I had good friends there, and I felt very settled and I felt very safe. And, you know, Sam was alive then, and I felt tethered still. Mhmm. And when he died, I I no longer felt tethered. I felt like I was just cut adrift. He did so much in terms of explaining the world to me, and I'm having to I feel like, like an alien having to figure the world out by myself. Mhmm. You know, that's that's the really hard part.\
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[00:46:43] Dr Louise Lomas: Yeah. So I can see those layers of losses, but also the layers of things to let go of and those that you want to keep, those that you want to cherish. And and I think that's the kind of the hardest bit, isn't it, when you confront yourself with what it was really like. You know? I think for me, it was definitely that moment when I when Badri died, and I was able to kind of step away from the marriage after after some time has passed, and I suddenly just were hit by my own feelings, reflections, and thinking, gosh. Because it when you're in a relationship, it's very hard to have an objective way of looking.\
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[00:47:25] Speaker 3: It is. It's very, very hard.\
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[00:47:28] Dr Louise Lomas: What what it's like. You know? It it really I think it's impossible. You have to not lie to yourself. But I I think the perception changes massively once someone dies. I think it releases something. For me, definitely, it did release, you know, that kind of different view of the relationship.\
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[00:47:45] Speaker 3: Yeah. And I can look back at it now and say, how the hell did I why did I stay? What was I thinking? That was not normal. That was really weird. That was really, really out there. That was that was madness. True true madness. But grief is grief is just it turns everything upside down, you know. When and so sometimes you just don't know which way, whether you're coming or going. And I really thought, naively, stupidly, maybe foolishly, that, you know, 1 year on, I went and scattered his ashes in a beautiful place in the Solomon Islands, which would be Yes.\
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[00:48:24] Dr Louise Lomas: I saw the pictures on Facebook. It was absolute I mean, I can't think of a better place.\
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[00:48:30] Speaker 3: Yeah. It was we was it we were so fortunate. It was beautiful, and it felt like a last gift from him to me. And he'd always said he wanted to his ashes scattered there, and he gave that to me. You know? He gave me that opportunity to go back there, to go there. I hadn't been there before. And, and I thought, oh, that's it. Great. That's that year over and done with. Right? Let's go. And and, like, for a few weeks, it was like that, and then suddenly it just hit again, and then you pull up again, and then it comes crashing in again. And and it's you know, it doesn't just leave you alone. It doesn't people talk about, oh, you just expand around it. It's not quite feeling that way for me. I've I've I've what I've I've never been into poetry, particularly. I mean, I like poetry, but I've never written poetry. But what I found in this last year that I keep writing I call it prosely, and it just comes on me, like, out of nowhere, and I just simply have to write this stuff down. I call it prosely because it's neither prose nor poetry. It's been both. And I wrote one recently about grief. Should I read it?\
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[00:49:36] Dr Louise Lomas: Yes. That would be amazing if you can. Yes, please.\
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[00:49:39] Speaker 3: Grief needs no reason. Catapulted into consciousness, it becomes your unpredictable companion, walking silently and raging tumultuously, keeping pace and stumbling blindly beside you. It cradles you and strokes you, tears at you with its strong teeth, warms you with memories, memories that bind you to it, lovingly cool, cruelly loving so that you want more and dread its coming.\
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[00:50:04] Dr Louise Lomas: Yes. I mean, that is so beautiful. Just the contradictions of the experience of I think you captured it beautifully. I've heard some other poems, and they were all kind of so rich and so intense. Kind of makes me think about that roller coaster analogy that we've used at the beginning that you actually came out with yourself. When I asked you what it was like living with Sam, it was just a roller coaster of a marriage. And I I think there's something that captured in this poem about the grief and what you're left with is just impossible to, you know, put into words without using poetry. I think poetry just has this amazing way of capturing the essence of feelings, isn't it?\
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[00:50:52] Speaker 3: Yeah. That's right. Because you can use words and twist words in a different way, put them together in such and other ways that it can bring it to life. But it is it's that there is there's almost there have been times when I can look back and sort of nostalgia on those first days immediately after his death that in this, like, oh my gosh. That was actually quite a nice period because you're cocooned in a way. You can just grieve and just ruin it. And then very quickly, it seems as though there is an expectation that you'll recover. And Mhmm. It all falls away in any lassitude that you were given is just like\
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[00:51:34] Dr Louise Lomas: Yes. Exactly. And I always think of the wider context, which is the society and how we perceive grief as a society and what is what are the expectations, especially, you know, when relationships are complicated and, you know, especially when in your case where you actually separated before he died. So in theory, you know, it's like the relationship ended. But, obviously, we know it didn't, but it makes it I don't know what you think about that. If you could maybe say about Yeah. A bit more about that, what it was like for you.\
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[00:52:13] Speaker 3: Yeah. I felt that there was there's a part of me that felt that I ought to be justifying to the extent of the grief that I was feeling. I didn't get that from other people. Mhmm. I think everybody knew us, knew what our relationship was like, knew how deep it was. 1 or 2 of his family members perhaps didn't ever believe it, but that's beside, you know, the second. But everybody else who knew us did, and they got it. And I think because I can be quite compartmentalized in my thinking that those that I've I was thinking, well, maybe why am I feeling that, you know, we were not together? We shouldn't be separated. I should not be feeling this way. Do I have a right to feel this way even because, you know, I had left him? People keep saying to me, oh, you will feel guilty, but I that's not something I've ever felt. And I've talked to the boys about it as well, and they haven't ever felt it either because we did we've been told that. We did more than anybody would have maybe expected to do to to support him, to help him, and to and to love him, and to make life a better place for him. So we don't feel guilty. But there was that part of me that was thinking, why are you should you be grieving like this? Do you do you have the right Uh-huh. And then the big part of me is going, yeah. Of course, you do. Shut up. That's that's ridiculous.\
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[00:53:38] Dr Louise Lomas: But that other part questions it. You know? Because, yeah, because you're in together in a way that that you know? I used to able to grieve him as his wife. Where do you fit then in this kind of multiverse of relationships?\
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[00:53:56] Dr Louise Lomas: You know? Like\
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[00:53:57] Speaker 3: Yeah.\
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[00:53:57] Dr Louise Lomas: You know, who are you in his mind and your own mind and this the mind of the society. You know? It's it kind of I think it's less straightforward and complicates things even more. It's another layer, isn't it? Because\
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[00:54:12] Speaker 3: Yes.\
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[00:54:12] Dr Louise Lomas: Something, you know, just because you're not together doesn't mean that emotionally you are not invested or that you which was obvious that you were, but in from a different place, did take that step back, which I think in some ways I looking back at my marriage, that definitely played a role in making things more complicated if you're ambivalent, if you're, you know, unsure, or if you kind of have certain regrets or you know, it it it just doesn't translate easily into this natural, maybe more ideal experience of grief that someone dies. You know? You think about the Lomas. You're preoccupied with that loss, but eventually, you kind of are able to kind of to separate things out into those different piles. You know? What you keep, what you let go of. It's much more straightforward in those kind of, easier relationships, isn't it? But when there's so much history behind, you know, things are never easy, and you you end up kind of sorting things out probably, I don't know, for a very long time or even forever. You know, there's that bit of you that is trying to disentangle yourself, but also decide what to keep, what what to let go of. And and that is a very kind of complicated process with as you're saying, with the expectations from the society, which are often, you know, you should be, you know, getting better or you should be feeling different about it or the other way around that for some other people that that there is an expectation that you should be grieving more. You should be feeling guilty. You should be having certain experiences. That is a very confusing element, which I often think it plays as such a significant role in sometimes prolonging or kind of, yeah, just complicating the grieving process, which is very complex in itself.\
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[00:56:11] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And trying to work out what is real and what isn't. And, you know, I well, I haven't had very little people questioning it to me or at least not to my face. You know, the those those thoughts will will come from somewhere. So it's there there's so much that we that we take aboard from society without ever having actually had that said to us directly. You know, there's there's some social norms and expectations about how one grieves and, who should grieve and how long for. And\
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[00:56:43] Dr Louise Lomas: Yes. Exactly.\
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[00:56:45] Speaker 3: And and one of one of the things that I've been and I was just thinking obviously you were saying that, one of the things that I've also been thinking about recently toying with the idea of is this is this idea of this being an opportunity to also go back and rewrite the story, not in a way to deny it, but to take some painful memories and go back into them and then start to repay it, but change things. You know, what would have how could that have worked differently? And just rewrite that narrative in some places. It's a part of the healing healing process. Yeah.\
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[00:57:25] Dr Louise Lomas: Yeah. I mean, I don't know about you, but for me, the essential part were of that was instill Louise kind of thinking a bit more about what I've done or I haven't done, you know, my kind of role the role I played in this marriage, but also kind of taking away some of that inflated sense of responsibility and kind of thinking, well, well, I was there. You know, I made those decisions as much as he did. You know, I've made those mistakes, and they're mine. And kind of owning some of that, which I think sometimes doesn't happen so easily if we're so blocked by this kind of expectations from the society or from our own kind of beliefs about how grief should look like. But that kind of process of unpacking and looking back and thinking, well,\
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[00:58:16] Speaker 3: to\
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[00:58:16] Dr Louise Lomas: me, a lot of kind of good stuff was released from that process and thinking actually appreciating, those aspects of my marriage that maybe I wasn't seeing as clearly or wasn't really able to appreciate as much. And then looking back, just confronting myself with, you know, with those good bits or what I've been left with, the the, the memories, but also the how he contributed to shaping me as a person. That was really essential.\
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[00:58:49] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I had to get up there and shut the door because the cicadas started up, and they are loud. They're so beautiful. I'm so jealous.\
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[00:59:00] Dr Louise Lomas: We definitely don't have that in in London.\
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[00:59:03] Speaker 3: No. We don't have that\
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[00:59:04] Dr Louise Lomas: in London. Yeah.\
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[00:59:05] Speaker 3: Yeah. That's right. And that is the thing that actually has been incredibly hard for me. Sam did so much for me. He he really did explain well Louise. He he he was he was my sort of executive function buddy and, you know, sort of kept me on track and, would explain people or interactions that I had with people or, you know, all sorts of things that I just find harder. And, to not have him around to explain some really tricky situations that have arisen for me has just been devastating. Mhmm. Not have that person to turn to to do that. Yeah. And there isn't a substitute for it because nobody knows me that I send it.\
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[00:59:51] Dr Louise Lomas: And that's a very painful reality that I think we often struggle to acknowledge when we grieve that you cannot take it back. I think that, to me, that that was one of the hardest aspects of working through my grief, especially at the initial stage, the just actually the permanence of the the loss and, you know, what it means longer term. It Lomas comes up later, I think, and it's so hard. But I suppose I was just thinking about, you know, where this conversation took us from and where we ended up now. And as we're coming to an end of this conversation is is this, you know, this image of a roller coaster again coming up for me and how intertwined those different aspects are and, you know, and the beauty of it. I think we often forget how there's something fundamentally essential about life and living and relationships that's always messy. It's always complicated. But the goodness that comes from it is not about, you know, not feeling the pain, or kind of denying those those difficult aspects, but but also but actually embracing them. And and as you were beautifully depicting that in your poem, this essence of the good and the bad, those different aspects and integrating them, something that perhaps Sam wasn't able to do because of how traumatized. You know, we can obviously speculate what was going on for him, but but there's something about this bit being disintegrated in him that didn't allow this to to happen. But similarly in grief, what you were describing is this kind of ongoing process of bringing those bits together and acknowledging the the the good, the bad, the ugly aspects, and and bringing that together, which is so incredibly valuable and allowing you to, you know, over a longer period of time to reclaim some aspects of yourself, reclaim some good aspects of the marriage, and allowing you to move on and enjoy your life in Australia. I mean, obviously, you did what you had to do to live your life. But whenever I look at those photos and the places you go to, I'm thinking, well, it's it's so wonderful that you can do that despite the losses, despite the costs of moving away and and starting from scratch. But it's, in some ways, very hard, but also very beautiful narrative. And and I'm really thankful we had this opportunity at least to talk about that and release some of, you know, those kind of ideal images of our husbands and kind of coming to terms with that, which is invaluable.\
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[01:02:45] Dr Louise Lomas: So thank you so much for that.\
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[01:02:46] Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure. Thank you for everyone here.\
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[01:02:49] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Thank you for joining us. I hope you found it useful. Connect with me on Facebook and Instagram under Guide to Afterlife for more brief tips and resources. Visit guide to afterlife.com to send me your questions and to take part in the grief MOT, your free first aid program for grief. See you next Tuesday for yet another stimulating conversation.\
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A Season 2 Episode 2: Rollercoaster Marriage: Navigating Loss of a partner with Dr Louise Lomas, Educational and Child Psychologist

The Grief MOT

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