On Mourning & Mother/Daughter Relationships

Transcript00:00:05 Joanna Lindenbaum

I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach ritualist and all around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change and results with their clients. I created the coaching.00:00:20 Joanna Lindenbaum

Revolution podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips and advice as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior and.00:00:29 Joanna Lindenbaum

Of yourself so that you can do even better client work and group work. Grow your business organically.00:00:37 Joanna Lindenbaum

And know that you’re making a real difference in the world. This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry so that more practitioners feel amazing.00:00:40Ohh.00:00:49 Joanna Lindenbaum

About what they do and so that more of our clients experience life changing shifts, let’s get started.00:01:03 Joanna Lindenbaum

Welcome back to the podcast. This is Joanna, and if you are one of our regular podcast listeners, you know that we took off last week. It was because I was hosting become a referral magnet every day of the week. And it was.00:01:22 Joanna Lindenbaum

Amazing, but we took the week off and I’m really excited to be back here with you and I’m a little nervous for today’s episode because what I want to share is really vulnerable today and it’s straight from my heart.00:01:43 Joanna Lindenbaum

And my depths and I just really want to make sure that I articulate it and express it.00:01:49 Joanna Lindenbaum

In the ways that I really want to, I’m going to be sharing kind of a mix of some personal updates with lessons for you on life and coaching and business and being with other humans in this incredible, beautiful mess that we call life.00:02:11 Joanna Lindenbaum

And the episode today is going to touch on lots of different things.00:02:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

We’re going to talk about grieving and grieving rituals and navigating through loss and a little bit about mother, daughter relationships and a lot more. So much of this, I think is.00:02:37 Joanna Lindenbaum

So intrinsic to our humanity, and whatever is intrinsic to our humanity is also intrinsic to our coaching and to who we are as practitioners and to what we bring and how we show up with our clients. So a lot of you.00:02:57 Joanna Lindenbaum

Probably no, I am still in my season of loss. It’s.00:03:05 Joanna Lindenbaum

Then just about four months since my mother passed away, the beginning of April, and I can’t. I just can’t even believe that so much time has gone by and you know, people ask me all the time. I want to be able to answer this question.00:03:25 Joanna Lindenbaum

Of how am I and how have I been? And I want to be able to answer it quickly, but the truth is that the answer to that question is complicated. It’s been complicated and it’s layered.00:03:39 Joanna Lindenbaum

There are many, many, many days with tears and sadness and deeply missing my mother. I listened to voice messages from her that I saved, just to feel more deeply connected.00:04:00 Joanna Lindenbaum

I try to remember what she looked like, what she sounded like, what she smelled like because.00:04:08 Joanna Lindenbaum

I’m just so worried that even though she’s so present in other ways, I’m worried that she’s fading.00:04:16 Joanna Lindenbaum

A little bit and.00:04:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

So I’m holding on as much as I can to my memories of her.00:04:23 Joanna Lindenbaum

Over these last months, I’ve also had moments of true and pure joy celebrating my mother and celebrating her life and her legacy.00:04:36 Joanna Lindenbaum

And who she was.00:04:39 Joanna Lindenbaum

Over these last months, I’ve also had.00:04:43 Joanna Lindenbaum

And been in a lot of honesty around who my mother could be for me and who she couldn’t or wasn’t able to be for me. And I’ve of course, had that honesty for many years.00:05:01 Joanna Lindenbaum

Now and you know, after somebody dies, sometimes there is this impulse to only look at, I don’t know what was favorable. We could call it or just to kind of, you know, whitewash it a little bit and it’s been really important for me.00:05:22 Joanna Lindenbaum

Both in the eulogy that I gave at her funeral and then with myself over these months, to be really honest.00:05:29 Joanna Lindenbaum

About the truth.00:05:30 Joanna Lindenbaum

The fullness of my relationship with my mother and who my mother was, and it was so many things, not one thing.00:05:39 Joanna Lindenbaum

These last number of months have also been hard in ways of holding space for my father, who is still incredibly bereaved. He’s he’s.00:05:54 Joanna Lindenbaum

Grieving really hard, and I’ve also had some worry that the time is going by too quickly. I don’t want it to get further and further away in time from when my mother was alive and in my life. In that way, every day, every moment feels precious.00:06:16 Joanna Lindenbaum

And over these last almost four months.00:06:22 Joanna Lindenbaum

There have been a lot of moments of not thinking about my mother.00:06:29 Joanna Lindenbaum

Like spans of time, hours and hours at a time.00:06:34 Joanna Lindenbaum

Of not thinking about my mother and.00:06:39 Joanna Lindenbaum

I know for some people, after loss, that’s not how it is. It’s like thinking about the loss and the the person that you’ve lost all day long 24/7. But that’s not me. I have been what I call a compartmentalize her.00:07:00 Joanna Lindenbaum

For a very long time and compartmentalizing, I see it as a skill, a really helpful, useful skill, and it’s one that I learned starting when I was very, very young, because my mother.00:07:21 Joanna Lindenbaum

Was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was 9, so starting from before 9 like starting from age 7 when she started getting sick.00:07:30 Joanna Lindenbaum

I had a sick mother and it just got more and more and more intense over the years and I learned pretty early on that I wasn’t going to be able to function in life, that I wasn’t going to be able to.00:07:51 Joanna Lindenbaum

Do what I set out to do in life that I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy and take pleasure in my life.00:08:03 Joanna Lindenbaum

If I were to think about my mother 24/7.00:08:12 Joanna Lindenbaum

Also through the years.00:08:14 Joanna Lindenbaum

She was in hospitals a lot. I spent.00:08:19 Joanna Lindenbaum

I don’t even know how many collective hours and days over the years in emergency rooms in ICU’s.00:08:29 Joanna Lindenbaum

In hospital rooms carrying for her being with her.00:08:35 Joanna Lindenbaum

And in those times as well, except, of course, when it was an acute emergency. But once I knew that things were leveling off.00:08:45 Joanna Lindenbaum

A little bit.00:08:46 Joanna Lindenbaum

I had to figure out how to compartmentalize how to keep on moving forward with my business, how to keep on being a parent.00:08:55 Joanna Lindenbaum

How to keep on taking care of myself?00:08:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

And I am just so grateful and thankful for this skill. It’s how I’ve been able to navigate through my business and through my life. All of these years carrying all of this with my mother.00:09:18 Joanna Lindenbaum

And.00:09:20 Joanna Lindenbaum

What I’ve really come to believe, especially over these last couple of years, is that compartmentalizing is actually an essential skill and an asset for when we’re working with clients, because stuff is going to come up in our lives.00:09:43 Joanna Lindenbaum

Stuff is going to come up during our day, and yet we still are going to show up for our clients now of course.00:09:52 Joanna Lindenbaum

I’m not talking about if you have a big emergency, of course you’re going to client, you’re going to cancel client sessions, and I’m not talking about invalidating yourself or denying your feelings. Not at all. But what I am talking about is having the ability.00:10:13 Joanna Lindenbaum

To compartmentalize, to be able, when appropriate, even when you’ve got a ton of mess going on in your life, to be able to put that aside outside of the box.00:10:28 Joanna Lindenbaum

And step into the container of your client work and of your client session and be fully present to your client right to the human in front of you that you are there to serve and support. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes.00:10:48 Joanna Lindenbaum

Share about what’s going on for me personally in my one-on-one sessions and in my groups I will, but the compartmentalization is that.00:10:57 Joanna Lindenbaum

Act in terms of my nervous system system in terms of my emotions, I am fully present with my client and regulated with my client, no matter what’s going on in my life.00:11:14 Joanna Lindenbaum

This is one of the things that we look at deeply in the sacred depths, transformational practitioner certification and training, because it is really a skill that we need.00:11:28 Joanna Lindenbaum

So.00:11:30 Joanna Lindenbaum

Anyway.00:11:32 Joanna Lindenbaum

There’s been.00:11:34 Joanna Lindenbaum

As I said, a lot of tears and sadness a lot, a lot of all of it. And in the last few months, there’s been this compartmentalizing and.00:11:48 Joanna Lindenbaum

I want to share is that I’ve had some guilt about that these last few months since my mother died, you know?00:11:57 Joanna Lindenbaum

I’ve had thoughts.00:11:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

Go through my.00:11:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

Head of well, why aren’t I sad?00:12:05 Joanna Lindenbaum

Even more often than I am, why aren’t I thinking about my mother more? Is it because I don’t care enough about her? Is it because she’s really fading away and I I’ve just had so many feelings that have come up around that.00:12:25 Joanna Lindenbaum

And of course, none of those thoughts are true.00:12:32 Joanna Lindenbaum

I know that I know that I am and I was a very good daughter and.00:12:41 Joanna Lindenbaum

That the love and the bond and the relationship between me and my mother were so deep and that my care and devotion for her were so strong. And I also know that some of these feelings of guilt.00:13:01 Joanna Lindenbaum

About compartmentalization in the wake of my mother’s death.00:13:07 Joanna Lindenbaum

They’re actually really poignant indicators of some of my complicated relationship with my mother when she was alive, because in true Jewish mother form.00:13:23 Joanna Lindenbaum

My mother, for as much as she loved, and for as amazing as she.00:13:29 Joanna Lindenbaum

Was she was also incredibly skilled at guilting others.00:13:37 Joanna Lindenbaum

She had this.00:13:38 Joanna Lindenbaum

Skill down. It was an art for her and my mother. She required a lot.00:13:48 Joanna Lindenbaum

And she had high expectations.00:13:53 Joanna Lindenbaum

And my mother wanted a lot from me and from our relationship, and honestly, more than I could often give to her. And because of all of this, even though the love between the both of us was so strong and so clear.00:14:13 Joanna Lindenbaum

And so true.00:14:16 Joanna Lindenbaum

It’s also true that my mother often felt that I didn’t care for her as much as she needed me to, and this.00:14:25 Joanna Lindenbaum

You know this still.00:14:27 Joanna Lindenbaum

Breaks my heart to this day that my mother felt a little neglected sometimes.00:14:37 Joanna Lindenbaum

I always just wanted so deeply.00:14:41 Joanna Lindenbaum

For her to not only know how much I loved her, which she did, but.00:14:45 Joanna Lindenbaum

For her to really.00:14:46 Joanna Lindenbaum

Really know how much I was there for her.00:14:49 Joanna Lindenbaum

And you know, Mother, daughter relationships, they can be so complicated. Right. I think that mother daughter relationships are some of the most complicated types of relationships out there. Sometimes some of the most beautiful relationships, the most loving, the most.00:15:10 Joanna Lindenbaum

Life giving and meaningful and also complicated.00:15:15 Joanna Lindenbaum

For a lot of us.00:15:16Yes.00:15:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

And I won’t on this podcast episode get into all of the details and nuances and twists and turns of my epic relationship with my mother because we’d be here for hours and hours and actually, over the last few years, I’ve written a memoir about this.00:15:37 Joanna Lindenbaum

Hopefully one day I’ll put it out there into the world, but for now I want to share this piece.00:15:45 Joanna Lindenbaum

My mother had.00:15:47 Joanna Lindenbaum

Some trouble and when I say some trouble, I mean a lot of trouble. My mother had trouble with me. Individuating.00:15:57 Joanna Lindenbaum

And becoming my own person.00:16:00 Joanna Lindenbaum

And one of the ways that she always really showed her love.00:16:11 Joanna Lindenbaum

Was by being in constant contact with me. In other words, she wanted to talk every single day, sometimes more than once a day, for her part of loving the part of knowing that the relationship was really, really strong.00:16:33 Joanna Lindenbaum

Was being able to be in a lot of contact and know that she was in the center of things and.00:16:48 Joanna Lindenbaum

I share this.00:16:50 Joanna Lindenbaum

A little bit because when it comes to coaching and when we’re with our client.00:16:58 Joanna Lindenbaum

We want to really understand what our histories are in terms of being attached to others, relationships and what loving relationships looked like with others, because we want to make sure that we don’t bring.00:17:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

Those misaligned patterns, those misaligned beliefs, those misaligned energetics into our client work and into our client containers. We don’t want to bring any of those wounds in. And one of the things that.00:17:33 Joanna Lindenbaum

One of the many, many things I share in sacred depths just around my own personal journey with client containers and energetics is the first few years that I worked with clients. I was almost desperate to make sure.00:17:53 Joanna Lindenbaum

That we would be in touch.00:17:55 Joanna Lindenbaum

All the time, I would always check in, sometimes multiple times a week in between sessions. I would worry if I didn’t hear back from clients right away. I would worry that they weren’t really into.00:18:09 Joanna Lindenbaum

The.00:18:10 Joanna Lindenbaum

Work or that I hadn’t done a good enough job. All the things until.00:18:15 Joanna Lindenbaum

You know, a couple years in.00:18:19 Joanna Lindenbaum

I it all.00:18:20 Joanna Lindenbaum

It hit me. Oh my gosh, I’m bringing this pattern that I learned from my mother of being in constant contact and relationship.00:18:31 Joanna Lindenbaum

And in order to trust a relationship and in order to know that it’s working really well, I I’m bringing that pattern into my client containers. That is not going to work.00:18:44 Joanna Lindenbaum

Right. And I really at that time, did the inner work around the fears and the beliefs, so that.00:18:55 Joanna Lindenbaum

I could be with my client in sessions and check in with them when it was appropriate or be happy when they checked in with me in between sessions, but then I didn’t need that constant validation right that we’re OK, we’re OK there. OK, I’m doing.00:19:15 Joanna Lindenbaum

A good job.00:19:16 Joanna Lindenbaum

So I would.00:19:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

Really encourage you, we do deep work on this in sacred depths, but I would just encourage you, if you’re listening to the podcast.00:19:23 Joanna Lindenbaum

Right now to think about.00:19:25 Joanna Lindenbaum

Are you bringing your?00:19:29 Joanna Lindenbaum

Attachment styles and relationships that are maybe misaligned or beliefs or patterns or wounds from other relationships into your client coaching relationships, and if so.00:19:44 Joanna Lindenbaum

Do the work to unwind that. Let’s throw too much shade on my mother’s way of being in constant contact. And So what? I will also say is that.00:19:57 Joanna Lindenbaum

Even though it was misaligned, it didn’t always work and it shouldn’t be in. In coaching containers, it did also teach me some incredible lessons about devotion and being deeply.00:20:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

Devoted to those that I care about and.00:20:23 Joanna Lindenbaum

This has become one of my superpowers that I use in all of my relationships in all of my friendships and in my client relationships, and they do this, though without that clinging or need to be in constant contact.00:20:40 Joanna Lindenbaum

And I’ll just share a little bit more about mother and daughter relationships. Like I said, they’re always layered or often layered, at least for me and complicated and.00:20:56 Joanna Lindenbaum

Same goes for me as a mother.00:21:00 Joanna Lindenbaum

And I have two daughters. My regular listeners probably know this. My oldest one, penina is.00:21:09 Joanna Lindenbaum

Actually, today she turned 17. If you can believe it. Today is her birthday. The day that I’m recording and my younger daughter Elle is 11.00:21:22 Joanna Lindenbaum

And they are obviously both the centers of my universe completely, completely, completely. And because of everything that I had been through with my mother and because of all of the work I have done around it over the years, all of the self-awareness.00:21:43 Joanna Lindenbaum

You know all of it. I’m really hyper aware and intentional about how I show up as a mother and.00:21:53 Joanna Lindenbaum

I realized a number of years ago now about to make a bold statement. Just go with me here for a moment I realized a number of years ago that.00:22:07 Joanna Lindenbaum

Both for myself and from talking to so many mothers, whether they were friends or clients, that in one way or another, there is always just a little tad of narcissism embedded inside of motherhood.00:22:26 Joanna Lindenbaum

Just in the sense or in the impulse that we want so badly to be at the center of our kids universes that, as mothers, so many of us, we want to be their home base forever, right. We want to be Center for them.00:22:45 Joanna Lindenbaum

But of course, our jobs as mothers are to check that impulse.00:22:54 Joanna Lindenbaum

And to support our kids instead, to become their own people, separate from us, the goal is ultimately for us to not be the centers.00:23:08 Joanna Lindenbaum

Of their universe.00:23:10 Joanna Lindenbaum

Even if there’s heartbreak for us inside of that joy and heartbreak, right? Such bitter sweetness. And at least this is how I approach it with my own daughters. There is such joy in witnessing them grow up.00:23:25 Joanna Lindenbaum

And individual.00:23:27 Joanna Lindenbaum

And become their own people. And I really like to think that I have really helped facilitate that process for them deeply to become their own people. And there is also heartache in it.00:23:42 Joanna Lindenbaum

Too, it’s like.00:23:43 Joanna Lindenbaum

I want to just squeeze the both of them.00:23:46 Joanna Lindenbaum

All day long, keep them close. Always be their go to person. Their most important person, which of course I also don’t want to be because I know they need to keep on individuating and find their other go to people.00:24:05 Joanna Lindenbaum

So in the spirit of all of this, and by the way, I apologize if I’m a little disorganized in this episode today. It’s such a personal one, that kind of, you know, moving a little bit from topic to topic. But I hope that it’s valuable and meaningful for you anyway. In the spirit of.00:24:25 Joanna Lindenbaum

This tinge of motherhood narcissism mixed with this job of.00:24:31 Joanna Lindenbaum

Allowing our kids to be their own people, I wanted to read a poem that I wrote about five years ago, four or five years ago, when Pena was 12. I don’t claim to be a great poet, but this is one that.00:24:52 Joanna Lindenbaum

It was really meaningful for me and meaningful for a lot of people when I shared it with them, and so I wanted to share it with you today.00:24:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

Here it goes.00:25:02 Joanna Lindenbaum

I miss the days when you were a permanent fixture on my lap. Your Big Blue eyes. Too big still for your small face.00:25:14 Joanna Lindenbaum

Directed at me fully, without gazing beyond.00:25:21 Joanna Lindenbaum

We were both younger then at peace with the idea that our bubble was impervious to time, that I would always be the center of your world and you mine.00:25:36 Joanna Lindenbaum

My heart is exuberant. That your world has expanded exponentially, yet my body still aches for the feel of your sweaty, trusting hand in mine.00:25:52 Joanna Lindenbaum

You are of me, but do not belong to me.00:25:58 Joanna Lindenbaum

A spin off that is meant to have a storyline separate from the original.00:26:05 Joanna Lindenbaum

I promise to keep a candle lit in case you need to stop at home to to pretend for a moment that the bubble never popped.00:26:15 Joanna Lindenbaum

You are my destiny and I am.00:26:22 Joanna Lindenbaum

Just your history. Your wings are beautiful. You’re using them well. better than I ever did.00:26:34 Joanna Lindenbaum

I’m a little embarrassed just because it kind of makes me teary even to read it after all these years.00:26:42 Joanna Lindenbaum

Yes.00:26:44 Joanna Lindenbaum

Anyway to bring it all back to coaching and coaching skills, it takes big and deep inner work to unfurl beliefs like I need for my kids to keep me at the center of their lives. And no matter what kind of clients you work with or what goals or subject matter you work with them.00:27:03 Joanna Lindenbaum

On this is part of our work with them to hold them, to navigate those fears, to help them unfurl those unhelpful beliefs with wisdom.00:27:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

And grace. And to learn more helpful beliefs and to learn how to get regulated with the fears.00:27:26 Joanna Lindenbaum

And so that brings us to the last part of what I wanted to share with you today, which is a little bit more in detail about what my grieving process has been like over these last four months and some things that I’ve been doing and some practices that I’ve been doing.00:27:48 Joanna Lindenbaum

And.00:27:50 Joanna Lindenbaum

1st I want to say this and I’ve said this for many years and I’ve taught this in trainings.00:27:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

In our modern culture, especially our Western culture, if we’re in Western culture.00:28:07 Joanna Lindenbaum

We’ve really lost touch with being intimate with death.00:28:13 Joanna Lindenbaum

And the dying process and we’ve lost touch with greeting.00:28:18 Joanna Lindenbaum

We’ve kind of culture has removed us from all of it. You know it. It used to be that we were so much more intimate with the death process at almost everybody would die at home if they were sick.00:28:38 Joanna Lindenbaum

We don’t have in our culture great practices or rituals around grieving and mourning, and I really believe that this is all to our detriment because.00:28:55 Joanna Lindenbaum

Death is a part of life.00:29:00 Joanna Lindenbaum

We can’t have one without the other. When we distance ourselves so much from the dying process and from intentionally grieving.00:29:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

It can really hurt us. It can have us be even more scared of death than maybe we already are. It can have us lose out on opportunity to.00:29:34 Joanna Lindenbaum

Deeply hold our loved ones through their last days and moments. My mother died on Hospice care in her home, and those last week.00:29:48 Joanna Lindenbaum

I was there and my father was there and my sister was was there with her 24/7 and we held her through the process and while it was.00:29:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

So painful I’m.00:30:01 Joanna Lindenbaum

So, so glad that we did it, that we didn’t shy away, that we didn’t take her for a final hospital stint.00:30:10 Joanna Lindenbaum

To die there, you know, we were able to midwife that for her.00:30:16 Joanna Lindenbaum

And for ourselves, I believe that it’s a detriment to us to be so distanced from grieving rituals, because then we don’t grieve properly. Not that there’s any one way to grieve. I don’t mean that.00:30:35 Joanna Lindenbaum

At all but.00:30:38 Joanna Lindenbaum

What I mean is that when we kind of don’t lean in and don’t allow ourselves to have grieving processes.00:30:49 Joanna Lindenbaum

The sadness, the grief, the loss it it can really get stuck in our bodies. It can create other problems and maybe other anxieties or depression, all of that. So I I really believe that just culture as a whole, we’re not getting it right right now and we need more rituals.00:31:10 Joanna Lindenbaum

That around the greeting process.00:31:14 Joanna Lindenbaum

I teach one in my into the depths training, which is all about training on ritual and ceremony, and for many years I was a celebrant and I had the privilege of holding peoples and families through funerals and unveilings.00:31:33 Joanna Lindenbaum

And all of that.00:31:36 Joanna Lindenbaum

Anyway.00:31:38 Joanna Lindenbaum

I had been in some ways, anticipating my mother’s death for decades. Like I said earlier, she first got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was 9, and I’ve kept all of my Diaries and journals since I’ve been a little girl. I’ve I’ve kept a journal since I’ve been sick.00:31:58 Joanna Lindenbaum

And so.00:31:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

You have gone back and looked at my Diaries from around that time when my mother got diagnosed and even then.00:32:12 Joanna Lindenbaum

Even as a nine year old.00:32:14 Joanna Lindenbaum

I was concerned and semi obsessed with my mother dying and for all of the decades since then, I’m going to be 50 later this month. So that’s many decades for all of the decades since then.00:32:31 Joanna Lindenbaum

I always wondered how I would actually grieve when she did die.00:32:39 Joanna Lindenbaum

And.00:32:41 Joanna Lindenbaum

I always wondered how I would actually.00:32:45 Joanna Lindenbaum

Move through it.00:32:46 Joanna Lindenbaum

And.00:32:49 Joanna Lindenbaum

You know, I think I’m still early in my process about four months in. I think there’s still going to be. I know there’s still going to be many twists and turns.00:33:01 Joanna Lindenbaum

In the grieving and mourning process over this year and in the years to come, but I can share with you and I want to about what the process has been for me so far.00:33:16 Joanna Lindenbaum

In some ways, it’s been really unexpected. Like I’ve been grieving in ways that I hadn’t expected to grieve, and in other ways not. And so 1st and this is kind of the unexpected surprise ways and part.00:33:36 Joanna Lindenbaum

Share with you a little bit about this so.00:33:40 Joanna Lindenbaum

I am not a religious person per se, but that being said, I am spiritual for sure and I also really love tradition, but because I’m not religious.00:33:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

It’s been kind of surprising to me that I’ve actually really, really relied on a lot of the Jewish grieving traditions these last months.00:34:15 Joanna Lindenbaum

Jewish funeral rites and other morning and grieving rituals and in the Jewish tradition. One thing I’ll say is that they’re really, really rich and meaningful and very purposeful and very intentional.00:34:34 Joanna Lindenbaum

The funeral and mourning traditions and grieving traditions. They’re really geared towards supporting those who are left behind to be able to navigate the process and to navigate it.00:34:54 Joanna Lindenbaum

With meaning and with connection and.00:34:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

I feel really grateful for that, and so I’m going to share a couple of these pieces.00:35:09 Joanna Lindenbaum

Actually, I’m going to share sort of what’s been the biggest piece for me I have here in my notes to share all lots of different things, but I think I’m going to just get straight to the point with this one, so.00:35:26 Joanna Lindenbaum

In Jewish tradition, when a parent dies.00:35:34 Joanna Lindenbaum

You’re asked to say a prayer. The prayer is called the Kaddish for a full 11 months.00:35:45 Joanna Lindenbaum

After the parent dies and you’re supposed to say it every day.00:35:51 Joanna Lindenbaum

Really supposed to say it a couple times a day, every day for a full 11.00:35:56 Joanna Lindenbaum

That’s.00:35:57 Joanna Lindenbaum

And I will tell you.00:35:59 Joanna Lindenbaum

That never in a million years did I think that I would recite the Kaddish beyond at the funeral itself. And by the way, when me and my sister and my father.00:36:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

Did recite it at the graveside.00:36:21 Joanna Lindenbaum

As my mother was being lowered down into the ground, it it was very, very moving. One of the things that I think are distinctive about.00:36:34 Joanna Lindenbaum

Jewish funerals is that there is a closeness, A proximity to the death process and.00:36:44 Joanna Lindenbaum

Those that are at the burial site are meant to bury the dead so we don’t leave it for the cemetery workers. We pick the dirt up in our hands or with shovels, and we do kind of this last kindness.00:37:05 Joanna Lindenbaum

This last good deed that we can do for the person that has died and and we put the earth on top of them anyway.00:37:15 Joanna Lindenbaum

Back to kaddish.00:37:16 Joanna Lindenbaum

I never in a million years thought that after the the funeral that I would say cattish not my thing to really do prayers or to go to synagogue very often, although I do with my family, you know we do.00:37:34 Joanna Lindenbaum

Sometimes go Friday nights, but anyway.00:37:38 Joanna Lindenbaum

I out of nowhere.00:37:42 Joanna Lindenbaum

Felt cold.00:37:44 Joanna Lindenbaum

I didn’t think I would do this for the full 11 months. I just thought I would do it once I out of nowhere.00:37:51 Joanna Lindenbaum

I felt called.00:37:53 Joanna Lindenbaum

To do it.00:37:56 Joanna Lindenbaum

This was right after the seven days of.00:38:00 Joanna Lindenbaum

Shiva were over and I felt myself compelled to go to synagogue and to show up and to say the prayers. And I think when I first went.00:38:13 Joanna Lindenbaum

What compelled me, at least on the surface?00:38:17 Joanna Lindenbaum

Was that this Scottish, which, by the way means holy or sanctified, that this prayer, this kaddish?00:38:28 Joanna Lindenbaum

It was something that my mother had recited for her mother when her mother died and it was something that her mother for a year recited for her mother when her mother died and something that her mother recited for her mother and so on and so forth.00:38:47 Joanna Lindenbaum

Through the generations and.00:38:51 Joanna Lindenbaum

There was something, really.00:38:53 Joanna Lindenbaum

Special and meaningful about that to me.00:38:58 Joanna Lindenbaum

Also, I thought my mom would want me to say it for her. So those are the reasons that got me there.00:39:04 Joanna Lindenbaum

The first time, but I’ll tell you that’s not what has kept me going back these four months and I’ve been going back not every day the last four months, but a number of times every week, even though my life is so busy, even though I have two kids.00:39:25 Joanna Lindenbaum

In a busy business, we just got a dog like all the things.00:39:30 Joanna Lindenbaum

I still find myself going.00:39:35 Joanna Lindenbaum

And I’m going for a few reasons. Yes, because my mother said it for her mother. And so on and so forth.00:39:43 Joanna Lindenbaum

But I’m also going becau