When Someone You Love Dies,There Is No Such Thing as Moving On | Kelley Lynn | TEDxAdelphiUniversity

Transcriber: Asmaa Sheikh Warak Reviewer: Eunice Tan Widower and best-selling author C.S. Lewis said in the first line of his brilliant book "A Grief Observed": "No one ever told me that grief was so much like fear." It's a powerful statement: fear. But fear of what? The fear of losing oneself. The fear of growing old alone. The fear that this intense pain will never stop. The fear of forgetting the sound of your voice or your laugh or that others will forget you, that your life may not have mattered. Grief makes you feel isolated, alone, terrified, damaged, and afraid of absolutely every

thing

.

On October 27, 2006, at the age of 35, I married my best friend, Don Shepherd. Four years and nine months later, my beautiful, healthy, active husband left for work one morning and never came home. They found him collapsed on the floor: a massive heart attack. No symptoms, no warnings, no goodbyes: just here for a minute and then, boom, he's gone. In the last five years since my husband's death, I have made friends and met many other widowed people. A few months ago, a dear widowed friend of mine proposed a challenge to me. He said, "Kelly, I want you to change the world." "That's all?" I told him. "I'll do that right after my morning cup of coffee." But

when

I stopped to think about that concept, one of my favorite quotes came to mind: "Change your mind and change the world." In other words, the way people see or perceive an idea has to change so that every

thing

around that idea changes as well.

So today I'm going to tell the truth about grief and then wait for that truth to become contagious. Any widow or anyone who has lost a

love

d one will tell you about the well-meaning but sometimes insensitive comments that come from those on the outside. "It was God's plan." "Everything happens for a reason." There are many more, but these are some of the "greatest hits". (Laughs) Now, the justification for these comments is always the same: they don't know what to say. I feel like it's time to change the conversation from "They don't know what to say" to "Well, then let's teach them." As the great Maya Angelou once said, "When you know better, you do better." So let's focus on the most insensitive comment of all time and the one I think is the most damaging: "You have to move on.

Get over it! Move on with your life." Let me say this as simply as possible:

when

it comes to the death of a

love

d one, there is no

such

thing as

moving

on. Is a lie. It's a made-up concept created by people who are too uncomfortable with death, sadness, and pain. But here's the thing: it's not your fault. They only repeat what they have been familiar with over the years, what society has taught them over and over again. “You need to move on” is a phrase born from centuries of ignorance and fear because pain is an awful lot like fear.

Now, the “move on” mentality starts very early, is constant, and never really ends. Within minutes of my husband's sudden death, I was attacked with questions: "Will you donate his organs today?" "Do you want cremation or a coffin with that?" You know, "When can

someone

stop by your apartment and pick up some of their items?" Now, at that time, people told me that these decisions were for my benefit, that they would help me "let go", "leave all this behind." At my husband's funeral, a complete stranger came up to me, stood next to his coffin, and said, "You're grieving today.

Go out tomorrow and find a new man!" (Laughs) Seriously, tomorrow? It seems a little early! (Laughter) A relative of yours made this proposal to a widowed friend of mine: "For every photograph you take off your nightstand, of you and your wife, I will give you 50 dollars." A widow goes to the cemetery all the time to visit her husband and she keeps the lawn chair in the back of her car so she can sit with him next to her grave. One day, she goes out to her car and notices that her car seat is gone. Her friends, thinking they were helping, said, "We took your chair.

We don't think you should go there again. It's unhealthy." Another friend's priest told her after her brother died in a skiing accident: "Stop talking about him; you should let him rest in peace." Another friend: father - two children. When she filled out a proper field trip form, the school principal told her, "Your other child has died, so now you only have one child." These heartbreaking stories are from real people, and this is the type of treatment they face every day. Re

moving

someone

's connection to a loved one who has died: what is the point of that? What kind of message are we sending?

That the people we love are replaceable? That the love you have for your daughter, your mother, your brother, your best friend has an expiration date? That his life didn't really matter? When someone you love

dies

and you're told over and over again to "move on," something inside you breaks. And when that happens, you no longer have much desire to live. You ask yourself, "Hey, why should I stay when I can't keep loving the person I miss?" Then you start isolating yourself; you keep it to yourself. Your world is getting smaller and smaller. You disappear. My friend who was offered money to get rid of photographs of him and his wife?

He no longer talks about his wife with anyone. He says it's just not worth it and that he's tired of being silenced. The widow whose lawn chair was taken from her? She still goes to the cemetery. But now she does it secretly. She doesn't tell anyone because she is tired of being judged for loving her husband who died. The woman who was told by her priest to stop talking about his brother? She did. She also stopped going to church (Laughter) and her faith has suffered a lot because of that. The father who was told, "You only have one son now," was recently asked by his six-year-old son, "Dad, if I die like my brother did, does that mean I'm no longer your son?" This is not the way to honor love, to honor those we love who have died.

You can't leave love: love is the only thing that never

dies

. So if there is no

such

thing as moving forward, what am I proposing? What is the message that we need to make contagious in the hearts and minds of people, the message that will change people's minds and in turn change the world? Well, here's the truth: love grows more love. All good things are born from love. So what if instead of telling someone, "Hey, stop talking about your brother," we said, "Tell me more about your brother who died"? What if instead of trying to fix people, we sat with them inside their pain and let them tell us what comes next?

What if we got rid of the phrase "move on" and instead started moving forward and overcoming our losses? Imagine what could happen. Have a look. This is Ethan. At her 20-week ultrasound, she was diagnosed with congenital heart disease or developing coronary artery disease. He wasn't supposed to make it to birth. Instead, Ethan lived seven short years of life and, in that time, he underwent some of the most innovative heart surgeries known to date. When Ethan died, his parents, Jessica and Eric, took their undying love for him and created hope: The Ethan M. Lindberg Foundation offers grants, housing, support, and even music therapy to families living with CHD.

Because they did not "move on" or "get over" his child, his life is now a legacy, and countless families and people are affected by his life in the future, forever. This is Felipe Hernandez. Philip was a wonderful husband, father and great man. His life ended instantly when he was hit by a car while riding his bicycle. That's Michele, Phil's wife. She had no plans to become a widow at the age of 35. After Phil's sudden death, Michele didn't know what to do and she couldn't find the support in the community that she so desperately needed. So she built it.

Michele created Soaring Spirits International, a nonprofit organization that connects widows around the world. Her most popular program, Camp Widow, is a three-day event offering workshops, presentations and social gatherings for widowed men and women of all ages. If Michele had listened to the countless people who told her to "let go" of her love for Phil and "get over it," her life would have continued down the path of isolation and loneliness. Instead, her foundation has served more than 3 million widows around the world and counting, all because she made the decision to live and share Phil's life. On the right is Michael.

Michael is Michele's husband today. She knows that just because Michele found love with him doesn't mean she stopped loving Phil, nor does it mean that the pain of losing Phil has magically gone away. He knows that the heart expands and that Michele's love for Phil is part of what makes her the great woman he loves today. Michael not only supports this, he is a part of it: Michael is Camp Widow's photographer. He knows Shelby. Shelby was only seven years old when her mother, Megan, died of cystic fibrosis. Shelby's father, Mike, met Sarah at Camp Widow in Tampa, Florida.

Sarah was there because her fiancé, Drew, died in a helicopter crash. Drew's parents made the decision to continue loving Sarah as an extension of their love for her son. Megan's parents have decided to do the same and continue loving Mike and Shelby. Now, Shelby knows that Sarah is not her mother, but she is a mother figure, and the two have formed a truly special bond. You see, Sarah was about Shelby's age when she lost her own mother. So every time the two of them are close, her heart heals a little more. Let's go back to this image on the left: under the Christmas tree.

It's about two weeks until Christmas. Somebody knocks the door. This giant box arrives. Inside, present after present after present from Drew's entire family: his grandparents, his parents, his aunts and uncles, all of them for Shelby, Mike and Sarah. This nine-year-old girl who didn't have enough time on this earth with her own mother is now giddy with joy as she opens multiple gifts from Drew's family, a man she has never met but whose life and death now explode in an avalanche. of love right on the floor of your living room. If even one person in this scenario made a different decision, this beautiful image would not exist and all of these people would live much smaller lives.

Instead, all their lives became bigger and broader. More love. The love that Mike and Sarah have for each other does not diminish or eliminate the love that Sarah will always have for Drew and that Mike will always have for Megan. In fact, he multiplies it, honors it. Love makes love grow. What about me? What have I done with the undying love I will always have for my husband, Don? Well, I'm happy to tell you that I am a speaker at Camp Widow, where I have been giving my comedy presentation about life and loss since 2013. I started a campaign called "Pay It Forward For Don Shepherd Day", where I ask people at all parts that do acts of kindness in their honor and then I post them on my blog.

Now, over the years, hundreds of people have participated in these acts of kindness and many of them don't even know me or my husband. I'm writing a book about our forever love story and my subsequent story. And today I am here with all of you, giving this very personal and important message to the universe. My husband's heart may have stopped beating on July 13, 2011, but he lives every day because it is my mission to make sure of it. Great things can happen when we continue to tell the stories of those we have lost, who have died. And it doesn't have to be on such a large scale.

Each of us can be the person who changes someone else's message about grief, love, and loss. This is how change happens: one person, one mind at a time. Every single one of us in this room and everyone watching this online and me, guess what? We are all gonna die. (Laughs) Not now, so don't panic; Hopefully, it's not now. But we are... we are all going to die at some point. We have no choice in the matter. We have no choice in the matter. But guess that? We have the choice of how to talk about those who have died and the language we use.

So let me ask you this: When you die, do you want to be forgotten? Do you want people to tell your loved ones, "Hey, get over it. Get over it. Get over it. Get over it. Move on; stop talking about it." Or do you want the people who love you to use that love to create a life full of joy, purpose and meaning? Isn't that what you deserve? Isn't that what we all deserve? The question posed in the final song of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway hit, the brilliant musical "Hamilton," is this: "When my time is up, have I done enough?

Will my story be told?" "Will they tell theirs? Who?" Tell your story?" My wish for everyone here today, for each of us, is that when our time is up, the people who love us never move on; the people who love us tell our story. Because this is The truth: If we move on and let go and get rid of the people we love who have died, if we do that, guess what? They're really gone. They're gone; they're just gone forever. But if we tell the stories of others and if we use that love to create more love and multiply the worlds ofThe rest of us, if we can do it, then no one really dies.

Not really. Thank you so much. (Applause)