Grief is inevitable
I don't normally dive into non fiction, but occasionally there is a book that caches my eye and when I saw "Can Anyone Tell Me" I felt immediately drawn to it and had to audition. This book, written by Meghan Riordan Jarvis, dives into the world of grief from a neurological, psychological, and personal lens while offering intervention tools to help readers process difficult emotions.
I knew this wasn't going to be an easy topic to journey through, having experienced significant loss in my own life, but I felt up to the task because I'm passionate about talking about grief and I had the sense that this book was going to transform peoples lives and my own in the process.
Whether or not you have experienced significant loss, this is an important book for everyone to read in an effort for us all to become more "grief informed". Did you know that suddenly losing someone close to you can have the same affect on the brain as a concussion? When you have head trauma, your Doctor may write a note explaining that you could be experiencing concussion related symptoms up to a few months after the incident. And yet we are only granted 3 unpaid days of bereavement in this country and often find ourselves returning to work with the same expectations and workload as though nothing happened. We need to do better. For ourselves and each other.
After prepping the manuscript I felt mentally prepared and excited to take on this work but there were some unexpected discoveries in store for me once I got behind the mic. One thing I did not anticipate was for the recording dates to overlap with the 6 year anniversary of my father's death. As anyone who has walked this path knows, death anniversaries dredge up emotions and memories that feel unpredictable and hover just beneath the surface. Spending hours every day in the booth with this material felt, at times, like Meghan was leading my Dad and I down a rigorous hiking trail with all of my grief neatly tucked away in a backpack.
While recording, the contents of my pack never spilled out but the weight of its presence was consistently felt. One of the things Meghan emphasizes in this book is the mind-body connection. So it's no surprise that after my recording sessions I felt a little more drained than I normally do, noticed my thoughts wandering to past experiences, and my dreams became incredibly vivid. To some that may sound painful in a way that is unappealing, but grief is already painful and never really goes away. Why not make some sense of it? Narrating Meghan's book meant so much to me and I hope it makes others feel less alone.
Despite how incredibly personal grief can be, every single one of us will go through it at some point in our lives and there are people doing incredible work out there to make the adjustment to life after loss a little bit more manageable.
