CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

[Cheerful theme music begins]

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Through our programming, we strive to amplify the voices of those who have historically been under-represented. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

[Theme music concludes]

Christine Brooks: It is so exciting to be here with you both, Larissa and Justine. Welcome.  We are going to just dive right in. I have to admit that as soon as I got a copy of this book, I devoured it. It is such important work, and I have so much gratitude to be in this conversation with you. And you all do work that's at the crossroads of professional practice, social justice, grief and pop culture, which might seem like unlikely combinations. But we're going to cover all of that. We're going to dive into each of them sort of in turn. But I really wanted to start out by just asking very directly, why grief and why now? 

Justine Mastine: Yeah. It's been a pretty tough few years to be a therapist or any kind of healer. 

Larissa Garski: Or a human being. 

Justine Mastine: Sure. Also a person. 

Larissa Garski: It's been a really hard time to be a person. 

Justine Mastine: Yeah. And during this hard time of percentage, as healers, we felt very unseen. And we take nothing away from folks doing frontline healthcare work. Absolutely not. But who are those folks going to talk to about the horrors that they were seeing? And that's their therapists. And we realized that we're all grieving. And collectively, we weren't really giving ourselves permission to grieve. In fact, the narrative was very much, clap for the healthcare workers, send them a pizza. Don't tell us you're sad, though. Don't tell us you're having a hard time. We just want to support you. And therapists, we're not actually even going to have you in the conversation. Larissa, what would you add to Why Grief? Why Now? 

Larissa Garski: It's so present, but unspoken. I'll keep it sort of focused here in the United States, because that's the country that I'm from and currently stand in. But I would say broad strokes. We don't create spaces for grief. We don't acknowledge grief. If you're lucky in a corporate setting, you get three whole days. If someone who's designated as a close family member dies, and then you are expected to carry on. And during a time of such profound uncertainty and pain and loss and death, during those few first precarious months of the pandemic, there still was not space that was made for grieving. I remember Justine and I talking about that in those early days and weeks, wondering if there would be more of an opening to have a broader national conversation. Sometimes there was shifts in movement, but nothing that fully came to the fore. And then, where credit is due, this book was very much Justine's and our editor's inspiration. And though Justine and I had been having conversations about the need to talk about grief, I wasn't so sure about diving into writing about grief. 

Christine Brooks: And you don't just write about grief, you write directly about death. We don't talk about death. And I would love to hear a little bit more unpack why that was so important and why you faced it directly. 

Justine Mastine: Yeah. Larissa and I have both been touched by death. I've lost both of my parents, a few beloved pets, assorted others, including, you know, you brought up that we talk a lot about pop culture. One of our areas of interest is the intersection between pop culture and psychology and how as humans we really attach to fandom characters and celebrities. And so many of our beloved characters have also died, which makes it more possible to talk about death. And still, as a culture, we don't want to talk about it. This is Eurocentric Western America we're talking about. And I very much wanted to talk about death because of the negative experiences I had when I was overseeing the death and send off of both of my parents. More so my mother than my father. I felt like going in to take care of those rituals, it was all very old ritual, which let me be clear, I love an old ritual. But these were rituals from the 1950s. And I didn't feel like they spoke to me. I didn't feel like they spoke to who my mother was. You know, the man who was helping me with this, the funeral director, was in a three-piece suit and led me down into the basement to look at caskets and urns. And the wallpaper was this, you know, vaguely racist Asian design. And I was sitting across from a newspaper clipping from the Nixon administration. And I felt like, is this still our narrative about death? Did we stop? Did we just decide this is what death looks like and just said, okay?

Christine Brooks: Right, right. And then you're having these considerations and writing this book in the midst of profound death. In so many ways and with so many people, that level of loss is just enormous and almost unfathomable in many ways. And so the antiquated ways and then confronting that we are all in this at the same time. And joyously, you do, right, from a perspective of pop culture, you do bring in the fact that we are multifaceted and live in multi-local places and multi-local universes in a lot of ways. And so how can that change how we confront this inevitability, confront these things that we live with and are our reality as human beings? You know, talk a little bit about that pop culture piece and why that shifts your perspective. You know, the way I kind of thought about it, the question that popped into my mind was what is your origin story in your superhero universes, whichever they may be, related to death and grief? Who are you in your pop culture fandom that was prepared to dive into a book like this? 

Justine Mastine: Well, Larissa, you want to start? 

Larissa Garski: Wow, there's a lot happening. 

Justine Mastine: We're getting into pop culture and death. 

Christine Brooks: That's your- Let's just dive right in. 

Larissa Garski: Yeah. Well, as a lead into this, one of the things that I want to name is that in going through the writing of this book, one of the things that became so clear and so stark is that death is part of life. We're very much interwoven and in much of our modern society, modern present day society, there is, we've created systems and structures that keep us apart from facing death because death is such a painful thing, both for the person who's actually dying and for the loved ones who feel that they're going to be left behind because in a very real way they are. And yet being present with death and the process of it brings us back to life. It reminds us of what's important. It creates through grief, this possibility for profound change, which is something that Justine and I really realized as well in writing this, that in fact, is one of the core ways that we ourselves as individuals have changed in our lives. And you do that by facing death and facing that pain. But then of course that returns us to that question of if death is so painful and so terrible and we've created all these structures to avoid it, how in the world do we face it? And I think for both Justine and I, well, I don't think I know one of the big ways that we answer that question is through the power of stories and narrative and pop culture. It gives us a container, a way to hold and be present with our grief without being overwhelmed by it. It also gives us, I think, the building blocks of how to start to make meaning from the death and that loss. 

Christine Brooks: What might that look like through a pop culture lens? Like give me an example of how you might Starship Therapize this. 

Larissa Garski: Grieving and death and loss. 

Christine Brooks: The grieving process. Right, right.

Justine Mastine: Yeah, well, I mean, I think this is a perfect place for me to talk about one of the few case examples because we really did try to keep this book very much focused on the healer and their experience as opposed to the client. Because there are already books about that and there's already plenty of conversation about that. I will circle back to my origin story, but I will jump into, I had a client who was actively dying, had a terminal cancer diagnosis, and this was someone who did not have a faith tradition. And so while they were doing quite well with some of the realities of the end of their life, one of the big questions, the big curiosities was what comes next? What's after? And this was someone who didn't have a faith tradition, so they didn't have a spiritual advisor to go talk to about these questions. And I, as therapist, became de facto spiritual advisor. And I actually feel like the work that we do is quite spiritual and that stories are a very spiritual experience. And what I got curious with the client about was what if you could create your own afterlife? If nothing is true, then anything is possible. Can we fanfic the afterlife? What do you want to come after? And they were very enamored of a certain story about a hobbit and a wizard and a fellowship. And we talked about, you know, could the afterlife look like sailing to the undying lands? Could that be what your next step is? And that offered this person a lot of comfort, believing that, okay, I get to decide what comes next. Because what matters is what's giving me comfort in this moment. And what's giving me comfort in this moment is believing that I can get on that ship with Frodo and Bilbo and the last of the elves. 

Christine Brooks: And not be alone. 

Justine Mastine: And not be alone. 

Christine Brooks: The companionship of that, and we'll touch on that more for sure. 

Justine Mastine: But my origin story, what I call my first fandom, was Twin Peaks. And I was a little bit young to be watching it when it aired. But that never stopped me from watching anything. 

Larissa Garski: A classic child of the 80s was Justine. 

Justine Mastine: That's right. I'm like, it's on television. And, you know, that story centers around a murder, a violent murder. But the story is about the people who are searching for answers around what happened. And the main character, for folks who don't know, is FBI agent Dale Cooper. And one of his lines, he's asked, “Where are we going?” And he said that he doesn't know, but he's sure it's somewhere both wonderful and strange. And in that moment, I felt like I was not aware I was a queer human yet. But I knew that I was strange. I had been told that. And if someone like Dale Cooper could believe that in my strangeness, I was also wonderful, then duality is possible. And just the doors of possibility open up for us. And that creates space for at this time in my life, being able to recognize the duality of life and death, that it can be both wonderful and strange. And that grief isn't bad, though we avoid it that way. Grief is hard. But as Larissa said, it's vital for transformation. The leaves have to fall, the caterpillar has to turn into sludge to become the butterfly. That's how we change. 

Larissa Garski: Yes. And I realized I didn't answer your question about my grieving origin story. So I'll do like a short vignette. I think I do mention this in the introduction of our book that I grew up with sled dogs. And one of the realities of having an interspecies family is that they will die well before you in most cases. And so I buried all but one of our 14 dogs. And that started from, oh gosh, I think it was like sixth grade onward. And so being a part of loving and losing and often nursing the dogs when they got ill, death was such a present part of my growing up. And I remember one of the ways that we got through it and really started to make meaning around it when I was a child was very much spearheaded by my parents. They would like bring in stories and sometimes music from, sometimes it was pop culture from like the movie Gladiator. Sometimes it was- 

Justine Mastine: Oh, that's beautiful music. 

Larissa Garski: Right? Justine, you'll love this because I don't know that I've ever told you this, but they were, my parents were huge Les Mis fans. 

Justine Mastine: I did not know that. 

Larissa Garski: Oh my God, they loved it. It was like, it was their most favorite thing. 

Justine Mastine: This is my most favorite moment. 

Larissa Garski: I don't usually like musicals and Justine is always like, oh my God, come on Larissa. So like, yes, this was one of the foundational family texts for how to navigate grief and loss. And now we're going to see if Larissa can tell this without crying. So we'll just see. But I remember one of the lines that my parents would play and replay on our old VHS player was at the very… 

Justine Mastine: Yeah. 

Christine Brooks: Yes. 

Larissa Garski: Was at the very end of the musical when the main character is dying and… And the line goes, “to love another person is to see the face of God.” And I remember as a young person hearing that line and thinking of the dog that was ill and thinking of how much I love them. And I thought, okay, that's the eternity here. That's the transcendence here. I love them and they're dying and they're going to be gone. But if they're the face of God, then they're also forever. And I didn't get that from any sort of ancient text of religion. I got that from a pop culture musical and clearly it changed my life. 

Justine Mastine: Oh, that's so beautiful. I didn't know you had that connection to Jean Valjean. 

Larissa Garski: Well, I love in these talks, Justine, to have a little surprise anecdote. 

Justine Mastine: I know it sparks a lot of joy for me. This is the best thing about doing interviews. We learn new stuff about each other. 

Larissa Garski: It's so true. 

Christine Brooks: It also indicates how deep your pop culture lexicon is, that you constantly are pulling from it. And that my sense is that you are able to meet clients in exactly where they may be or the reference points by having this knowledge of these touchstones that a lot of people do share. And I know that you, in your work, you are not just in your clinical offices. You are out doing conventions. You are part of the pop culture world, not just picking from it. You are living within it. So I imagine that your clients are often speaking a language that you can just join them in. Do you think that that impacts who comes to you for the work in some way? 

Justine Mastine: It definitely does for me. Larissa used to actually contract with me when she lived in Minneapolis. She now lives in Chicago. But my private practice is called Blue Box Counseling, which is a nod to Dr. Who. And my logo used to look very much like the TARDIS from Dr. Who. And the way I saw this was I grew up in a time when you needed to look for literal flags and literal windows. And I'm trying to present a nerd flag in the window saying, your stories are welcome here, which sometimes clinicians think, oh, that's silly or that's not important. And what I would say to that is if you talk to the people who speak the language of story and who find their spirituality through stories, if you were to talk to that human who has now long since passed away of cancer, whether Tolkien was important to him and whether it mattered that the therapist knew that story, you bet it mattered. And so I am very upfront about who I am and the work that I do. I used to try and hide this part of myself when I first, I call myself a recovering yoga teacher. When I first went through yoga teacher training, I tried to hide this part of myself because, you know, I should be wearing Lululemon and talking about how beautiful everyone's practice is and I shouldn't be talking about nerd stuff. And then I went to therapy school and I was like, also, I need to hide this part of myself and be very, you know, 

Larissa Garski: buttoned up and professional. 

Justine Mastine: Right. The equivalent of a beige sweater. That's who I need to be. And the feedback I got in both areas was you're not being authentic. I was like, well, no, of course not. You're asking me not to be because you're saying this is what a yoga teacher is and this is what a therapist is. And so a huge part of my work is deconstructing the narrative of what it means to be any kind of healer and how do we bring in that which is authentic to us. I created a narrative style of yoga that I called Yoga Quest that was based all around pop culture stories. And I based my entire therapy practice all around pop culture stories. So the folks I see, it's very rare for someone to find me who's like, I'm not really into stuff like that. It happens. But much more often people come to me and they're like, oh, finally, someone who's not going to pathologize the fact that I'm a furry or the fact that I LARP or the fact that the meaning of my life comes from video games. 

Christine Brooks: Right. And this ties so beautifully into the way that you created the narrative of the book, which as you mentioned earlier, you wrote this book for therapists, for healers. And I think it does translate beyond psychotherapy. People who are in human services, people who are working with other people, many of us, regardless of licensure, regardless of the office that we work in, have been taught to be a tabula rasa, to be the blank slate upon which things are projected, to be and also to contain our own grieving processes, to contain our own emotional lives. And of course, there is a huge conversation around disclosure that we'll keep in a small container over here for right now, because I want to open this up and shatter it a little bit tonight and talk about the humanity of the therapist, the humanity of the practitioner and the fact that there is a tension there, particularly in very intense social movements and intense moments of social unrest, social activation, social justice. And we are in the midst of that, along with the pandemic that we have experienced. I don't know that we can actually separate the two. 

Larissa Garski: No, I think you're right. They are so intertwined. 

Christine Brooks: As well as being a Gen X person myself, the people who are now coming into the practices, the people who would be labeled as millennials, would be labeled as Gen Z, would be labeled as digital natives, whatever sort of generational moniker we want to give them, these are individuals who have broken a lot of ground around the fact that mental health matters in the practitioner's life, not just in the client's life. And I feel like you're really touching on that. So what was your impulse or how do you want to talk about breaking through some of the stigma around being a therapist while grieving? 

Larissa Garski: You have to do it simultaneously. This idea that you need to, as a therapist, take all of your pain and put it in a box and then maybe you check on it in a couple of months, I've so been guilty of that. There's so much dramatic irony that I'm the one who's talking about this early in my career. That was my M.O. So much so that Justine and Patty, who was one of our main supervisors and mentors, had to do an intervention with me at one point because I was so divorced and separated from the very real physical and emotional pain that my job at the time was causing me. And through that and a couple other scenarios, it really became so clear to me that while of course it's not the case that I'm going to show up on a call and start weeping for sixty minutes, that's not the vibe. If I'm going to show up in an authentic way and be able to be present and be able to move with a client's deep grief, I've got to be acknowledging my own grieving. And when I say simultaneously, I do literally mean at the same time that I am going to be able to go inward and be with the parts of me that are oh so sad as I'm listening to my client and give them some reassurance simultaneous with giving that to my client. It is for me the most human and authentic way to be. 

Justine Mastine: Well, and part of what you're speaking to Larissa is we need to be people. We need to have permission to be entire human beings and human beings have a whole world of experience and emotion and life that historically our profession and that we could extrapolate this out to many healing professions that you know you show up and you do the job, but you're not a special snowflake. You're you know it's why I had the vision of what a therapist was because that had been presented to me that you should be a Tabula Rasa and I tried and I really sucked at it. At the time I thought it wasn't okay to be me you know I thought maybe Dale Cooper wasn't right about being both wonderful and strange in my job maybe I can be wonderful and strange in my life but if I want to be taken taken seriously as a healer well the I need to conform and I could not disagree more now and in fact when I teach when I mentor when I get in front of people like all of you part of what I want to bring is my authenticity as an invitation to yours. 

Larissa Garski: Exactly so beautifully said. 

Justine Mastine: Right and this might be your authentic or your authentic might look very different but can you bring you because that's what's healing it's not healing to walk into a beige room with a picture of a sailboat unless that's really meaningful. 

Larissa Garski: Well and even if it is you know one of the things that like I've really enjoyed discovering in my work as I've continued on is that unlike Justine I'm not so I don't work at a practice where the geek flag is so front-facing there's a little bit of like mystery there in terms of like finding me but then like once you do when you get in my office if it's my literal office you're going to see all of the amazing fandom art that I have up if it's my virtual and you're going to be like well look at this beige wall. Yet as soon as I start talking I'm weaving in all kinds of fandom and pop culture references and so right out of the gate as Justine said so beautifully I'm inviting and normalizing for my clients like hey story gets to be a part of the space. One of my favorite things as a therapist and doing this work has been sort of like teasing out with clients who present a little bit more beige facing teasing out within them the stories that are so meaningful and sometimes it's stories that I've like never watched before Justine loves this example and she probably knows where I'm going but like I never watched this show Suits in my life until I had a few folks cross my threshold right and they were like huge fans and I was like all right I'll sit down and I'll watch this and then I loved it and we would go back and forth and I found like interesting ways to bring those characters into session it added such richness and such play which I think is also another cornerstone and another answer to the question of how do we grieve when we do it with play. We have to have that lightness and brightness and joy to balance out the weight and the heaviness of sadness is how our systems titrate. 

Christine Brooks: And I come from a family that originated in the south of the United States so along with play I would like to throw in that sprinkle of dark humor as well you know that sort of the gallows humor if you will that I think sometimes also we get so afraid we get so primed that making that joke or you know giggling in the pew by accident because somebody said something during the service that was just too much right that we we've created this stoicism that grief equals sad, grief equals miserable, grief equals nothingness and that will never end and in my own lived experience of grief it it doesn't feel like that at all it comes and it goes and sometimes it feels hilarious and that feels strange because no one taught me that that was okay and sometimes it feels miserable and giving permission to be in that space I think is critical too and one of the places where you know in your writing that I really saw this so clearly this balancing of the two but also not avoiding the pain while embracing the joy was when you were talking about social justice and how we grieve for the destruction that is happening in many many communities virtually all communities right now and that holding space for the social justice element as well and inviting that in and and saying this is a space to explore how devastating it may feel. Can you speak a little bit to where you both developed that ability to to hold larger social justice issues or how that plays into your processes as clinicians as practitioners educators activists supervisors the many hats that you wear? 

Justine Mastine: Yeah I I have too many hats uh probably but you know my my mom collected hats so that must be literal hats that must be you come by it honestly I do come by it honestly yes although she also collected watches and I don't know that that's helped me. 

Christine Brooks: 50 minute hour 

Justine Mastine: there it is there it is look at the time yeah 

Christine Brooks: tick tick tick 

Larissa Garski: mm-hmm 

Justine Mastine: yeah but I mean I can say I I don't know that this is where activism was born for me but or that language anyway but the idea of showing up for your community is something that has I have been steeped in uh my my father um was the mayor of the town where I grew up um and he was the mayor there for 16 years would have been 20 um if he hadn't passed away and he never considered himself a politician sometimes I use that language but he never would have used that language he said I'm a civil servant. And he always answered the phone when journalism students called because he had been a journalism major and worked in publishing for a long time and he was always giving of himself in that way to mentor to show up to really care about the community where he was planted and stayed um and cared very deeply about things that didn't really matter much to me at the time you know there something that's coming to my mind right now was there were some dividers being put up in a neighborhood that were gonna divert traffic it's like well but it's gonna break up the neighborhood and I was like well people just have to go around it was deeply meaningful to him and in that way he was doing his own kind of micro activism you know and by micro I don't mean small I mean person to person um and using his platform for what he felt was greater good I mean he he spoke out um and was doing civil commitment ceremonies before that was an okay thing to do and we had the um who are the Baptists that uh 

Christine Brooks: Westboro 

Justine Mastine: Westboro came to our door um and said you you need to stop that um and he was like no I'm not gonna stop that because this is something I believe is okay it needs to be okay and I'm gonna stand up for that and it's very funny to talk about this now not funny haha but I've never kind of conceptualized my dad as being an activist but as we're talking about it I think he was he was leveraging his power in the ways that he knew how um and in that way he modeled for me to stand up for what you believe in and to to pay attention to that which feels important to you. 

Christine Brooks: Larissa I know you bring this into your practice a lot as well um and you write about particularly how you bring it into supervision but I'd love your take on on how you live this. 

Larissa Garski: Um how I live this rather than how I got to living this. 

Christine Brooks: Ah why don't we start with got and we'll get to live. 

Larissa Garski: To live, beautiful. 

Christine Brooks: Yes. 

Larissa Garski: Um I think that I'll start with that sort of in the middle which is that Justine and I had some really incredible supervisors that we sought out um once we graduated from therapy school and one of those humans is Patty Halava who I referenced a bit earlier and Patty very much just in the way that she showed up and embodied embodied mindfulness and embodied questioning she very much was inviting every single supervision hour that Justine and I would have with her to question the status quo to be present and curious with what was coming up for you and to really take that idea of systems thinking that is so core to the practice of marriage and family therapy but to like zoom out and look at all different kinds of systems cultural, political, um societal, regional and because of that it just became very like normalized for Justine and I were like well this is just how you do it. I guess you're always looking at things systemically um and then when we started working together when I was contracting with Justine at her private practice we would do consultation with two of us peer to peer and that just really was the foundation to our conversations and it grew and grew and grew um this idea of questioning the status quo and questioning social constructs and we would talk like all the time the two of us in those early years how do we bring that into session verbalized to normalize is one of the things that Justine said all the time in those early days which speaks to a couple of things the main one I want to highlight is that if we don't name it in a therapy session our clients don't know that it's okay to name it and it's about acknowledging and giving choice right both in the therapy room and if you're the supervisor during the supervision hour um it's not to say that like when the protests were going on after the murder of Mr. George Floyd I didn't talk about that in every single supervision or therapy session but I did in almost everything single therapy session and supervision session check in and give the option so that one there was choice and two it was really clear to whoever was sitting across from me that this was a space where we could acknowledge this

Justine Mastine: It's both welcome and important 

Larissa Garski: That's right that's right 

Christine Brooks: And in your writing you you give attention to your own locations of identity you don't write from an objective space or a space where the self is put in a container over here it's very much about recognizing that you come from very particular places and are perceived in very particular ways through presentation and as you said you know the the naming to claim it is really critical because then it opens up the opportunity that people can know you as you know yourself um maybe the invisible locations of identity are made more apparent or the visible are named in very particular ways so that people can also be in the conversation with you and the and in the multiplicity of you 

Larissa Garski: Really beautifully said it's making me it's reminding me that that seed for me was planted years ago in one of my first courses as an undergraduate in college by um of all people Dr. Timothy Brennan he was teaching class in the newspaper and he thought that it was complete and utter nonsense this idea of unbiased journalism he would like stand in front of the class and be like that's nobody's unbiased ever he's like I don't want anybody to be unbiased I want to know what's influencing at you I want to know what makes you interested in a particular kind of story and that really stuck with me and very much started to blossom when I started to get training as a clinician um this idea of why in the world should I be unbiased there's no way that I am and so how can I be clear and authentic about who I am where I'm from what my biases are so that clients can start to do the same and they can also feel like they're making an authentic choice about whether or not they want to work with me 

Justine Mastine: yes informed consent right like I consider all of this part of my informed consent this is the human you are agreeing to tell your deepest darkest secrets to. Is that cool?

Larissa Garski: Or do you have a problem with pac-man right oh no shade no shame 

Justine Mastine: Do we need to talk about it 

Christine Brooks: Right right and and that ties back to this this sort of core theme that we've been looking at which is how can we talk about grief if we're not meeting one another if we're not connected if we aren't recognizing the community of maybe a dyad in the consulting room or the fact that we don't leave the rest of our community at the door when we come into the work and how do we talk about death and grieving if we're leaving parts of ourselves and of course this is this is moderated by appropriate practice scope of practice all of those things but bringing ourselves into the room offers in my opinion that opportunity to say I can meet you in that sorrow 

Justine Mastine: Yes, and it offers we are able to offer something special from ourselves and also receive something back and what I'm getting at here I don't believe I shared this in the book so you all are getting something that's off book but when I was working with that client who was dying of cancer my mother was also dying of cancer. And this client didn't know that I didn't bring that in but I had the benefit of the experience of being the loved one whose parent was dying, to bring that lens into the room without ever naming it and I was able to offer something and be in grief together in in such a unique way and what that experience offered me was the ability to be with a dying parent and find out what their experience was because my mother was not able to express what was happening for her at that time and so in a way where no one is harmed we're able to show up for one another and sort of enact this this grieving together and I now at the time I probably wouldn't have labeled it this way but it was such a gift it was such a gift that synchronicity.

Larissa Garski: And one of the ways you unwrapped it is you got a lot of consultation outside of that therapy room

Justine Mastine: So much 

Christine Brooks: Right 

Justine Mastine: So much and I grieved you know my I was sharing office space with a dear friend of mine and I would just go into her office and say can I cry for a while? 

Christine Brooks: Right right and that is the community of the practitioners right there is not doing this work alone and not thinking we can do this work alone 

Justine Mastine: Right yeah because I was I was crying because I was sad that my client was dying I was crying because I was sad my mother was dying I was crying to and needed support and how amazing to have someone who was like yes come in my office come cry. 

Larissa Garski: Right because the other sort of medical metaphysical piece of it all is that when you have that grieving community as a clinician they are there with you emotionally in the therapy room so yes you're like physically alone usually it's just like you and the client or you and a couple other clients but when you're getting that consultation when you have that community you bring them with you into that space. 

Justine Mastine: Yeah you're feeling you're you're surrounded by support. 

Larissa Garski: That's right yeah. 

Christine Brooks: How do we get better at being grieving therapists grieving practitioners how do how do we improve this moving forward? 

Justine Mastine: Yeah I have a few answers they're mostly about structures and systems that I think could change significantly and I was quite open about this in the book so I'm quite open about it here too I think that the way that we train therapists the way that we train educators the way that we train supervisors is just as outdated as that very nice old man who led me down to the basement to show me the caskets and urns and we are not educating folks who live in the world that we live in which is to say talking about the realities of climate devastation are in fighting with one another the the general grief that we live with every day and so we're not coming in with those skills on the front end so I think there could be a big sea change there but until that happens micro activism person a person show up and be a person don't allow yourself to be squished down and I am not going to name this person but a professor of mine said that you know you should be sitting across from your client hands at your sides basically seated mountain pose no you know don't take any notes don't have anything between you and the client including a coffee table and just be open to receive and never touch them for any reason under any circumstances and I was like first of all where where are my clients putting their tea in their tissues I mean there's no coffee table what are we doing that's just logistically a nightmare but but also how am I showing up authentically as a human being if if that's how I'm showing up and so my invitation to fellow clinicians or to students or to whomever is the the greatest gift you can give is yourself and that means showing up as your entire self finding community sometimes it's really hard because a lot of people have been indoctrinated into this tabula rasa and really kept rolling with that and don't know what to do with folks like me and Larissa I'm especially I mean I think especially me I think Larissa you do a good job of like

Larissa Garski: I mean I have that Spock thing 

Justine Mastine: you do you have that Spock thing 

Larissa Garski: Really like lean into a lot of like logical analysis which I think can like really put people at ease so sort of like ease them into the transition into the wild and wondrous weird that's gonna be happening especially when I'm their supervisor right. 

Justine Mastine: But my big Kirk energy is just like exploding and I'm like just get in the ship and we're going you know? 

Larissa Garski: It's true 

Justine Mastine: Which I think can be a little overwhelming but that's my invitation and that's how I think we can be better is just inviting each other to be people and allowing each other to be people so if you're a supervisor let your supervisee be people if you're a teacher let your students be people. 

Larissa Garski: I would say we have a lot of I mean that's part of why we wrote the book right to have to help answer that question of how do we grieve and how do we how do we normalize it and embody it and practice it and teach it so I do think there's lots in the book in and around and related to that in terms of tips and tricks but I suppose the thing that I really want to highlight and put right next to literally everything Justine just said is we are very very good we being modern humans at avoiding grief oh yeah you're gonna tell that story we would write whole chapters Justine and I and then we look at each other at the end of the writing because we write on video together in a shared Google Doc and just you know be like that's great a job well done and then we'd sit there and long pause and I'd be like did we grieve did we sit with the sadness did we talk about the sadness 

Christine Brooks: and you're so busy producing that you weren't actually doing the work 

Larissa Garski: that's right we weren't actually doing the work so we had to go back and really be with it and so getting curious with the parts of you that help you avoid grief 

Christine Brooks: How does how does someone do that? 

Larissa Garski: I think my go-to is going to be internal family systems my friend which is a therapeutic modality well it's a modality both for therapists and for coaches that really it conceives of consciousness as being multifaceted so this idea that you are not singular you are made up of many many parts and so some of your parts help you avoid the things that cause you pain because there's fear there's profound fear that if we touch that thing that grieving thing will get lost in the ocean.

Christine Brooks: right that operating belief that if we start grieving it will never end or that the the horrible parts of it will never end 

Larissa Garski: Yes 

Christine Brooks: in my belief system my personal belief system grief doesn't actually end we learn how to be in process with it and we learn how to metabolize the extremities of it but the reality of the loss and the reality that we love something that is no longer here never disappears it never goes away it just lives out differently in different aspects of our life and over time 

Larissa Garski: and in some ways what a wonderful gift that it does because it means that what we lost is still here with us 

Christine Brooks: and really mattered 

Larissa Garski: that's right 

Justine Mastine: grief is just love persevering 

Christine Brooks: I’m gonna segue for a second because there's a couple of things that i want to make sure that we touch on that feels so rich and one of them is that we have not named and claimed ritual we talked about the antiquated rituals and how that we're done but what does ritual mean in this pop culture contemporary starship enterprise reading process what's that about?

Justine Mastine: Yeah the beautiful thing is we get to make it we get to create ritual or take and adapt ritual you know like like my client who said i, i want to do my afterlife on the on the undying lands like that i think part of that ritual was our, our work together was was writing that story it was weaving that narrative. Like okay we are telling your death tale we are telling the tale of your afterlife and there there are so many ways to do ritual and i mean i i can speak for myself when i'm uh when i'm really missing my dad i watch the Lord of the Rings when i'm really missing my mom um i, i listen to Send in the Clowns um because that was her favorite song and it was playing when i was born and you all have now known me for about an hour and i think you can see that that really shaped my entire personality

Larissa Garski:  it's a very appropriate origin story so 

Christine Brooks: Soundtrack of our life 

Larissa Garski: Yes um i guess i'm just gonna like describe what i'm what i'm hearing you do justine which is you go to meaningful stories and you decide how to incorporate them in your active life it's not a meaningful story that is forced upon you or that necessarily comes from a long long family lineage it is one that speaks to you because of your uniqueness as a human being and thus you go to it and it offers you you know all of this different narrative richness and you figure out how do i bring it in to the sadness i'm feeling about my dad how do i bring this in to honor the sadness that i feel about my mom and not just the sadness the rich and varied experience i had with each of them 

Justine Mastine: Right well and it's it's about our relationship 

Larissa Garski: That's right 

Justine Mastine: it is emblematic of our relationship and my relationship with my parents like so many people's relationships with their loved ones was complicated 

Larissa Garski: Oh goodness yes 

Justine Mastine: so complicated and yes there's there's sadness but also you know there there's laughter when we talked about this earlier you know when you're carrying that ring to Mordor some funny stuff's gonna happen it's it's it's not all orcs and sadness you know sometimes Samwise Gamgee says something funny 

Larissa Garski: potatoes 

Christine Brooks: Right right 

Justine Mastine: potatoes yeah 

Christine Brooks: and we can celebrate in the ritual too yeah that the grief can be celebration as much as it can be sorrow 

Larissa Garski: that's right and it can also be an active way of feeling like i'm getting back in touch with this person or this being that i lost and in this way they're gone but also parts of them are here with me i'm honoring them i'm honoring this legacy i'm acknowledging the ways that they changed and shaped my life and i'm bringing that into the present and so life is beginning anew because i'm facing death if i don't face death then i i'm i'm shutting myself off and away from that which is so meaningful 

Christine Brooks: We talked a little bit when we were getting to know each other about um a meditation or a process that we might be able to close out our conversation with and justine i think you were going to leave that 

Justine Mastine: yes i would be very happy to, okay, um so folks at home you you are all autonomous human beings who get to decide what to do with your minds and bodies so if you would not care to join us in a meditation that is totally fine but if you would care to to join me this will be about five minutes find a comfortable spot whatever that means for you right now my eyes can be open or closed if you're going to keep your eyes open i invite you to shift your gaze away from your screen just to give those eyes a break and wherever you are take a nice deep breath in and let it go coming into this space being aware that for the next five minutes there's nowhere else you need to be and nothing else you need to be doing this time is just for you so give yourself permission to take those things that work and leave all the rest behind i'll be offering you some guidance in this meditation you're welcome to focus on the sound of my voice or allow my words to gently come in and out of your awareness naturally as they will you look around yourself and at first your surroundings seem like a desolate wilderness it feels as though you are a weary and lonesome traveler who has been beset on all sides by tribulations with nary a friend or companion in sight you reflect on the difficulties you've had in your own life and the collective strife that feels so close the past few years but just as it begins to feel as if all hope is lost you peer through the trees such a dark shade of green that they almost appear black and make out a dim spark of orange with cautious optimism you walk toward this flash of orange and with each step the spark grows brighter after a while your ears prick at the sound of laughter and human voices how long has it been since you've gathered with others in a felt sense of community oh look another arrival calls a voice from up ahead you step into a clearing with a blazing campfire in the center surrounded by many inviting faces as you stand awestruck and overwhelmed one of your kin hands you a steaming mug while another makes room around the fire welcome your friend says as you sit down in the circle and take in the faces of your fellows you greet each companion in kind and pause on their face for a moment you want to remember who is here at the campfire with you this community has been waiting for you you have all been through so much but now you are finally here joined together to share in the journey to come take a moment and consider what you want to share about both your trials and your triumphs take a moment and share what feels important to you at this time allow your fellows the chance to respond thank them for their presence and take one final look around the circle you want to remember each face and each message you want to remember this feeling and now it's time to take this feeling of community back with you into the ordinary world with this image in your mind and this feeling in your body start to make your way back to this virtual space that we're sharing together take as long as you need but when you're ready come back and rejoin us thank you 

Larissa Garski: Thank you justine 

Christine Brooks: Thank you so much it's such a beautiful example of the fact that we can do this in any moment we can remember in this way in any moment thank you. Thank you both so much and if you have any final thoughts or last you know last words that you'd like to offer is as your wisdom drop i invite you to do so now 

Justine Mastine: um i i really just so appreciate this conversation and thank you all so much for joining us um i i hope that the book speaks to you and you get a feeling of community as you're reading it and that if enough people read it and feel community maybe they'll look up from their book and and find the community that's around their proverbial campfire um and if is it okay to share where folks can be in touch with us 

Christine Brooks: Sure absolutely 

Justine Mastine: um so if you'd like to stay connected with us um best way is to follow us on instagram @grieving_therapist and from there you can access all kinds of info and um sometimes see me uh make reels where i'm talking in my car after i work out which is my primary self-care 

Larissa Garski: that's true very much as these days um i really want to genuinely thank everyone for their presence and their vulnerability this evening um for the space that we were already all able to make and create with one another and i suppose the final thing that i would want to say is i hope that this book is an invitation for others to take up space and for those who are and for and for folks to get curious about the space that they're in and the space that they're making and the space that maybe they're not making um because we are but two humans who had a voice and a perspective we are not the only voice we are not the only perspective and life is rich and wonderful when there's a community of voices and there is equal moments of speaking and listening 

Justine Mastine: Oh i love that and it makes me think of one final quote “The world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me” right that's right 

Larissa Garski: And on that note of musical theater thank you all 

Christine Brooks: We started with it we end with it it's a beautiful full circle just like life itself 

Larissa Garski: that's right 

Christine Brooks: thank you both so much it's been a real pleasure

Larissa Garski: thank you 

Justine Mastine: thank you 

Christine Brooks: My heart is full

[Uplifting theme music begins]

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, Nikki Roda, and Pele Shalev. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities. 

[Theme music concludes]