Resilience Is in Your DNA with Dr. Lucy Hone

Psychologist Dr. Lucy Hone studies resilience, a topic that hit especially close to home when her 12-year old daughter Abi and two friends were killed in a car crash in 2014. She tells Sarah how her close knowledge of resilience informed her grieving, why humans are hardwired to cope, and what role her grief over Abi plays in her life now. Lucy also shares practical tips for anyone who is grieving from her first book, "Resilient Grieving," and previews her new book about living losses, called "How Will I Ever Get Through This?," which will be out in 2026.

For more information about Lucy Hone, please visit www.drlucyhone.com

Transcript:

Lucy: I think probably what I was astonished by is the fact that I don't think about her all the time now. I sometimes even feel guilty saying this. I think I can go a couple of weeks without thinking about her. I'm so sorry, Abi. I mean, what an admission, but you know, she's here in my heart, in my soul, in my bones, in my work, in our home, and in our lives.

Sarah: Welcome to Peaceful Exit. The podcast where we talk to creatives about death, dying grief, and also life. I'm Sarah Cavanaugh, and my guest today is psychologist Dr. Lucy Hone. She's the director and co-founder of the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing and Resilience. Lucy studies resilience, a topic that became deeply personal after her 12-year-old daughter Abi, and two friends were killed in a car crash in 2014. Lucy's known for her popular TED Talk, “Three Secrets of Resilient People,” as well as her book, “Resilient Grieving.” It's fabulous. Today she explains why resilience is rooted in our DNA, how her own grief about Abi has morphed over time and why if we want to have love in our lives, we have to learn to accept loss.

Sarah: Well, welcome to Peaceful Exit.

Lucy: Thank you so much, Sarah, for inviting me this morning. I am delighted to be here.

Sarah: Well, I understand you're in Christchurch and it's seven in the morning, so I'm really grateful that you got up early for us. As I was doing prep for this conversation, I realized that in 1988, I went bungee jumping in Queenstown. For me as a young person, I think that was the first time that my body realized it could die. Like it was such a visceral, sort of primal, like I could die jumping off this bridge. And I wonder what your first memory of death as a young person was.

Lucy: So I'm going to start with the fact that I too have done a bungee jump and I too had that visceral moment as you step out onto the platform of knowing that my entire body, every cell in it, was telling me not to do this. I think that's where I first realized, really physiologically felt the fight or flight and freeze response and thought, that's interesting. I had to override that to throw myself off to do that bungee jump. Um, Death. First experience of death, uh, would've been pet loss, but I, in truth, can't remember it. And then I lost my grandparents pretty early on and I didn't go to my grandpa's funeral because I was too young back in the day in Victorian England, because I'm English. So I have a very English upbringing with death. And then my mom died of cancer like you, Sarah, and she actually died around the millennium, and two things really happened then. I got pregnant with our middle child at the same time that she was diagnosed. And we went for her CAT scan and my 12 week baby scan within a day of each other. And she died six weeks before he was born. So it was really quick, and I had a 18 month old that I was looking after in and out of hospital, pregnant with Patty, traipsing around with Ed. And, um, it, yeah, it was really, really tough. And that was definitely my first experience of harrowing grief.

Sarah: My mother died five days before our youngest was born and I can completely relate to that. Let's talk about your fabulous book, “Resilient Grieving: How to Find Your Way Through Excruciating Devastating Loss.” I added the word, sorry. Uh, but it is excruciating. It's so readable and so practical, and I love people who can take very complex subjects and really translate them for everyone. And you also give us so many options for action without judgment, and that feels so life-giving when oftentimes we think of grief as a passive state — it's being done to us and we're suffering, And, and I talk a lot about grief, as you know, and I appreciate how much permission you give and it's helped me in the last week. I lost my brother, and it's still very fresh. But you're really just encouraging us to be honest, and I think our culture expects us to bounce back, you know, and, and we think that's resilient is, let's just, let's bounce back. You've, you've had a couple days, what's the problem? Right. But that's not how you write about it. Will you define, like, what resilience means to you?

Lucy: Thank you for your words about my book and here’s to your brother. What is your brother's name?

Sarah: Richard.

Lucy: Richard, I always like to say people's names out loud. [Sarah: Thank you] Um, here's to Richard. I've got goosebumps. It is the most amazing thing about this work is that it makes you feel love. So, I was a resilience researcher. I was towards the end of my Ph.D. when our daughter was killed in a car accident, and we can come back to that harrowing journey. But essentially, my work has always been in that field of resilience psychology. And what I know from resilience psychology — firstly, I know that resilience isn't bouncing back, and actually not everyone does know this, and even within the field of resilience, it is still very often defined as bouncing back. Not in my world, because you don't go back, and I don't know about you, Sarah, but I wasn't feeling very bouncy for about three years after Abi died. So I really take exception against the word bounce. I mean, it's just an absolutely appalling phrase to associate with acclimatizing and adapting to any type of potentially traumatic event. So let's get rid of the bounce. When you go through some major life transition, you don't go back. It shapes you. It changes who you are. I don't like to think of it as defining you because I think we can always keep redefining ourselves. But I really truly think that we are who we are because of what we have lived through. Your life is transformed. Literally, your whole operating system is transformed because you now understand that these terrible things can happen. So that knowledge underpinned my own operating model when Abi died. But beyond that, I also, oh, I knew some so important things when she died. I knew to have hope. I knew that while three quarters of people will go through a potentially traumatic event in their lifetime, the research shows that a very small proportion develop prolonged grief disorder, a very small proportion develop post-traumatic stress disorder, and actually a very big proportion of people, 60 percent, adapt and demonstrate resilience, and also around 60 percent experience growth from what they have gone through. So I guess as a researcher, I understood that in my bones that somehow we could get through this, and somehow most people do get through their grief using pretty ordinary processes. No grief is ever the same. Every relationship is different. Every circumstance is different. We all adapt and process these harrowing events in our life differently.

Sarah: So, I have three kids myself. I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child. Tell me about losing Abi and your dear friends, Ella and Sally.

Lucy: Yes, thank you. So, in truth, I don't feel the pain now. It's 11 years on and I occasionally bump into it. The other day on, I was doing Pilates and they had beautiful music on, and it was a song that really reminded me of Abi. And so I just stopped what I was doing and lay on the mat and had a good old cry. You know, I don't mind crying in public. She and Ella were 12-year-old bubbly girls who were at the start of their lives and had everything going for them. They had beautiful charmed lives. I can feel good about that. They were both born in England and grew up in Aotearoa in New Zealand. Lucky girls had a very outdoor life, and we live in a small, coastal village and they had the run of it, so a pretty charmed childhood. And Sally was a dear, dear friend of mine, English too. And yeah, so I can hardly remember it, Sarah, the actual, the acute bit that you are in now. I found myself recently thinking, I wonder if grief is like childbirth, in that you forget about how awful it is and one of these days when someone close to me dies again, I'm going to be really berating myself for being able to talk so objectively about it. But we're, you know, we're a long way down the track and our life has grown around her loss. I like to sometimes say her name last thing at night. I whisper her name before I go to sleep and she's everywhere in me. I've got a little A in my necklace here and she is the pink dot on my jacket. So I am her and she is me.

Sarah: One bit about your story I find amazing is. Your ability to bring her body home for four days. And this is very unusual in the United States. And I wonder, is New Zealand different about, do they embrace this practice? And I love what you said about there's a time when you're together with the body of a loved one, where you're ready to let it go.

Lucy: I, I feel absolutely blessed because we have lived here for the last two decades that I was able to do that. So the first time we brought a body home was my mom's body in England. And we did so because my sister Esther lived already in New Zealand. It was towards the end and she said, “We'll bring her body home, won't we?” And I said to her, “Seriously, are you baked?” I think that's what I said to her at the time. I just couldn't really believe, um, because it was absolutely the first time I'd ever heard of that. So we did, and it did take me, I think, three days to be brave enough to go into the room with her dead body. It really was a big thing for me. I was definitely very Victorian English about that, death-phobic. And I'm so glad I did because it was a transformational life moment for me. So I remember at Mum's funeral when her coffin came in, I remember smiling at it because it wasn't scary because I knew. You know, I'd been familiarized and desensitized to it in that aspect. And so when Abi died, that was a no-brainer for us. And it's indigenous practice here. So it is from the Te Maori world, the Maori world. Particularly in a circumstance of traumatic death, it is so good because of course your poor brain cannot fathom what's happened and needs to catch up. And of course that takes time. But I did feel that having her, we, I think we ended up having her at home for five days. So she was with us until we drove her down the hill to her school for the funeral, and all the children came, all her friends came and they all put things in the coffin and they read to her and they spent time with her. And it felt like the most normal thing to do, and I'm sure it has helped all of them, all this time to know that this is what death looked like. I don’t know why I knew, but instinctively that just gave me so much deep comfort to know that she was helping them, that we were helping them.

Sarah: That's so beautiful. So as I remember it, you rejected, immediately rejected, what experts told you after Abi died, that your family would be prime candidates for estrangement, divorce, mental illness. Is it because of your work, or how did you know instinctively that that would not apply to you?

Lucy: I remember thinking, looking through the literature where it said there were five stages of grief, and that these were the things that you could expect to happen to you — as you said at the beginning, this kind of passive prescription of grieving — and then at the same time it told me that grief is individual as your fingerprint. It doesn't take much of an academic researcher to go, “I'm sorry, but these two things cannot coexist.” There can't be five set stages and it be as individual as your fingerprint. And the individuality matched my own resilience psychology understanding that we all handle trauma and change differently. That you have to find your own recipe for resilience. And I like something about what you said earlier on, Sarah, is that I like to give people permission and I like to make it real. You know, I'm not doing toxic positivity here. I'm the first to say this is bloody awful, and not what you wanted and not what you asked for, not what you ever could imagine happening. But the truth is that somehow people get through these awful times.

Sarah: Yeah. I love what you say about most people are resilient, and you might assume that's not the case, but I love that the research shows that. What did Abi's death reveal to you about your own resilience, and how has it strengthened, changed, weakened? I mean, it's been 11 years, you say. So has it changed?

Lucy: I wrote this book, “Resilient Grieving” book, pretty soon afterwards. I finished my PhD, I was at the end of it when Abi died, so I obviously didn't work for six weeks or something. And then I found it really helpful to go back to work and just do a little bit. And then after that I wrote the book. So my grieving was very intertwined with my curiosity and research and writing of this book. And I, I would say now looking back on it, that having this kind of survivor instinct and having quite quickly developed feeling like I was on a mission, is very typical of people when they are operating out of a resilient mindset. When I wrote the book, I was really worried that I would be slammed for putting more pressure on the bereaved, and I'm thrilled to hear you and so many others say it doesn't do that. It just gives a companion guide and options to those people who do want to take an active role in their grieving. I'm a person who likes to focus my attention on what I can control and then work out ways of accepting all the awful stuff that we can't control. But the hardest thing that I was unprepared for was the vulnerability that came from that sudden death.

Sarah: I read your book as you offer an option or an opportunity for agency, but then you say, if it doesn't work for you, you know, be your own Guinea pig. As you said, I think that's why it doesn't come across as, this is, you know, it's no longer the five stages of grief, it's the cornucopia of options that you offer. And as you spoke about going back to work a little bit, it's actually why you and I are having this conversation because this is just a little bit of work I can do to start reentering the world. I couldn't function the first month, and I think now I'm thinner, but I'm actually feeling like I need to start having these conversations again. And I love what you say, “don't lose what you have to what you have lost.” That was a beautiful way of putting it. You write about being surprised by your healing. Why did it take you by surprise?

Lucy: I have been astonished over the decade at how much we have healed and I'm gonna cry now because if I think of our family, and my beautiful boys, our beautiful boys, we are a very different family. But my word, do we value each other. And that was what I was curious about at the beginning. You know, of all of our identities, for me, being a mum is my most precious and coveted one. And so, I was so curious to imagine how we would end up as a family and what impact, long long-term impact, it would have on us. And, uh, so it, it, it definitely, um, we are a different family, Obviously. I hated being four. It felt such a square-sided number for such a long time. I'm so used to the five and the, the kind of irregularity of that. But we have truly adapted, and I think probably what I was astonished by is the fact that I don't think about her all the time now. I sometimes even feel guilty saying this. I think I can go a couple of weeks without thinking about her. I'm so sorry, Abi. I mean, what an admission. But you know, she's here in my heart, in my soul, in my bones, in my work, in our home, and in our lives. We are different. Our life has grown around her loss, around that pain. It turns out you can learn to live and grieve at the same time. And when I did my TED Talk, which I think is the last line in my TED Talk, that just came out of me and now I think, oh it's so funny because that is oscillation theory.

Sarah: The oscillation theory really helps me. I think it helps open up space for the times when you feel vulnerable and you feel shattered, that you can just take the time you need to be shattered. And I've been feeling so supported by my team because I've just had to say, I can't do these conversations right now. I just, I can't function in that way, and especially with this subject matter. I can talk about grief, but I can't feel it at the same time, or I won't be able to talk to you at all. My throat will close and I won't be able to speak.

Lucy: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's what I always did was compartmentalize.

Sarah: So in your TED Talk, you share three strategies of resilient people. And you pick three, specifically acceptance, choosing what you can change and a question that's so key. Actually, I've been using it since I read your book. I love this question. So would you share what three you chose and why they sort of rose to the surface?

Lucy: The first I think is about expectation. Because the first one is essentially that suffering and struggle are part of life, that sadly tough times come to us all. And if you know that it prevents the “why me?” question. So it stops you from feeling singled out and discriminated against. So that's really important. Because it allows the self-compassion. It allows you to go, okay, everybody suffers. I'm not alone here. How am I going to get through this? What do I need to do to help me get through this tough time? So that's the first one. And then the second one, I think you're right, is completely about awareness. You want to get really selective over where you are focusing your attention. Become acutely aware of whether you are just getting sucked into that negativity bias or whether you can also focus it on what still matters, what you can change, what you've still got, what is helping you, and just shift that bias away from exclusively being stuck and consumed by all of our difficult, challenging, negative emotions, which of course are abundant when we are struggling through tough times. And then the third is this incredible question, and it comes from cognitive behavioral therapy. And it teaches you to ask yourself, is what I'm doing right now — the way I'm choosing to think, act or be — helping or harming me in my quest to get through this? And if you've been using it, you and I both know that what's so potent and amazing about it is — firstly, it puts you back in the driver's seat. But also you can apply it to everything, to the, you know, should I, should I have cream in my coffee? Should I have the fourth glass of wine? Should I go to the trial of the driver, in our case? Should we meet him afterwards for a restorative justice session? So it has saved me in the most profound moments of my life and in the everyday. So I think that it, it's the question, it's the thing I get most correspondence about, Sarah. I honestly get someone writing to me from

you write of disappointing relationships. We can't expect others to know instinctively how to help us, what to say, what to do, when to call, when to leave us alone. How can we adjust our expectations and not become too disappointed in loved ones who don't show up in ways we want or we need them?

Lucy: I think the main thing to understand is that, um, friends and family and colleagues and counselors — all of these people disappoint us in our grieving. That I'm talking from a research perspective here. In fact, what we do know is that our number one form of support, somewhere in the world on some platform or other about how it changed their life every week. It astonishes me the potency of it. So I'm glad that you are using it too.

Sarah: It's a beautiful question. And I think, you know, sometimes going back to work too soon is harmful or staying away too long.

Lucy: It allows us to find our way, and that, as I've said, is what all of my work is about, is helping people find their way through whatever they are facing to better days ahead. And so it literally, by asking that question, you can go, should I stay at work? Oh yeah, this is good. Should I stay at work? No, I need to go home. So it is deeply personal and I think it does connect you to your values and it provides action. So it's got that kind of acceptance and commitment therapy underpinning.

Sarah: You have a wonderful chapter too on positive emotions, and you talk about needing hope. How can people in those early stages when it's so hard, how do you identify hope?

Lucy: Most people think that their grief is going to consume them, that there's no way through it, and everybody seems to think they need counseling. And so I think my job has become to lay down the evidence for people and demonstrate to them that resilience is in your DNA, that actually we are hardwired to cope. For myself, it was thinking about the fact that even losing a child, even being that mother, that's baked into our DNA from a sociological point of view. We have done that since the beginning of time. And so my work is about giving people hope, laying down the facts and evidence to show them that they can get through it, that other people have got through it. And we are just launching The Healing Room, which is a narrative writers community. That's me creating hope, gathering people together so that they can share all the myriad of ways in which they are slowly adapting to their loss and coming to terms with their loss. So yeah, it's just believing the science for me is how I try and be a hope monger.

Sarah: I like that Hope monger. Say more about the healing room.

Lucy: There's something about a community that makes people feel less alone, that validates their own messy experience. There's also an amazing thing about being in an online global community that widens that perspective. So like, wow, all humans feel this awful thing that I'm feeling. But also by being online, there's something less blatant than being right in a room in group therapy with other people. So you've just got that screen between you and them, which is kind of protective and gentle, and so you are once removed from other people's pain, but you are bearing witness. We've just opened up expressions of interest last week and we've been inundated. So by the time this goes live and people are listening, it will be up and running. So if you go to drlucyhone.com, that's my website, sign up for my newsletter, but you'll find the healing room there.

Sarah: Say a little bit about rituals because your interpretation of rituals is not from a religious perspective. It's really about personal things we do to remember our loved one. Are there some that help you, that you have sort of integrated into your life?

Lucy: Yeah, I think firstly it's really important for everyone to know that rituals are absolutely vital for our mental health throughout the lifespan, whether you are grieving or not. So that making your coffee, standing in the shower, saying hello to the mailman, whatever it is, these things become islands of certainty in a very uncertain world. And in my new book — we should talk briefly about that at some point.

Sarah: Yes, go for it.

Lucy: My new book is called, “How Will I Ever Get Through This?” It's about living losses, the grief associated with all of those other life shattering losses that we go through, whether it is divorce, or dementia, or infertility or job loss. And in that I have this beautiful reflection activity called Islands of Certainty. So this is about having the practices, possessions, people, and places that enable you to find a little bit of stability in this very unfamiliar, chaotic territory that is grieving. One of the things I do that I really love because it connects me to Sally actually, is I gather foliage when I'm walking in the park and walking the dogs in the evening. She was a florist and she was a gatherer. So that's my connection with her. And I bake my mom's almond cake and think of her and do so many little things with Abi. We have these incredible dots in our lives that were on her coffin and now are scattered throughout our lives. And I think that's probably why the publishers put them on the front cover of my new book. And so the importance of rituals is that. They are these small, practical, maybe private, maybe infrequent or maybe every day rituals that we do that connect us to those that we have lost so that we still feel connected with them and that they are still part of our world.

Sarah: It feels adjacent to mindfulness too. You know, it's sort of a moment of mindfulness about that person that you love. What is your definition of mindfulness and how it relates to grief and resilience?

Lucy: Yeah, so mindfulness is self-awareness in being fully present in any given moment without judgment. And I think I didn't understand the “without judgment” bit until Abi died, and that is — now I equate that to the not beating yourself up because you are crying while buying your petrol or whatever you're doing. And so it is about accepting. We somehow just have to accept all of everything that life will throw at us. And I know that is hard and I have deep compassion for anyone who is going through their worst moment right now. And I don't say try to accept all of it in a flippant way, but what life has taught me, what Abi has taught me is that is what living a full life is about. That is what loving is about. That is what attachments are about, that if we're going to love and attach, if we're gonna love deeply, then we have to accept and acknowledge that we are going to grieve. Because there are going to be losses too. And I don't want to live in a world where I don't have love, so I have to accept loss.

Sarah: I love the section on strengths, and one of the things you give us is a beautiful pathway to figure out, like, what are our own strengths and how do we tap into those and recognize that we are all resilient in some way?

Lucy: It's such important work this, isn't it? And when I run workshops and I ask people to put their hand up, if they know their strengths, nobody puts their hands up. We're so reticent to acknowledge that we have strengths. And yet if I asked you what your weaknesses are, we're all so good at listing them immediately. And yet actually, I'm a firm believer that we need to focus our attention on what is right with us, what we can do, who we have got, and even what they can do. Because you and I both know that one of the big challenges when we are grieving is relationships. At a time when we need other people so much, we are so challenged by our nearest and dearest. So even that is taking a strengths-based approach to ask yourself, okay, this person is completely driving me nuts, but what can they do? What are they doing? How can I ask them for some help? It's not toxic positivity, but it flips you out of the deficit zone where you are only looking at everything that is wrong. And my word, when we are grieving, there's a lot that is wrong in our lives. And it encourages us to notice all the good that is going on. And so as I write about in “Resilient Grieving,” that can be those moments of pride when you notice that you have got out of bed, you got dressed this morning, you brushed your hair maybe, you might even have got to the shops, you might have put dinner on the table, you might have packed the kids' lunchboxes you might have spent two hours at work. In your case, Sarah, you've done a whole podcast. These are good things, and it's really important for our poor, grieving brains to let those good things in and to notice them, shine the torch light of your attention on them, and amplify them. Don't quash them. Don't feel guilty about them. They are as much part of your evolutionary DNA for grieving as all of those challenging negative emotions are.

Sarah: You mentioned relationships and our favorite form of support when we are grieving is pets. And that's very telling, of course, because they can't talk. And I think that is the problem, isn't it? That people either show up and do the wrong thing or they say the wrong thing. You know, my starting point is for anyone listening to understand that if you are being challenged by your nearest and dearest when you're grieving, that is so typical. We see this all the time. The research backs this up. Other people can be so challenging when we are grieving. So let's start with that. Then my next step is to say to people, it's okay to press pause on any infuriating relationships. Like truly, you know, is it helping or harming you? Seeing that person every day, you are allowed to say to them — you, you have to find the courage. Grieving requires so many micro moments of courage. But I think you do have to put yourself first and just not answer the text or just send them a love heart back or do what you need. And then my next point is actually to say to people, don't expect those who are supporting you to be mind readers. Tell them what you need. Do you need practical support? Do you need an emotional shoulder to cry on? Do you not want to be hugged? Do you need someone to go to the accountant with you? So there are just so many different forms of support and I think what often happens is we expect someone to give us all of the support.

Sarah: Yeah, my, my brother was wise. He said he didn't want to take care of other people's feelings, and I think that sometimes that happens when you're grieving. People show up with their own story and their own feelings, and you do talk about that in your book, and I so appreciate that. Is there anything you're grieving right now?

Lucy: I live with my boys, not present, and I live with the absence of having girlyness in our world. So those kind of holiday times, I really miss Abi more. And as our boys are growing older, they are starting to understand that, and be a bit more receptive to letting mum do her kind of Christmas day things to get the decorations out and do the big meal kind of thing because they just didn't get it and didn't really care. And so I do grieve her then. Empty nesting is such real grief, and again, you're learning to adapt. You're learning to relive in a very different world. I miss having them at home and I love having them at home, but I'm pretty pragmatic that, you know, that's life, isn't it? And I'm thrilled that they have the ability to flee the nest. You know, I try and focus my attention on that, Sarah.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Do you believe Abi's still around?

Lucy: I don't, sadly, I wish I did. I don't really feel her spirit is, but I do feel her spirit is. I feel like she's everywhere in our lives and I feel so lucky to have had that incredible young woman that she was.

Sarah: What does a peaceful exit mean to you?

Lucy: I think my mother, when I think of peaceful exit, because she had that. She died very young. She was 63, but she did say to us, “I'm okay to go because you're all married and you've all got children.” And so that is the peaceful exit, feeling like, she felt like her work on this earth was done. And I echo that feeling. I feel very grateful to have had everything that I have had and everyone that has been present in my world. And I think it is really important for a peaceful exit to accept all that this life gives us — the good, the bad, the ugly, all the love, all the loss, all of it.

Sarah: Thank you for listening to Peaceful Exit. I'm your host, Sarah Cavanaugh. You can find us on Instagram at apeacefulexit and on YouTube at Peaceful Exit Podcast. To learn more about this podcast and my work, please visit peacefulexit.net. You can also send us an email and let us know what you thought of this episode, or share an idea for a new episode. We're at peacefulexitpodcast@gmail.com. Our senior producer is Julie Kanfer, and our sound engineer is Jason Gambrell. Additional support from Cindy Gal and Ciara Austin. I have an amazing team. Original music provided by Ricardo Russell.Please make sure to follow us on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, and rate and review us wherever you listen. It really makes a difference. And please tell your friends about Peaceful Exit. As always, thank you for listening