The ABCs of Grief with Jessica Correnti

Child life specialist Jessica Correnti helps kids and families navigate loss, change, and big life transitions. In this episode, she tells Sarah why children often experience grief in short emotional "bursts"; why they process grief best through play; and why it's best to talk to kids honestly about death and dying. Jessica also shares  her deeply personal story of pregnancy loss, and how that experience inspired her books, "Forever Connected" and "The ABCs of Grief" series.

To learn more about Jessica's work, please visit https://www.kidsgriefsupport.com/

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Jessica Correnti: We want to minimize pain for our kids. We don't like to see them suffering, of course. But the reality is that difficult things in life happen all the time. That's part of life. And we can't take away pain. We can't take away awful things happening. But what we can do is we can validate kids in where they are in the moment, and we can let them know that we can sit with them with any feeling that they have, and it's okay.

[00:00:28] Sarah Cavanaugh: Welcome to Peaceful Exit, the podcast where we talk to creatives about death, dying grief, and also life. I am Sarah Cavanaugh, and my guest today is child life specialist Jessica Corti. Jessica helps children and families navigate loss, change, and big life transitions. In our conversation today, she explains why children process grief through play and short emotional bursts, and how honest language can make a huge difference when we talk [00:01:00] to kids about death. We also discuss her deeply personal story of pregnancy loss and how that experience inspired her fabulous books, “Forever Connected” and “The ABCs of Grief” series.

So, welcome to Peaceful Exit.

[00:01:15] Jessica Correnti: Thanks for having me.

[00:01:17] Sarah Cavanaugh: Let's start just with a basic explanation of what is a child life specialist.

[00:01:22] Jessica Correnti: Usually child life specialists are found in the hospital setting. Essentially we are a piece of the health care team to help children and families cope with being there at the hospital. In the last, I'd say 10 to 15 years, we have really evolved as a profession to stepping outside of the hospital walls. There are so many difficult life events that children are going through, and there are so many pieces of our expertise that we can utilize to help children navigate those really difficult times. So [00:02:00] working with hospice, working with grief centers, working at dental offices, working in the school system, any place where a child is entering a new and/or difficult life experience, that's where a child life specialist could come in, help kids understand what to expect with what they're facing, help them process emotionally what they're going through, and teach them coping skills

Sarah Cavanaugh: I never thought about peaceful exit around losing a tooth or something like going to the dentist, right.

[00:02:30] Jessica Correnti: Yeah.

[00:02:31] Sarah Cavanaugh: But it is scary. It's scary for kids.

[00:02:33] Jessica Correnti: Mm-hmm. Yep. And anything that they don't know about, all these fears can come in and take over. And if kids know what is happening, it's much easier for them to go through the steps of the procedure or the experience, or whatever it might be. Information is power.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Did you have any grief experiences as a child that influenced kind of how, where you ended up?

Jessica Correnti: For me, I think the [00:03:00] very first grief experience that I remember was my dog dying. I know for a lot of kids and adults that can be brushed under the rug so often, oh, it's just a pet. But that, to many people, feels just as big as any other type of loss. Especially for children — often that's their first experience with death and with grief. So I just remember for me, it was the very first time I saw my dad cry and that was kind of shocking to me as a, I think I was nine years old and I was like, whoa, this must be really big. I've never seen him cry before. I had other experiences with having a grandparent die and the one thing that sticks out the most is how little support and validation there was, my grandparent that died when I was a child — I was, I guess I must have been 13 — and one of the things that still really sticks out to me to this day [00:04:00] is that I was at school, I was telling my teacher that I needed to be excused early to go to the funeral. And they were asking, who died in your family? I said, my grandparent. The next question was, how old were they? And my grandparent was mid-80s. And the reaction right away was, at least they had a long life.

[00:04:24] Sarah Cavanaugh: At least.

[00:04:25] Jessica Correnti: Yes. And I was like, ugh. But I only knew this person for, let's see, I was 13 at the time. So I really didn't have that much time with my grandparent. I just remember feeling so gutted when I heard that phrase. I was like, how dare you? Yes, they lived many years, but that doesn't take away my pain. That doesn't take away all the things I wish I could have done with them in the future.

[00:04:52] Sarah Cavanaugh: I don't think we had the language back then. people weren't talking about it the way they are now. But I honor your work because I think it's so [00:05:00] important for us to learn how to talk to our children and also children in our care, or any children we're around. Any kind of guardian will benefit from all the work you're doing, so I really appreciate that. What are the most common experiences you help kids through when it comes to grief? Because it's not just about the death of a loved one.

Jessica Correnti: A lot of the kids that I support have been through the death of a loved one. But kids can grieve any type of change, transition, loss. So it, it could be things like they moved to a new state, a new country. It could be the family’s going through a divorce. It could be somebody in the family got a new diagnosis that is life limiting or life altering, or it could be something that is just really intense for a short period of time, but everything changed in an instant. And when we have that language to connect that to these other types of loss situations, [00:06:00] it opens up this conversation. There's validation. It feels good to be like, oh, that's grief. I didn't realize that. I never would've thought that before.

[00:06:08] Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah, and having the language and the questions to ask. How's the approach to working with children different than working with adults?

[00:06:16] Jessica Correnti: I think the biggest difference is how their grief is processed. All of the processing of the grief is through play Now, it looks very different for younger kids versus school age kids versus teens. But often it is coming out in a very play-based, a very behavioral-based type of way. Another thing that's really different about how kids are processing their grief is that it's done in these short little bursts too. Versus an adult, it’s this all consuming, I'm in bed for days at a time. It's not like that with kids. They have these really big, heavy moments [00:07:00] and they might sit there for a couple minutes in that, and then with the next breath, they're wondering what's for dinner? They're going to ask to play with a friend. They're hopping from their grief to play back and forth pretty quickly, one moment to the next, and you have these little windows of these big griefy moments. People often ask me, they're like, how do you do this job? Isn't it the most sad thing ever all day? And it’s actually kind of fun. Yes, there are definitely moments that are really sad and really heavy, but most of my work revolves around play and using play to help kids understand what they're going through, to help children have a release. For example, sometimes the thing that's coming up the most for the child at home is these big anger bursts, and we want to let that anger [00:08:00] out in a good, healthy, productive way. So we might do play activities that help release that anger in a really fun way. So we might make these anger volcanoes where we, with each pour of the baking soda, we're saying something that's making us really angry or something that feels really unfair. You know, this fun, engaging, active way to help them express what feels really hard to get out.

[00:08:28] Sarah Cavanaugh: What subtle signs do adults often misinterpret in children if they're going back and forth between grief and play? Does grief always look like sadness?

[00:08:39] Jessica Correnti: People think that a grieving child will always just be sad, quiet, maybe angry sometimes. But children, just like adults, they all show their grief in very different ways. They might still be laughing and playing and telling jokes. There might be [00:09:00] some kids that are having a really hard time grieving, but they're not crying and they are throwing themselves into sports. Or maybe they're really studying and focusing all their time on that, and that's their distraction, and that's how they're coping with their grief. So there will be these different grief styles. Every child is so different with their personality and their coping tools that they have built up so far.

[00:09:25] Sarah Cavanaugh: And it makes me think, you know, you talk about coping strategies — as adults maybe we can just kind of be curious, like, is that behavior a coping strategy, whatever that looks like for that child? Are we recognizing, as you say, and validating that coping strategy for that individual?

Jessica Correnti: Yeah, and what might be a coping strategy for one kid is going to be the total opposite for another. I mean, some kids want to throw themselves into the schoolwork. Other kids are very triggered by what's coming up at school, whether it's the content or the social interactions. There's [00:10:00] a lot of evolving that happens, I think for any griever, but especially for a griever who is a child, they're constantly changing. They're constantly getting into these new cognitive phases where maybe they can process things a little bit differently. Then there's that coping piece too, that's gonna shift as time goes on

Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah. Are kids ever too young to talk about grief and death?

[00:10:26] Jessica Correnti: So, simple answer is no. You're never too young to have these conversations. People want to protect their kids and they step on eggshells around certain topics and conversations. But you can have conversations about death and grief as soon as your kids are talking. Maybe even pre-language too. There are these cues from nature all around of life changing. Watching the lifecycle of our plants, our trees, the animals that we [00:11:00] see outside. How often as kids do we see, going on a walk, a dead animal on the sidewalk? That’s a, a beautiful opportunity to open a conversation about, oh, that, squirrel died. That's so sad. And using very clear language can help kids gain an understanding. And it's so much easier to have a conversation about a dead squirrel versus a dead family member, and if they have that foundation to build upon, they know what death means. That's one less piece of the process that you have to help them through.

[00:11:37] Sarah Cavanaugh: One of my guests said when her fish would die, her father would just scoop it out of the tank and throw it into the yard.

[00:11:43] Jessica Correnti: Oh my gosh.

[00:11:44] Sarah Cavanaugh: So it was a little traumatic, but —

[00:11:47] Jessica Correnti: Oh, wow. Yeah. A couple years ago, my kids had, um, an appointment at the pediatrician and they had a fish tank there. One day we go into the pediatrician, the fish aren't there anymore. [00:12:00] My kids asked the front desk, where'd the fish go? And the receptionist said, oh, they went on vacation. I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, why? No, the fish did not go on vacation. Why are we telling kids this?

[00:12:15] Sarah Cavanaugh: They went to a farm upstate. That was like one of the phrases I heard. So you feel like any age is okay to go to a funeral?

[00:12:23] Jessica Correnti: I think there are definitely some questions that we can ask ourselves to see if it's a good fit, considering things like: what's their relationship to the person who has died? What is the child's temperament? Is this gonna be something that will be helpful for them or is this gonna be something they are really having a hard time with? If they have information about what to expect, most kids do very well with going to a funeral. It's when they don't have information about what to expect, that's when things can be really difficult for kids to process and cope with [00:13:00] it. But then there's also this piece of do they have a support person there at the funeral? Because a lot of kids, they might want a break. If they have somebody that's identified there to give them a break, go into a separate room, play, be a kid, and get out of that heavy space for a little bit, then it can be a very therapeutic healing process for them to be there. So I don't think there's really ever a absolute, definitely they should go, definitely they should not go. It's really helpful for kids to have a choice in the matter.

[00:13:35] Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah, it makes me think of your toggling back and forth between play and grief, like heavy and light. You know, you have to give them that option, which — that makes so much sense. Well, you mentioned euphemisms. Euphemisms for death, like they went on vacation.

[00:13:49] Jessica Correnti: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:49] Sarah Cavanaugh: But there's also like passed away and gone. It can be confusing for kids. Why is it better to be more direct with them and what words should we use instead?

[00:14:00] Jessica Correnti: Anytime we use any sort of euphemism, there is room for confusion. There's room for misconceptions to form. I've heard kids very frequently think when somebody uses the word we, “we lost them,” they literally think

Sarah Cavanaugh: They're somewhere, they're just wandering around.

[00:14:19] Jessica Correnti: They’re hiding, They're playing hide and seek, yeah, or they're literally wandering around and we need to go find them. That can cause a lot of stress and anxiety. So if we use clear concrete language that has no other meaning, we give them the opportunity to really understand what's going on. There's this language and this idea that kids don't really understand the permanence of death until they're kind of like midway through elementary school. And I, I don't really think that's true. It sounds very blunt, but using the very real factual words, they usually understand it pretty quickly. We can help them understand the permanence of it by saying, “when, [00:15:00] when somebody dies, their body stops working, they stop breathing, their heart stops beating.” So using these very simple short sentences, I think that most children really can understand what this means if we use really clear language.

[00:15:17] Sarah Cavanaugh: I love how you put that. and in our culture we used to say, keep your chin up, or, be brave or, stay positive. Do we unintentionally pressure children in ways that actually harm them?

Jessica Correnti: I think we do. We want to minimize pain for our kids. We don't like to see them suffering, of course. But the reality is that difficult things in life happen all the time. That's part of life. And we can't take away pain. We can't take away awful things happening. But what we can do is we can validate kids in where they are in the moment, and we can let them know that we can sit with them with any feeling that they have and it's okay. It's okay to feel sad [00:16:00] right now. It's okay to have a lot of love in your heart right now. It's okay to feel silly right now. Anything that you're feeling right now, whether it feels comfortable or uncomfortable is okay. And letting them know that you are going to be there no matter what.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Beautifully said. Maybe talk a little bit about what common mistakes we make and what we should or shouldn't do when it comes to being with and holding space for a child who's grieving.

[00:16:34] Jessica Correnti: Yeah. So I, I do work with caregivers and parents. I, I think the biggest, I'd say mistake that people make, is trying to protect their kids from, that pain and, and suffering that is natural in life, versus giving them the skills and the tools to build that resiliency to be able to cope with those things when they do [00:17:00] come. Most if not all of the kids that I've met, by the time they transition out of my care, they have built up such resiliency and these beautiful, powerful coping skills. And I've witnessed them go through other types of adversity and losses, and they're able to move through it in such a powerful, beautiful way. Not to like put silver linings on what they went through, but they've learned so many different skills

Sarah Cavanaugh: One of my guests, Dr. Lucy Hohn, wrote a book called Resilient Grieving, and what you're talking about is teaching resilience, I think that's so important these days.

Jessica Correnti: I have like a love-hate relationship with the word resilience, because I think people have this misconception that we just bounce back to whatever was before. And in profound grief there is no going back to the before. It's we break the whole thing open and [00:18:00] we rebuild in a totally different way.

[00:18:02] Sarah Cavanaugh: She says the same thing.

[00:18:04] Jessica Correnti: Yeah. I love it.

[00:18:06] Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah, she does. She says it's not bouncing back. There is no bouncing back. Well, let's shift to books. You have three books, as far as I know, out in the world so far.

Jessica Correnti: I do.

Sarah Cavanaugh: “Forever Connected” and “The ABCs of Grief” and “The ABCs of Grief: Emotions and Feelings.” And it looks like this is going to be a series. Just a quick story. So one of the last all children's bookstores in the country — I mean, there are very few left, and this one actually has closed now — but when my kids were small, it was called All For Kids. And it was founded by Shawnee Haslet in Seattle. And at one point she had an art show where she showed the originals of the book art, which the power of those pictures, and your wonderful illustrations by Rachel Nyman. How did you [00:19:00] think about the illustration in your book and what you wanted to convey?

[00:19:04] Jessica Correnti: With the illustration process, I, I had a very specific vision on what I wanted on the page. There is a lot of white space around my illustrations, that was very intentionally done because grief can feel so heavy. It's all consuming. I wanted that calming white space around these images to give that sense of calm in a chaotic time. I really wanted images that would have any child, no matter what kind of grief situation they were facing, to look at the image and be able to pick out something that resonated for them. I have heard a lot of parents reaching out to me saying, this is the first book that my child found that actually spoke to their experience.

[00:19:53] Sarah Cavanaugh: Well, and it's the power of your words and it's the power and simplicity of the drawings and the paintings. So your first book, “Forever Connected,” focuses on sibling loss, and I'd like to spend a few minutes talking about how kids tend to be impacted when they lose a sibling, compared with other people in their lives. And I understand you have a personal experience if you're willing to share.

[00:20:14] Jessica Correnti: Yeah. I'll start with my own personal experience first. I went through several pregnancy losses and this was about eight years into my child life career. So I had all this experience under my belt of helping families through the death of a child because I worked in pediatric ICUs for quite a while, and then I was on the other side. I became the bereaved parent and had to help my children through their grief. When I went through the death of my daughter, Maggie, who I lost at 22 weeks in the pregnancy, my son was 19 months old. I realized how few resources there really were outside of the hospital [00:21:00] walls to help kids process and cope with everything. Because of course, this tiny little blip of time — we carry this on with us for the rest of our lives. The book “Forever Connected” was really born out of this theme of helping kids to understand that they're always connected and tied to their sibling who has died. And at the same time, they don't have that physical presence. So I would have these parents saying, I want my kids to know that they're always there with them, but they're not there. That's where “Forever Connected” really came from with giving some concrete language to children with this really abstract idea of: you guys are always connected in a way. My youngest, she was born a year and a half after her sister Maggie died. She still grieves just as much as her brother. She never had the chance to meet her sister. That's a misconception that [00:22:00] people have sometimes, if they've never been through this type of loss. They think, oh, what do they have to grieve? They never met them, they never had time with them or a relationship with them. And that in itself is a huge thing to grieve because they didn't have that time. It really doesn't matter how much time somebody did or didn't have, it's the loss of what could have been and the loss of what should have been in an ideal world.

[00:22:28] Sarah Cavanaugh: Well, my brother Matthew died at three weeks old.

[00:22:31] Jessica Correnti: Hmm

[00:22:32] Sarah Cavanaugh: And he died of SIDS. Our family did not acknowledge, like you're speaking about. What would you recommend to the family who had three living children, including a toddler? And it sounds like you had a toddler when Maggie died. How did you help your toddler process that loss?

[00:22:50] Jessica Correnti: I think as much as we can be open, that's going to help the whole family process the loss. And that's what I did with my son. I [00:23:00] was very clear and open with him. I told him Maggie died, and he actually came into the hospital and met her. And then we have pictures documenting this. So I knew I had the foresight, he likely won't remember this. He tells me he does. But even if he does only have these built memories from the pictures, that's huge too. He was able to attend the memorial service that we had for her afterwards, and he watched everybody else process all of their feelings. We didn't hide anything from him and I, I think that's huge to help kids understand what has happened. And if you walk into my house, you'll see that Maggie is very much a part of our household. There are pictures of her on the walls. There are these little trinkety things everywhere that connect us to her. One of the things that is like her symbol [00:24:00] is these little tiny piggies. Because she had a little pig that was the same size as her in the hospital. So you'll see these little Maggie touches all over our house. My youngest daughter, she talks about her grief and she talks about her sister now more than her brother does. And it's almost every single day she brings up Maggie. Just the other day, so Maggie's birthday was December 8th, and my daughter wore these little pearl earrings that connected her to Maggie, because Maggie means pearl. And people asked her, who's Maggie? She's like my sister. And they would give her these looks like, what are you talking about? She's like, don't you know about my sister? It's just so much a part of her life and it's a normal everyday conversation But I, I do think that it's, it's changed from decades past. I hear people all the time say, I had a sibling who died and I never really heard their name until I was an adult.

Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah, it's very true. I was [00:25:00] born following Matthew's death. So what you said about your youngest, I always felt that I was aware of something but we never had language for it. So my oldest brother told me when I was 10 years old. I found out when I was 10 years old But to have those skills when you're so young, and to have, as a parent, to have those skills to help your kids, it's really remarkable. Love these books. Love that they're ABCs. So in the first one, ABCs of Grief, you write about bursts of grief. Talk about these bursts and do kids get them more than adults?

[00:25:36] Jessica Correnti: I think any age has these bursts. For adults, they might feel more like triggers or maybe a flood of memories happening. For kids, they're going from these big moments back into their play pretty quickly or back into their activities pretty quickly. Often what I see with these bursts is, maybe it's a couple of big [00:26:00] questions back to back. So sitting with them and answering those questions and really being present with them in the moment. Sometimes it might be a reminder that hits them like a ton of bricks. Maybe they're out doing an errand with their parent or caregiver and a song comes on that instantly just reminds them of a certain memory or something that happened with their person. And it can feel like a flood of emotions all at once. And I think the caregivers who are there, we can pick up on these moments and again, call out what you see happening and say, wow, that, that, that really hit you, huh? And then pausing and seeing where it goes. It's so much more powerful when we see where they take the conversation. Our agenda doesn't mean anything to them.

[00:26:52] Sarah Cavanaugh: That's great advice. I know that when I did practice that as a parent, oftentimes they just had one question and then they were off to [00:27:00] play and they didn't want a whole long monologue, as you said. I love this, when you open the cover and there's all of these emotions listed here. And I remember when my kids were in school and they had faces labeled with different emotions and that's fairly new.

[00:27:18] Jessica Correnti: Yeah. The language is coming a long, long way. Doing and ABC series, I was limited to 26 words. And of course, the grief experience is way more than 26 different emotions and feelings but I wanted this space to really get out as many feelings and emotions that could come up while grieving. And so all of those extra words ended up on, on the end pages and I actually utilize that as a tool when I'm working with kids and teens in my private practice. We'll take a look at the end pages, and one activity that I really like to do, especially with my older kids and teens, is spend some time with that page and say, what five words on [00:28:00] here really speak to your experience the most? They're the expert in their grief and their situation and their experience. Not me. I don't know what things look like for them day in and day out. And that's one of the things that I've heard about my books that parents talk about frequently is how it's really opened up this beautiful, powerful conversation between them and their child about how grief is showing up for their child, how grief is showing up for them. And being a point of conversation between the caregiver and the child to say, oh, I feel this one a lot. Do you feel that one? Or is that just me? And, and they're able to see that their caregiver is grieving in a different way than them, and giving permission for that too.

[00:28:45] Sarah Cavanaugh: I do feel like your books are for adults as well as children.

Jessica Correnti: I, I really hope that it gives language and starts to, to change the conversation in households around grief instead of, you know, we're only gonna talk about this [00:29:00] for this very short period of time right after somebody dies or this other big grief situation, then we're gonna close that book and put it on the shelf. I don't want that. I hope that every household has books like this so that they can pull it from time to time and be able to have these conversations about what's been coming up for them. The next book in the series is the ABCs of Grief: Coping. And again, we walk through the alphabet and instead of dissecting and figuring out what grief is or the emotions and feelings attached to it, this one invites people into exploring 26 different ways to move with their grief. There are things that kids do every day in these pages that they might not put the language to that being a coping strategy. And that's huge, if they realize that what they are doing is also helping them cope with their grief.

[00:29:58] Sarah Cavanaugh: I love that. And you were talking about [00:30:00] integrating Maggie into your present life and not just, this is something that happened in the past, but this is something we were gifted with in the present.

[00:30:08] Jessica Correnti: Yeah. And Maggie plays a role in each one of my books. I mentioned the little piggy. There is at least one piggy in every single book that I have written,

[00:30:18] Sarah Cavanaugh: You mentioned you had a piggy about her size. Was she in the ICU?

[00:30:22] Jessica Correnti: So she died before I delivered her, so I had to go into the labor and delivery unit and deliver her there. We had about nine hours with her before we left the hospital. That was an interesting experience too, almost being rushed out the door because they needed the room for another laboring mom. My family has raised a whole bunch of money for our hospital to make sure that no other family feels rushed like that. And we've been fundraising to have a respite room so that families can have all the time that they want and need with their [00:31:00] child, and don't feel rushed out the door. So that's something that hopefully will be coming very soon. It's been years in the making. It's something that has really weighed on our hearts and something that we don't want any other family to have to experience.

[00:31:15] Sarah Cavanaugh: How has this loss impacted your work?

[00:31:18] Jessica Correnti: Any type of profound loss like this, it changes you at the core in every aspect of your life. I was already doing a lot of grief support in my work as a child life specialist prior to going through my own losses. I think the biggest thing that I didn't realize is how deep people feel this for their lifetime afterwards. But as a professional, my experience has really helped me to be more proactive with the grieving clients that I support. I realized that it is integrated into everything in their lives. So we're able to have these really meaningful [00:32:00] conversations that I'm not quite sure I would've been able to get to had I not had my own loss.

[00:32:07] Sarah Cavanaugh: How do you integrate a baby into your life that you never knew?

[00:32:11] Jessica Correnti: There's definitely not a one size fits all, but for us, we've integrated Maggie into our family and a lot of little ways that have been really profound and powerful for us. This goes back to the piggy again, this little stuffed animal piggy shows up in all of our family pictures. There are these different legacy projects that we have that really brings her into what we're doing. She wasn't able to make an earthly impact but we're making such a big impact for her and because of her with these fundraising projects that we've done. My books too, these books were born out of those experiences and, and being really integrated into the grief world [00:33:00] with running support groups and focusing my whole private practice on supporting grieving kids. Really everything that I do now is because of her. There's little things and there's big things, but it's all interwoven.

[00:33:16] Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah, it's beautiful. I think the origin of my work is the loss of Matthew.

[00:33:21] Jessica Correnti: Yeah. They changed us in such big ways and sometimes it's hard to put words to that because it is such a big experience to process and there's so many layers to it

[00:33:33] Sarah Cavanaugh: We tend to simplify things

[00:33:35] Jessica Correnti: Yeah.

[00:33:35] Sarah Cavanaugh: And it's very complicated. Have there been any other losses in your life that influenced your work?

Jessica Correnti: I think if you ask any provider who has worked in the hospital, especially in the intensive care unit, there are certain patients and families that you carry with you forever. You don't forget those stories. Those are the death losses. And then [00:34:00] just being human. We have a lot of non-death losses that we experience, even really amazing moments too, like the experience of becoming a mom with a child that was healthily, you know, delivered healthy in the world. There's a lot of grief that comes from that moment that you become a mom too. In a moment, a split second, your identity has changed profoundly. While most of that is very joyous, there are some other shifts that happen that you also grieve. Going off to college is another big one. So there's, there's all these moments that we all have.

[00:34:40] Sarah Cavanaugh: Sounds like you're not quite there yet.

[00:34:43] Jessica Correnti: Not quite there yet. It's gonna hit me before we know it. I have a almost 11-year-old now, and I'm like, oh my gosh, you're gonna be 13 in three years and then you're gonna be driving and then you're gonna leave for college. And so my mind's already going there, even though I have a little bit of time.

[00:34:56] Sarah Cavanaugh: He, he's like, whoa, mom.

[00:34:58] Jessica Correnti: Yeah. He is like, [00:35:00] I just hit double digits. Calm down.

[00:35:02] Sarah Cavanaugh: Yeah. Calm down, mom. Well, I can imagine in your practice you've witnessed peaceful exits and not so peaceful exits. What does a peaceful exit mean to you?

Jessica Correnti: I think a peaceful exit means having everything that makes it as calm, as individual, as, as personal as it can be. With my daughter, she had a, an exit and an entrance all at the same time. While it was profoundly sad, it was also very peaceful and beautiful. Which sounds really odd, but we knew exactly what we wanted in that moment. And sometimes a peaceful exit means having the people that really matter in the room, having the sounds, the music. Having these things identified of what your wishes are — that's a peaceful exit to me, having all of those priorities [00:36:00] granted.