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For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Kaley Olson:
Well, hey, friends. Thanks for tuning in to The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical Truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Kaley Olson, and I'm here with my co-host, Meredith Brock.
Meredith Brock:
Well, hey, Kaley.
Kaley Olson:
Hi.
Meredith Brock:
I am excited for our listeners to get to hear from a new friend to our podcast listeners but a dear friend of mine. Her name is Carole Holiday, and y’all don't even know —
Kaley Olson:
No, you don't.
Meredith Brock:
— because she is a strange combination of precious, incredible wise —
Kaley Olson:
Funny.
Meredith Brock:
— funny. Yeah, y’all don't know. It's just so good.
Kaley Olson:
She's great. It's great. I want her to move from California to North Carolina —
Meredith Brock:
Me too.
Kaley Olson:
— So we can hang out more.
Anyways ... but guys, before we get into Carole's teaching, I do want to recommend a resource our team put together called “‘Am I Okay?’ A 10-Question, Self-guided Check-in. It's available for free using the link in our show notes, but here's why I recommend it.
Today Carole's going to talk about grief. And grief comes in many forms. It doesn't just mean the death of someone we love. It can be the death of anything as we know it now, but sometimes, Mer, when that happens or whenever little griefs come along, I don't really know or I might not be paying attention to how they're impacting me.
Meredith Brock:
Yeah.
Kaley Olson:
And before I know it, I'm not OK.
Meredith Brock:
That's right.
Kaley Olson:
And I didn't know ... I don't know how I got there. And if you find yourself there and you're asking yourself, "Am I OK?" this is a resource that will help you process what you're going through, so you should for sure download it and then listen to the podcast episode from Carole because it's going to be great. It’s in the show notes below.
Meredith Brock:
All right, friends, let's go meet Carole.
Kaley Olson:
Well, Meredith, we are so excited to welcome our new friend to the show
Carole Holiday. Hey, Carole.
Carole Holiday:
Hey, ladies.
Meredith Brock:
Well, Carole is new to the podcast, but she's not new to me. She is a dear friend of mine that I have gotten to know over the last couple of years, but y’all get to know her for the first time today. She is from Costa Mesa, California, and she spent 20 years on different business stages encouraging different kinds of entrepreneurs and then took a big leap and opened up a cooking school located in a turn-of-the-century sweet little cottage.
Kaley Olson:
So she's basically a Disney princess.
Meredith Brock:
It feels that way, doesn't it? But in a season of life when I think most of us would find ourselves settling into retirement — taking it easy, if you will — her daughter challenged her to start writing. And now she is a first-time author of a book titled I Don't Know Who I Am Anymore: Restoring Your Identity Shattered by Grief and Loss.
Kaley Olson:
Wow.
Meredith Brock:
Yeah.
Kaley Olson:
What a message.
Meredith Brock:
I know. And really beautiful that she took the courage to write it in this season of her life.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah, for sure. I know that's what we're here to talk about today. But can we talk about cooking really quickly before we dive into that? Because —
Meredith Brock:
Yes, please —
Kaley Olson:
— Carole —
Meredith Brock:
And maybe the cottage ...
Kaley Olson:
And maybe the cottage. I know, right? Transport us to Costa Mesa, which in my Southernness thought was Messa, but here we go.
Carole Holiday:
I know everything there is — [Crosstalk.]
Kaley Olson:
Everything is different.
Carole Holiday:
— accent, yeah.
Kaley Olson:
I love it. But, Carole, if you were to invite us to come over to your cottage for a meal, what would you make us?
Carole Holiday:
Such a fun question. One of my favorites. I love it. Well, first of all, these days you have to find out gluten-free, lactose-intolerant, all of that stuff. But if I had my druthers, I would offer probably one vegetarian-type option and one carnivore-type option, depending upon where you ladies fall. Definitely this time of year, I would say, oh, maybe a pulled-pork sandwich with some pineapple coleslaw and some thick, “molassesey” — that's not a word I know, but I used it anyway —
Kaley Olson:
Meredith's sold.
Meredith Brock:
This sounds great.
Carole Holiday:
[Crosstalk.] — barbecue sauce.
Meredith Brock:
I'm ready.
Carole Holiday:
One option —
Meredith Brock:
Yeah, I'm ready.
Carole Holiday:
And the second option, I love doing soup, so I would probably, because we're getting into autumn, do a little bit of a butternut-squash pear routine. And actually, lately, I've been thinking about our friends in Maui because so many people in California spent summers on Kāʻanapali Beach where Lahaina just had that horrible fire. And there were two restaurants that I loved there. One did a great salad called Longy Salad that has romaine and green beans and grape tomatoes and a little Gorgonzola cheese. And there was another restaurant called Kimo's that served little carrot-ginger muffins. And in honor of my friends in Lahaina, I would probably offer you those options. So you'd have to tell me which way you would go.
Kaley Olson:
Both.
Meredith Brock:
Can I have all ... have all of those?
Carole Holiday:
If I could keep it, I would.
Kaley Olson:
I know, coming from two working moms who wish that someone else would just cook for us.
Meredith Brock:
Yes, please.
Kaley Olson:
Here we are.
But, Carole, while I love talking about your food, I know today you're here to share more with us about what you wrote in your book about grief. I want to repeat the title again for those who might've missed it. It's I Don't Know Who I Am Anymore: Restoring Your Identity Shattered by Grief and Loss. And so, Carole, I would love for you to just take it away from here so that Meredith and I and our friends listening can listen in.
Carole Holiday:
You bet. Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to share with you too.
I tell you what, when you think of writing a book, and I think many people do in their lifetime, certainly my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Miller, and my ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. Edna Plummer, sort of nudged me in that direction. Then I kind of put it on the back burner. I certainly didn't think it was going to be a book about grief. People have been so supportive when they find out that I have written a book, and they go, "Great, what's the topic?" And I tell them, and they sort of skirt around me and find their way out of that space with me probably because it's touched everyone. In fact, in the publishing world, I've gotten to know terms, and Mer, you'd be proud of me, but I finally get that the word “evergreen” means it's a topic that never goes away.
And unfortunately that's the topic of grief. Like I say, I didn't dream of writing a book about grief. And for your listeners, I'm guessing if they're dealing with life's losses, disappointments and heartaches, they didn't dream that their life would look anything like it does now. So it catches us off guard and by surprise. But I will say that the whole reason I wrote that book, besides my daughter nudging me to do so — they're so stubborn and determined, my kids. I don't know where they get that from, but I'd like to place the blame clearly at Ms. Meredith's feet, and that may catch you by surprise, Mer, but there was something that you said to those of us who were under your tutelage when we were learning how to write a publishing proposal. I entered that, again, because my daughter forced me to, and then I thought, "Well, what am I going to write about?"
And Meredith, in her wisdom and experience, said this, "Write about what you Google at 3 a.m."
Well, where before I had been confused about the topic, there was no longer any confusion because I knew instantly what I had Googled at 3 a.m., and it was this: Can human DNA be rearranged? What a weird thing, right? Everybody's thinking, Why in the world would you do that and not Google a great recipe for a chocolate fudge cake? Or what do I wear to this wedding coming up in Charleston? No, I was Googling this. But my background's biology, so once you know that, it's not so weird. But the reason I did that is because I had experienced what I referred to as an avalanche of loss in my life. And I literally knew that I wasn't the same person that I was before the loss. I didn't know who I was, going through the losses, and I certainly had no idea of who I would become after I had navigated those losses.
So to me, it wasn't just that there were heartbreaks, losses and disappointments, but there was this massive loss of a sense of who I was any longer. So that's a little bit about the background, and I'm forever grateful that Meredith posed that question as to what I would Google at 3 a.m., and I would like to pose the same question to your listeners and ask them, "At 3 a.m., when you can't sleep, when your heart is heavy, what are you Googling?" That tells you a lot about yourself and a lot about your griefs.
The other thing I want to say right upfront is what I am not. I am not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a medical doctor, [and] I'm not a theologian. I'm not a great Bible teacher like Lysa TerKeurst is. But I'm just a girl going through grief, trying to figure out how I managed that backpack that I'm carrying with all that heavy stuff as I'm going through the valley of the shadow.
So when I talk or share, and I say my book is part stories, part Scripture, part solution, it's not that I have every solution fixed on the planet. I hope only that it will be a springboard for you to find out what helps you get through this. I'd just like to say that right upfront. But I also want to acknowledge that grief has many forms and faces. We kiddingly joked before the show started about a loss that one of your kids had, and it was devastating to him at his ripe young age. And so many times, I think people think grief is one thing: It's the loss by death of someone very important to you, and certainly it is that. But there's such a greater spectrum of griefs in loss, heartbreak and disappointment.
When I was writing my book, I have to tell you, the editorial phase was my absolute favorite, because it was wonderful to share my thoughts and ideas with people who were really professional wordsmiths. And one of the critiques I had early on was, "Carole, you're not sharing enough of your loss, enough specifics. And the reader's not going to really understand what your griefs were."
So I always kind of like to start a podcast underscoring those losses so that you might say, "Oh, I didn't know that that was a grief." For me, a 35-year marriage ended very abruptly, suddenly, unexpectedly; there was an intimate betrayal involved. The day after my husband left, I lost my job, which led to all kinds of financial devastation: the loss of my partner's income, the loss of my income. Then as a result of that, I got into some real deep waters physically and had multiple heart surgeries because of the fight or flight that I was constantly living in.
So between financial tumblings, between my marriage crumbling, between my physical health crumbling, it was a lot to handle. And then my best friend, who was the Rock of Gibraltar for our family, ended up being diagnosed with a very aggressive and rare cancer, and I took care of her in the living room of our little house on Wilson Street. That was a huge, huge loss for me.
So you can see there's griefs there that relate to finances, there's griefs that relate to employment, there's griefs that relate to your marital status, there's grief that relates to your health — all kinds of griefs. And I think sometimes we tend to think, Well, nobody died, so I don't need anything like that; it's a lot broader than that. And the other thing I found out is kind of tied into that. We established this hierarchy of loss for us that, "Well, my losses aren't as bad as so-and-so's, so I really can't count that as griefs." And I think I learned to acknowledge that everybody brings a different context to your losses. And depending upon what that background of your life is, you're going to deal with the losses and the traumas quite differently.
Grief is also notorious for sweeping in under surprise attack. Rarely do we know it's coming. We're unprepared, and as a result, society as a whole avoids the topic. And it also keeps us held hostage by that isolation. I say in my book and also on my website that in the early intense stages of my grieving, everything wanted to isolate me. But there were three things that wouldn't allow it: my faith, my friends, and — crazy as it may sound — food, which kind of goes back to our earlier conversation about how food and sharing around the table enters into our grief support.
The other thing that we bring is something called multiple hits. There's a book about trauma epidemic by Dr. Paul Conti, a psychiatrist, and he talks about when you have multiple ... what I refer to as my avalanche of losses, that can store up until one tiny little thing that maybe you lose a pet or something that wouldn't normally send you so deeply into depression, maybe that's just the straw that breaks the camel's back.
I liken it to a history impact tool. For those of you who've ever purchased a used car, you get something called a Carfax, which identifies how many accidents has this car been in? Is the chassis really as strong as it looks on the outside with that freshly painted car? And lots of times when we're bringing in a history impact tool of our own history of grief and trauma, one little thing can cause us to go deeper and deeper. And along with that, what is so difficult in grief is our comparison to others. Somehow we think that somebody else is doing better than us and we're not dealing with our grief and our losses well enough. I have to tell you that right now I'm going through a knee-replacement-surgery recovery, and one of the least effective, one of the worst things that I did was check in with people before the surgery and say, "Well, how was yours?"
And it seemed like everybody I talked to was doing line dancing at six weeks or climbing Machu Picchu at eight weeks, and I am three months post-surgery still in a great deal of pain every day with an expectation that's not matching my reality. We do that so often with grief. We say, "Well, that person just handled it so well. Why am I where I am?" And that's a question you have to stop asking.
In the very beginning of my book, in the author's first thoughts, I say this simply in the first sentence, "This is a story about grief," and then I add, "and the journey out of it." So that's the second part of grief, what it means to move through it, not around it, not hop over it, not dig underneath it, but move through it. I say in life that there's life as you have it or life as it is now and life as you want it to be. The distance between those two points is where grief resides, and we get the opportunity, we get to choose: What are we going to do with this?
I'm reminded of being in the Paris airport with my sisters who were both in the travel business, and my sister had broken her foot. So on her way out of Paris, we were taken by a little cart to a room where we waited. And so it was my two sisters and me and in walks this French woman who has tears running down her face, and she has a conversation with the agent in French. I don't know any French, but I can clearly see she's in distress. And she sits down on the bench next to me, and I turn to her and I say, "Can I help?" in English.
And in broken English, she turns around and says, "I know what you just said." And she looked at me as if to say, "I have this grief; I have this sadness; do you know what to do with it, American lady?"
And I think, at one point we have to ask ourselves, what are we going to do with it? Are we going to move through it, around it, over it, under it? Are we going to ignore it and sidestep it? Are we going to stand in our pain, which happens to be the Chapter 2 title of my book.
Three things that can stall our healing: [Firstly] I think we sometimes place faulty Christian expectations. We're good at that sometimes in the church, feeling like, "I should be better than this. I have faith. I've known Jesus all my life, so why am I hurting so badly?" That's a horrible thing that we do to ourselves.
Secondly, we sometimes hold on to coping mechanisms that no longer serve us, like putting that in the drawer and not thinking about it — maybe a good coping mechanism for a short period of time but for long-term healing, we've got to open those drawers and look at pain in the face.
And then thirdly, what can stall our healing is lack of self-care and personal help. You become the last person you want to help when you're in grief, so sometimes you have to rely on friends to do this for you. Self-care as simple as getting outside and taking long walks by yourself ... it doesn't have to cost anything. It's wonderful if you have the ability and the financial resources to go to a spa to get a massage and mani-pedi and all of that, but lots of times, you don't. And I certainly didn't, and I relied on long walks ... take care of that self-care for me.
So again, it's a story about grief, a story through grief, and it's the walk into hope. Hope starts with the pain and struggle and ends in redemption and carries with it, through both struggle and redemption, hope. And that is the distinguishing mark of Jesus followers. I think that's why, in my book, I got to thinking that there's a lot of Jesus followers who have no idea what to do for people who are grieving.
Even though when I think about Jesus and His last words on earth were to His beloved disciple, John, when He addressed him and said, "This is now your mother; you need to care for her." To me, that was a charge to the church as well as to just this individual, to care for the widow, to care for the disenfranchised, to care for the one who's set apart in their grief. And lots of times we want to do it, but we don't know how to do it. And that's the person that I also wrote this book for, that those people who want to help a grieving friend in real ways that maybe don't seem so glamorous, that don't seem so inventive, that seem kind of boring, like go hang some pictures on their wall or loan them a car when theirs has to go to the mechanic or, yeah, stop and buy them some chicken soup if you don't like to cook.
So I'm hoping that that book can be used in this way ... three scriptural promises you can hold on to. I loved exploring this when I was writing my book. When people say, "Well, you attached your identity to these things that went away. So how do you restore that identity?" Well, in Christ, that sent me right back to the Old Testament, to the whole theology of the I AM, where God says, "I am the creator. I am the boundaryless one. I am the one who created all that is. And yes, I created you. And guess what? You are in my image. You are also reflecting the I AM."
And I say, if I really understood that ... and in the beginning it was not necessarily in my heart, it was just in my head as I re-read those passages, I said, "Well, if He says I am the I am, then I guess I can't be the I am not, the I am not lovable, the I am not worthy, the I not valuable or wanted. I can't be those things. If the creator of the universe says that I am the I am."
Additionally, as I studied about prayer and couldn't even find the words to navigate or to give voice or words or articulation to my deepest thoughts and losses, I realized that it was the Holy Spirit who was going to create that verbiage for me. That as much as I love words, I couldn't find them sometimes. And when I heard that the Holy Spirit, in groans and utterances, was going to advocate for me to the Father and explain and translate my sadnesses, that gave me such great hope and such great relief.
Additionally, I, in one of my chapters, wrote, "I am who you say I am," because I had to study how important names were in Scripture. What names had I given myself through my losses, and what names does God speak over me? So I told you, Kaley, that I know that there's at least one person listening to this podcast today who is sitting there going, "I don't know who I am anymore."
And maybe in just the translation to the Holy Spirit, the secondary part of that is, God, please help me find that person again. I know that that's happening. In my book trailer, my very first question in that is, "How is this possible?"
And someone made the most astute comment when she wrote, "No truer words have ever been spoken."
Because if you're sitting in a trauma or a grief, your question certainly becomes: How is this possible? I want to leave the listener with this. If you're wondering that: How is this possible? I want you to know that one day you will be able to say, "I never thought that a new life could be enjoyed after my losses, after my heartache, after the how-is-this-possibles that I whispered. Yet here I am, discovering that a redeemed story can be rewritten and a rich and purposeful life can be mine. The Lord's not forgotten me." It's important to remind ourselves who we are not and who we are.
I just want to read something in closing that I have in my book, and I encourage people to read this daily. Just as I said in the beginning, look, I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a theologian, I'm not this and that, but I am this: I am a girl with a bag full of heavy things going through the valley of the shadow. I'm going to tell you what you are not first, listener.
You are not the following: You are not your failed relationship. You are not the number on your scale. You are more than your bank account, bankruptcy, marital status, mistakes and missteps. You are not your anxiety, affair, abortion or betrayal — this gets me every time reading this list — you are not your shame. You are not your sin, done by you or to you. You are not your regrets, your sadness or your broken heart. These are not your names. But in light of the cross and despite all of your shortcomings, God says, "This is what I call you. I call you innocent, sacred, precious, despite all of your mistakes. I call you desired, with full understanding of who it is that no longer desires you. I keep you under My wing, in the cleft of a rock, in the palm of My hand. I see you. I know you. I love you. I call you by your name. In relationship to Me, I call you daughter."
That's what I want to leave with you today, that there is hope on the other side of grief, that there is a life beyond that thing or that person or that status or that label that you've lost. All can be redeemed. And as Isaiah 43:1 says, "I have called you by name, you are mine" (ESV). And in that, we find our value and our greatest worth.
Kaley Olson:
Carole, you have such an incredible gift with words. And I know for our listeners that what you have just spoken over them has met them in a place that they desperately needed to be met. And I love ... It feels so rare to meet somebody with such pure intentions. You're such a unique author, in that I see God using you so powerfully because you're just simply willing to bring your gift of weaving words together. Like you said — I don't know how many times you said in this recording — "But I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a Bible teacher," but you are an incredible writer, Carole. And your words, I believe, will be salve to so many hearts as they were today just in this podcast. I know I was really blessed by what you just had to say just now. I needed to hear it.
So good. Specifically as I'm reflecting on what you just shared with us, I love that you opened up with the fact — and it is a fact — that there is a spectrum of grief. And that it's not just a matter of someone passing away, then you're grieving, but that there's a large spectrum. And I think you zeroed in on something that was really important that we have seen or I see often living in the world of women's ministry. And that is that we oftentimes, women, and I want to say the human race in general, we love to compare ourselves in every regard to people around us. And I hear so often, and I see it up close and personal in my personal relationships, women setting aside their losses that I can see are holding them back, because they don't seem that bad. And so they say, "Well, it's not like I had a family member die. I just lost my job. I'll find another one" when I can see that as a crack, as a chink in their armor, in their trust with God, because they don't really deal with it, right?
Instead, they just kind of excuse it away: "Well, it wasn't that bad. It's not that big of a deal," because they're comparing it to other people's losses that seems so much more significant in their eyes. And so, one of the things when I first started getting to know Carole, I was like, "Carole, I feel like you're like our mentor. You're like the one ... I want to say you're like ..." I just love being around her and hearing the wisdom that she has. And so I would love, Carole, for you to speak to that younger girl who's maybe just comparing her loss and downplaying what it is ... what would you say to her, Carole? What would you say to help her move out of that season and start getting healing like she needs?
Carole Holiday:
Well, I have a daughter and two daughters-in-law who are like my daughters in the age group that I think you're addressing. And I see them with this because of the social media platforms. I think, first of all, young women have an extraordinary amount of platforms that will thrust comparison into their faces. And I think that has to be managed pretty carefully. I have daughters-in-law that regularly go off of social media to take a little break and remind themselves of that. So that's the first caution that I would throw out there.
Second of all, I love that you said that, because years ago, I used to say, "Comparison is the evil seed of inferiority." That still is very true today. But I don't know, maybe we're not addressing the I am proposition enough because everything else can go away. I guess the blessing and the curse in my life is that basically I lost everything.
And so you get to choose to find out really who you are and to find out who God says you are. And either believe it or not when you're acquiring in the early stages of life; when you're looking forward to even increasing your wardrobe or increasing the education that you have or increasing your status at work, you're in the acquiring stage, so it's harder to step back. But I think a study constantly should be: Who does God say that I am? Because if you look at that, if everything is taken from you, is anything left? Is there any value left? What is the nugget that keeps me together? What is my spiritual DNA? What is that? Who am I? At the very molecular core of my spirit, who am I? And if they come back to that, then the rest doesn't matter.
I am not saying it's easy. I'm not saying, "Oh, it's just you. Just read that and Exodus, the burning bush, and you'll be fine." It's not that way. I think starting every day [by] reading who God says you are is not a bad idea. So to watch your social media and watch the comparison, to revisit the I am, really important things. And to surround yourself with a community of women who think likewise.
I just thought about this. When I was a young wife, I was in this prayer group, a church support group, a small group at church. There were about eight of us, and I remember this girl pulling me aside and saying, "I really like our group because we all shop for shoes at Nordstrom," which is [inaudible]. And I was so taken aback. I didn't know really what that meant. And it just came to me right now in what you asked me to address is, I think, like Who cares? Who cares where you buy your shoes? What does your soul look like? So choose your friendships and your associations carefully; I would say that's good.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah, that's really good. Carole, I have a question based on something you touched on when you said that there are things that stall grieving, and the first point you made was specifically like if you're a part of the church, it's really easy to think that because you have the hope of Jesus, we all have the hope of Jesus, we should be better than we are.
Carole Holiday:
Yeah.
Kaley Olson:
We should be better. And so I think there are a lot of women out there who are very much like yourself or very much like a close family member of mine who is really kind of the anchor for the loss of a family-like matriarch. So let's talk like legit loss right now. So anything can be like loss, but really significant loss, death of a person, death of a 35-year marriage. Something's really hard, but maybe she sees herself as somebody who knows that she needs to grieve but is doing so much to hold it together for everyone else. And as her friend, you might know, I want to talk to her, but I don't know what to ask her besides, "How are you?" So when you are going through that season, or maybe you've been a friend to somebody in that season, what can someone do right now who is watching somebody hold it together and they know on the inside they're an inch away from crumbling? What do they ask that person besides, "How are you," to really help them dig deep?
Carole Holiday:
You guys ask the best questions. I'm going to share a little story with you and maybe that will help answer that, because what you just asked is: What can we say? What can we do? In my book, I write about what I believe to be thin spaces, which is moments or geographic locations where the distance between heaven and earth diminishes and the two sort of touch.
I was leaving a doctor's office after I had had a blood test for some ... certain tests that I never imagined that I would ever need to have in my life. And I was in shock as I was walking to the elevator, and the elevator went down to the lobby. The door opened, and I don't know if anybody can relate to this, but my eyes were filled with tears, but they weren't spilling over. But yet, when the door of the elevator came open and the wind from outside hit my face, all of my tears just spilled over onto my cheeks. Without saying anything, without really being aware of my surroundings at all, I walked outside in front of the medical building, and I saw a concrete bench, and I sat down. And I sat with my hands in my lap, and my head was down, because I remember watching the tears drop onto the concrete.
Before I knew it, someone had come alongside of me. Again, I never looked up, sat down next to me without saying one word, took my hand in hers, I knew at that point it was a woman, and sat next to me and said nothing. She sat next to me, holding my hand; it could have been 30 minutes; it could have been three. I don't remember. And I say in my book, I don't know if she was wearing Chanel shoes or if she was part of the overnight custodial crew and was coming down after her shift. I had no idea what this person looked like, what they were wearing; I just knew that she was sitting there holding my hand, and after a period of time, without saying a thing, took my hand, put it back in my lap, patted my shoulder, and walked away. That was one of the holiest moments of my life, what I call a “thin space” moment. I share that because so many times we're so worried about what we can say. As a friend, what you need to do is be present.
I would see if I could get together with that person, just give them a big hug, just say, "Can I come over and sit with you for a while," maybe take their hand and see if that starts something. It may not be the initial eruption of emotion that that person probably needs to have. But the first rule, I would say, of being present for a friend who's grieving is to be present and not worry about your words. So many times, words get in the way. And I will tell you, I lost someone like that in my life. And this woman, Sarah, who I call the Rock of Gibraltar of our family, as close as we were, my three kids, my one son-in-law at the time, and me with Sarah, we grieved clumsily. There is no, "Oh, this is the perfect way to do it." We hugged her, we cried, we said stupid things probably, but we were present. We were there. And so I would say: Don't stay away from that friend who needs you; she doesn't know she needs you yet. But she will, because we do place these very unrealistic expectations.
You see, I had known Jesus from the time it was all I can remember. I always say 2 [years]. I don't know how old I was. I remember as a kindergartner thinking, Oh, I'm holding Jesus's hand. Yet here I was all these decades later falling apart. How was that possible that a woman of such faith who understood Scripture, understood ... well, I believed I understood my value. How is it that all of this just hollowed me out?
See, sometimes we need this crisis to understand and to recalibrate our hearts to who God says we are. So I don't know if that helps. Be present, be there, [and] don't worry about words. Remind them that they are valued and they are loved and you are there, and you have no idea what you're doing, and you have no idea what to say. But doggone it, you're not going to leave until that person opens their heart a bit.
Kaley Olson:
Yeah. That's good, Carole. I like what you just said. You recalibrate your heart to who God says you are. And I think that that's a perfect way to wrap up our time together and just remind our listeners that Carole's got a wealth of wisdom in her book that's titled I Don't Know Who I Am Anymore: Restoring Your Identity Shattered by Grief and Loss. And you guys can grab a copy of that book using the link in our show notes.
And, Carole, how do you want our listeners to connect with you?
Carole Holiday:
Thank you so much. This is like ... the old lady does social media. For someone who tried to live in a witness protection program for many years, this is really a turnaround for me.
Kaley Olson:
Wow.
Carole Holiday:
My kids are getting a kick out of this. So I am on Instagram, @carole — with an E, C-A-R-O-L-E — holiday — just like Holiday Inn: @caroleholiday. I have somewhat of a Facebook presence but mainly on Instagram. And I have a really fun, I think pretty website, caroleholiday.com, where I dispense a little bit of musings and some recipes on occasion. And they can also find my book and really cute pictures of my grandkids there.
Meredith Brock:
Well, Carole, I really hope our listeners have been able to experience the joy it is to know you, because you are just such a precious soul with so much wisdom. And I cannot encourage our listeners enough to go over there, give her a follow on Instagram. Her grandkids really are super cute. And she really does have some incredible recipes, y’all, not just on her Instagram and on her website, but they're also woven throughout this book that she wrote.
Kaley Olson:
I love that.
Meredith Brock:
How cool is that? So even if you're just looking for some recipes, y’all, pick up the book.
Kaley Olson:
There you go.
Meredith Brock:
But if you, like any human on earth, have experienced loss at all, this is a resource that you don't want to pass by.
Also, we've tackled a subject of identity loss and grief. We recognize that some of you may need to evaluate where you're at personally now that we've talked about this a little bit.
And if that's you, then I highly recommend downloading our free resource here at Proverbs 31 called “‘Am I Okay?’ A 10-Question, Self-guided Check-in.” This resource will help you unpack why you might be feeling anything but OK at the moment.
Kaley Olson:
For real.
Meredith Brock:
Maybe not right on the surface but under the surface maybe you're not feeling OK. And this resource will help you kind of unearth some of that. So you can download that today at the link in our show notes.
Kaley Olson:
Yep, absolutely. Well, friends, that is all for today, Carole and Meredith, thanks for talking on the podcast. I love getting to talk with you, Meredith. Carole, it's a pleasure to meet you. As always, friends —
Meredith Brock:
You as well.
Kaley Olson:
Yes, at Proverbs 31 Ministries —
Meredith Brock:
Yes.
Kaley Olson:
At Proverbs 31 Ministries, we believe when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it changes everything. We'll see you next time.