034: Tiffany & Alica

Written By Tiffany Yu

Tiffany & Alica | Making Space for Grief this Mother's Day & the Ongoing Pandemic ft. Grief Guide Alica Forneret

Listen on: Apple // Spotify // Google // YouTube

In this episode, I’m joined by Alica Forneret, grief guide, consultant, and educator, to talk about grief in the context of Mother’s Day coming up and how it has shown up for us during the pandemic.

We discussed:

  • Alica’s grief journey

  • Mother’s Day for grievers

  • What is grief?

  • Grief in the pandemic

  • Why are we afraid of grief?

  • Grief at work

  • Why it’s important to educate yourself about grief

  • What Alica wishes you knew about grief

  • The gift of grief

Show notes:

About Alica Forneret

Alica Forneret is a consultant, educator, and author dedicated to creating new spaces for people to explore grief and grieving. 

Alica facilitates for teams at organizations including Google, Culture Amp, and The California Department of Education. She has partnered with the likes of The Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation, Columbia University, and Lululemon. And she consults on product development and systems change to help companies create resources and tools for grieving communities.

Alica's writing about grief, work, and race has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Psychology Today, GQ, and more. Alica is the founding Lab Director of Summit Foundation’s Starlight End of Life Lab, an associate board member for Our House, and an inaugural member of the BC Women's Health Foundation Young Women's Council.

Follow Alica Forneret

Transcript

Tiffany Yu: Hi, everyone. You're listening to this episode of Tiffany & Yu, the podcast. If you're new to the podcast, Tiffany & Yu is a podcast about things that matter. And more specifically, I'm talking with friends who are using their voices and platforms to cultivate creativity, compassion, and change. Today I have with me a new friend. This is our first time meeting over video slash voice, Alica Forneret, and she is doing some really incredible work. She's a consultant, educator, author dedicating her life to creating new spaces for people to explore grief and grieving. So I found out about Alica's work through something that we had both participated in called the Shine Bootcamp. I'd love to just start there. When did you do Shine? What made you decide you wanted to do it and what's happened since then? 

Alica Forneret: Thank you for having me, Tiffany. I did Shine in spring of 2019. And I had applied in 2018, didn't get in, reapplied in 2019, got in. And I was really interested in doing it because I was working in content marketing at the time and was really looking to grow confidence in my voice and my public speaking. I'd been doing grief work for a couple of years at that point and had been on stages and doing events and crafting my story and my narrative was something I really wanted to hone. So I found out about Shine, I think through a colleague and was really lucky to be a part of it. It was really the first foundational speaking training that I had in terms of my grief work. And it was so wonderful in so many different ways. 

Tiffany Yu: I love that. I did Shine in fall of 2020. And for me, I feel like I'm very early in my grief journey, even though I technically have experience with it for over two decades. And interestingly enough, the first episode of this podcast ever a little over a year ago, was with my friend who is a therapist who specializes in grief. And I just think that it's such an important conversation that we need to have and need to continue having. So if you feel comfortable sharing a little bit of your grief journey and what took you on this journey of wanting to create these types of spaces? 

Alica Forneret: So I got into the death and grief space at the end of 2015. I was working on a print project with a creative friend of mine and we were trying to figure out, what's the most like random, exciting topic that we could explore with this project? And we chose death. And it was a field that neither of us had worked in before. And so we were really exploring it from this abstract angle. We were talking about death and art. We were talking about death in culture, history, making-- we did photo shoots. We did all of this really creative work around it. And then about a year into that project, and a month before we were going to print on it, my mom went into the ICU and died unexpectedly. And so I'd spent about a year doing research, having conversations, and doing a lot of work in the space, in an abstract external way. And I decided what would make the most sense after my mom died, that I should probably turn the lens inward, look at my own grief, think about how all of those topics applied to me in my life. And so that's how I entered into this world. And it primarily, in the beginning, I was really focused as a writer. I was focused on writing and expressing myself and my experience through the written word. And then it just all sort of, I was going to say exploded, but that sounds very aggressive. It all bloomed from there into something so much more than I ever expected when I was writing those first blog posts.

Tiffany Yu: That's so powerful. And so this episode is going to go live a little bit before Mother's Day. And I'm curious to better understand how you're feeling about that day coming up, and how you would suggest our listeners navigate that day for people like you, who have lost their moms, or even who have difficult relationships with their mothers, because that's a type of grief as well.

Alica Forneret: This year is the third year that I'm hosting an annual event, previously it was called Motherless Mother's Day. So to answer your question about how I'm feeling, I'm feeling kind of like I do every year, but there's pieces of me that are just really focused on thinking about my mom, having memories of my mom, grieving the loss of my mom. And then the other half of my brain, or probably like 70% of my brain, is like, Work work, work, project work, serve people, serve the community. So this year I also will share, I just moved back to my hometown where I grew up, and this is going to be the first year that I'm spending Mother's Day in my hometown with my dad since she died. And so I think there's something unique about this year as well that will feel a little more, probably challenging and familiar. And in terms of how people like me can support themselves, what I do, I can speak for myself really first is I let myself acknowledge and feel whatever comes up. If I feel joy thinking about my mom on Mother's Day, great. That's beautiful. I can feel excited. I can commemorate her and I let myself feel that. And at the same time, I can feel 20 minutes later, sad, terrible. Be sobbing, be set off by something, triggered by something that I never expected. And so allowing myself to navigate what really can be a roller coaster of emotions, particularly around this time of year, is very important for me personally in managing my grief. And I think that that acknowledgement is a really good first step, and allowing yourself to say, whatever I'm experiencing, whatever I'm feeling, that's-- our body's telling us this is what we need right now. 

Tiffany Yu: I love that you're sharing the dualities or the multifacetedness of the experience, which is on the one hand you can sit in a memorialized place and really remember all those moments of joy, but then also sit in the depths of what that loss really feels like. There's actually a quote. I mentioned this in my Shine talk, which ultimately became a Ted talk about toxic positivity, and I'll share it here too. And the quote is from someone named Francis Weller and they say, "The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other, and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That's how much grief I can give." And to me that really highlights the beauty of the human experience is to be able to experience those. But one of the things that's coming up for me. So I lost my dad when I was nine. So it's been, this year will be 24 years. And, last year, I'm sure you know The Dinner Party. Last year, I spent Father's Day at a Dead Dads-- it's weird because we've come up with these hashtag ways of talking about our dead dads. 

Alica Forneret: Loss, yeah. 

Tiffany Yu: I went to a Dead Dad dinner and what came up for me was being seen in my grief and how beautiful that was. And even though it's been a long time, which I think I then didn't let myself feel because I'm like, Oh, it's already been this long. And one of the things I learned from reading Option B is that you can't put a time limit on grief. Let's take a break here and then when we come back, I want to dial it back and talk, what is grief? What does it look like? Why are we so afraid of it? So stick with us. 

And we're back from the break here. We are chatting with Alica Forneret about grief and making spaces for grief. And right before the break, we were chatting about how Mother's Day is coming up. Alica organizes an event for others who have that shared experience. And really, I think thinking through what these holidays and what these dates mean to us once the person we used to celebrate them with are no longer here. So I wanted to take a step back because I feel like our understanding around grief, even though it's one of the emotions we're the most afraid of, we have the least amount of understanding around it. So I'd love just to hear, what is grief and what does it look like? What does it look like? I put that in air quotes. 

Alica Forneret: So I define it, in my work, as the full body, full being experience that we have after a loss. And that includes the impact on us emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. For me, when I, when you Google grief, it shows up and it's like sadness and sorrow after someone dies. And I think that that complexity of the impact that it has on us emotionally, the impact that it has on our physical bodies, the impact that it does and can have on their mental health is lost for people sometimes. And I think also the different level of emotions that we can experience that are quote positive and negative. Or the fact that for many of us, grieving does not fit those five stages. It is not linear and the experience is something that is very individualistic, and very unique to us as individual human beings.

Tiffany Yu: And I remember you sharing, your work has been seeing a boom over the past year. Can you talk about what grief looks like in the context of the pandemic? If you haven't experienced parental loss, you can still experience grief.

Alica Forneret: The experiences that we're seeing people have with grief and understanding grief has widened so much in the last year. We're seeing people grieving the loss of normalcy, grieving the loss of relationships, community, intimacy, physical touch, and affection. There's so many things that we're now recognizing have been lost in this state of isolation that we've been in. And I think it's important to remember and also note that grief is not just tied to the death of a loved one or a human in general. It can be tied to any loss that we have, any separation that we have, anything being removed from our lives. And I think we've seen that so much in the pandemic in just the way that we're interacting with each other. And then also, obviously on the whole side of the last year that is dealing with deaths related to COVID, police brutality, murder within communities of color. It's just really I think widened our point of view on what it means to grieve anything.

Tiffany Yu: At least in my own personal experience,  I just felt like growing up, I didn't have safe spaces for me to understand what it looked like to grieve, and this could be heavily influenced by being the daughter of Asian immigrants and what emotions were appropriate to be outward with and be inward with. I'm not sure in your work, is there fear or is there discomfort around navigating these conversations? And what do you think is at the root of that? 

Alica Forneret: Absolutely. I think and know just from experience in conversations in this work that there's fear for a couple of different reasons and fear when it comes to how we individually handle grief and dealing with it ourselves, and also dealing with the people that we interact with. So for example, I think that a lot of that fear comes from being afraid and being nervous about saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, showing up in the wrong way for someone in your life when you're a support system. And at the same time as an individual, saying the wrong thing, being a burden, not being connected enough with the people that are in your life to make it clear that their support means enough to you. I think that that fear of getting it right and doing it right and grieving correctly can hinder us from just like I was saying earlier, just grieving however we need to, and expressing what we need and expressing what we're going through, however we need to. And then I think, like you mentioned, like there's so many layers of barriers, both culturally, within society, economically when it comes to the resources that we have access to, to be able to grieve and find professional support, et cetera, that I think that it's not just a fear that keeps us from being able to grieve in this really holistic, open, expressive, vocal, public way all of the time. There are a lot of other factors contributing to our ability to find the support that we need and get the support that we need. 

Tiffany Yu: That's so powerful. And I think one of the things we are learning over the past year is, we can't really de compartmentalize our mental health. And what I mean by that is, we're now seeing our workspaces make vocal statements and commitments around police brutality, Black Lives Matter, the rise in anti-Asian racism and violence. How do we navigate this conversation around grief at work? Because, I can grieve at home and have my professional support systems like a grief therapist and my friends, but I can't leave it at the door when I walk in-- back when we had offices, when I walk into my Zoom meeting I guess, when I walk into work, like how do we navigate where the boundaries are between what's appropriate to share around grief within the work place. 

Alica Forneret: I think first getting rid of that expectation that we are going to leave it out the door or be able to turn it off when we turn on our computer. Getting rid of that expectation is first and key. And I think that the culture that companies are building around understanding that we are all human beings and not machines coming to work. And when I gave my Shine talk, it was specifically about this. It was about grief at work, and it was about the fact that I had an employer, unfortunately, who told me, when you come to work, you need to leave your dead mom at the door. This is a place where we get business done and it's not welcome here. And I think that that really flipped a switch for me to understanding, Oh, the fact that you even-- as a C-suite level leader in a company with young people who are losing parents, the fact that you think that it's okay to say those words to me is probably where we should start, let alone figuring out the resources and the benefits that you're going to set up for me to be taken care of. And I think that that first real shift that I see when the education is available to people is, Oh, this is deeper than just asking someone to leave it at the door, crying in the bathroom when you need a moment or like take your bereavement leave for three days and come back and you're supposed to be fine. There's a lot of complexity to being able to support ourselves, be able to support our direct reports, and be able to support our colleagues. 

Tiffany Yu: And I think what you're really highlighting is, there's a whole system in place. So what are the work policies in place, but then the whole team dynamics and how much support you feel like you're getting there, or whether you feel like you're walking into a space that is psychologically safe for you to be able to know, okay, if I'm not getting the things done that I need to, who can I reach out to for support? We talked about how grief doesn't really look like one thing. And there was a book that I read by Brené Brown. She talked about how grief is one of the emotions that we'll all experience, but we're so afraid of it. And oftentimes at least what I've learned in therapy is if we don't know how to label it, then we're not really sure what our pathway through is. So I'm curious if you have thoughts for our listeners about how to know if they're experiencing grief. Or is the assumption that we just all are, I mean, well, we are in a pandemic. And so, I mean, I often do talk about how we're experiencing collective trauma and collective grief every day. But I've also noticed that I have a couple of friends who have never reached out for professional support before. 

Alica Forneret: I think one of the first interviews I ever did around this subject was with Rachel Ricketts and I was talking about, I was like, Oh yeah, blah, blah, blah, when my grief just comes out of the blue, this and this and that. And she was like, girl, it is in there. It is always underneath whether or not you recognize it, whether or not you feel it manifesting somewhere physically, or you see, you hear something in your brain telling you that you're grieving . It can be just underlying inside of us, whether in a big, positive way, in a neutral way, in a negative way. And I think for me, that's really important to remember because it also makes me feel like I understand, and I communicate this with people as like, I understand that if it's always in there, I feel less like when I'm triggered by something, I'm doing something wrong or I wasn't strong enough or something came out of the blue and it just like smacked me in the face. No it's it's in there. It is something that many of us are experiencing. I cannot speak for all of humanity and say everyone is grieving right now. But I can say that the majority of people that I know not only are grieving in some way, but are being vocal about it as well. And I think in terms of supporting ourselves, there are practices that we can do with our bodies, with body scans, with journaling, meditation, just to drop in and have that alone and solo time where we're not taking care of someone else's grief. We're not focused on supporting someone else. And really when we have those moments, I think for me, it's one of the best ways to understand what I'm going through is to just find a practice that allows me to check in. 

Tiffany Yu: I love that idea of the check-in. I know you talked about a couple of them so far, the body scan, and the meditation, and the journaling. I'm curious if you have other strategies to share for how people can really reflect, and turn inward to really better understand what they're feeling.

Alica Forneret: I would say, whether or not this is turning inward, reading about grief, reading other people's stories, reading books. That has been one of the things that has been so helpful to me. And it was very helpful to me in the beginning. Being validated by other people's experiences and recognizing, Oh, it's not just me or, Oh, that random thing that happened to me the other day, that happens to other people who are grieving or missing someone or commemorating someone through a practice that you think is just your own. And I think one of the really useful and important things as well about reading and educating yourself about the topic of grief is that sometimes that allows someone else to articulate what you're going through when you aren't able to. And I think one of the things that I recognized in a lot of the books that I read in the beginning, it was like, Oh, that's how I described that feeling or, Oh, that's the language I can use to talk to my partner or to talk to my friends. I didn't know what the words would be that should come out of my mouth. And I think that when we read someone else's stories or we read about other people's experiences, it can allow us to find those words, find that validation and find the ways to articulate what we're going through when we probably, especially in the early days, a lot of us just don't have the energy to be figuring out that stuff anyway. 

Tiffany Yu: One of the things you're making me think about is, for those who want to support someone who's grieving. Again, there's the fear, this discomfort around saying the wrong thing. Of course we don't want to trigger other people, and then we don't know what those triggers are. So we end up saying nothing. And I find that a lot of times when I've had friends who are grieving, they look to see how their friends are acting and because we haven't really been taught or given a guidebook for how to support people. I think it's like compounded on top. I'm curious if you have suggestions on how we can better support those who are on their grief journey. 

Alica Forneret: For me, the first thing I always say is similar to my last answer. Educate yourself about grief, death, the dying experience, if that's what your person is going through because I think that we have all of these preconceived notions. We have whatever understanding we were brought up with that might not translate to the person that we're taking care of or supporting. So I think really privately or with your person, reading, watching videos, listening to podcasts, listening to conversations like this, and understanding first, what might they be going through? What could I learn about this experience of grief that isn't in whatever textbook I read that talked about Kübler-Ross like 20 years ago? I think that that for me, for support people is the best first step to take so that we don't come in and just make assumptions about what someone needs or make assumptions about what someone is going through. And then I think the biggest reminder and thing that I always tell people really to center themselves with first, is that when you are going to support someone, it is about them and it needs to be about them and it is not about you. So if they don't answer your texts, they don't answer your call. They tell you I'm fine, but I don't need your support. You did what you needed to do by showing up. And what matters at the end of the day is that they get the care that they need. And I think that that sometimes gets lost for people. It's like, well, Why didn't they accept the help that I offered? Because probably they just didn't need it from you. And I think remembering that, and starting from that place of understanding, while educating yourself about the complexities of grief is the best place for people to start. And then, there's a million things you can do to support them, the food and the showing up and all of that, but like really making sure that you are as well prepared and equipped and informed as possible to go care for a person who has experienced something very life altering and challenging is number one step in my book. 

Tiffany Yu: I saw something this morning in an email newsletter that said meeting people where they are is a form of empowerment. The work of the mature person is having the ability and the compassion to be able to decenter yourselves and really check in on how people are doing. Sometimes I feel like when we bring in a grief expert, the expectation is that you come in and you know everything and you're going to help all of us navigate grief. And so I'm curious by working in a space where it's such a raw emotion that you'll come in and out of as well, if you find yourself navigating that expectation that people are like, okay, Alica, tell us all the answers, give us the guidebook, while you're experiencing your own things too. Or have you been able to set stronger boundaries around that? 

Alica Forneret: Oh, I think it's-- I wouldn't say that it's for me about setting boundaries, but it's about communicating what it is that I do well. And what I do well, the whole purpose and goal behind my work is to be a conduit for all of the people who do grief work, mental health work, healthcare work, et cetera, to serve grieving people and to funnel those resources through my business and my brand so that people can access them. So I think by this point, my audience hopefully should all know that, I am not a grief yoga teacher. I don't want to become a grief yoga teacher, but I know a lot of grief yoga teachers, and I will connect you to many different kinds of people that can help you with your grief yoga, for example. Same with books, same with websites, same with different kinds of resources, groups, et cetera. For me, I think I've been very vocal about the fact that my lane is to-- I'm like the merging lane for all of the resources to get them onto the highway and then everyone can access them. I feel very lucky in that because I don't claim to know everything or even near everything about grief and grieving because I can speak very intimately to my personal experience, but there are so many layers of our identities that impact the way that we grieve that no one can speak to every facet and experience that human beings have with grief. 

Tiffany Yu:  It sounds like you're the ecosystem builder, where someone comes to you and they're like, I need, blah, blah, blah. Then you're like, Oh, I've created this grief ecosystem, where I know where to direct you to find more of the resources that you need. And we've actually spent a couple of episodes on this podcast, more from an advocacy perspective, but really helping people reimagine that there's no one way to advocate. There's no one way to grieve. And so how can we provide you all of the tools that fit in best with your skill set and what you need to find that support. What do you wish people knew about grief?

 Alica Forneret: Truly just how complex it is compared to what we are taught. All of the layers, all of the factors, and all of the pieces of our identity that impact it. I wish that there had been more teaching in conversation around that. 

Tiffany Yu: A couple of months ago, I was part of an event on Clubhouse called "the gift of grief." And I'm curious if you can share what you think the gift of grief is. 

Alica Forneret: Hmm. A connection to my mom. I think it'd be incredibly hard if she had just died and then I didn't grieve and never thought about her again. I think for me too, it's the fact that grief can involve the joy, the happiness, and the beautiful memories. And also, the sad, the challenging ones, the angry ones, et cetera. I think it is a gift to be able to go through this process and have the time and the energy and the space to process everything. Yeah. 

Tiffany Yu: That's so beautiful. That touched me right in my heart. That deep connection, to feel so deeply for someone and to be so connected to them and to be able to experience that through your grief. So I do close all of my podcasts with the same question, which isn't about grief. What are you grateful for today? 

Alica Forneret: Hmm. My home that I just moved into. It's new to me and my husband and having a roof and a kitchen and a bed and a couch to sit on at the end of the day and protection and safety. it's just such a privilege that I am very grateful to be settling into right now. 

Tiffany Yu: Thanks for sharing. And if people want to support you in your work, where is the best place to follow you, hire you, et cetera?

Alica Forneret: So my website is www.alicaforneret.com. And on Instagram, I'm at alica.forneret, and all of the info about working with me, my Mother's Day and Father's Day event this year, everything will be promoted and available on those. 

Tiffany Yu: Perfect. And thank you so much for being so vulnerable and coming on to the Tiffany & Yu podcast.

Alica Forneret: Thank you for having me so much.

Tiffany Yu
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