The Loss of a Sister – Jenn’s Story
Jenn: [00:00:00] With the ambiguous grief. I like didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to put it. I didn’t know how to grieve a person who I was still talking to
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I’m your host Carlin, a Canadian queer identifying 30 something year old, providing a platform for the stories that need to be heard
hello, Jen.
Jenn: Hi Carling. Thanks for having
Carling: Oh my gosh, it is so nice to meet you.
Jenn: You too. I love it when people I know. [00:01:00] Introduce me to other awesome people.
Carling: Yeah, I know. It makes me feel like, I don’t know, like we’ve been set up and we’re like, somebody thought we would get along so I’m excited to chat with you.
Jenn: Me too.
Carling: I would love it if you could introduce yourself, tell me like who you are, what you do, where you’re from, and then we’ll find out where your story starts.
Jenn: Awesome. I’m Jen Oglesby. I live in Media, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of Philadelphia. I’m a mom and a wife and a friend and all those things. So I have two little ones. I spend a lot of time parenting these days. But I am also a clinical social worker, a coach, and a grief educator.
So I do a lot of work supporting people with coping, with the challenges of grief and telling the truth about loss. My road with that started. I’ve had several losses in my life, but the most recent one was my sister. She died in 2021. And so that’s what started me down this path.
Not a path that I, I don’t think anyone who does grief work ever starts there. Like they don’t think I’ll grow up [00:02:00] in two and help people with grief. We’ve all got a story that got us here. And so yeah, so now that’s the focus of my work. And I love talking about. Grief and loss. I think we need more truth telling about those things, which is why I’m like, I love your podcast.
I love that you make so much space for people to tell the truth about hard things. So thank you for this space.
Carling: Ah, thank you. So what got you into social work? I always find that interesting cuz it sounds like one of the hardest jobs.
Jenn: yeah, so I was an English and theater major in college, so like totally different. And I did a year of AmeriCorps after I graduated. Worked in a school in Nashville honestly, like I grew up in a small town in Georgia, very white, very privileged and became very aware of how privileged I was and had that.
Experience of realizing that the world was a lot bigger than the little world that I had grown up in. And so I looked into different career [00:03:00] options. Like I knew I wanted to do something to address inequities and to support people and come from a place of a strength-based place, which social work is very strength-based, very environmental, very much about not just individual support, but the systems that we live in.
And how those impact us. And I also am a person who likes to do a lot of different things, and so social work is a, you can wear a lot of hats as a social worker. So yeah, so I ended up going to grad school for that and have done many different things since that time. So my current career is like this iteration in my professional life and we’ll see where I go next, but I’m very happy in this space right now.
Carling: Wow. That’s amazing.
And so are you comfortable sharing about your grief with the loss of your sister?
Jenn: Yeah, absolutely. I’m always like, where do I start that story? So I’ve had other losses in my life. Like I lost a stepbrother to drug overdose when he was 20, and my stepmother died from lung cancer when she was [00:04:00] 59. So I’ve had some out of order deaths before my sister she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
In 2016. They thought it was benign The story was like, we’ll go in, we’ll do surgery. She’ll have some, rehab and OT and speech and PT and all the things, but she’ll probably make a mostly full recovery. So it was really alarming that she had a brain tumor, but it was like, okay, it’s not that kind of brain tumor, so hopefully we’ll be okay.
Carling: How old was she?
Jenn: she was 30, almost 35 at the time. Married, no kids. She lived in Asheville, North Carolina and I was in Philadelphia, so there was a lot of the distance there was tough. it’s a very long, convoluted story, so I’ll give you the highlights. It turned out not to be benign.
When they got in there, they realized it was something else. So it was cancer. It was a very rare form of cancer. So it’s actually the most common brain tumor in children. But in adults it happens like in one in 2 million people. [00:05:00] So there was no real like treatment protocol, no clear picture, no clear prognosis.
And so they ended up doing radiation. So this was in the spring. They did radiation that summer and she was cancer free. The tricky, difficult part about it at that time was actually not her cancer, but the fact that she had a giant hole in her brain where they had removed it and the. Tumor was in her cerebellum, which helps the two sides of your body work together.
So it impacted her speech, her ability to drive. She had permanent double vision. She couldn’t work anymore. She had difficulty walking unassisted. So it really upended her whole life and it was a lot of, for her and for us as a family and everyone who knew and loved her A lot of wait and see if she was gonna, if her skills were going to improve, if she was gonna regain some of that functioning.
And so it was a slow process over the course of a few years of like finally realizing she was never gonna drive again. Finally realizing she was not gonna go back to work. Finally realizing that her [00:06:00] speech was not going to improve cognitively she was still there. So we went through a whole huge transition as a family and a whole huge.
Grieving process, just adjusting to the fact that her life was gonna be so different and trying to figure out how to be in relationship with each other. My sister and I were extremely close. She was my person, she was my soulmate, she was my best friend. We were super, super connected. And so when she lost her ability to.
Speak clearly over the phone that impacted our communication and obviously she had her own stuff that she had to cope with and adjust to, and that was very difficult. So there was a a shift in our relationship during that time. We finally got through that, I feel like it was about 20 19, 20 20 that I finally realized that I had not done my own grieving about how different she was.
How that relationship had changed, how I had some things that I needed to let go, some expectations that things were gonna go back [00:07:00] to the way that they were. So I started going to therapy at that time to address some of that. And then in the summer of 2020, her cancer came back. there was a lot of medical complication with all of that.
But the bottom line is she passed away in December of 2021. It was very fuzzy. Like we couldn’t get a clear prognosis. So like I couldn’t get her doctors just to tell me that she was dying, even though I could see that and I could feel that I couldn’t get anyone to confirm that for me.
And she started having some cognitive shifts, so I wasn’t aware how much she understood. So it was very, it was medically complicated. It was. Emotionally complicated. It was personally complicated. It was just so many layers of complication. And then we had the pandemic in the middle of that too, so we were limited in how much we could see each other for quite some time.
But I did make it there barely before she passed away. It happened really fast. She ended up dying from complications of pneumonia and yeah, and then it just When she died, e everything went dark for me. It was really [00:08:00] as much as even when, you know, it’s coming, there’s just no, there’s no preparing for it.
And it was all very, just very confusing how it all went down.
Carling: And were you guys close in age,
Jenn: so she, we were two years apart and she’s my only sibling. So I have I had stepbrothers, but we didn’t grow up together, so the relationship was very different. But my sister and I were only siblings. Our parents were divorced. For a long period of our childhood, we would go back and forth between my parents’ house.
So like she was the one constant person in my life. So yeah, we were very very close. And she’s the person I thought Nothing can happen to her cuz I will not make it.
Carling: Right. Oh,
that’s so hard. I’m so sorry.
Jenn: Thank you. And yet here I am. Somehow we do.
Carling: how do you differentiate or what was the difference in experience between this loss versus some of the other? Was it the just how close your connection was?
Jenn: Yeah, I mean, definitely when I lost my stepbrother and my stepmother, and of course like I’ve lost grandparents. It was very [00:09:00] different. For instance, losing a grandparent, then losing like someone who’s 20. But the relationship, that was very upsetting for me, obviously a very big shift for our family.
Really devastating losses both times and very different experiences like my, with my stepbrother. You know, I wasn’t there with my stepmother. I was there with her when she died with my sister. I was there with her when she died. So they’re all very different. Yeah, but for me, it’s like in the inner circle of my heart.
It’s like my sister and my kids, my husband, those are the people that just are the glue and the foundation and the, I can’t imagine what I would do if anything happened to them. Not that I wouldn’t also be devastated to lose a parent or friends or any of that, there are just some people that are, They’re the people you, you, you.
Like. I could never make it without you. And she was that person for me. So it did feel different. It shook me in a different way. The floor came out from under me in a very different way than it did with the other losses, simply because of the nature of their relationship.
Carling: Yeah. what does [00:10:00] grieving look like for you in that then? What? What did you do?
Jenn: I’m very privileged in that I was able to take time off. I had coaching clients at the time. I took a whole month off. My sister died in December and I had already planned to be off for two weeks just for the holidays cuz I had no, we had no idea it was gonna be that soon. So I ended up taking a month off from seeing clients which I’m, as a coach.
Most of my clients are pretty, they’re stable. They’re able to take that time away. And then I picked back up in January. I was like, okay it’s time to get back to work. So I started seeing clients again and seeing clients was fine. For me to sit with a person and just be present with them one-on-one was actually great because it was like, I’m just gonna focus on you and what you need, and whatever I have is, that’s part of my job is like putting my stuff over here so I can show up for you.
And I was able to do that as a coach in those one-on-one relationships. But everything else, I, I couldn’t do it. Like I have a weekly newsletter. I was like, I don’t know what to say. I really don’t know what to say. I don’t know [00:11:00] what to do. So I ended up taking what I now call a grief sabbatical.
At the time, I just called it like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, and I can’t function today and I can’t function tomorrow either. So I guess I’m just gonna wait until it gets better. And then my therapist used the language of sabbatical, like, why don’t you just stop trying to figure everything out right now and take a break?
And I’m very privileged that. With my husband working and we had savings, like financially, we were able to do that for a time. So I ended up taking almost nine months off. just giving myself, honestly it was a lot of just resting. Grief is so exhausting. Showing up for my clients.
I don’t think I brought on anyone new during that time, but I kept the clients that I had a lot of journaling. A lot of walks in nature, a lot of laying on the couch, feeling like I couldn’t get up. Yeah, it was a really, it was a really strange time. I felt very disembodied. I just was like, I don’t know where I am.
I don’t know what I wanna do. I couldn’t [00:12:00] figure out where to take my coaching practice. It didn’t really feel right to go back to what I was doing before, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. And every time I would do a podcast or write a newsletter or give a talk, it was about grief.
That was just what I kept talking about. And then I realized maybe this is actually where I wanna lean in. But it took, I cannot stress how completely messy it was to figure up and down and back and forth, and, Awful. It was to just feel like in this free fall where I couldn’t find the ground under me.
And I still feel that way sometimes. It’s only been a year and a half since my sister died. But I was able to take time and space, which I realize a lot of people cannot do.
Carling: Yeah. I find the exhaustion of grief is annoying to me. I’m like, why can’t I just get up and keep doing things, but I’m physically so exhausted and I don’t think people talk about that enough. That need for physical rest.
Jenn: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I was parenting at the time too. I had two young children, so [00:13:00] it was like any resources I had went to them and went to my clients. And then anything else I had, I really backed away from a lot of my, I had really supportive friends. But I didn’t have the energy to socialize or go do things.
I spent a lot of time alone and a lot of that time was just yeah, laying around because it is exhausting. It is a full body experience. It is not just an emotional experience, it is a mental experience. It’s a physical experience. Like our body actually has a, physical reaction to grief. And you’re right, we don’t talk about that enough and It is annoying.
Carling: That’s the only word I can yeah. Put to it. I’m. Like annoyed that I can’t just drink a coffee and get over it.
Jenn: And even now, like even over the weekend, I kept being like, why do I feel so like listless and tired and irritated. like everything should be fine. This is fine. And it always takes me a while to be like, it’s grief. Because even in my mind, even knowing everything that I know about grief, I still think it’s been long enough now.
It can’t be [00:14:00] that right. It must be like something else. And then I’m like no. Like a year and a half is a nanosecond in grief land. There is no timeline. There is no, it’s been too long. And what makes me think that now I’ve hit this mark on the calendar and so it must not be that anymore. It must be something else.
It really can sneak up on you.
Carling: Yeah.
And so what was the transition of that and then deciding to do more specific grief work for a job?
Jenn: Yeah. I. I got invited to give a talk about grief. So I had sent out a newsletter to my coaching list about grief. Ended up giving a talk about grief, and the response to that was like, just told me that there’s something here. Like I’m saying something that people are telling me like they’re thanking me for.
They need to hear. And the biggest question for me was like, can I do this? Can I talk about this? Can I be with people in this? Because I’m still in it. So how much do I need to have tended to my own grief before I can help other people tend to [00:15:00] theirs? So I decided to sign up last summer for a training and just learn about it.
Learn about what it is, because even though I’m, I was trained as a clinical social worker Most social workers, and in fact, most mental health professionals get little to no grief training, which is I could go on a whole box about that. It is its own thing. It is its own set of skills and practices and a lot of mental health clinicians are actually not trained in how to properly support people with grief or they’re using very outdated models.
So I decided to spend the summer doing training. And then once I got in there, I just couldn’t get enough. I thought it would be, I was not sure if it would be overwhelming and feel good. Like I didn’t know which way it would go, but it felt good and I felt like this is the place I wanna be. And then once I started taking clients I really felt like this is the right space for me right now.
It’s not hard in the ways that I thought it would be. You just don’t really know until you get in there. And [00:16:00] people would tell me like, oh, it’s grief work so hard. It’s gonna be so depressing. All these things. And yes, it’s sometimes sad and sometimes depressing, but it’s also really incredible to see how we find our way through how much it helps when we have a space where we can tell the truth.
How much, there are tools available to us that don’t make everything better, but that just help us be a little more equipped to live alongside what we’re being asked to live, whether or not we want to. And so once I learned those things from myself and learned ways to help support other people with that, it just started to feel like the right space.
So I just. I’m very much a breadcrumbs person. Like I just follow the breadcrumb and I’m like, this, that seems like the right thing. And that seems like the right thing. I never have a five year plan. I don’t know what my five year plan is, but like this is where I’m supposed to be right now and it feels good.
And I’m doing more, I just finished another six month training. And so I will be here as long as it feels good. And I expect that will be for quite some time.
Carling: Wow. I’m curious, what are the ways [00:17:00] that you thought it would be hard that it ended up not being hard?
Jenn: It’s interesting cuz again, it’s I feel like I should know this as a person who is grieving, but people who are grieving don’t cry all the time.
Carling: Right.
Jenn: Like, you know, our lives are bigger than just our grief. That’s not always true. In the beginning it feels like that’s all there is, but at some point you laugh again and at some point, I’m not even talking to my clients just about grief.
Sometimes I’m talking to them about, all the other things that stress us out, work and interpersonal relationships and I can’t seem to get my closet cleaned out. What is that about? Like all of these things. And a lot of times grief is woven in there in ways that people don’t realize.
But I think I thought like it would be sad all the time, which again, Yeah, not even as a grieving person, but all the grief spaces that I’m in, like whether I’m with other grievers or whatever, like we’ve still got our sense of humor. We’ve still got all the same everyday stressors. We still have goals for ourself, and then I also wasn’t sure if I could separate my grief [00:18:00] and other people’s grief and so a lot of what I have to do is tend to my own grief so that my needs are being met. That’s my most important job. Yeah. And then I just had to realize I’ve been doing this for a long time, I know how to, create that space where like my stuff is over here and it’s not bleeding into your stuff and trust myself.
And once I started doing it, it was not as overwhelming as I, as, or as difficult as I thought it would be. It’s really incredible when you can just choose to be present with someone and be available for their experience. The side benefit of that is it takes you away from your own for a little while.
Carling: And what kind of people do you typically work with in, in the grief space?
Jenn: So I work with all kinds of grief. Most everyone who comes to me has had a death. I have worked with some people who have anticipatory grief. Those are the two biggest ones. , there’s all kinds of grief. I think that most people, when they’re looking for grief support, it’s one of those two things.
Even though I think a big part of what we, [00:19:00] what I try to do and what I think we’re culturally getting a little bit better about doing is recognizing that grief is everywhere. Like that it exists, not just when someone dies. But that’s primarily where I. Where most of my clients, when they come to me, that’s their experience
Carling: Yeah, ambiguous grief I think is also something that a lot of people aren’t talking about, or I think maybe more people now through like TikTok and Instagram are talking about that loss of. Somebody or something that is still alive. There’s like nowhere to place it. It’s, you know, when somebody dies, their physical body and everything is gone. But when somebody’s still alive, you can still grieve, so many aspects of it.
Jenn: Absolutely. That was something I really struggled with when my sister after her brain surgery, and I, it was so helpful when I had a name for it. It took me four years before I realized that’s what it was and found the right language and [00:20:00] found even one book. I think there’s one out there that’s good about ambiguous loss.
But that’s a really difficult place to be because that grieving process was very different than when my sister died. They were different intensities, but I feel like when my sister died, I knew what I was grieving and I knew that there was no, like there was a finality to it.
With the ambiguous grief. I like didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to put it. I didn’t know how to grieve a person who I was still talking to. And then I felt guilty for grieving a person that was still alive right in front of me. It’s very complicated and you’re right, there’s not enough out there.
And that’s an area where I work with people too. It’s just, I think people don’t always recognize that’s what they’re experiencing and that it can be helpful to get support for that. I think when you’re in it, You don’t think, always call it grief
Carling: Yeah, grief is a little too synonymous with death. Instead of the loss, maybe more loss is a better idea. Even, the loss of what you [00:21:00] had hoped or dreamed for somebody or with somebody,
Jenn: Yes.
Carling: Do you ever feel that in coaching somebody through grief, do you find it sometimes helpful or triggering for your own grief and experience?
Jenn: I think that’s what I was worried about. That’s why I thought it would be difficult. And I have actually found it’s not that it never happens because I’m human. Like any therapist, any coach, anybody, like at some point someone’s stuff is gonna push up against your stuff. So I can’t say that it never happens.
Of course it happens, but I understand like how to handle that, how to take a step back, I get clinical supervision so I have a place to take that if it’s happening. But it doesn’t happen as much as I thought that it would. I was afraid I was just gonna be like up against it all the time. But everyone’s experience of grief is so unique that, people start telling their stories and their experiences and you realize there’s a universality to grief.
There are some things about it that we can all connect around. [00:22:00] And then at the same time, it’s a completely individual experience and we all walk through it in a different way.
Carling: when it comes to helping people through grief, do you have like a, is there ever an end goal or is it I don’t really know what my question is, but when you go to therapy, there’s like an end or a goal or a something you’re aiming for, but with grief like you, because you never get rid of it, you just learn to carry it and live with it. So yeah, I guess how do you approach either a timeline or like a markers of. Success. I’m sure there’s a better word way to word that.
Jenn: Yeah. Yeah. So everything I do is very client driven, so sometimes it just depends what people bring to me. In most cases people are telling me I want to feel less overwhelmed. I wanna feel a little bit more like I have some agency in my life, cuz it can feel like everything is so out of control and like you can’t get a handle on anything when you’re grieving.
People [00:23:00] will come and say I wanna just feel like a little more at peace, or a little bit more I can remember my person without bursting into tears every single time. And so a lot of the work that I do with people, I see my role as helping people make sense of their experience.
And there’s so much to be said for just The way that you’re experiencing this, the way that you’re feeling makes sense and it can feel so tingly and overwhelming and this sort of hurricane going around you. And so my job is to come in and just be just a step above that where I can see the whole picture and just help people untangle the threads a little bit.
And we’re not trying to fix anything. It’s just like, look, this is going on over here. This is going on over here. How are you feeling about this? And when people have someone and a space to just put it all and then take a step back, it reduces a lot of that overwhelm. So typically I let clients tell me when they feel like they’re done or, we’ll, if we find that overwhelm has been alleviated, [00:24:00] they have more skills and tools and perspectives to walk alongside it.
So what do you need to care for yourself and your grief? How are you thinking about your grief? And I might offer some perspectives but it’s always like, tell me where I’m wrong. It’s not for you. But I think a lot of times, I’m always surprised how quickly people go from completely and totally overwhelmed to like in a place where they feel like they can be alongside it a little bit better.
Because they just need a place to untangle it without judgment, without someone trying to fix it. And with someone who can help them just make sense of what’s happening inside of them. Cuz it, it doesn’t make any sense. Everything about grief is nonsensical. Everything about death is nonsensical.
I’m still trying to figure out whose idea this was. To put us all here together and make us all love each other so much and then kill us all off in the
Carling: Yeah.
Jenn: I’d like to have words with someone. That seems pretty messed up to me. But, it doesn’t make [00:25:00] any sense. But with a container to put it in, you can just feel a little bit more like you’re able to be with it.
Carling: I would. I feel like this is like the best segue we’re gonna get for, I wanna hear, I. About this taking down the patriarchy as it relates to you were like, is it okay if the conversation goes this way? And I was like, oh, I hope it does because I am forever trying to smash the patriarchy and so I would love to hear where this conversation goes with that. As it relates to grief,
Jenn: Absolutely. So I think it really, and this is where like my social work background and social justice orientation comes in too. But I think it, it helps to understand the environment that we’re living in. Most of us, and I, myself, I imagine most of your listeners live in a culture that is patriarchal, white, supremacist, capitalist, ableist, all of those things.
And sadness is not productive. So when you live in a culture that values productivity over anything [00:26:00] else, there is no room for grief. So it makes perfect sense. That we would all feel like we are in a rush to move on, to get over it, to get back to things, to get back to work, to get back to being productive.
I am horrified, especially having lived of really intense grief, through an intense loss. How little time we give people like off of work, for instance. To tend to their grief how little support parents get to make space for their own grief. And then just in general, how little we know how to be with each other in pain and that our job is not to fix it.
We cannot do anything to take away someone’s pain or to make it better, but we’re so conditioned to think that’s what we need to do. This is how I help, I make you feel better because subtext context, all these things, we all gotta get better so we can get back to work so we can be productive so we can feed this system.
[00:27:00] It really became in some ways consciously for me, almost an act of resistance to be like, I am not going to rush myself back to work. Now again, I have a lot of privilege. Everyone does not have that. So this is not to say that everyone should be doing this or can do this, but I did have the privilege to say I’m not gonna rush myself back to work.
I kept feeling like I should. I kept feeling like I should get back to it and feel better. But what if I’m just feeling the pressure of this system that I am, that I’m in? That tells me that. It’s not okay to just be sad, and that’s all I have to do. What if my job right now is to grieve and that’s my only job?
What would that look like? And trusting that there was value in doing that, even though I had to constantly do all these internal checks with myself, that was a worthy and important thing to do. And so I think it helps to remember that. We live in a culture that doesn’t want us to be sad. And so of course it makes sense [00:28:00] that we feel like we’re doing it all wrong when actually we’re doing exactly what we should be doing and we don’t have the rituals and the support and the community that we had at one time to support us through that. It’s very isolating. And we aren’t given any space or containers, and so when we can. Which again, a lot of privilege there. We have to create them for ourselves. No one’s gonna give it to us.
Carling: It’s very interesting, like where I live, it’s pretty standard to get three days of bereavement leave or five if you have to go out of town. And so like I literally on a Sunday watched my dad die and then I had three business days to wrap it up. , so the, I took, I ended up taking a few half days cause I was like What am I supposed to do?
Cuz I knew that three days wasn’t enough to like grieve. And then that was enough time to plan the funeral. And it wasn’t until the day after the funeral that I crashed and was [00:29:00] like, oh God, like now I need my three days, or, whatever. three days is wild to me
Jenn: it’s horrifying. Yeah.
Carling: And. My work was supportive in the sense that if I needed to take time off, but that probably would’ve looked like short term disability, which would’ve been, a fraction of my income and, this, that and the other thing. And it, it certainly wasn’t like encouraged. It was sort of like, we support you if you need time,
Jenn: it’s wild. I mean, It’s horrible. It’s horrible. It’s like in, to me, it’s inhumane. It is inhumane to ask someone to return to work three. You don’t even know what happened after three days. Like you, you’ve just been doing paperwork and going to the funeral home and doing all the things. Like you, there’s no, you don’t process.
You don’t even feel it until way after that. And I remember reading in the beginning, like long after my sister died, like I don’t remember where, but they were explaining a cultural process where [00:30:00] like a person who’s grieving, is not expected to do anything for a year.
They’re just expected to go be alone if they need to be alone, be with people, if they need to be with people and like their job is to grieve. And I think we pay a huge price. As a society, like all for all of this unattended grief, like I really believe that a lot, not everything, but a lot of like stressors and mental health issues and anxiety and depression.
All that is in great part due to all this unattended grief. Like we have no room for it. We have no space for it. And again, not just death, but all kinds of grief and we aren’t given any place to, to put that. And it’s bad for
everyone.
Carling: I just think, mental health support in whatever capacity should just be a given and access to everybody. It shouldn’t be a case of privilege because , if we had a way of learning and a place to put all of these hard things, whether it’s, death, grief, or ambiguous grief, or.[00:31:00] Anything, even like the grief of losing a job , I think we just bottle it up and then it doesn’t go so well.
Jenn: Yes. And I think one of the best things that we can do for each other in lieu of, all the things that we can do to take down all these harmful systems or in, in addition to, is to just practice being with each other, without like, just giving people the space. To feel all those things and to have those experiences without trying to move people onto the next step and not again, even with just a job.
Like how often do we say you’ll find something else, you’re so talented. They’ll be someone else will be so lucky to have you. Like, Just look like, what if we just didn’t say those things and we just let people be sad for a little bit? That’s a perfectly healthy thing to do.
Carling: yeah. I’ve been really trying to like, instead of. Saying, oh, it’s okay. No, it’s not a big deal to just say I’m sorry, that really sucks. Oof. Yeah, that’s hard. Like just like acknowledging it and giving, giving that, I [00:32:00] feel like it gives that person permission and validation to be in that f
Jenn: Yes. And that’s one of the best things that we can do for each other is just. That acknowledgement. So I love that you’re doing
Carling: Yeah,
it’s
Jenn: and it’s not habitual. It takes conscious effort. Yeah.
Carling: Yeah.
like as a recovering people pleaser, it is very hard not to just be like, don’t worry, I’ll fix it. Don’t worry. Give it to me. I’ll, we’ll solve this together. Even though it’s not something that needs to be solved, it’s just something that needs to be,
Jenn: Yes. I love that.
Carling: Oh, I just love the work that you do and I’m sorry that the, the loss that it took you to get on that journey, but, What incredible work and so where is the best place for people to find you and follow what you’re doing and reach out to you?
Jenn: Awesome. Thank you. So I have a website, jen oglesby.com, so that’s where everything lives. , I’m also on Instagram at. Jen Oglesby. And I work one-on-one with [00:33:00] people. I run groups and I also have a weekly newsletter called The Comfort Corner. And it’s really designed to be more than just a newsletter.
Like it’s a, it’s really designed to help people feel seen and supported in their grief. So I do some personal reflection. I do some psychoeducation about grief. I share resources. A lot of people tell me that it’s really helpful for them, so I definitely recommend people sign up for that and check it out if it’s of interest to them, cuz I really make great effort to make that robust and substantial and supportive.
Carling: I love that. And I imagine like in post covid world, can you take on clients from anywhere?
Jenn: Yes. Yep. So one of the things I love about coaching is I can work with anyone. So I do coaching over Zoom and I do phone coaching too, cuz. I don’t know. We’re all a little zoomed out sometimes, so sometimes it’s nice to just get on the, to old school, get on the phone. I have clients who are happy to just talk on the phone while they lay on their bed and not feel like they have to have it so together.
So I do that
Carling: [00:34:00] totally. That’s amazing. I’m so appreciative that you took time outta your day to, to share your story and what you do, and. , like I said, I just love the work that you do.
Jenn: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I love your podcast. I love what you’re doing and thanks for making space for this conversation.
Carling: you. I do feel like that’s like my little contribution is just like providing space for people to have their story
Jenn: I love it.
Carling: Okay. Have a great day.
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I Did Not Sign Up For This- Podcast 