Grief, God, and Finding Peace: One Mother's Journey Through Loss with Adrienne Graves

“Adrienne Graves: I had a total disconnect between my body and my actual presence of mind. The way I do it now and the way I started in the hospital was one, breathing. I wrote the word intention, set an intention, and then show up for that.”

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina.

Cristina Amigoni: Hello. It's Friday again.

Alex Cullimore: It's Friday. Yes. I mean, it's not for the people who are listening to this right away. It's Wednesday for you. But for us, it's Friday, and it's the end of the day Friday. It's the end of a somewhat brain-flattening week kind of Friday.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. As in back-to-back to back-to-back to back-to-back. Never ending. Yes.

Alex Cullimore: One of those many bags of bags was a conversation we just had with Adrienne Graves, which was a great conversation. She shared so much, just personal journey. What a story. What an incredible – I don't even know. I would say, life journey is really the only way I can describe it to do it justice.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Incredible. Every time I talk to her and she shares more about it, it's amazing and just inspiring that she can share her journey, all the things that happen to her, which are more than any one person can happen that you can handle in a lifetime. The courage to keep sharing it, to just live in her, in what she learned in her reality and not shy away, I guess, and hide because of all of it. It's very inspiring.

Alex Cullimore: Great story of finding courage in the middle of just lots of tragedy and finding ways to show up, be present, be intentional, and how she's brought that both to her life and then to the people around her. She comes across very easily, just having that presence and I hope that comes just as easily in the recording, because it's a powerful story.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, very powerful. Just to her view of what we can do with the time we have until, well, the inevitable.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, this one is the episode where we started talking about death, so –

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: I've clearly mentioned that at some point, but we got more into that.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yes. hope you enjoy.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah.

[INTRO]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

BOTH: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing a 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[INTERVIEW]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, we are joined with our guest, Adrienne Graves. Welcome to the podcast, Adrienne.

Adrienne Graves: Thanks for having me, you guys.

Cristina Amigoni: Hi, Adrienne.

Adrienne Graves: Hi, Cristina and Alex. It’s good to be here.

Alex Cullimore: It's great to have you on. If you wouldn't mind giving just a little background for our audience, what brought you here? Who is Adrienne?

Adrienne Graves: Who is Adrienne? Well, I’m a writer, I'm an author recently. I got to work on a collaborative book called Moms Never Stop Worrying, and the subtitle And Being Brave at the Same Time. It’s essays about having grown, or out of the nest kids, sharing our own stories of being brave in the midst of not knowing what we're doing and winging it as parents. That was really fun to be part of. Then I've written a blog at adriennegraves.com for over 18 years. That was actually inspired – my writing was re-inspired by a son of ours, our middle child, Noah, who passed away. While he was in the hospital, a friend set up a blog for me. I didn't know what a blog was at the time, because this was 18 years ago.

I thought I was just talking to my mom and dad in Arizona and my mother-in-law in South Dakota. This blog actually went viral around the world, even some scientists and at the South Pole were sending prayers and good thoughts for his healing. He never got a diagnosis. But during that five-month stint at the hospital, I started writing. I am a theologian by training, Christian theologian by training. I was a women's minister for several years, a couple of different churches. His life and death basically forced me to ask bigger questions than I had been, I guess, just conditioned, or trained in.

Now, I write about the collision of culture and faith and when things don't go the way we plan. I didn't set out – when I was a kid, I wasn't like, “Oh, someday I want to talk about grief all the time.” That just wasn't my aspiration. Now, I coach folks through grief and also, existential questions, like asking the big questions that don't feel safe sometimes in traditional faith settings. That's a elevator pitch, if that was short enough.

Alex Cullimore: Oh, there's no time limit. But that's a great intro. I love the – it's a very intensive story and it does show the idea of A, how much life changes underneath our own feet, but also, the story of connecting. Can you reach out, you rewrite something that feels very private, but it's very just raw and realistic, and there's a lot of people that can connect with that. I don't know, sometimes it reminds me that there's a lot where we have that is just generally unspoken as people, and sometimes it's deeply cathartic to come across that and it can be spread very quickly.

Adrienne Graves: Well, that's what I found in – At first, I was just saying like, “Hey, we have this appointment, or we have this.” Then finally, because of my upbringing and conditioning, I thought I just had to be a good Christian girl and not ever say anything wrong, or negative. Then I was like, is this – do we have expletives on this podcast?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. You can say –

Adrienne Graves: Because my true little prayer was, “Finally, are you fucking kidding me, Lord? Are you fucking kidding me? My kid is sick and dying in a hospital and you're not healing him.” I still hadn't put that out on the blog. That was my vertical prayer. I sat in the hallway in the hospital that night and thought I was going to get struck by lightning. I honestly thought I'd be a pile of ash because I had said the F word to the creator of the universe. The ironic thing was that, I mean, that didn't happen. Here we are. I’m on your podcast.

I also had a sense of peace. I'm kind of a smart ass and I was just like, “Oh, you're okay with this. You already knew that I was totally disenchanted with the way you're running the universe. I think this is total crap, and I don't approve, but I'm going to love this kid and I'm going to love the one I have at home.” We have a daughter who was four and a half when Noah passed away. In that moment, I felt so seen. It was like, the books in the Bible that are actual like, people crying out to God. It's not just the polished stuff you hear in sermons. It was the limits. I was, I guess, testing them out, not on purpose. Just in necessity.

In that moment, I came back to the blog and I said, where – and this is my smartassness, because the Bible was my textbook in college, you know what I mean? It wasn't like, I didn't know. I said, where does it say that God will give us – he'll never give us more than we can handle, because I can't handle this. Then that's when people came out of the woodwork from all over the world. Many of them trying to quote the scriptural reference to me and I'm like, “You're quoting it out of context. Bless you, #blessed.” I was like, I don't know back then, 18 years ago. That was still pre-hashtag. But I was like, no. It said it's actually false. That that's just modern American current language to try to satisfy things we don't understand. I mean, I had to, right? I was forced. I was in an impossible situation. I couldn't fix my son.

The college I went to, it said, expect a miracle on the side of the basketball court. I expected miracles, plus I was a theology major. Like, I extra, extra special believed at all. The truth is, is I had to face my biggest fear, which was death. I was like, 35 at the time. I had fear death since I was a little kid and avoided the topic as most Americans try to do. Yeah, we want to avoid it, or just make it, get over it quick. Move on. Get over it. I couldn't. I was in the thick of it.

Our son never got a diagnosis. In Western medicine without a diagnosis, there is no treatment. He was on some palliative measures, as far as life support, which my husband and I decided to remove Noah from life support after five months of no one knowing anything, and also, his body just shutting down. I expected a miracle, but my theology and my reality weren't lining up. A lot of people were afraid about that, that pushing back, asking the questions. I've never thrown away all of it. God and I have always been fine.

It's that as a theologian, I thought I was going to study to figure out belief and figure out God and then be able to relay that to everybody else. The truth is, is the longer and the more that I've dug into trying to figure out God, the more – and belief and existence and all of that, the more I don't know and actually, the more peace I have as a result. Noah was a pivotal person for me. I mean, the kid, it's like this wise sage who never said a word. He was seven-months-old when my husband and I removed him from life support.

We didn't want to put him on life support, because we didn't want to take him off. Because that's bullshit position for a parent to be in. It's like, “Are you fucking kidding me, Lord?” But it was that prayer where I felt the most at peace. The name Noah means peace, actually. Actually, in Hebrew, peace is shalom and the word shalom when you define it is nothing is missing. Nothing is missing. Nothing is broken. For me, it's overcoming my perception of death, my perception of life, my, what is existence? Like, all the things, right?

My lingo, my terminology at the time was like, bless God of this. I'm okay with this. The truth is, is I'm not. I'm okay that we went through this experience, because our eyes and our hearts were changed radically. I mean, my husband went from having a PhD in engineering to shifting into the nonprofit world and doing world relief work. It was like, snap on the turn of a dime of, okay, I am going to pay attention. I'm going to be engaged. I want to be present exactly where I am, because I didn't know how long Noah had when he was in the hospital. I was all about having him be healed and then we travel around the world and we tell everybody how good God was. Because my expectation was that the outcome would be his was total healing, right? Then that didn't happen.

What I realized is the American Christian system specifically, because that's where I was trained, but also, I've traveled all over the world and I've met people who believe and love and follow God in all forms on all continents. I did South America, but the South Pole, Antarctica, but anyway, I've been to five continents and we don't have a corner on the market on how to know God, how to live as human beings on this earth. We're all humans sharing space on earth. We're the ones who have created the delineations and the silos and the separations. That was what it was. Noah was never given a diagnosis.

I would have been the person who, had he been given a diagnosis, I would have started a foundation. I would have been raising millions of dollars to figure out the cure, so nobody else would have had that thing, right? I think that's awesome. I love the moms and parents. I mean, any organization that is helping raise funding for kids, that's exactly what has happened. Somebody has been affected. Being a theologian and a chronic empath, what I realized is our experience was that this is the human condition. There's a 100% chance we're all going to die. Nobody's getting out of here alive. It's the thing that I fear the most. All the energy and all of the time and all of the effort I was spending fearing death and trying to avoid the topic and trying to, yeah, avoid it. It's all up in my business. This is my kid. I can't do anything about it. I was like, a 100% chance we're all going to die, but what percent chance am I living? What percent chance are we going to live fully with the time we have, whatever it is, right? Because we all want 96 in our sleep and pain-free, whatever. That's great. But it doesn't happen all the time.

What percent chance, though, am I going to live fully with intention, in awe, with curiosity and wonder now? That's what I started doing. When my daughter would come to the hospital, I would sit on the floor. We'd do art. We'd go explore. We'd go hide under table clogs and have deep conversations about castles in the sky and death and life. There was a point when Noah's in the hospital where I was fighting, fighting, fighting. There's going to be no stone unturned. You figure this out.

I mean, mice died at the CDC from his stool. Nobody knows why. Scientists in Australia were trying to figure out, in South America trying to figure out what's wrong, what's going on with his body, because every test kept coming back negative, negative, inconclusive, whatever. Then one day, one of the doctors handed me a stack of 17 different leukodystrophies, which is the white matter of the brain. I was like, “No, that's your job. You figure that out. My job is to love the heck out of this human, to soak in this human.”

It was funny, I had been standing like a flamingo with one leg up in his crib. Then the other, obviously, holding me up on the floor and just trying to spoon him awkwardly. This one nurse came in, he was six-foot five and he goes, “I do believe engineers created those cribs to fit parents, too.” That was all I needed. I mean, I jumped right up in there and I memorized Noah, like it was my job.

Alex Cullimore: There's a huge theme of this acceptance of unknowability in all of the stories and in truly terrifying circumstances. You studied theology wanting to know, wanting to be able to spread it, you end up with not even the diagnosis. There's a lot of incredibly challenging unknown in all of the story. That's, I think, probably one of the scarier parts of death for most people tends to be that idea of what is unknown about it and what that – knowing that it is, while not knowing what it is. You've had a front row view of that for a long time. I really love your challenge of, hey, what if instead of knowing that there's 100% chance of death, but there is still a totally variable percent chance of how much you're living. It's a powerful reframe of, well, you know where this goes, but what do you do in the meantime? Then that, you have some say over, or some decision in.

Adrienne Graves: Right. Yeah. I mean, I had to decide how I was going to show up. I mean, I haven't done it perfectly. There have been plenty of days where I rocked myself in my closet in the corner, crying, or just played scrabble all day on my phone, as one does, as we're able to do, muggles who have to use words. I appreciate you sharing that, Alex, and being able to pull that out, because that has been my biggest, I guess, battle or struggle is making peace with the unknowns. But also, so as word nerds, I like to look words up in the dictionary that I already know the definition for, because we can learn new things.

I've had this gut feeling as a theologian, as a minister, as a Christian person in America, Christ followers, whatever, I don't like to brand it and label it, because holy cow, has it gotten hijacked. I have had this nauseating frustration with the fear-based, fear-driven theology that has the American Christian truth. You hit the nail on the head with that. We want certainty. I was gone, oh, certainty, I'm going to figure God out. If I just read this and I study this and I do this and I say this prayer this way, and then it'll all be figured out. I can just replicate it by going into all the world and sharing it this way. That doesn't work with a billion genetic expressions of humans on the earth. We're eight billion different reflections of really creative, bigger entity than we are, right?

If we're made in the unit of God, we're just a reflection. We're a glimpse. That whole desire for certainty and an answer, and I'm going to just show you this three-point sermon, or these scriptural references or whatever, it just grieves me because it boxes in existence. It's silly. We're silly. I'm silly. I realize how silly it is that I was so hell-bent on trying to figure it out. When you look at the word agnostic, it's so beautiful, because it says, I believe there's something bigger than me, but I'm not about to try to figure that out, or try to explain it to you.

If we can get back to as humans, and especially I'm talking directly to the American Christian Church right now, because America as a whole has been affected, whether you were raised in it or not, somehow American Christian Church, okay? If we can get back to curiosity and wonder and awe and mystery, like if you took all the major world religions and you took their theologians and had a conference, they'd all just try to convince one another of how you need to think and believe exactly like them, whatever camp it is. They're all going to do the same thing. But if you put all of the major world religions mystics in a room, they'd be there for the rest of eternity to just be like, “Oh, my gosh. How awesome is God?” The awe and the wonder. Not just God, but humanity, existence, creation, the ocean, all of it. I know, I'm getting way out there, but –

Cristina Amigoni: It all makes a lot of sense.

Adrienne Graves: Yeah. In order to get it, just into the day to day of – I think honestly, that's why there's a golden rule in every single religion and why Jesus emphasized it, when he was pressed with what, okay, but which scripture? Which one? Which lord are we supposed to follow? He's like, “Scrap it all.” I mean, he did and he didn't, right? He said, the fulfillment is love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

What is loving ourselves? I mean, we're so critical with ourselves. Then, we're going to be critical for the world, right? Or, if we're critical of others, then we're going to be critical of ourselves, and everything will have that critical eye, right? If we are made in love and we are designed for it and then we can look the word namaste, or does the divine in me recognizes the divine in you? Therefore, I'm not going to treat you like crap. I'm going to treat you as you are designed, which is with awe and with love.

That brings me to my day to day, which is writing and sharing stories. I believe that we share our stories, and as we learn the stories of others, we heal. We heal ourselves. We heal one another. It might not heal the way I thought it was supposed to with Noah. The reality is like, Noah, his life and death was the amount of time it was supposed to be. It's not what I wanted it. He knew that. His soul had a understanding, and he did what he was supposed to do. I'll never be the same because of it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. The theme and I know we talked about it even before we were recording and during coffee and dinners as well, but the theme of when we share our stories, we heal. It's just true. I mean, you've shared how you were accidentally blogging about your journey and how that when it went out in the world, other people showed up to help you heal. It would never have happened and we don't know how much it healed them to read it as well. They were clearly touched and part of the journey in that sense. I find it sad, really, that our brain, our critical part of our consciousness that criticizes ourselves, or our conditioning, or whatever is around us.

I was just talking about it with a friend of mine just before the podcast, of why we tend to – the default is to isolate when we're struggling, instead of sharing our story, so that we can heal. s, It's the opposite of when it needs to hap pen. It's if you're struggling, don't isolate, because then, how are you going to heal?

Adrienne Graves: Yeah. There wasn't just one person designed on earth. Yeah. and there's been generations and generations and generation. We are designed for connection and for community. It's not just for great parties with disco balls. Like, I throw.

Cristina Amigoni: Those two.

Adrienne Graves: Yeah, those two, but it's for the raw, the real, and the all up in each other's stuff. Not because, I mean, I know that's vulnerable. I know, that was the thing though, is that's where I knew I had to keep writing, because I was like, “Oh, I'm not the only one.” Noah was in an ICU of 20 units. He was just one of the kids, and the whole fricking unit was full, which sucked, right? Then we're in a hospital full of kids. But I was like, “We're not the only ones going through this. We're not the first parents to lose a child. We're not the last parents to lose a child.” I had this just deep knowing of every kid represents a family. That family looks all sorts of ways, right? Then they're in a community. They're in a neighborhood. They're in a school. They're in a synagogue. They're in a church. They're in a mosque. They're in a temple. They're in some larger community. Then they're in a broader, and I just could see those ripple effects.

I was like, this isn't just about us. This transcends just our story. It sucks, because maybe that was my conditioning, because I was a pastor. I'm always thinking about others. I have pulled back at times, because I was very public. I wrote out my guts in real-time from the hospital. I realized, part of me was trying to help heal others in the midst of that, which is that conditioning of being a minister. I have given myself permission over the last 18-plus years to say, this is okay that this is just for me. I'm allowed to be sad about this by myself.

I still have always had great friends. I mean, people were not – I mean, they were afraid. They were absolutely afraid to step into our situation, but they did it anyway. Like, you said. They entered into that connection and community, even though it was raw. I mean, everybody we knew we had kids at the same age. That is the biggest exposure to your fear. But they showed up. I mean, people, our friends and our church at the time brought us meals for five months at the hospital. That was another revelation I had is church isn't in a building. I mean, it’s confined to a building. That's not where actual deep community has to happen. We're having it in the sterile hospital room, because it's where people show up.

Cristina Amigoni: Community is where people show up.

Adrienne Graves: Exactly.

Alex Cullimore: I really appreciate your reflections on it being about on wonder to you, because I think those are the things that get missed. I was not raised with any religion, but I've spent some time in churches, actually, fairly recently, just because we play some music for a relative of my partners, which is great. I enjoyed listening to the sermons. Sometimes I feel it wraps up almost too tight. It has some cool, yeah, and message that talks about community and wanting to help people and wanting to – and realizing you can see yourself in others, and acknowledging your own flaws. Sometimes when it then wraps up in like, oh, this is only confined to this building, or this is just wrapped up in what they're specifically prescribing as God as a box in that, then it feels like, okay, I feel like we got so much of the magic that exists, and so much of the wonder of the world in existence.

Then it almost takes away from the enjoyment of that when you try and just wrap it and say, “Well, this is just for this group of people that happen to be here now, or just for – we'll put this in a label.” At some point it's too bad, because we all just are existing and there's so much to be in wonder of.

Adrienne Graves: That is so good, Alex. I can't add anything to that. You are spot on. I love that that is something you came away with from those experiences, because that has been my – I'm a middle child peacemaker. I grew up not – you're not allowed to say anything bad about anything, right? Or be critical, or judgmental, or anything. I've given myself permission to, how do I really feel, Adrienne? The thing that was bothering me for the last couple of decades in church was that, well, one, somebody's telling me stuff I already know from the Bible.

Cristina Amigoni: Because you’ve studied it over and over.

Adrienne Graves: Great, great. Okay. You're adding your story to it and that's part I love. However, you walk in, you're in rows, you're looking at the backs of people's heads. Somebody else is telling you these things. They wrap it up neatly, because that is what American church has become. You wrap it up neatly and then everybody stands up, turns around and walks out. I was like, why are churches not set up in roundtables? I don't understand why –

Cristina Amigoni: Where’s the community?

Adrienne Graves: Where’s the community part, right? Also, why are we only allowing the one person to tell us the things? There's eight billion people with all the different genetic expressions of God sitting there on this earth and they're going to have a different perspective they can bring, just like, you were able to pull out things as I'm verbally processing my story, you were able to pull out points.

AI is taking notes that are stellar. Wow, here's a thread, here's a thread, here's a thread. Cristina did the same. But you don't get that when you're just being – It's like a college lecture, right? That's not what the church is supposed to be, what it's become. All the power and the messaging is all set up in a central location. I will stop, because – I'm writing a book, actually. I've been writing it since Noah is in the hospital, but I'm actually releasing it. Noah's birthday was June 10th, 2006. This June 10th, 2025, I am releasing a book and I'm going to share, because there you get 80 to 100,000 words and we're just 45 minutes on a podcast.

I definitely dive into that more, because it's just a grief that I've held of the church being hijacked by enterprise. I do believe, so in my middle child heart of hearts, I truly believe that it's been with good intention. I had this encounter with the divine. And so, I'm going to tell you how it happened. Then, this will happen for you, right? I mean, hence, the high church, right? Orthodoxy. All the things. Then you get all these branches. Did you know there's 33,000 Christian denominations?

Cristina Amigoni: I didn't know there was anything besides Catholicism, until I came to the US. Because people were saying like, “We're not Catholic, but we're Christian.” I was like, “What are you talking about? There is no other.”

Adrienne Graves: Yeah. It's the same. I mean, we went to Siberia once and this guy is like, “I don't get you Americans. We are just the Russian Orthodox church. But you guys are all over the board.” It's the first time I ever heard of it. I thought we were better, though, because we were at least non-denominational. That's still just another denomination.

Cristina Amigoni: It’s another box.

Adrienne Graves: People wonder like, “Oh, Adrienne are you a stray? Do you even believe in God? Why are you so angry?” I'm not angry. God and I are fine. We've been fine the whole time. I think it's silly. I know now that I'm silly to have ever tried to box it all in. If we're to go back to just even the garden story of creation, like I love reading scripture and then saying what's not in it. It's like, God made all the things that it was good. Then was like, you guys, go check it out. I just made the stuff. Go have fun. Go explore it. Go, go have fun. Do your thing.

I think that's what we're meant to do. I think we still do that. We haven't ever not been meant to do that. But we are seeking these containers in order to figure it out. It's all been about just the playful curiosity of wonder the whole time.

Cristina Amigoni: Which, as you mentioned several times throughout this, but even before we started recording, the way to actually get to that curiosity of wonder is by pausing and focusing on, yeah, it’s a 100% truth. We're all going to die. That's 100% guarantee. How much do we want to live? The living is through pausing, through paying attention, through realizing when we're on autopilot and when we're not. Is to making conscious decisions about creating communities, being community, connecting, and all those things that we just take for granted, or we assume somebody else is going to do, or we assume we don't need.

Adrienne Graves: Right. Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: Totally expects in the face.

Alex Cullimore: I’ve only got one tiny caveat, that it's also a conscious choice and entirely plausible and good to once in a while, have a day where you spend playing scrabble on your phone.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, absolutely.

Alex Cullimore: That’s also a thousand percent existence life. That's not a waste of time. That's not a loss of time. That is time.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. You're connecting with yourself and with what you need at that point.

Adrienne Graves: Let me tell you, my phone never beats me at Scrabble anymore. I’m good now.

Cristina Amigoni: There you go.

Adrienne Graves: You're right. I mean, that's the thing is, I wasn't a forced time out. I had some like, we lived at the hospital for five and a half months, and I had to be intentional. I was like, well, if I can't go out and – So, one of my favorite things in the world is to talk to strangers. Because then they're not strangers anymore, right? You're making a human-to-human connection and people feel seen. I was like, “Dang it. If I'm going to be stuck in this hospital, anybody that walks in this bedroom, or this hospital room, I'm going to learn their story. I'm going to ask them questions. Get to know their hearts.”

It was funny, because over the amount of time, Noah accrued 40, what are they? Not charge nurses. His primary nurses. The ones that wanted to always sign up for him. He had a little fan base. They would go do their rounds on the other patients and then they'd want to come and just hang out in his room. It's not because he was asking them questions. It was because they were feeling seen. I mean, I'm still in contact with several of his nurses and they're incredible humans. But they had to be there. I had to be there. Let's get to know each other's stories. You guys, nurses are amazing. Let me just plug that.

Cristina Amigoni: Oh, yes. 100%.

Adrienne Graves: I love the doctors. They were great. They were doing the best. They never figured out. It’s not their fault. But the nurses, [inaudible 0:36:50]. They run the whole gamut. Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: They don't get quite as much credit as they should. Yeah, I learned that with two childbirths, that it's all about the nurses. Nowhere close to – it's similar story about when William spent time at Children's Hospital, it was the same. It's the nurses. It’s the nurses. I love how you said that being there helped them feel seen. It was another way to seek community and to seek, to pause. They got to pause.

Adrienne Graves: Right. I mean, because they're surrounded by death. Noah wasn't the first child that died in the hospital, right? They’re surrounded by this heartache and this tough stuff every day. I don't know, maybe I saw his room as something more than it was, but the fact that they kept coming there and hanging out a little bit longer and lingering and being so gracious to help me, like when I had a wish like, “Hey, I want to just snuggle on the floor with Noah. Is that even possible with all those tubes and all the things in there?” “Yeah, let's just do it. Let's make it happen.”

I mean, you guys probably didn't think that this would be something where there's scriptural references. We're talking about God on this leadership development, human podcast, but there's a scripture that talks about entertaining strangers, because in doing so, you may have entertained an angel. I mean, I think nurses are those. I mean, so many people, right? I don't think I had checked in with the grocery store, this Cheetos story. Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: How do we pause more? Because there is an element of being able to connect with others if we're connected with ourselves. Otherwise, it's just this running around. You're still running around, if you don't actually take the time to take a whole day and just play Scrabble in the closet.

Adrienne Graves: Well, for me, pausing, you know how you think that you can't possibly make something happen because I'm too busy and I got too much going on, and then I was in this forced pause and the whole world actually kept rotating on its axis outside of the hospital walls without me. I was like, “What? Dang. I thought I was necessary,” right? I was doing that. I mean, I had to learn how to breathe. I was holding my breath for so many years. I started breathing. I mean, simple things, like the five, seven, eight method of inhale for five, hold it for seven, exhale for eight, or the four, four, four, four, box breathing

Because I was a really good middle child, and so I stuffed all the things for so many years. I had a total disconnect between my body and my actual presence of mind. The way I do it now and the way I started in the hospital was one, breathing. I wrote the word intention, set an intention and then show up for that. Like, eye contact, right? If there's another person involved, put the freaking phone down. What if we hand wrote notes? That would be so fun if we still did that and we just fold them up in a form and just chuck it out the room. But eye contact.

I'm old school. I'm Gen Xer, so phone calls, as far as being intentional towards others. For me, it's been a long journey of coming back to myself and to my body and to my heart and listening and pausing and saying – even putting my hands on my heart, or on my belly and my heart, or on my eyes and my heart and just asking myself, what do I need, or what am I feeling? Is this true? Is that thought true about me? I had plenty of thoughts that weren't beneficial, or life-giving to myself. It takes a lot of shifting, but it's an intentional path, instead of just mechanized the way our culture can be. Just going through the motions. Being okay to say no, that I feel like, is part of the pause, because every no is a yes to something, or every yes is a no to something else, and what matters.

I was a bit radical. This really tough life lesson. I was like, well, nothing compares to my kid dying. So, I'm just going to chuck everything and just do this. It's like, you have to have a balance. We have to live in the day-to-day, right? We can't be completely extreme like that. I don't answer my phone right around the school pickup time, because I want to be intentional with my son, and 14. The kids telling me things right now. I'm going to pay attention, because there will be a day where he's like, “I'm not going to talk, tell my mom that.” When my daughter calls, I keep my phone on silent and vibrate. Sometimes she has to call her dad to get me, but then when she calls me, how can I be present for my husband, right?

I mean, we can get in a pattern where you're just like ships in the night. We had gotten into that a little bit before Noah was born. Just business of being young parents. Okay, we need to – I know it sounds lame that we have to schedule it, but let's schedule dates. Not bring our phones on our dates. Make eye contact.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, those are great. All great. It takes effort for sure to pause with so much stuff around. One of my favorite things is I started doing started getting acupuncture, and it's twice a week, once or twice a week. I love the thing that I love the most is because you have needles all over you. You actually can't do anything else. You can't even lift your hand. You are just stuck in this. Close your eyes, sit there for as long as the acupuncture decides you're going to sit there and you don't do anything else. There's no buzzing. There's no looking at the phone. There's no moving. There's not even scratching your chin if it starts itching. There's nothing else. I've found to actually really love that. I'm like, that is one of my many. I meditated and it's the same thing, and going on walks, but that is one of my sanctuaries now. I'm like, I get to do nothing, except for being with me, my soul, my thoughts. That's it.

Adrienne Graves: How long did it take you when you first started trying acupuncture to sit with those thoughts, or let those come and go? Because that's a –

Cristina Amigoni: That’s a good question. Yes. That’s a good question. I mean, I've been getting acupuncture for over 20 years. Not consistently. This is the most consistent I've actually – I’ve been doing it for over a month now. It's the most consistent. The sitting with the thoughts, I've actually learned through meditation. I've been doing transcendental meditation for five, almost six years every single day. It's something I'm very used to. It's something I seek. Part of my healing journey is besides reaching out to people, the minute I feel like I can't, that's what I'd actually do, because I know that's the moment I actually need to say like, yup, go into darkness. Don't think I can pull myself out. Need something. Somebody's saying something.

The other thing that I do is I increase my meditation time. Instead of just doing 20 minutes a day, there are days that I'll do two hours, three hours, because that's where I sit with my thoughts and I process. That's where I, I guess, I'm used to it. I need that time.

Adrienne Graves: That's good. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I'm not up to that many hours, or even an hour, but I do love – I guess, with the breathing, I do, it's meditative breathing. I have a lot of thoughts, so very many of them. It was hard for me at first. But then, just that whole consciousness around the thought of, okay, that's a thought and it can now go and I'm going to, again, and it just bringing it back to that breath. So funny, because semantics-wise, again, every major world religion talks about coming back to the breath and then God being the breath of life and breathing life into us. But our culture, we're holding our breath for whatever thing it is that we're holding breath for. I love that you have that practice.

I think, what I've done, too, before it was like, as a Christian raised in that world for a while, you're supposed to have a quiet time. The practice of sitting with scripture. I write notes, whatever, pray. Then it was just packaged, like you were talking about earlier, Alex, about going into the sermon and it's wrapped up neatly and then here you go. That just never felt right for me. I wasn't ever good at it. I'm a four on Enneagram, if that's another show you've done. I just don't really like to be boxed in, or told what to do. I stopped saying amen, or that that was the end. I was like, come on, we're doing this all day long, and making it a lifestyle, instead of just backed off my box of being spiritual today.

Alex Cullimore: It was on my to-do list. Be spiritual for one hour.

Cristina Amigoni: Did that. Now, let's go load the dishwasher and fold the laundry.

Adrienne Graves: Exactly. What was the point of that? That's dutiful. That's not life-giving. Yeah, it's not filling.

Alex Cullimore: Just wonderful about intention and observation. Intention and just being present to the only thing we have. Present.

Adrienne Graves: Yeah. I mean, honestly, that's another thing. Being intentional with grief, because that whole people pleasing part of me, right? Our culture. You don't extend grief very long. You have the service and then the burial and then it's like, okay. I, when my folks passed away in 2014, 2017, I was intentional, because of Noah to show up in their final months and be present in it. With Noah, I also had it. It's like that premature grief, or the preemptive grief that you experienced, because you know that the person isn't going to live. But then, actually practicing the presence of grief, of showing up with it. I realized there's a lot that I had tried to steal stuff, I mean, in my body, that chronic pain.

I go to acupuncture. My brother-in-law is an acupuncturist. Super convenient, right, for that. But the showing up for grief and feeling the feelings and crying the tears, being pissed and being numb and whatever the feelings are, they're ridiculous. I have a friend, I have several bereaved parent friends who, we have some sick jokes, because we're in this club. We never meant to be a part of, but there are no rules for grief, other than be in it, right? Because I tried to avoid it. I tried to avoid it after my mom died. I told my husband, we're selling the house and I'm running away and you're all coming with me. We moved to Nashville for four years. That's another story, because in Nashville, I was in bed for quite a long time, because I was sad, because I was trying to avoid the grief of my mom.

Actually, that was one thing I wanted to bring up today, because I had heard somewhere that I started meditating there and feeling all the feelings in Nashville. But I had heard somewhere that in order to get out of our depression and not to get over grief, but to get through depression and to get up and out of that, we need to focus on somebody else other than ourselves. I had this idea that I was going to go and volunteer and that I had something to actually offer. I had heard about this organization. It was started by Rebecca Stevens. She's awesome, Rebecca. She's an Episcopalian priest and she started Thistle Farms. Their whole tagline is ‘love heals.’

It is a two-year residential program for women post-incarceration, post-addiction, or post-trafficking, and they provide everything. They provide financial support. They do record expungement. They have free health care and trauma recovery and residential. You live there for two years, and you are employed and you get your first paycheck within three weeks, because these women haven't had a paycheck for all different reasons, right? It was given to them by a pimp, or whatever. Everything was all controlled. It was all control based.

Becca started this program that's not control-based. It's all about their freedom and that love and unconditional love, not prescriptive love, not like you do – If you do it this way, then – I got to witness this. I went there thinking I was going to be a volunteer and they healed me from that grief of losing my parents in such a short amount of time. They provided community, simply because they believe in the power of love healing. I showed up in that grief. I felt the feelings. I'm not saying I'm done. I still think about my parents and I'm like, I can drop the hat, but I have experienced what it looks like to heal in community, because I watched it in action, and such an extravagant thing, extravagant expression of lavish unconditional love. That's just a farm just based out of Nashville, Tennessee. I virtually volunteer with them and then we support them. I love them. They're an amazing organization of doing practically, practically healing and what that looks like.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that's beautiful. It's wonderful to know that, yes, those exists and they are very much necessary. Probably, a lot more of them.

Adrienne Graves: Yeah, they're just holding space. I think that's the thing, too, is we need to hold space for ourselves and hold space for others. That's where you're going to find the healing. I have to commend you guys. I think the way you hold space for people in the workplace to remember their humanity and then hold the space for the humanity of their colleagues, I think it is – it's so counter, right? The establishment of the workplace – personal things.

Yeah, you need to, because these are persons. These are humans. Tell me to work. You guys have tapped into that. Yeah, I think it's stunning. I think it's beautiful, the work that you guys are doing.

Alex Cullimore: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: This is very much the rebellion of the establishment.

Adrienne Graves: I love that.

Cristina Amigoni: It is the true and true rebellion. Yes. It's the forced pause. It's like, you don't get to pause anywhere else, you're going to get to pause with us. Because that's why we're here, for you to pause for 30 minutes, or an hour, or an hour and a half when however it goes on.

Adrienne Graves: Right. Their place is a worker paying for the cause. Like, go for it, man. Go for it. At the end of that pause, because I love just some of the things you guys have shared about people sharing the impact of what those pauses have done for them personally, and then obviously, in their teams, which is going to be the ripple effects, right?

Cristina Amigoni: We just had a couple of moments of pause this week, and one of them reached out afterwards because he said like, “Wow. That hour, I went from being super frustrated and venting about my frustrations to reflecting on what those actually meant to coming up with a plan and now I'm taking actions.” Then 24 hours later, he emailed to like, “I've already taken action.” But it's that pause that was nice to say it.

Adrienne Graves: Well, you did. You created space.

Cristina Amigoni: Because we didn't do anything. We just created space and asked questions.

Adrienne Graves: That is huge. That’s the first drop of the ripple effects, and then the ripple effects are just like, the wow, right? Yeah, you guys do transformative work. Organizations probably hire you guys thinking, this is very business-like, we're going to bring in these. Then they're like –

Alex Cullimore: Intentional or not, it ends up helping with the business, too. There’s that, and that's not the goal. The goal is just to help the people. But then, it turns out that helps the business and we just have to back our way into that sometimes, so that people let us help them.

Cristina Amigoni: There's a billion and a half other topics we could go into, or tangents and rabbit holes. For now, what is your definition of authenticity?

Adrienne Graves: My definition of authenticity is being able to be raw and candid with yourself and others and being at peace with that. No matter if it's the shiny, right? And presentable, or it's just in your very worst place, you know still you're still loved and sought after.

Cristina Amigoni: I love the addition of the – not the addition, but the inclusion of with yourself, because we can run marathons using Bolt’s speed from ourselves.

Adrienne Graves: I used to be a kid at war with myself, growing up in the 80s in the diet culture and all that. I would look in the mirror and never have anything nice to say. Then I, at some point, thanks to Noah. I saw a picture of myself when I was three and I was so freaking cute. Ringlets, really cute little rotan belly, knocked knees. Just softer, plumper, cute little kid. I had this thought come to my head. How would I talk to her? I put that picture on my mirror and I started talking to her, because she's still part of me, and started loving her. That's also part of the healing journey, right? How we talk to ourselves.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, definitely much is. It’s a big part of therapy, is to go back to talking to that version of ourselves. You've got a book coming up and you already have one out there, and you've got a blog and you're healing through stories. Where can people find you?

Adrienne Graves: I am on Instagram. I do right there sometimes and on my – so, just @adriennelgraves, and Alex can put those in the show notes, right? Facebook, I have Adrienne Graves Writes, and I'm writing there. I have not been as faithful to my blog as I was in years past, or my website, but I'm updating that. I don't know the title of my book right now, because I have an entire word document of ideas that range from anywhere from God, You're Fired to You're Not the Boss of Me, to Good. Just the word good. Two things that are true at once. That's what I'm leaning towards.

Cristina Amigoni: Love that one.

Adrienne Graves: I will let you know, of course, why I title this so that I can let your audience know as well. Thank you for letting me plug that. That will be coming out June 10th. That is my goal for his. It would be his 19th birthday.

Cristina Amigoni: We’ll line up to buy it.

Adrienne Graves: You're sweet.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much, Adrienne 

Cristina Amigoni: Well, thank you, Adrienne.

Adrienne Graves: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure and I had no idea. You guys said, I didn't know what direction I would go. I hope that it's encouraging to some of your listeners.

Cristina Amigoni: I'm inspired. That really –

Alex Cullimore: [Inaudible 0:58:28].

Cristina Amigoni: Yes.

Alex Cullimore: Thank you, Adrienne.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you so much, and thanks for listening.

[OUTRO]

Alex Cullimore: Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Uncover the Human. Special thanks to Rachel Sherwood, who help to produce our theme. And of course, our production assistants, Carlee and Niki, for whom we could not do this, or could not publish this. We get to do, basically, the fun parts. Thank you to We Edit Podcasts for editing our podcasts.

Cristina Amigoni: You can find us at podcast@wearesiamo.com. You can find us on LinkedIn. You can find us at Uncover the Human on social media. Follow us. We Are Siamo is W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O.com.

Alex Cullimore: Please feel free to reach out with questions, topics you'd like addressed. If you'd like to be on the show, reach out. We're around. Thank you, everybody, for listening.

[END]