← Leading Organizations That Matter
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- [00:00]
Deborah Grassman
Foreign.
- [00:11]
Ray Spadoni
Welcome to Leading Organizations that Matter, a podcast about leadership, organizational culture and how we find meaning and purpose in our work. I'm your host, Ray Spadoni, and today's topic is Recovering from a Loss of Self Worth Worth an interview with Deborah Grassman. Imagine what you might learn about life and loss, about wounds and healing from 10,000 dying veterans. Today, I have the pleasure and honor of talking with Deborah Grassman, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and the founder of Opus Peace, a nonprofit based in St. Petersburg, Florida. She's the author of several books, is a contributing author for four textbooks, and has published numerous articles on related topics. If that's not enough, there are four documentary films and a TED Talk that feature her work. And as I mentioned, Debra has cared for over 10,000 dying veterans as a VA hospice nurse practitioner for 30 years. Deborah states, quote, if anyone wants to learn how to achieve inner peace, ask a veteran who has successfully struggled to find it for the rest of their lives after they return from war, end quote. The lessons she learned culminated into a concept known as soul injury, a wound that separates a person from their own sense of self. I'm pleased to talk with Deborah about what she has learned and the work that inspired Deborah, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining me.
- [02:00]
Deborah Grassman
Well, thank you, Ray. It's a pleasure to be here and I am greatly honored that you recognize the importance and the value and the relevance of Soul Injury and what it might offer to your listening audience.
- [02:14]
Ray Spadoni
Well, I do and it's interesting and I'm eager to bring it to the audience. And before we hit the record button, I did give listeners a high level overview of your background. But can you tell us in your own words about your work and then most importantly, what compelled you to do it?
- [02:38]
Deborah Grassman
Well, I am a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I worked for the VA for 30 years and during that time I worked in hospice at the VA. So during my 30 year career I took care of more than 10,000 dying veterans and from them I learned a lot about not only how to die healed, but how to live healed. And certainly that propelled my career after I retired from the va, which was to start a non profit called Opus Peace, which was to those lessons that these veterans had, had taught me because it always seemed to me to be so paradoxical that these lessons about how to attain personal peace came from people who had been trained for war. So I not initially when I first started and I was young and naive and didn't really know any better, I just, you know, treated patients the way I would anybody, you know, and it took me several years to start seeing how trauma impacted people's lives. And certainly when I moved into hospice for the last 20 out of my 30 years and did exclusively hospice work, I really saw how when people are dying, they know things the rest of us just don't. You know, everything that I have learned in my life that has really mattered, I learned from the dying. And that's because perspectives shift dramatically as death approaches. You know, the day before you're given a terminal diagnosis, yeah, you pretty much take your life for granted. But the day after you wake up, you know, the things you thought were so important now steams, insignificant. And the things that had been escaping your attention now thrust themselves before you to try to complete. So that's what I witnessed every day at the bedside of dying people. And then certainly, these veterans had unique experiences. I mean, most of us have not been in war. Most of us have not been trained for war. And yet all of my patients had been. And of course, in hospice, families are at the bedside also. So you not only get to see the impact of trauma on patients and on veterans, but you see the correlation that ripples outward into the family system. So I definitely saw a lot of that, because in hospice care, you do bereavement care for 12 months after a person dies. So you really, you know. So a lot of things surface at the end of life that had gotten shoved under the carpet, so to speak. But for all of us, as we're dying, the conscious mind gets weaker and the unconscious mind gets stronger.
- [05:50]
Ray Spadoni
Oh, interesting.
- [05:51]
Deborah Grassman
Yeah. Often when these unbidden memories will surface and kind of be begging for attention. So we're talking about bringing peace to people at the end of their things. It's often dealing with, quote, unquote, unfinished business that surfaces that they've kind of been numbing out or pushing away from or not paying attention to for. For decades, whether it's military or non military. But, you know, that's. That's the unique perspective that I was able to have. You know, there are thousands of professionals that deal with PTSD and trauma. There are thousands of professionals that deal with hospice work in hospice, but there's only a handful of people where the confluence of both of those patient populations is merging and yielding some lessons that we hadn't really considered before. And I believe that that's really the unique gift that Opus Peace, our nonprofit. That's the lessons that we are bringing forward, is the lessons from dying that converges with lessons from trauma. And ultimately, what we found, what we sort of Uncovered gradually. It didn't happen as fast or as quick or as easy as I'm going to make it sound. But when you've done 30 years, things, patterns start emerging over the years and then they start melding into a clearer picture. And what we really discovered was that there, what we call a soul injury, which is when you get separated from your own sense of self. You know, you can be traumatized, you can have PTSD and not get separated from your own sense of self, but you can also. But if you do get separated from your sense of self, then that's an additional wound, so to speak. And we call it a soul injury. And they can have. It can happen traumatically, but a soul injury can also happen and more commonly happens insidiously. So sometimes I give the. My own example in my own life and this sometimes I'm sort of embarrassed to even tell you this because it's so pale in comparison to what I've witnessed with traumatized veterans. But when I was five years old, I was watching Lassie on TV and she was about to die, I was sure, because she was in some dangerous situation. And right then my dad walks through the room and I'm sitting there crying and he laughs at my tears. And then I hear him later tell my mom about how I was crying at Lassie because I thought he's gonna, she was gonna die. And mom started laughing. Well, what did I do? I made a five year old decision that day to never cry again. And I didn't for 30 years. And so when I was 35 and I was dealing with something painful, it sort of, it occurred to me, I thought, what if my fear of my tears, my fear of crying is worse than if I just let myself feel it, feel what I'm feeling. And that's what I cried for the first time in 30 years. And you know, that was the day my unfreezing began. Because for 30 years I was ashamed of the Deborah that felt sad. I was ashamed of any time, you know, and I became, you know, always everybody's cheerleader. I was, you know, my parents reinforced how nothing ever got me down, you know, so, you know, that, as I said, I'm embarrassed to kind of tell that story when you think about.
- [09:57]
Ray Spadoni
But it's, it's instructive. It's the scripting, it's, it's the things that happen to us at a young age that at the time may not have seemed like much, but which can, you know, have a profound impact on the course of our lives. And I think that's actually a very good example. You know, you mentioned the coming together of end of life and trauma, certainly something you've discussed and uncovered and witnessed with the 10,000 veterans that you cared for. As you mentioned, many of us, many people listening to this podcast have not been trained for war, have not experienced war, and may not be actively facing the end of their lives. And so I wonder if you can comment, Deborah, because I do want to get to the trauma piece and some of that which you just described. But, you know, for the rest of us, what have you found most broadly applicable to all of the rest of us in terms of the work that you've done?
- [11:05]
Deborah Grassman
Well, I think you know, so much. We are inundated with commercials, with counselors, with everybody telling us we just need to be stronger and more resilient. And, you know, we can get over it. We can rise above it and be a hero in our own life in that way, just be stronger. And, you know, really what we have found and what dying people have taught me, in addition, veterans, because veterans were really indoctrinated in that stoic wall. And, you know, be strong at all costs. And, you know, to be weak or to show weakness or to show grief or tears or anything is a sign of weakness. I mean, it's especially indoctrinated in veterans, but it's also indoctrinated in our American culture. Culture, you know, not just veterans, but it's especially in veterans. So I would say what we have discovered is sort, sort of at AT D because as I said, your conscious mind gets weaker, your ego gets more fragile and starts receding. So what we've sort of saw in those last few days, few weeks, few months of life is that you already have everything you need in order to be whole. It's not about trying to magically infuse more strength, more resilience, more wholeness into someone. You already have everything you need, but what you. What needs to be focused on is removing the barriers that keep you from connecting to your real self. And so what we saw was that there were primarily three barriers. The first being unmourned loss and hurt, unforgiven guilt and shame and fear of helplessness and loss of control. Because. And if you can make peace with, if you can learn how to stop numbing your pain and instead mourn your pain, then what happens is you learn how to release the hurt. And if you learn how to forgive others and forgive yourself, then you learn how to release guilt and shame. And if you can accept helplessness, and I want to tell you when you're at the end of. You know, much of what aging is about is accepting your limitations, accepting, you know, people, when they come to hospice, for example, they're losing their independence and becoming more dependent. As we get older, we get more dependent, we get more helpless. And, I mean, there is nothing worse than being helpless and not in charge of your own life, especially if you're a stoic veteran. So, you know, when we were able to help people come to grips, to be able to reckon with. Yes, helplessness is also a part of life. Yeah, I know. Power and control is part of life also. And making peace with the other end of the spectrum, which is loss of control and helplessness. So it's always ironic to me, as people are trying to control something, that they really have no control over that if you can just help them feel their helplessness, get real with that, then they end up coming to peace, because what they're really doing is healing the relationship they have with their part of self that's holding their hurt, their pain, their shame, their helplessness. And that's really what Opus Peace is about. It's about helping people heal the relationship they have with themselves. You know, I always say dying people, right, are fertile ground for healing. I want to tell you, I worked on an inpatient hospice unit. There was more living and healing going on on that inpatient hospice unit than there was going on in my own home or anybody else's home. Because dying people are fertile ground for healing for a lot of different reasons. Number one, they have nothing to lose. You know, they have nothing to lose, and they have everything to gain by just kind of becoming real, becoming open, becoming honest. And then, you know, they learn things they hadn't really thought about. They become humble, they develop humility. And, you know, it takes a lot of. I always say it takes a lot of courage to die healed. And you will see as much courage as you do on any battlefield. You will see it in hospice as people reckon with their. With what is, you know, their unfinished business, and they come to grips with it.
- [15:58]
Ray Spadoni
Well, I. I'm. I'm struck by your use of the term that stoic wall, when you were referring to the military. And. And, you know, the. The way they've been trained, you know, some of which is so that they will obey when there's consequence and when the stakes are highest so that they can cope. And, you know, there's. There's reasons for it. But as you stated, sometimes that stoic wall needs to come down. You described the Sort of the three elements of hurt, unmourned loss and hurt, unforgiving guilt and shame and fear of helplessness and loss of control. And you relate that to this notion of inner peace. And I see in your work you spent a lot of time talking about inner peace. Am I making those connections appropriately? That it's really confronting those three areas in particular, this kind of the sources and the places where we hold on to hurt is that contending with that and finding out ways to release the hurt equates to inner peace, or how much am I oversimplifying by it when I say that, Deborah?
- [17:16]
Deborah Grassman
Well, yeah, in some ways you're absolutely right. It's more complex than that. And in other ways, you're exactly right. It's absolutely simple. A couple things that come to my mind. First of all, when you talk about that stoic wall, I want to be clear that stoicism, you are right, it is important not only on a battlefield but in everyday life. I mean, there's times when, you know, every day we have to get up and put our, our big girl and big boy pants on and go to work whether we feel like it or not, and, and what have you. So I always used to tell people, you want to use stoic, we need it. You want to use stoicism more like a door that you can open and close at will, as opposed to a wall that imprisons you ultimately, because it's only a wall and you don't know how to let it down. So, so that's one thing I, you know, one point I want to. Want to make. The other thing, you know, why is it simple and complex? Well, there's a reason, I think. And that is, I mean, let me ask you this, Ray. How many classes have you taken on how to be a loser or a failure?
- [18:32]
Ray Spadoni
Several. But I, But I failed them all. No, no, I get your point.
- [18:37]
Deborah Grassman
So, I mean, you think about it. Losing and failing is part of life. I mean, it is part of life. And yet we, we don't talk about it. We don't know how to feel it. We, you know, it's, it's advertisements, television, school systems. Everything is about how to gain, how to achieve, how to hold on to, how to control. We're not taught, oh, here's the advantages of learning how to be with helplessness when in fact you have no control. Instead of covering it up and numbing it out. So what do you want to do? You know, or let me ask you this, I'll ask you, Ray. What do you do when the part of yourself that's holding hurt or shame shows up on your doorstep, what do you do? Do you say, oh, welcome, sit down, let's talk for a moment. Or do you say, oh, go away, get out of here, I don't like you, I don't know what to do with you. And you go over here and, you know, you call a friend and go out and, you know, watch TV or something, you know, watch a sports game or something. You know, we all have lots of numbing agents that we can use to avoid feeling our pain, feeling our helplessness, in other words, getting real. So as I said with Opus Peace, what we talk about is learning how to heal the relationship you have with yourself. And when we talk about your, you know, connecting with your real self, we're not just talking about this idealized, perfect person who never makes any mistakes and is always happy and satisfied and content. We're talking about the good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful. We have all those scattered pieces of self. And, you know, the research is really clear now that the body keeps the score. I don't know if you've heard of.
- [20:34]
Ray Spadoni
That, the cumulative effects of trauma and so forth.
- [20:38]
Deborah Grassman
Absolutely, all of that. You know, the body keeps the unconscious memory. When our conscious memory has forgotten, that part of self is going to hold that emotion for you in your body unconsciously. So, you know, we don't. Although we encourage people to feel their feelings, what I think gets ignored way too often is the part of self that is holding those feelings. You know, feelings come and go, feelings pass, feelings are temporary. But the part of self that's holding a feeling for you because you won't consciously integrate it. Ah, that's what can change everything, is first of all, becoming acquainted with all the parts of yourself and not just the parts that you like, not just the parts that feel good. But if you can open up, you know, think about it. How would your world, Ray, be different if you were no longer afraid of your emotional pain? If you were no longer afraid of your shame? I mean, we all harbor shame about stuff, but how often will we talk about it? How often will we show up? How often will we be fully present? You know, one of the tools that we use, in fact, we have a big event coming up, a worldwide event that we do every year on February 2nd, and it's called national anchor your heart Day. And so just imagine around the globe at 3:00 on February 2nd, that everybody just stops in the middle of their busy for just three minutes, just three minutes. And anchors their heart and gets real with whatever is going on inside in their heart. Just for three minutes. Feeling that collective stillness with other people doing the same thing at the same time. I mean, that's a. Collective stillness is a precious commodity in today's world where everything's so busy and so scattered and there's information inundating us no matter where we turn, but all pausing and just getting real with ourselves, being vulnerable with ourselves, being real with ourselves, just releasing the numbing, whatever we're trying to hide and just getting real with that. Then we can close it back up and move on, but just for three minutes. So any rate, it's. It's a simple grounding tool. And again, research is showing how valuable it is. It's not about trying to dissociate from our bodies. It's not that our bodies are bad. In fact, it's just the opposite. Our gr. Our body is the vehicle with which to experience this world that we have been given to be in this world. So being fully present to it. And that's what anchoring your heart, it's a simple three step tool, but what it is, its purpose is to help you be present to yourself.
- [23:52]
Ray Spadoni
Well, you, you describe this notion of being present to yourself. And you know, the culture has shifted a lot over time. I mean, we. There's an openness to things like mindfulness and meditative prayer practices and so forth that were much less prevalent going back 10, 20, 30 years. But this, this idea of anchoring your heart, is this where peace and pain can coexist, which is something that you talk about. And you know, I noticed in one of your materials, there was a testimonial from a woman who stated the following. I discovered that the very losses that I was so frantically running away from were the very losses that could free me up. Is that peace and pain coexisting or is it more than that?
- [24:56]
Deborah Grassman
Well, I think it's both. But I would say it definitely starts with that. It starts with that we live in a culture that tells us that emotional pain has no value, that it's all about, you know, be happy, be happy, you can have it all. You know, you don't have to lose anything. You're not a failure, you don't fail at anything. You just, you know, reframe it and go on. So numbing behaviors are actually encouraged. Therefore. So, you know, when we talk about pain and peace and when I asked you a minute ago, what is your relationship to the part of you that's holding your pain? Because we know that Hurt doesn't just disappear. That your body will store it if you don't consciously integrate it. So any rate. So it starts, you know, when we. When I say anchor your heart for just three minutes, just three minutes, get real with yourself, with whatever you find there. Good, bad, ugly, beautiful, whatever it is. And just start with glimpsing. Just glimpsing. Opening yourself to the possibility that you don't have to be afraid. You see, it's not so much the emotional pain. It's the fear of emotional pain that drives numbing agents, and it's the numbing agents that separate us from our own vitality, our own passion, our own sense of self, our own energy. So they are all interconnected. So, you know, sometimes a simple exercise that I have people do is just to think about a little disappointment that happened. Because when you are disappointed, that's a loss. You know, something happened that, you know. You know, maybe it's a phone call that you missed, you know, and there's that disappointment. And then, you know, what do you do? You kind of shut down, you know. Well, then to just take a moment to anchor your heart and open back up to that disappointment. Let yourself feel the grief of that little, teeny, teeny, tiny loss, that little interruption that maybe happened, but nevertheless, it's a loss. You know, when we talk about loss, people often only think about the ultimate loss, such as death and bereavement. And of course, that is the ultimate loss. But every day we all experience little losses in disappointments and interruptions. And if we can learn to open up and be fully present to the disappointment, then, in fact, we learn how to grieve, we learn how to release. And we don't carry it on into the next moment and say, oh, gee, this happened, and, boy, what a bad day I had and what have you.
- [27:39]
Ray Spadoni
So this, you know, this notion, this notion of injury, Deborah, you know, injury suggests. Suggest a wound. It suggests pain and suffering. As you describe that, this moment of thinking about a disappointment in your life, it sounds to me that it's not so much the loss or the disappointment or the cause of the pain, it's our reaction to it that can become the bigger problem over time.
- [28:14]
Deborah Grassman
It's the relationship we have with it. Yes, you're absolutely right. And, you know, we have to choose our stance toward it. Before you choose your stance, though, you have to acknowledge that the hurt is there. Now, you know, I can tell you I told you my little Lassie story. So what relationship did I have with loss and disappointment? What have you it was, you know, immediately to pretend like it wasn't there. Oh, that was my favorite saying when I was younger. Oh, it's no big deal. You know, that was it. So that was the relationship that I had with loss and hurt. Instead of feeling it, I would react to it, which is what you're saying. And the stance that I chose to then have, which became my identity. See, there's the soul injury that separates.
- [29:01]
Ray Spadoni
I mean, you are probably reward, being rewarded as the little girl who didn't cry.
- [29:07]
Deborah Grassman
Absolutely. And, you know, my older sister, she cried over everything. And that got my parents upset. And here I came along, you know, and I didn't cry over anything. And, boy, did I receive a lot.
- [29:18]
Ray Spadoni
Oh, yeah, you were the good one.
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Deborah Grassman
I was the good one. Nothing. Nothing ever bothers Debbie. I was always told, yeah, yeah, I got a lot of attention for that. So Interesting.
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Ray Spadoni
I didn't mean to cut you off. You were about to tell me another experience.
- [29:35]
Deborah Grassman
Well, I was just going to say, you know, that the tools that we use sometimes sort of feel counterintuitive, because what we do is we help people move from numbing their pain to mourning their pain, to move from hiding their guilt, to using their guilt to learn how to forgive themselves and others, to move from being ashamed of not being good enough to releasing their fear of who they are and who they are not, and to move from controlling things they have no control over to feeling their helplessness and their loss of control so that they can then cultivate the courage to let it be. To let be and to let be. You know, sometimes we say let it be as if to, oh, just leave it alone. Don't pay any attention to it. But how I'm meaning it when I say to let something be that you have no control over, you can't change it, you know, so you have to let. When I say let be, I. What I'm meeting is release it with hope and grace, with intention. Not over. It's just the opposite. That's not a passive thing at all. To release something that you have no control over or someone that you have no control over, and to release it with hope, grace, and intention. So that's a different process. So some of those things kind of that I just said, you know, when I talk about numbing and. And hiding guilt and being ashamed and controlling, you have no control over. You know, the methodology that we use, in my mind, it very much is a natural alignment with how we are made to be. But, yeah, we get all these other things, all these barriers Inserted upon us from really day one all the way through. And our institutions reinforce it collectively. And then what do we have to do? It's about releasing those barriers. So that's what we focus on. Certainly mindfulness is a big part of what we do. But I don't consider us so called experts in that. There's a lot of mindfulness experts that really teach that. So we don't personally say that's not our expertise, but we do definitely have, you know, we're the only really experts in what we would call soul injury. With those, with the definitions, you know, the, the three causes and focusing on those three causes and how to release them.
- [32:13]
Ray Spadoni
Well, let's talk a little bit about, about Opus Peace and the work that you do. You know, programs, tools, resources. Who are these aimed towards specifically and what are you trying to achieve with the programs and services you offer?
- [32:35]
Deborah Grassman
Well, our defined mission is to help people heal the relationship they have with themselves. So again, the model, as I have said, is you already have everything you need in order to be whole. But there are barriers that interfere with connecting with that wholeness. And when that happens, you have what's called a sole injury. So you know, the tools we, we do focus on, on education and self help. We don't provide direct counseling ourselves, but we do provide people with the self help tools. And we do have online courses to do that. I do have a book that's going to be released in just two more months called Soul injury healing, the relationship you have with yourself, which provides all the concepts, all the tools and in fact, I mean, one of the most effective ways of using it, the tools, is to start a little group of 2 to 10 people and study the concepts and the tools together. Because it has a lot of self awareness exercises associated. Both in the online course and in the book. There are self awareness exercises to help help you kind of navigate that, what we call reowning those scattered pieces of self.
- [34:00]
Ray Spadoni
So these are really aimed towards individuals, not groups or organizations?
- [34:06]
Deborah Grassman
No, it's aimed for both. We have corporations that use our tools for employee wellness programs. We have hospices that use them with their patients. So yeah, yeah, and we have a soul injury inventory, self awareness inventory that kind of helps people identify those three causes to see if in fact, you know, they are interfering. You know, the main thing is, you know, people don't really think in terms of wellness as having to do with unborn loss and hurt, unforgiven guilt and shame and fear of helplessness and loss of control. We have not packaged each that ticket. See, that's the gap that Opus Peace fills. That's the gap that dying people reveal. That's the gap that traumatized people reveal. Is, you know, these things we're not paying any attention to. Well, guess what? They're impacting your life. And if you would just, you know, pay attention, open them up, bring some mindfulness there, connect with them. Maybe it's not as, you know, if you end up connecting with the soul, source of your vitality, the source of your being. We do talk a lot about being and connecting with your human beingness.
- [35:22]
Ray Spadoni
And when did you start Opus peace, Deborah?
- [35:25]
Deborah Grassman
In 2013.
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Ray Spadoni
Okay, so it's been a while, 12 years. And we've probably had some cultural shifts during that time and a pandemic and so forth. What have you witnessed? Maybe going all the way back to when you started, you know, at the va, working with. With veterans and those who were in hospice. How has the culture shifted in. In regard to our willingness to do the sort of work that you're describing?
- [35:58]
Deborah Grassman
Oh, well, if you're really asking me to go back all the way to the beginning of my career, I can tell you at the beginning of the career, when I would talk to veterans about ptsd, they didn't even know what PTS. PTSD was. I mean, you know, so we've come a long way there of opening up in that regard. Mindfulness. Some of the things that you have talked about that you brought up today, I mean, that has been a kind of a taboo subject even when I first started in my practice. Definitely never studied it in as a nurse practitioner. It was never studied and never brought forth into practice. And now, I mean, it. It is. I. I don't know if it's yet mainstream, but, man, it has definitely infiltrated. Thank goodness. So is becoming more so. And, you know, as you say it, right, you know, I think about just something simple like on television. You know, if you. If you think of the television show America's Got Talent or the Voice, you know, I think 20 years ago, you know, the contestants come on oftentimes, and they're very vulnerable. They will say, oh, you know, I suffer from. From autism or my. Whatever it was, whatever it might be, they will tell their story, and it's a vulnerable story. And the reason I'm struck is for the exact reason you were saying, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, certainly 20 years ago, you. They would have been covering that up. They wouldn't have wanted anybody to know that aspect of their story.
- [37:27]
Ray Spadoni
So, well, less stigma. I mean, we, you know, we have athletes doing commercials about their mental health journey. And so there's, it's, it's an issue of stigma.
- [37:38]
Deborah Grassman
It is, it is. So, so I have to say, thank goodness, because, so therefore, we are becoming more, what I would say, real. We're opening up to. Yeah. We don't have to be this Id idealized, perfect aspect of self and only acknowledge the good and the beautiful. You know, we all have bad and ugly, too. We all have different other aspects. It's all, it's that full spectrum. So be fully present to the full spectrum. You know, in the literature they talk about, Viktor Frankl always called it artificial optimism. And some clinicians will call it toxic positivity, meaning you can only think positively. You can only look at the bright side. And, you know, if you really look at that, if you have a need to only be positive, to only look on the bright side, why? Because you're afraid of negativity. You have a fear of negativity or emotional pain. So that's just the opposite. You know, again, it goes back to that quote that you said. Somebody said, you know, we're running away from the very thing that would free us up. You mentioned, you know, in my Lassie story, I was running away from the part of Deborah that was holding her emotional pain unconsciously for her for 30 years. And then what happened when I let myself stop, feel the pain, open up to it, then I discovered that part of me, and guess what? That was the strong part of me. That was the brave Deborah, who was brave enough to hold that part of self, the pain, for me. And that's why she was the part of self that was holding her. So I actually got to connect with my brave self. So that's what's meant. Going back to when you said, you read on the website, the woman who said, you know, I discovered that the very thing I was running away from was the thing that would release me. That's what it is. You meet your brave self in that process. So that's the advantage of opening up and connecting to the part of self that's holding the pain. So again, it's not just about feeling the pain. That's just the start. That's just step one. But the next step is connect with that part of self that's holding the pain. What does that part of self have to say to you? Do you hear what it's saying to you? And we have some very straightforward, simple tools to open that up. You give your body, you give your mind just, just half A chance, just, just a little bit of an opening, because it wants to be whole, it wants to be incongruence, it wants the outside to be congruent with the inside. So, you know, you only have to open up and be willing and it will start happening. And it, and it's probably not going to be a. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I mean, a lot of times there is a breakthrough experience where it happens pretty profoundly and pretty fast, but more commonly it happens gradually and in a more natural way. It's a gradual unfoldment that comes as you are ready to receive the grace of your being.
- [40:52]
Ray Spadoni
You, you've learned a lot. And the, the veterans, your patients taught you a lot. You know, that was their, their, their willingness to share. And so now that you've been doing this for a while, what compels you to do this work? What are you hoping to achieve? And why do you think you feel so motivated to do it, if I can ask?
- [41:22]
Deborah Grassman
Well, you're kind of bringing tears to my eyes as I think about those 10,000 veterans. I have a tagline that says, don't waste your suffering. In my 30 years of dealing with dying veterans, and I will tell you that dying veterans know things that non dying veterans do not know. But I, you know, obviously I have seen things that the average person has not seen. You know, I have a, a very unique perspective, but us. But when the stoic wall comes down and the vulnerability of the suffering comes forward, and then you see the brave self emerge that, that has been holding that suffering for a lifetime, and then you see that part of self, that ego self that's, you know, conscious, embracing it and dealing with it and opening up to it. Yeah, it's, it's, it's hard to put into words what I always call them, those kinds of moments of transformation that I witnessed is beholding. I would be sitting at bedside and behold a patient as they release their fear of death, let's just say, I mean, I dealt with that commonly almost on an everyday basis where people, you know, are afraid of death. And then I was the clinician who would admit them to our hospice unit. And you would see them, you know, really be forced into the reality that their death was coming and probably very soon. And you would see, I would see that transformation that, that would happen, reconciliations that would happen within themselves and with other people. And then you see that profound peace. And it is a piece kind of beyond worldly understanding, as they say, that emerges as death is no longer fought. But not only is accepted, but. Not only accepted, but trusted. You know, your body knew how to be birthed into this world and it knows how to leave this world. You know, the physician I worked with, I remember one day he said, you know, we forget that, that yes, birthing is a miracle, but dying is just as much a miracle. And when we can let the fear go, then we're able to behold the energy of our being without a body, you know, as we're laying our body down. And to be able to do that consciously, wow. I mean, that's, that's what I hope to do, you know, that's on my bucket list, is to be able to die healed, to die, you know, to die consciously, to be able to consciously lay my body down.
- [44:51]
Ray Spadoni
This is wonderful. This is wonderful work. The, the name of this podcast is Leading Organizations that Matter. And I would dare say your work matters quite a bit. And it's aimed at an individual level. And I know you're working with groups and that this can be distributed through groups who are like minded and who feel that this mission is important. But I think that this notion of dying healed and finding this level of peace, accepting your death, as you stated well, is noble and impactful. Deborah, this podcast is going to be an introduction to your work for many. I hope you are a prolific author. You mentioned that you have a book coming out soon. I know you have other books that you've written. Can you just talk a little bit about your books and what they include and what might be of interest to those who hear this episode? And you know, their, their curiosity is piqued and they want to learn more, surely.
- [46:01]
Deborah Grassman
Thank you. Yes. Well, the first book, the initial book was called Peace at Last Stories of Hope and Healing for Veterans and Their Families. So it is very veteran centric, so to speak. And definitely if you know or love or care for vet, a veteran or for veterans even professionally, I would encourage you to look into that. It really was the first book to identify how trauma changes at the end of life and is different than in the previous life cycle. National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and the National VA endorsed the book right there on the book, recommending it as a change agent really for caring for veterans at the end of life especially. So that's a piece at last. And my greatest fulfillment, Ray, is when I'll have a veteran email me and tell me I read myself. I saw myself on the pages of your book. So again, I think that book is filled with a lot of untold stories because those untold stories surface at the end of life and realness surfaces. So that's a lot of what that book is about. The second book is called the hero redeeming the destiny you were born to fulfill. And that is more about personal growth and healing. Although the context is veterans, because that's where I practiced, nevertheless it is personal and non veteran intentioned. And it gives the process of abiding, reckoning and beholding our interior self. And the way to do that is to reown re home and revitalize your being and the grace of your being. So it gives you those steps. And then the book that is coming out is really, as I said, it's called Soul Injury. And it is filled with, you know, for 11 years we've been doing this work, we've been applying this work in non hospital hospice, non veteran settings with hundreds of people and they have collected their stories for how to apply these processes that we're talking about because they really are pretty straightforward and so told those stories. We have a lot of people like a lot of organizations like those that work in sexual violence, for example. There's nothing that can give you a soul injury faster than a when being sexually assaulted. So we have a lot of professional organizations looking to this book for really to do the interior, ongoing healing. Because it's one thing, you know, we don't consider ourselves necessarily trauma experts or experts in acute events, but after trauma, after an acute event and everybody's forgotten it and think you should be over it, oh my gosh, you know, the long last, that's what we can, that's the gap that we can really help with that insidious nature of, of things.
- [49:20]
Ray Spadoni
And when is Soul Injury coming out?
- [49:23]
Deborah Grassman
It should be at the end of February 1st of March, but very soon it's already to the printer, to the typesetter rather, and just working out the final things. And once it's printed, it'll be ready to go.
- [49:35]
Ray Spadoni
Fantastic. Do you, do you maintain a database on your website of folks who are interested in you so they can get updates? And is that part of what Opus Pista is about? Yes, you do. Okay, great.
- [49:52]
Deborah Grassman
And we have, you know, we have a contact us button. So we would encourage you to your audience, anybody. We do put on a free monthly webinar of various topics, something that's related to soul injury. We also, as I said, I would really encourage everybody to tune in on February 2nd. Now that is a Sunday. It is Groundhog's Day. And the reason we're doing it, we always do it on February 2, even when it's a Sunday is because it's about dealing with our unconscious, dealing with our shadow. You know, and that's the groundhog comes out but sees its shadow, it runs back in. And that's why the significance of that. So I would encourage that. And we will be doing a webinar starting at 2 o'clock from 2 until 3 that day on the soul injury inventory. And then at 3 o'clock we'll do the 3 minute anchor your heart collective around the world. You know, and last year we had about 800 people on for that. So yeah, I would encourage you to, to promote that if possible because it really and you know, people can do it in groups, at their company or at their faith community, whatever. You know, it's a great way to engender meaningful conversation, meaningful dialogue. You know, it just opens the door.
- [51:14]
Ray Spadoni
Well, I will, I'll make sure that I leave a link in the show notes to your website and it sounds as though there's a, an ability for folks to stay in touch with you through the, through the contact sheet and they'll books.
- [51:31]
Deborah Grassman
We also Ray, we're planning, we haven't implemented it yet, but we do have in the works a plan to do a research project with people who've experienced sexual violence either as a child or as an adult. Whichever. We are going to be doing a research project with that when we we will be posting about looking for people that would be interested in participating in that.
- [51:53]
Ray Spadoni
Okay. So all things will will be able to be found on your website. This episode will be out just about a week before February 2nd, so. So individuals who are interested in that and learning more about it will certainly be able to do so by clicking through to your website or I'm sure they can find it on their own. It's Opus Peace. But I want to thank you, Deborah. This is been a very interesting conversation and as I mentioned before, your work is important. It matters. It's very impactful. So thank you for doing it and I'm very grateful that you were able to join me on my podcast and really appreciate your time.
- [52:35]
Deborah Grassman
Thank you for doing it and recognizing the value and relevance of this.
- [52:41]
Ray Spadoni
Thanks for listening. I hope you'll consider leaving a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your platform of choice that will help others find us here. My mission is to help empower organizations that matter by supporting those who lead them. Feel free to learn more about me and my work@redsaleadvisors.com.