This episode was originally released on August 18th, 2018. The Sugars have been thinking about what it means to say goodbye and let go. In this first episode of our two-part series on moving on, the Sugars and Claire Bidwell Smith answer two letters from people struggling to move past their grief after the death of their loved ones. The first letter comes from a woman who recently discovered that her best childhood friend died by suicide. In the wake of the news, she spent hours pouring over letters from her friend, and realized that there were signs of trouble early in life. Now she’s haunted by the fact that she failed to intervene years ago. “I keep ruminating on how Alejandra might have killed herself and where she was when she did it,” she writes. “I feel so much guilt from my complacency.” A second letter writer, who calls herself “Wracked by Guilt,” feels similarly about the death of her mother. “How do I get over the sickening feeling that I played a role in my mom’s death?” she asks. “How is it possible for me to stop trying to place blame and simply accept the situation?” Claire Bidwell Smith is a licensed therapist specializing in grief, and the author of several books, including “The Rules of Inheritance.” She writes and speaks about grief regularly, and offers online grief support in addition to her private practice. Her new book, “Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief,” will be released on Sept. 25th.
The universe has good news for the lost, lonely and heartsick.
The sugars are here speaking straight into your ears.
I'm Steve Allman.
I'm Cheryl strayed.
This is dear sugars.
Oh dear song.
Won't you please share some little sweetness with me?
I check my bell vibes every day.
Oh, and the sugar you see in my way.
Hi, Steve.
Hi, Cheryl.
You know, we've been thinking so much about what it means to say goodbye and let go and move on.
Yes, we have, you know, because we're moving on from our own podcast, which is a sad thing, and it involves a lot of letting go to the good times we had, the wonderful experience we had with each other, but also with our listeners.
So this really kind of came into our minds when we were thinking about some of the themes and topics we wanted to explore in these final episodes as we move toward the end of our show.
And we thought we'd do this two part moving on thing.
Yeah.
And in the short term, I can say just in my own experience, and most of the people I know, people stay in relationships.
People stay in some way in an active discourse with their grief longer than they naturally should.
They hold on because it is so tremendously difficult to let go.
I found in every relationship that wasn't going to last forever.