Todays episode will focus on the difference between grief and grieving, but first we will share a real life story of loss and the story we have for you today is about four bodies in a cornfield. Definitions about grief and grieving taken from a podcast featuring Dr. Mary-Frances O'Connor, PhD, an associate professor of clinical psychology and psychiatry at the University of Arizona, and the director of clinical training. podcast called Speaking of Psychology - www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/grieving-changes-brain Book: The Grieving Brain; The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, published in February 2022. - Maryfrancisoconnor.org Additional resources for better mental well-being:
Suicide hotline - SMS 988 - link:988lifeline.org
CBT Therapy - link: cbttwincities.com
Free Therapy - walk-in counseling center (MN) - link: walk-in.org
Contact us at: beyondgoodbye21@gmail.com
00:00:00
Beyond Goodbye is a podcast that explores dying, death, and grief and therefore may contain
00:00:07
sensitive or distressing material that could be triggering for some individuals and is
00:00:12
not suitable for all listeners.
00:00:14
Therefore, listener discretion is advised.
00:00:18
Hello and welcome to Beyond Goodbye, a show that empowers listeners to engage with death
00:00:24
and grief in a healthy and transformative way.
00:00:28
My name is Angela Sturm and I am your host as well as the Creatrix of Beyond Goodbye.
00:00:35
Our focus in this episode will be around defining grief versus grieving and what each looks
00:00:41
like.
00:00:42
But first we begin with a real life story of loss and the story we have for you today
00:00:46
is about four bodies dumped in a cornfield, two of which were my children and the siblings
00:00:52
of my guest who happens to be my son, Zachary Pettis.
00:00:56
This is our story in our first episode titled Bodies in a Cornfield.
00:01:18
I'm sure some of you may have heard or read about a SUV found by a farm hand dumped in
00:01:24
a cornfield in Dunn County, Wisconsin two years ago.
00:01:28
When the farm hand looked inside the vehicle he found four deceased people, two men and
00:01:33
two women.
00:01:34
Two of those victims were my children, Jasmine Sturm and Matthew Pettis.
00:01:39
The other two victims were Jasmine's longtime friend, Natasha Fluke Presley and Jasmine's
00:01:45
boyfriend, Lois Foreman.
00:01:48
All four had been shot in the head but Matt and Lois had been shot twice in the head.
00:01:54
They had a suspect, Antoine Suggs, who later turned himself in after fleeing to Arizona.
00:02:00
In 2023 Antoine was found guilty of murder and currently is serving a hundred plus year
00:02:06
sentence in prison.
00:02:10
Back in 2021 when I first learned Jasmine and Matt were missing, it was a Sunday and
00:02:16
I was watching football.
00:02:19
My Tasha's aunt had called me and asked if I knew where the girls were because Tasha
00:02:24
was missing.
00:02:25
So I knew that Jasmine had to work that evening as did Matt.
00:02:29
They worked at the same place on the weekends.
00:02:32
So I gave her workplace a call and neither of them had shown up for work which was unusual.
00:02:40
So I called to a couple friends and then finally called her son, my grandson and he was upset
00:02:49
and said that they hadn't come home.
00:02:52
He never called us.
00:02:54
So I called Tasha's aunt back and we decided to make phone calls to the police stations,
00:03:01
hospitals, you know just to kind of see if maybe they got on accident because you don't
00:03:06
ever think that someone you love or anyone, your friend, family, you don't think something
00:03:14
like murder happens to them.
00:03:17
We couldn't find them.
00:03:19
They weren't in any hospitals.
00:03:20
They weren't in any jails.
00:03:23
And very late in that evening, Tasha's aunt called me back again and said that a Dunn
00:03:28
County detective had called her and was talking to her about some vehicle they had found and
00:03:34
that she thought that they were all dead.
00:03:38
Now my head, my mind at the time was like, there's no way they're dead.
00:03:44
They're just, I was mad because I was thinking their phones had turned off and they were
00:03:47
just somewhere.
00:03:49
So I told her that not possible.
00:03:53
They're not dead.
00:03:54
But then after a couple of hours, it's late now.
00:03:56
It's we're into early Monday morning.
00:03:59
I decided to give Dunn County a call.
00:04:01
I wanted to call the coroner's office and ask if they had bodies brought in.
00:04:06
So I called, asked that I was put on hold for a very long time and they had transferred
00:04:12
me to a Dunn County detective.
00:04:16
It sounded like he was outside and in retrospect, it turned out he was at the crime scene.
00:04:21
But at the time, I didn't know that.
00:04:23
And as we were talking, I told him who I was and I asked him if there were deceased bodies
00:04:29
there and if two of them were my children.
00:04:32
He had told me he couldn't tell me what they had or identify anyone.
00:04:37
But he then asked me if I had the passwords to Matthew and Jasmine's cell phones.
00:04:44
And then I knew that they were dead.
00:04:47
After I got off the phone with them, I called my dad.
00:04:50
I was sitting outside in my driveway and I told him they were dead, that they had been
00:04:56
murdered.
00:04:57
I think he yelled or screamed.
00:04:59
I don't remember a lot of it.
00:05:00
I don't even remember crying.
00:05:01
I went back into the house and I kind of sat in the dark.
00:05:05
Zach was living with me at the time and he was getting up to get ready for work.
00:05:10
And I told him that they were found and that they were murdered and he just looked at me,
00:05:16
turned around and got in the shower, got dressed and he went to work.
00:05:22
Yeah.
00:05:24
So my Sunday was when they were kind of missing.
00:05:32
I was at the gym the morning of.
00:05:38
And I was reaching out to Jasmine, I had borrowed her just a couple of dollars the night before.
00:05:43
And I was reaching out to her saying, Hey, can you pay me back now?
00:05:46
Whatever.
00:05:47
She was a server.
00:05:48
So she made cash tips and she was going to pay me back the next day.
00:05:52
And she wasn't responding.
00:05:53
And I was like, you know, whatever.
00:05:54
She's probably sleeping.
00:05:55
She'll get back to me.
00:05:56
So I went to the gym and I'm kind of hanging out.
00:05:58
And then I get a call from my grandpa, your dad, obviously.
00:06:04
And he had said, this is about, I don't know, hour, hour and a half into my workout.
00:06:11
He had said that, Hey, like, you know, your brother and sister are missing.
00:06:16
You should, you should go home and be with your mom.
00:06:19
Just kind of comfort her in that time.
00:06:22
So I was like, okay, I went home and then didn't really wrap my head around it.
00:06:30
There was nothing.
00:06:34
I didn't really think anything of it at the time.
00:06:36
I didn't believe it at the time.
00:06:37
So I was kind of thinking, it's not what it is.
00:06:41
And then that Monday morning when it was confirmed, we had all been, I mean, after, after so long,
00:06:47
I think that Sunday evening, actually, junior had a football game and his mom never came
00:06:54
home and that's totally unlike her to make him miss a sporting event or some type of
00:06:59
a school event or anything.
00:07:02
So when we all, me and my mom showed up at the field for a football game and junior wasn't
00:07:08
there.
00:07:09
That's when we called him and was like, you know, where's your mom?
00:07:11
And he was saying that she never came home and whatever.
00:07:14
So yeah, then that Monday, I just didn't believe it.
00:07:21
I was in disbelief.
00:07:22
So I don't know really what was going through my head, but I know you had told me that and
00:07:29
I drove, it was about a 30, 40 minute drive to work.
00:07:32
And when I got to work was when I finally started balling, crying, I couldn't control
00:07:37
it.
00:07:38
So I went into my manager and I told him, I said, Hey man, my brother and sister were
00:07:43
just murdered and I'd like to go home.
00:07:45
I don't, I don't know if I can do it today.
00:07:48
And he looked at me almost like as if I was joking.
00:07:52
And then he saw that I was uncontrollably crying.
00:07:55
And then he was like super consoling and was like, yeah, go take as much time as you need.
00:07:59
Well, I only took that day and then went back the next day.
00:08:02
But yeah, that was, that was my Monday.
00:08:05
So yeah, all of it was just really unbelievable.
00:08:10
Like surreal still is to me, although less intense now, which brings me to our topic about
00:08:19
grief and grieving.
00:08:22
Do you differentiate grief from grieving?
00:08:24
I suppose I never really had to look at it until this event in my life.
00:08:31
A grief I suppose now I've looked at as grief is something you can look back on and you
00:08:37
can still feel those emotions in your, you can just feel that, that sorrow kind of despair
00:08:45
lost feeling.
00:08:46
And you don't really know how to describe it.
00:08:49
To me, that's grief.
00:08:50
It's like you're just kind of lost in limbo.
00:08:54
Grieving is when you come to grips with it and you're, you're kind of trying to get past
00:09:00
that, but you're still hurting, obviously.
00:09:04
And so that's grieving to me is understanding what it is you're not lost anymore, although
00:09:10
it is still hard in a dark road that you're going on.
00:09:13
But that's kind of my idea.
00:09:14
I'm impressed because according to Dr. Mary Frances O'Connor, an associate professor
00:09:22
of clinical psychology and psychiatry at the University of Arizona, grief and grieving
00:09:27
are two distinct experiences.
00:09:30
Dr. O'Connor, who has spent most of her career studying grief and its effects on our brain,
00:09:36
also has a book called The Grieving Brain, The Surprising Science of How We Learn from
00:09:41
Love and Loss, and did a podcast called Speaking of Psychology.
00:09:47
She defines grief as an intense feeling that completely overwhelms you while grieving, which
00:09:53
will never go away, is still the feeling of loss, but it is now a familiar feeling.
00:09:58
And we've learned how to comfort ourselves.
00:10:00
Dr. O'Connor also clarified that even though the feelings haven't changed, our relationship
00:10:06
to those feelings have changed.
00:10:09
So you kind of hit it like, you're not a doctor.
00:10:15
And that that's exactly how she defines it.
00:10:20
I found her explanation of grief versus grieving to make a lot of sense after thinking about
00:10:24
it a bit.
00:10:26
If I were to compare how I manage my feelings today to how I managed them two years ago,
00:10:32
huge difference.
00:10:34
Two years ago, I had to pull over when I was driving because I was crying so hard.
00:10:40
And I felt it in my body too.
00:10:41
Like my whole body just felt different.
00:10:44
And I said in the trailer to this podcast that these intense emotions that were brought
00:10:51
to my front step were emotions I couldn't put words to.
00:10:56
And that's grief versus the grieving.
00:11:01
Now I if I have my moments, obviously, but I will call somebody like when I called you
00:11:07
last week, or I'll call a friend, I journal, I'll listen to music, I meditate, I allow
00:11:13
myself to feel those feelings.
00:11:17
Do you notice a difference in like how you were, how you managed it two years ago or
00:11:23
a year ago even compared to how you do that now?
00:11:26
Yeah, so I just don't think I had the mental strength to deal with it a few years ago.
00:11:34
I, you know, obviously just lost your mom, my grandmother, my dad, and then my brother
00:11:40
and sister all within three months of each other, three, four months.
00:11:47
So that was a big hit to me for me.
00:11:48
I always was the type to bottle my emotions in, but that is something that you really
00:11:52
can't bottle in.
00:11:54
So for my, I was drinking a lot and doing a lot of just harmful things to myself.
00:12:03
And it doesn't quite pay.
00:12:05
I mean, you can go throughout the entire day.
00:12:06
I mean, I went throughout the entire day at work.
00:12:09
Pete, you would have never guessed that I had just been a victim of my brother's and
00:12:16
sister's homicide because I would still kind of be a happy go lucky kind of outgoing guy.
00:12:21
And then when I get home, I mean, I couldn't even get in my car for five minutes without
00:12:25
breaking down crying.
00:12:27
You get home and you just want to drown those feelings out.
00:12:31
Now I'm still not the greatest at talking, but I do have some help.
00:12:37
And so I'm a little bit better at exploring my feelings, but it's still like, yeah, I'm
00:12:44
not, I'm not experienced or well versed in that mental field just yet.
00:12:51
I'm still learning.
00:12:52
So it's still hard for me, but I do notice a difference.
00:12:55
Yeah.
00:12:56
And I don't think grief managing it has anything to do with your mental strength because I
00:13:02
think you're a very strong person.
00:13:05
I just, it's just, it's new.
00:13:07
It's not anything we've ever been exposed to before.
00:13:11
The other thing that Dr O'Connor also said, and it really resonated with me as she talked
00:13:16
about depression and grief, and she said they're not the same thing.
00:13:22
So to her, depression is global, which means that it, everything depresses that person.
00:13:33
They might have guilt feelings about maybe not finishing college or feel like they should
00:13:38
be further along in their life than they are or a relationship ended and they feel it's
00:13:43
all their fault and they can't get past the past.
00:13:47
Whereas grief is just the sadness and the emotions for that lost loved one.
00:13:54
And I bring this up because not so long ago, few, few months, I was talking to somebody
00:14:01
called somebody cause I was feeling awful and I started sharing my feelings with him and
00:14:05
I asked him, do you think I'm depressed?
00:14:08
I reached out to him because I know that he has suffered from depression his entire life.
00:14:13
I've never suffered from depression.
00:14:15
So I didn't know what it felt like.
00:14:17
And so as I'm describing these feelings, he's like, Oh yeah, you're depressed, but I didn't
00:14:22
agree.
00:14:23
I mean, I was like, I'm just sad.
00:14:25
I miss my mom.
00:14:26
I miss my kids.
00:14:28
I don't think that's depressed.
00:14:29
I think I am sad.
00:14:32
What are your thoughts on that?
00:14:34
Yeah, actually, after this whole instance, you know, Matt had battled depression a little
00:14:39
bit.
00:14:40
Jasmine ever so slightly.
00:14:43
I had no understanding of depression before this event.
00:14:48
I had no empathy towards it even sometimes and I've kind of kicked myself for that after
00:14:54
this event because it's real.
00:14:56
It's real and it can be detrimental.
00:14:59
I now know very well what depression is.
00:15:03
Depression is sometimes you wake up and you feel like you had just ran a marathon when
00:15:09
you got 10 hours of sleep at night.
00:15:12
Sometimes you get off work and you had a great day and you immediately start bawling crying
00:15:17
and you don't know what it is.
00:15:18
I mean, depression is like just a cloud over you that can start raining at any given moment
00:15:24
and you live with it.
00:15:26
And I had no understanding of that before and I do now.
00:15:32
So I do, yeah, I mean, I battle with it ever so slightly.
00:15:36
I did think the same way that I thought, I'm just sad.
00:15:38
It's just in emotion, it'll pass and life goes on, but depression doesn't really work
00:15:43
like that.
00:15:44
It stays.
00:15:45
Yeah.
00:15:46
Yeah.
00:15:47
Well, for me, defining grief versus grieving and depression, that helped me because now
00:15:56
I don't need to feel like I'm grieving wrong if I'm not having these intense day stopping
00:16:03
emotions still.
00:16:05
Some of our listeners might feel like that or feel like their grieving is wrong or feel
00:16:09
guilty because you're having more good days than you are bad, but there is no right way
00:16:14
to grieve.
00:16:16
But maybe by separating grief from grieving, we can take another step towards healing and
00:16:22
by healing, I mean being kind to ourselves.
00:16:26
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
00:16:29
Being kind to yourself should not be underestimated.
00:16:32
It mentally, physically, emotionally, all of those things.
00:16:37
You have to take a big look at yourself and give yourself a break sometimes.
00:16:42
You have to give yourself that time to just cry, just feel those emotions.
00:16:45
Then you have to give yourself that strength to know that you're going to keep going and
00:16:50
you, you know, whatever it may be, friends, family, loved ones, kids, it doesn't matter,
00:16:55
you've got to find that thing that keeps you going that you need to be strong for.
00:17:00
It's hard.
00:17:01
It's not easy, but you can do it.
00:17:04
Right.
00:17:05
Right.
00:17:06
Well, that is all there is time for today.
00:17:10
Thank you so much for joining us as we dove a little bit deeper into the subject of grieving.
00:17:15
We hope that our discussion provided our listeners with support as you journey through this grief
00:17:25
and that you've gotten some insight from this next week.
00:17:28
We will talk about supporting those who are dealing with loss.
00:17:34
Sometimes those supporters don't really know what to say and we want to help with that.
00:17:38
You can find all our source material in show notes and I will include a link to Dr. O'Connor's
00:17:43
book for those interested in purchasing it.
00:17:46
I do not get any residuals.
00:17:47
Should you decide to buy anything?
00:17:49
I just really like her work and believe many of you might benefit from her book.
00:17:54
Also, if you are struggling with grief and need additional support, we encourage you
00:17:59
to reach out to a licensed therapist or counselor.
00:18:02
We have included some local links to resources in our show notes.
00:18:07
Please be sure to hit subscribe and like and we look forward to meeting next week.