How to Deal When the Shit Gets Real Podcast · Rietta Boksha

Lisa Heacock: Grief and Compound Grief

·36 min·2 clips

In 22 months, Lisa lost 12 loved ones and calls it “compound grief.”

1. How to Deal When the Shit Gets Real Podcast centers on Lisa Heacock’s grief after 12 loved ones died in 22 months. 2. Host Riera interviews Lisa Heacock, a former corporate worker from Seattle who lives in the UK, because her losses changed her life trajectory. 3. The episode asks how someone deals with “compound grief” after repeated deaths, caregiving, and major life changes. 4. Lisa names her niece, her father, her mother, and her 24-year-old son-in-law Jack as part of the 12 deaths. 5. She says her father had brain cancer, underwent surgery, and still could not have any of it removed. 6. She quit a law-firm job and lived with her parents for seven months while her father was dying. 7. She describes returning to the UK, shutting the curtains, and speaking only to her closest friends. 8. Lisa says her mother visited the UK, stayed for a couple months, and later died in her sleep 14 months after her father. 9. She explains that Jack died from a fall in front of her daughter, and the call came in the middle of the night. 10. She defines “micro grief” as losing bits of a person through anticipatory grief, decline, and changes in communication, health, independence, and finances. 11. Lisa says watching her father move from being “larger than life” to sitting in a chair and being confused was part of the grief. 12. She says watching her mother “shrink” physically and emotionally while caring for her dying husband was another layered loss. 13. She describes carrying her own grief while also carrying her mother’s grief, her daughter’s grief, and the grief of other family members. 14. Lisa says there was no “mom fix” for her daughter after Jack’s death and that she had to simply be present. 15. She tells her therapist she feared being “in a ball in a corner” and never getting back up. 16. She says the losses exposed an unhappy marriage, which contributed to an amicable divorce after 28 years. 17. The conversation moves into coping tools like bereavement counseling, sound bath healing, kinesiology, Reiki, chiropractor visits, massage, Zumba, hiking, and mediums. 18. Lisa says a sound bath uses gongs, bowls, vibration, and meditation to calm the nervous system and lower grief-driven stress. 19. The tone is candid, practical, and emotionally direct, with Riera asking follow-up questions and Lisa answering in detail. 20. People dealing with bereavement, caregiving, or hidden grief will get the most from this episode, while listeners wanting light conversation may skip it.

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