Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world. It’s Dr. Janice Fortman with Relationship Matters. I hope everyone is having a beautifully blessed morning, afternoon, evening wherever you are in the world. Well, I’m still on my soapbox and I know you know, audience, what soapbox I am on. The soapbox is the COVID-19 vaccination soapbox. Have you had your vaccination? Now, as I always say, I know a lot of my audience, a few of them anyway, don’t believe in the vaccine, um, whatever, but think about it. Think about it even if you don’t get it for you, get it for someone that you love. You don’t want to get it and then you give it to your children, your parents, your spouse, and they get really, really ill or pass away from it. Now, I’ve had both of my, as a matter of fact, on Monday I got my booster and, um, it didn’t give me COVID. I haven’t grown any horns and I’m doing just fine. So get your vaccine. Now, a lot of things are happening during COVID. I think they said over 700,000 people have passed, have died from COVID and think about this, that’s a lot of grief, a lot of grief. And today I have as my guest Emily Thoreau Thoreau. Now let me tell you a little bit about Emily before she comes on. Emily is a grief transformation expert and holds a master’s degree in English with a concentration in writing. She’s been teaching writing and composition on the college and university level for over 30 years. I think she’s too young; she must have started when she was 10. During that time, she published three writing textbooks with Prentice Hall and Pearson Education. She participated with the Bereaved Persons Association in Bakersfield, California, which her husband co-founded. She also assisted her husband Jacques Thoreau, a bioethicist, with multiple revisions of his popular text “Ethics Theory and Practice” published by Prentice Hall and Pearson Education. Now, with the loss of two husbands, her parents, sisters, and many friends, she has in-depth experience in the grief discovery process and she’s going to offer us some real answers on how to transformationally move through grief to a life filled with joy and love. So I am going to bring Emily in now. Hi Emily.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Aloha, nice to see you.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, yeah, right. Hello and how are you?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
I’m just great. It’s a beautiful day here in Maui.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know, stop bragging. Oh, you are in Maui. I am jealous. I know it’s beautiful. I know it’s beautiful and we’re here in Chicago and, um, it’s supposed to go down at least in the outlying suburbs to maybe 37, 36 degrees, just a little bit above freezing, right? So I don’t want to hear anything else about Maui and Hawaii, okay? And before we get into the topic, I was really curious about your husband’s book because I had never heard of a bioethicist and so I looked it up and I looked up your husband’s book and it said, um, examples of bioethics, ethics rather, yes, um, is, um, organ donation, transplantation, genetic research, death and dying, and environmental concerns. And so what, from what I’m understanding, is that it’s the ethics that’s involved in all of that?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yes, the ethics, uh, that has to do with living in general. I think it’s probably the easiest way to say it in anything related to life and death matters.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, and okay, all right, okay, yeah, um, I was looking at that and I thought, oh wow, you know, uh, that’s, that’s, that’s pretty deep, um, and, um, and it said, uh, that you had helped him to revise his book quite a few times. I think there are 11 editions.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yes, I know. Now it’s available, uh, digitally. It’s still used. He wrote it in 1975. Wow, it’s still used around the world and most of it now is with the online education classes that the universities are doing now so that students have access to it online. I’ve got a whole row of the books in my bookcase of all the different editions.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, all righty. Well, I want to start out, um, talking about, uh, your journey and how you became, I, um, well, I know it’s not a grief counselor, but, but what would you call your title?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Well, my publisher says grief transformation expert.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
And I, to me, it’s more of a facilitator or coach to help people through the process, especially with finding happiness while they’re grieving. That’s, that’s a very important part of what I do.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so tell us about your journey to becoming a grief transformational expert.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Well, I became very interested in actually life and death matters when I was pretty young. My father got an ambulance company in a small town when I was 13 years old and my mom and dad and I ran it together. It was a small town, small company, and in back in those days, in the olden days, you only had to have an advanced first aid certificate to be an attendant on ambulance calls. And so, and my dad was the first aid instructor in town, so by my 14th birthday, I was certified and ready to go on ambulance calls. And my first ambulance call was, uh, two families and a head-on collision with multiple fatalities. And it really made me start thinking about the fine line between, you know, now you’re here and then you’re not, and what that meant and, and how to deal with it and how to feel about it. And I continued helping Mom and Dad run the company until I went away to college on purpose so I could be away from having this 24-hour business, uh, that, that we took care of all the time. And then, um, it just seemed like I always was in a position where I was helping people out in one way or another with, um, friends and, and throughout my life have invited me to come and sit with people who are dying and, and so I did a lot of that. And then I was married to Jacques for 22 years and we had, even though he was a bioethicist, he also was an actor and singer and had a great time in the community with doing that sort of thing. We did a lot of theater together and we had a great happy life. And when he didn’t really realize, I think, that he was dying, he, he had been dealing with congestive heart failure and then renal failure and dialysis and all that sort of thing. And the, the one Friday morning we had just finished for the first time being able to submit a revision of the textbook online instead of having to mail in big boxes of papers that we printed off. And so we called his editor and we celebrated and it was, it was great and we had lunch and we were getting ready to take him to dialysis and he just said, am I going to get better? And it just hit me at that moment that even though that he’d taught at the, the college, his main class that he taught was to the nurses on how to deal with living and dying. And here he thought he all these times in the hospital, all the doctors visits and everything else were to make him better to get well. And it didn’t dawn on me till then. I wish we would have talked about that in particular before, but we didn’t. And, and I had to tell him no because he wasn’t, he was getting worse all the time. And, uh, he died about an hour later.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh my God. Oh my goodness. So I, I think he just kind of had to, to know that he didn’t have to keep struggling to stay alive. He was thrilled that he got his, his book, uh, revision completed. That was kind of what his goal was to get that accomplished and then he was gone just like that.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Oh my goodness.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Was, was he at home or in?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yeah, we were, we were in the process of getting him into the car to go to dialysis and he was sitting on the edge of the car and he just looked up at me with this kind of shocked look on his face and instead of not very nice word because he was shocked and that was it, he was gone.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh my goodness. Oh wow. I’m sorry to hear that. Oh my goodness. And how long ago was that?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
That was in, uh, 2006.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so now that was your first husband.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Well, actually my, my second husband. I had a starter husband [Laughter] the father of my children and you know, we just, it was, we were young and we weren’t quite really right for each other and it was, uh, good for both of us that that marriage ended. But then I met Jacques and he was fabulous and being removed for 22 years.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh my goodness. Now I said in your bio that you lost two husbands.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
That’s right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And so, so, so okay, your, your starter husband, he’s still alive.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Okay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And Jacques, uh, okay, he passed and, and so your second husband, I know your third.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Third husband, yeah.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, yeah.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
I got married again after Jacques. I had no intention of getting married, no intention of dating. I, we’d have a great relationship and I just thought I’m, I can figure out how to do this on my own and I didn’t expect to meet anybody else. But then I did and he was also quite wonderful, absolute opposite of Jacques. They couldn’t have been more different except for they both were very ethical, uh, honest, uh, very love based, which was, was perfect. And we had a, a great time together, good, really good relationship. It took me a while to be able to be willing to fully give into the relationship though. And he, he kept wanting me to marry him and I just, I never felt unmarried to Jacques. It wasn’t something I thought about before he died that eventually I wouldn’t be married because I, I knew he was on his way out, but it just, I, we didn’t get divorced, you know, I know they say from death do you part in traditional battles, but we wrote our own vows and we didn’t say that and it, it just, I just didn’t feel unmarried. So it was, it took me a while to get to the point where I felt like I really could get married again because Ron and I became very, very close and it just was the logical thing to do. So there I was married another time and he was as far as I knew healthy when I married him, but he ended up having congestive heart failure and renal failure just like Jacques had and that’s what he died from.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So how long were you married to him?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
We were together, uh, 10 years. We were married, uh, almost seven, but we were together for 10 years.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So Emily, how did you deal with both deaths? First of all, how did you deal with Jacques’ death?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Well, I just plain didn’t know what to do. As much as we’d talked about death and dying, I’d even taken the class because I was working as a nurse at the time and kind of felt likely in a past life, but, um, he had a, the class that was on living and dying for nurses and I took that class and we talked a lot with that class and talked a lot about living and dying and I, I thought I was prepared. And one of the really interesting things that happened was we were very prominent in the community. We were both involved in theater besides being at the University and the college and, um, we had tons of friends. I had done lots of community service stuff so, you know, I couldn’t go in my grubbies to the grocery store because I’d either run into a student or somebody that I was doing something for in the community. So with all that, we have had tons of people that we knew and his celebration of life was absolutely fantastic. And we, at the time, we owned a live theater and our, we had actually didn’t own it at the time that he died because I had given it to the non-profit Foundation that was kind of went along with the theater so that I could stay home with him for the last or in the hospital with him for the last couple of years. So we had that service at the theater and the theater was full, the lobby was full, there were people out on the street. It was just an amazing number of people. But what was interesting when he first started getting really sick and he’d be in the hospital, he had all kinds of visitors and people hanging out and calling him and flowers and all that sort of thing. And over the last two years of his life, as he got sicker and sicker and sicker, the people just started staying further and further away. I don’t know whether they were having a hard time watching the process he was going through, but they just weren’t there. They came out for the celebration, but then when he was gone, they didn’t really want to be around me, uh, in that it bothered me because I thought, hey, you’re my friends, you know, we’ve done all this stuff together for so many years, but they just didn’t know how to handle it. And it was most of the people that I knew. So I spent a lot of time alone. I, I had one really good girlfriend that had been staying with me and she was wonderful. I don’t know what I would have done without her, but she eventually had to, to move back home. And I just, uh, I actually spent a lot of time alone. I would go teach at the University and come home and sit and didn’t watch a lot of TV, didn’t read a whole lot, didn’t do a whole lot. I was just, it was kind of a time of contemplation with trying to figure out, okay, now, now what do I do? And I didn’t really know what to do. And I didn’t, at that point, I didn’t write a lot, which was unusual for me because I was, I’m a writer, taught writing, or still teach writing and loved that, but I, I just wasn’t doing that. Uh, I just really didn’t know what to do. And then New Year’s Eve came along and I thought, okay, this is my opportunity. I’m, I’m not good with resolutions because I write a bunch of them and I forget about them like I think most people do. But I thought I’m going to choose one thing that this year I’m going to accomplish one thing, but I didn’t know what that was going to be. So I, I did start meditating and did start writing and trying to figure out what that one thing was supposed to be. And what came to me was to accept invitations. And I thought that’s strange because I wasn’t getting any invitations, but I thought it, it came to me for a reason. So when I started getting invitations, I accepted them and it opened the doors for me like I never could have imagined would happen. And I had so many opportunities that were just amazing. And it wasn’t like people asking me over to dinner. It was things like the newspaper for the county calling me and asking me to be on the editorial board for a year. It was the film Commission in the county contacting me and asking them to create a film festival for them. It was my friend going to South Africa and she said, why don’t you come with us? And I did. And I hadn’t thought before that of going to South Africa and it was an amazing trip. And my daughter had convinced me to start going to a trainer who was a friend of hers and we got to be kind of chummy and he was a ultra marathon bicycle racer and he asked me to help him on the races. And so I actually was his like caretaker on the Race Across America on a bicycle. Yeah, he, he holds many world records in that and that was quite an amazing situation. So all these things and there was more than that. There were a whole bunch of other things like the, the county regional center asked me to be on their bioethics committee as a layperson. Uh, Jacques had been on there as an ethicist, but they asked me to be a community representative as a layperson. So it, it and it went on and on and on just all these things started happening. I was so glad that I had committed to saying yes to invitations because it really changed my life. And it’s ultimately kind of how Ron and I got together because a, a friend of mine, uh, saw me and she said, you know, are you dating? I said, no. Do you want to? I said, no. And she said, well, you need to go on Match.com. And I said, no. And then, uh, she said it to me so many times. So I thought, you know what? I made this commitment to say yes when people invited me to do something. And she said it to me so many times. I thought I, I’m supposed to do this. That I decided to set myself up by writing this list of everything that I had to have in somebody that I would even consider going out to meet for coffee, you know, okay, let alone a long-term relationship. And it was a really detailed list with a bunch of things. And, and then I wrote my bio of what I was and, and I went on, um, on a Thursday night and the, the guys, I started looking at guys and said that this is not the place for me. I’m not going to find anybody here. They’re just totally different kind of, uh, people that I had no interest in, in even having a conversation with. And then I saw Ron’s picture and I thought, hmm. So I looked at his bio and I started checking off things on my list and he was every single thing that I had really and more.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
And so I contacted him the way you do through that and we started emailing each other back and forth. That was on Thursday and on Sunday we had decided we’d go out in the afternoon for coffee, but I was still working on that film festival and, and had people at my house screening and stuff and they just, it kept going on and on and on and it was finally like seven o’clock in the evening when they left and I emailed them I said I’m so sorry and he said well I haven’t eaten yet have you and I said no and he says well meet me for dinner and I thought you know I didn’t have really experience with online dating but everything that I read said go out for coffee the first time you know okay um that we went out to dinner and never looked back we were together from then on.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow then that is or so how long did you all date before you got married?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
I, I was trying to remember what that was because it was about almost four years I think before.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh wow.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yeah because of that not feeling unmarried thing that I had so it wasn’t that I didn’t love Ron it was just it was kind of conflicted.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So Emily so you you did you deal with Ron’s death the same way that you dealt with Jacques so how was it different?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Totally different, uh, well there are two big things kind of had to do with religion, uh, Jacques had been raised Catholic all the traditional stuff but then when he became involved in philosophy and ethics he became agnostic and so he he yeah it was he just the more he saw the more he just didn’t connect with religion anymore so that was that was kind of different and then uh Ron was a religious science minister so the opposite as you can get right and uh and Jacques was half French half Sicilian and Ron was African-American so they they couldn’t they couldn’t have been more opposite and things like that yet they had a lot of things in common right uh like they’re they’re both Highly Educated um both brilliant men and uh very love centered so it worked really well together but with with Ron’s Health he started having problems when we were living on the mainland in in California we discovered it we went to a New Year’s Eve Meditation Retreat in Joshua Tree which is high desert and it gets really really cold and being it New Year’s it was uh especially cold and we didn’t have Heating in these places that they have to stay so it was it was cold there was ice on the ground The Fountains froze you know it was it was that cold and in the middle of the night he said uh we have to leave we were supposed to be there like three days in the middle of the night he just said we have to leave and I said do you need to go to the hospital and he goes no I need to get out of this altitude because the altitude was really high and and he just he knew he had to get out of the altitude so we just packed up our stuff and and left in the middle of the night and as we got down closer to sea level he could breathe a lot better but he was really struggling to breathe and that was when we started getting him checked out and discovered that he had the congestive heart failure too like uh chocolate had okay so we he had that for about four years I think before he died starting with that but initially we were able to get medication and have things work and he stayed in good shape and had a trainer and all that sort of thing so he was he was really doing pretty well but then he wasn’t it just kind of he’s his health started going down and he’d have episodes where we would have to get to the hospital real quick because he he his lungs would start filling up the fluid and he had to get the fluid off and we we went through that a lot and we had honeymoon in Maui and and had been here several times after that because he still had friends here from when he lived in Maui before and we really enjoyed the the people that he knew I never came here like a tourist and it just was so comfortable there and he got to the point where he said you know why do we keep going back to California can’t we just stay here so we bought a house sold our house there uh moved everything and right before we left uh I guess it was about three weeks before we left I had to take him to the hospital uh we didn’t call an ambulance because we lived so close to the hospital I knew it would be a lot faster and I knew that he needed help right then so I was able to get him in the car and get him to the hospital and uh they actually it wasn’t he didn’t stop breathing and have his heart stop beating but he was close enough that it was essentially a code that they had they had 12 people in the emergency room taking care of him and it took like overnight to get him stable enough that they could transfer him to ICU and they did and then they told us that he had to have a pacemaker put in and he said well we’re moving to Maui in a couple weeks can I have it done over there and they said hey no you have to have it like put in right away so uh here he he had a pacemaker and when you have a pacemaker they put your arm in a sling and you’re not supposed to move it for a while to make sure that the wires from the pacemaker get uh really firmly implanted where they need to be so I was doing all of the moving and everything for the house because he wasn’t able to do anything he could sit and tell people you know point to things but he couldn’t really help and so he was in that kind of shape when we got here and he felt his attitude was wonderful we lived very much in the moment all the time that that was very important to us to be focusing on what was good and at any one moment you asked as we were both being able to sit there and talk and smile and so all was well even though all this other helsings were going on but by focusing on the moment like that instead of with Jacques we were focusing on the the health issues and how miserable he was and how hard it was okay so this was different so it was different it was totally different with Ron and Ron had he had significant health challenges he didn’t feel great but he just his attitude toward it was totally different and he knew that he his transition wasn’t that far off and he was okay with that and I think being okay with it I think I think Joc never wanted to die I don’t think he thought he was going to die and and I think that was why he had as much of trouble as he did but Ron looked at it very realistically and by being able to experience everything together um it made it a lot easier for me because I was able to live in the moment with him and when it got right down to it the week before he um see two weeks before he transitioned he went into the hospital and he kept getting sicker and sicker and sicker and he he lost 35 pounds in five days and nobody could tell him why that was happening and they weren’t able to get give him anything that would make it stop they were he was having massive massive um gut problems and nothing helped and so after he’d been there for that long he asked the doctor what they were going to do for him and the doctor said well we can run all these other tests and he said I’m not having other tests he said we’ve done all these tests I don’t know what other tests you’d do and he had worked in the medical field he had a master’s in public health and he did Hospital Administration and lots of things like that so he he knew how how things operated and he said is is there something that you can do for me that’s going to make me better or make me feel better made me stop losing weight make me not be so weak and the doctor said well we’ll we’ll keep doing tests and and Ron said you’re not answering my question and the doctor said well you know there’s not really anything we can do but we can try and keep you comfortable and Ron said well then I think I want to go home and the doctor said you can’t go home you’re you’re way too sick we have to be here so that we can do all these things for you and he said no I’m going to go home and he said well if you go home it’s going to be against medical advice and you can’t take any of your medications home we won’t prescribe them for you and he said I don’t care I’m going home.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And so that’s when you all, uh, went on and moved to Maui?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yeah, well we moved here two years before before then.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
When you say going home.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yeah, home to you. He wanted to go home to our house and we, we had fortunately a very good friend who was a hospice nurse and I called her and told her what was going on and she arranged for care for him, um, she arranged for a hospital bed by the time we got to the house there’s a hospital bed there and the hospice doctor was there to prescribe the prescription swarm that the doctors at the hospital wouldn’t give him and I said I asked him I said do you want to go on hospice and he said no I I don’t think I need to be on hospice I said Okay that was Friday night and on Monday morning he said now it’s time I need to go on hospice so we started making phone calls and called everybody he wanted to know what his situation was so if they wanted to come see us they could and a lot of people did they got on a jet and flew over here and we had people sleeping on air mattresses and couches and in Neighbors houses and everything else and that last week was so.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Did he pass, did he pass, uh?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
He passed in the hospice, the hospice at our house.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
In your house but healthcare at the house. So Emily, Emily, so now you, you had both of your husbands, um, to, to pass and I know you said your sisters and your parents. What I want to know is as far as a year in the year span, well how, how many years was that? Is it like 10 years or?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Well we moved, we, Jacques died in, um, 2006 and Ron died in 2017.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, okay, and, and I know this really led you to your journey, um, to, um, where you are today. And so what I, I’ve got to go to a commercial right quick and when we come back I want to talk about you wrote a book, uh, and I know you do workshops and you’re part of a couple of organizations and, and, uh, very interesting in organizations. So I really want to get to your, your advice and what’s in your book because it’s all of us sooner or later have to deal with grief.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Absolutely, yes.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And, and so let me go, uh, this commercial right quick and then when I come back then, uh, we’re gonna go off into that, okay?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
That’s great.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Alrighty, we will be right back with Emily Thoreau Thoreau. Alright. [Music]

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
We are back with Emily and so Emily I know you wrote a book and that’s all I told you I’m on my husband’s computer so we’re gonna see if we can do your book trailer and then oops that was wrong and I’ve got to share and then I got to share my screen and then oh this is different it’s computers different okay oh I don’t know if I know how to do oh wait maybe it’s here yeah there it is okay uh I know I’m sharing the screen and oh you know what laughs I forgot that you’re supposed to put on there um well let’s talk about we can just talk about the book that’s fine no problem okay tell us the name of your book and tell us all about it and and how you really got to write this book.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Okay, um, I after Jacques died I started reading whatever I could get my hands on about, uh, grieving and what I could do and and there were so many that were sad Memoirs as opposed to being what I was looking for I wanted something to help me something to guide me and so after Ron died I decided that I would, um, write about what was going on and see what I could do to help me to to get through what was happening and I found some really cool ways of writing that I thought I can share this with other people so I formed a Meetup Group because I didn’t know that many people on the island yet and people came because everybody wanted to have help with grief and we had really wonderful meetings where we would do writing through grief and that I’ve I saw that that really helped and then about eight months after Ron died a really good friend of his died suddenly who was a whole lot younger than he was and I was so concerned about his wife that I wrote her a letter right away that was like a list of these are things you don’t need to worry about right now because I know she had never thought about her husband dying he was he was too young and these are things that you do need to pay attention to right now and she had told me how grateful she was for that letter that I gave her and I thought I’ve got to do more than this so I decided that for the first year after her husband died every week I would send her a card with things in it that would be helpful to her during that time and so as as I did that once I I wrote out all the 52 different things I was going to send her over the year I realized I had an outline for a book and so I got a publisher and or an agent and a publisher and we got the book written and published but what was different about my book is that each chapter is on like a different subject and at the end of each chapter there’s something active for the person reading it to do to help them deal with their grief and a lot of them are the writing things but there are other things in there too of different exercises and things that they can do to help them feel better and that led me to creating a group that is is just getting started now they’re just we’re in the process of forming a non-profit to support it so anybody who wants to can come to it it’s going to be a combination of writing and happiness that we’ll do online every week and the happiness came to me because I read happy for no reason by Marcy Shimoff Aftershock died and it had helped me a lot and so I was looking through it again after Ron died and I discovered that Marcy had training to become a happy for no reason certified trainer and I thought this would be perfect with the grief work that I’m doing because I wanted to bring happiness and that to that so now I’m a certified trainer for that too so the grief and happiness Alliance that we’ve formed that we’ll be meeting every week uh we had will both will write will have happiness practices and we’ll have it’ll all be on Zoom be virtual so we can have breakout groups so that people can talk together and get to know each other and support each other personally.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And so, um, I I’m gonna ask you this and I know it has to do, uh, with finding happiness after grief. Now do you, what about gratitude?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Oh gratitude, gratitude a part of it gratitude and there’s I’ve got a whole chapter on gratitude in the book and gratitude was one of the things that really helped me turn around after Jacques died because I was I was kind of negative then and I had, uh, people kept suggesting that I write down what I was grateful for and I was saying I don’t have anything to be grateful my husband died you know and finally it was one of those things where enough people said it that I thought they must be telling me this for a reason and it was before I had decided to accept invitations so I started writing down what I was grateful for and I was shocked because the more I wrote the better I felt and the more I wrote and I just kept right I got to the point I was I felt like I was addicted to gratitude if I’d be in the doctor’s office waiting for an appointment I’d I’d be pulling a receipt out of my purse so that I could write on the back of it because I didn’t want to forget what I was grateful for at that moment and uh doing that I finally got a little little book to keep in my purse so that when those moments happened that I’d have some place to ride it but every day since then every single day since then I have written in my journal things that I’m grateful for every single day.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh wow and you’re part of an organization and I hope I pronounce it right is Nike ki o emalia did I pronounce it close?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Okay, I’m not really a part of the organization but I, um, donate to them a portion of my book sales goes to them and I’ve given them Books A friend of mine wrote a beautiful Kiki stands for children in Hawaiian and a friend of mine wrote a beautiful children’s grief book and so I bought a bunch of copies from her to donate to them so that they’d have them for the kids because it’s it’s a an organization here on Maui where, uh, this woman’s daughter was pregnant and with her first child and she found a lump in her breast and showed it to the doctor and the doctor said oh we’ll worry about it after the baby’s born and so after the baby was born it had metastasized and the baby the baby was fine but he wasn’t very old when she died and her mom was a psychologist and she thought she was very concerned about this child and how he was going to be not ever having the opportunity to know his mom really so what was going to happen so she formed this group called her daughter’s name was Amalia so it’s the children of Amalia.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, yeah, we never think, uh, really about how children handle grief. Now is this the same as the, uh, the doorway into light or is that a different?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
That’s a different organization. The doorway into light is mostly for grown-ups and they, they deal, uh, very openly with dying and and grief and they have a death store they call it and they had a death cafe going on here and that’s how I got introduced to it when I started going to the death cafe because traditional grief groups just kind of weren’t for me because I didn’t want to go someplace where everybody’s sad I wanted to bring everybody else up around me as well as being able to bring me up and with the death cafe we met at a Mexican restaurant and at guacamole and chips and talked about our loved ones and the wonderful experiences that we’d have together and it was so uplifting and and really nice and I I kind of started facilitating that uh for the organization and until the pandemic put a shut down on anything like that but they they do um they do things here like Burial at Sea uh green burials they they do things that are really different than the the traditional way of enabling things so I just I liked their or I like their openness and the the beautiful stuff they do and and how they welcome and support people and and are positive and in their groups and the things that they do so it’s kind of both ends of the spectrum they both happen to be on Maui but that’s where I am right now so that’s where I’ve uh chosen to donate to so I’m involved with them.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Never heard of that that, uh, that’s a unique concept.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
The death cafe has meetings all over the country internationally too. Yeah, everybody kind of does their own thing with them a thing about, uh, the the Central One the people that founded it said it was all about eating cake people getting together to eat cake we didn’t eat cake at ours we ate Mexican food but.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, where you are, yes. And well, you know, Emily, a question two questions came in I want to get two. Okay, uh, it says, um, can you give us your definition of ethics in your profession?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
In my profession I would say integrity. Integrity, integrity, everything that I do I tell the truth and it’s like when Jacques asked me if he was going to die I had to tell him the truth. I think that when when we tell the truth and we base everything I base everything I do on love then that’s that’s ethical to me to be truthful and basing everything on love.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, and we had another question, uh, from Sarah Crawley she says she asked was it the law of attraction that attracted the same diagnosis for Ron because of the strong unending love energy for Jacques?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
That’s a really interesting question and I’ve actually kind of thought about it before like why did I end up with two people with the exact same thing and in a way I kind of felt like even those early ambulance days and everything else all these things I did were in preparation for me being able to help other people to take care of other people and there was a lot of caretaking involved with with both husbands yes and I was I was fully ready and uh capable of doing that and grateful for the opportunity to be able to do them for both so it you could say it had something to do with the the law of attraction I know the law of attraction had a lot to do with me attracting both those husbands that were so wonderful.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so but I would I would like to think that the Law of Attraction didn’t attract illnesses.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
But but it attracted the love in your life.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Absolutely.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And and it put you to you know to help other people.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yeah, you never know why things happen, you know, and you’re like why me or why is this and, uh, it all happens for a reason for, uh, actually so that you can help someone else.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, you know, now I have, uh, one other question. What what is something that you should never say to someone who is grieving?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
I I’ve tried to get past saying this because I know people never say this with malice they’re doing the best they can but the thing that bothered me more than anything else was I’m sorry for your loss.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Really?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
And the reason for that is it’s become so commonplace it’s like saying have a nice day or how are you you know people don’t want an answer and they they feel obligated to say something because they know that you have are dealing with loss so they they feel like they have to say that so they can go on to the next question that could be how about those Dodgers you know that that they just feel like it’s an obligation instead of something that uh that’s truly caring.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, now one other question, uh, the last question, uh, I read somewhere where it says that grief is a lifelong journey is in your opinion is that true?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Absolutely grief is not something that you get over a lot of people think that you’re supposed to get over grief and move on with your life and I’ve certainly moved forward in my life that I will always hold both my husbands in my heart and my mom and dad and my sister and all my other relatives and friends that that I have gone before me they’re always going to be there in my heart and that’s just part of the love in my life and it’s I think when when people want grief to be over it’s it’s in kind of a negative feeling and if you can look at it positively in dealing with love then that makes it better.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so we had a comment from Sandy Barney in and she said I hate it when someone would say, um, I know how you feel.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yeah, that’s that’s no good.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
No, you don’t know how we feel.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Right, right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And so now Emily if people want to get in contact with you and and really, um, get your Journal your your book loving and living your way through grief.com is that the way they can get in contact?

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
That’s right they can contact me through there that’s my website you can also email me at Emily loving and livingyourway throughbrief.com and, uh, it’s the book’s available and it’s traditionally published so any place that you buy your books you can get it it’s it’s on Amazon but it’s also on Barnes and Noble and, uh, all the other independent booksellers it’s it’s out there all over the place so.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, and if they want to call you they can call you I get to know yeah I got it put it out there it’s 808 -446-3557 and you can go on Amazon amazon.com and, um, get Emily’s book don’t go in there shopping for shoes and clothes come on here and shop for something that you really all of us all of us can benefit from because all of us are going to go there loving and living your way through grief.com Emily thank you so much for being with us today and oh got another question but Sarah we only got a minute so Sarah says, um, so what do you say I guess if you don’t say I know I can tell you quick okay mention the person’s name and say a memory a positive memory about them like people said about my parents they said I loved how they were married all those years and they all still were holding hands all the time so that sort of thing is going to bring a smile to you instead of Tears so.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Okay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Alrighty, well we did get that last I question it well thank you so Emma so much Emily for being with us you have really given us a lot of information that we all are going to need and I want you I told her before the show not to say anything else to me about Maui well when you come you must visit me.

Emily Thoreau Thoreau
Yes definitely definitely so aloha.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Aloha alrighty bye-bye wow that was very very very very very very interesting it’s something that we are definitely definitely we all need we are we’re all going to need, um, at some point, uh, in our lives we’re all going to need that and, uh, I really wanted to have her on the show because especially now through COVID with COVID going on it’s so much grief and and so many people can benefit from, uh, Emily’s Journal so I want everyone, uh, to have, um, beautifully blessed morning afternoon or evening wherever you are in the world you like to be on relationship matters just submit a headshot and a brief bio and just submit it to relationship matters TV at gmail.com that’s relationship matters TV at gmail.com this is Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman coming to you again from relationship matters and I want you to remember there are all kinds of relationship matters and relationships do matter alrighty have a beautifully blessed evening and I’m on this other computer so I’m I’m doing this ah have a beautiful blessed rest of your day bye bye [Music]