Banishing Blame After Suicide Loss, Part 2 with Lark Dean Galley

Content warning: This episode discusses death by suicide, and viewer discretion is advised.  If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call or text the suicide hotline 988.

What does it look like to navigate the tumultuous seas of grief, and can a tragic loss lead to profound transformation? Today, our courageous guest, Lark Dean Galley, opens up about her journey through the heart-wrenching experience of losing her son to suicide. Her story is raw, deeply touching, and a testament to the human capacity for resilience and change. She shares candidly about how this tragedy impacted her marriage, offering an invaluable perspective on the strain such loss can have on a relationship and how compassion and open communication can become a lifeline.

As Lark navigates through the shadows of this loss, she uncovers a profound shift in the way she perceives parenthood and life in general. Listen as she recounts the challenging discussions she had with her husband and how they both traversed the landscape of grief in their unique ways. Lark also shares her journey towards grace, forgiveness, and understanding, offering listeners insights into a more open-hearted type of parenting, focused on conveying love rather than enforcing obedience.

Finally, we follow Lark's transformative journey towards acceptance and letting go. Her ability to allow her children autonomy and reject judgment, with personal examples which serve as a powerful lesson to us all. You'll learn from Lark's journey that true happiness can be found in relationships rather than achievements, as she and her husband strive to eliminate blame from their relationship.

Stay tuned for Part 3 in which Lark sheds light on the unexpected blessings she discovered amidst the tragedy, illustrating that hope and healing can be found even in the aftermath of such devastating loss. Join us, as we explore these deep and moving themes with Lark Dean Galley.

Lark and I would love to hear your thoughts! If you'd like to support the podcast, please follow/subscribe to be alerted to upcoming episodes and also, I'd love it if you leave a review!

Wishing you lots of love on your own hero’s journey,
xoxo, Karen

Thanks so much for listening!  Please share this episode with your loved ones and spread the love to bless others!
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Podcast: The Hero Within Podcast

Connect with Lark Dean Galley

Website:  https://larkdeangalley.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hey there, welcome back. I'm Karen Hall, your host of the Hero Within podcast. I'm passionate about sharing inspiring true stories of unsung heroes who've overcome some of life's most challenging adversities. Come along with me and learn how you too can find hope and healing to return to love. Good morning.

Speaker 1: 0:29

Today's episode covers the topic of death by suicide. I know this topic can be distressing and listener discretion is advised. If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please call or text the suicide hotline 988.

Speaker 1: 0:46

Lark Dean Galli has overcome her unstable childhood. She has her master's degree in economics, was the number one global sales rep for a Fortune 500 company, earning multiple six figures in commission. After working in the corporate world for 25 years, lark left to run her father's company when he passed away unexpectedly from suicide. Lark started her own consulting business. Her 19 year old son's suicide reinforced her goal to help 100,000 people choose to stay on this planet and step into their greatness. Lark is a devoted wife and mother of four adult children and four grandchildren.

Speaker 1: 1:28

If you haven't heard part one, lark shares how she couldn't even bring herself to say the word suicide. Thanks for rejoining us today in part two for our raw and vulnerable episode banishing blame to heal from suicide loss where we learn from Lark. As she delves deeper into her personal journey, she uncovers a profound insight into why divorce rates increase when a couple experiences the unimaginable loss of a child. Lark then discloses a key to strengthening your marriage and combating the wedge that the grief can drive between a couple. You'll be fascinated by Lark's transformation in her own parenting from being an enforcer focused on obedience and control to being centered on conveying love. Let's hear more of what Lark has to say about the secret to slowing down an increasing connection.

Speaker 2: 2:25

My heart was just broken. And then you go through the blame, and then you go through the grief, and every few days it was these different emotions and it lasted for months. I was so used to accomplishing goals, doing all these big things, making decisions, and there are times when you just do not have the emotional, mental strength to do things and I never understood that until I went through it.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Yeah, Because you had gone through numerous hard things before and you talked about how that you thought oh, this is my hard thing.

Speaker 2: 2:59

Like I was oh, this is my hard thing. I'll never have to go through anything hard and I'm like, oh no.

Speaker 1: 3:05

Can you talk a little bit about some of those things that you felt did prepare you?

Speaker 2: 3:10

I will tell you, just growing up with a diagnosed father who was bipolar, so there's mental illness there, instability, just having to learn how to cope as a child in different situations, like we were moving every year, and you can imagine that was not easy on a child. But I sort of had to be very outgoing. If I wanted friends, I had to put myself out there and learn to make friends easily, and so that was a skill that I learned which helped me later in my corporate world. As far as being in outside cells, I could strike up a conversation with anybody, let's talk. And then, when I was in my late 20s, I was married and really wanting children and I went through three years of infertility and God, why am I not having a child? This is a good goal, right? He would want to bless me. But three years of infertility and then finally getting pregnant, and I was so excited and I told my husband that we'd been married about six and a half years at that time that I was pregnant, and he said out of the blue this caught me off guard I don't want to be a father and I don't want to be married to you. And a couple months later he walked out the door, he left. This was before cell phones. I couldn't track him, I had no idea where he was and he was gone, and that was hard.

Speaker 2: 4:23

But my struggles through the infertilities sort of prepared me for what was coming, because I had developed this relationship with God and I thought, oh, infertility, that's my hardest thing. And then, when my husband left me, I was devastated. I'm like, how did this even happen? How did I not see this out of the blue? And so then I have a young daughter, a little girl that I'm raising by myself, and I just felt that Heavenly Father wanted her to have a father and for me to have a husband.

Speaker 2: 4:55

And the year after, it took me a while to get divorced because my first husband was gone. You have to file for abandonment and it's a big thing. And then I feel like God introduced me to my current husband and we've been married now 26 years, to which, I have to tell you, second marriages are not easy. Marriage isn't easy and second marriage is not much easier, right, and so we had a lot of ups and downs, but through that, just creating a strong relationship and divorce rates go up when you lose a child, and I now know why. Right, because every problem that you're having in your marriage is suddenly magnified like 100 times and you're broken, your spouse is broken. You don't know how you're going to keep yourself together, let alone keep a marriage together.

Speaker 2: 5:42

And at about the nine month mark after my son died, finally my husband and I were able to have a very open conversation and, interestingly enough, what we found was that we were both feeling the same thing, but we hadn't talked about it. So how can the other person know how broken we were feeling? Yeah, and by really getting the truth out there and the feelings and having compassion for each other, that has allowed us to stay together. Not that it's easy it wasn't easy before, it's definitely not easy now, but we finally realized that we are really all each other has when it comes down to like he understands and I understand him and the struggles that we're going through, and so having that support there is so important.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Yeah if you think about if you didn't stay together, who would understand your situation as well as your husband does, and so that that's a really powerful Thought to have when you are trying to work through it. And it can be so confusing when you're grieving differently and then to have those issues compounded. I know your husband felt like he was to blame for Christian's death because of his conversation that he had the night before, and I think you had some of those feelings because your relationship had been strained. And I think every single person that goes through something like this, when there's a loss, they think if only I would have, if only this situation would have been different, and that's part of the bargaining stage, the grieving process. Could you talk a little bit about the blame?

Speaker 2: 7:22

So my husband had a conversation with my son the night he died. He had come home late from school. He was at the University of Utah in the mechanical engineering department. Okay, this boy was brilliant and he could run circles around his mom as far as his brain capacity and he was having some struggles. He had been in a car accident a couple weeks earlier. We were trying to help him adult, we need to take care of the insurance and this and that, and. And then my husband really pressured him Okay, what about your grades? And it was midterms for spring and he had been struggling.

Speaker 2: 7:54

It was difficult topic in his grades had started to slip a little bit. He was struggling there and I think my son felt like he disappointed his father. They were very close and I didn't realize this until later when his friend came forward and said yes, we had talked to and Christian had been struggling. I didn't know this. I'm Imagine that my son just thought why bother? It's not going to get any better. I'm disappointed my father. I just don't want to do this anymore. He just lost hope, which was sad. And so the next day, when we found out that my son had ended his life, my husband was blaming himself and I said we don't know that it was your conversation that triggered this. It could have been a couple months or a couple years down the road, we don't know because our son just wasn't open with us. And I said you can't blame yourself. This is something that he chose and we need to respect his choice. It's not what we wanted, but it's what he chose. And To understand how can we do better as parents? Before there was a lot of very strict rules and you'll do it this way and this is what we expect. And now it's kind of like I'm my children's guide. I'm here to help and be an advocate. I'm not here to judge them. The world is going to judge them hard enough. They need a soft place to land, and so I've really changed my parenting.

Speaker 2: 9:17

The other thing I want to point out is that we all grieve differently and we have a different relationship. So my relationship with my son was different from my husband's relationship with our son, and so for me to say to anybody, even to my husband, I understand exactly what you're going through. I don't understand exactly, because my relationship was different right from his relationship. How my husband grieved was different. He didn't want to talk about it. We barely talk about it now my son's suicide. He can barely go there, whereas I have been speaking about it.

Speaker 2: 9:54

I've written a book, I'm all about it, and my husband can't even go and listen to me speak because that makes him so depressed. And so we have had to allow each other our own space and their own way to grieve. And I can't say to him which I wanted to do in the beginning if you do it my way, you'll heal faster. And he can't say to me if you do it my way, you'll heal faster. Right, we have to respect each other where we are.

Speaker 2: 10:19

So my older daughter has read my book. She'll come to my speaking engagements. My younger daughter has not read my book. That's not what she is able to do. And at first I started to try to force her to face the issue. Christian has passed away, he's not coming back, and in the beginning, if I would even say his name, she would leave the room. And she was so angry with me the first year and I think she was just angry in general that her brother she was very close to him had taken his life and she needed a place to put that anger and it was on me and that was hard for me, but I understood what was going on and I needed her to have a safe place to land and so I allowed her to be upset with me over our son's death, just because she didn't know where else to put that anger.

Speaker 1: 11:06

Oh, thank you for bringing that up, because so many times the other people that are grieving don't know what to do with their anger and so, like you said, it's so easy to have a scapegoat and to blame somebody and it takes so much strength to allow someone to place that anger on us, especially when you're grieving yourself. It's just another added weight and it's another added pain and it can estrange those relationships. I remember you said your family all wanted to be in the same room and you all wanted to be together and you would kind of cling to each other. But then when you have some of these issues that strain the relationships, at those moments I imagine it can feel glaring, I mean, it probably feels scary.

Speaker 2: 11:47

And your heart is just so raw, right, there's just one little thing is just too much, and we're just trying to focus, trying to even get our heads around what has happened and trying to decide what is life all about? Does anything matter? Right? And in that conversation I had with my husband, as I mentioned, we were both feeling the same way, but we didn't know it. We both have advanced degrees, we both have had very successful corporate careers, we've done a lot of things and achieved a lot of honors and awards and financial success. We both said nothing matters. Things didn't matter to us. Anything we had done in the world did not matter to us. It meant nothing. And now I can say things just don't mean anything to me. It's just so temporary that it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2: 12:39

It comes down to relationships how you treat other people, the way you talk to anyone, the way you see them have grace for them. By giving them grace, you can give yourself more grace, and vice versa. I wasn't very forgiving of a lot of other people as far as like, if I can do it, then they should be able to do it too, and I don't care what's going on in their lives. They better step up. And now I'm like that person might have had some difficulties or they might be struggling with something that I don't know about. However, they can show up, I'm glad they showed up and that's probably their 100% today and I'm just glad and no judgment. And that takes a lot of weight off my heart as well, because then I can say I can show up and today my 100% looks like this and that's okay. I showed up and that's okay.

Speaker 1: 13:30

Yeah, oh, my goodness, that grace, that's a power thing, and the expectation is what causes a lot of problems.

Speaker 2: 13:37

Right, love is I love you, just because you're you and you don't have to do anything to earn that love. As a parent, we feel like I want my kids to do the very best and I have these expectations and I'm going to push them. At what line is it that you've pushed them too far? That's a hard thing and I think so much that our loved ones, the people in our lives, they just want to know that they can just show up without having done anything or without meeting an expectation, and you're still going to say I love you, thank you, and not have this love predicated on. What grades did they get? Did they clean their room? Did they perform well? Are they the captain of the football team? I promise you that does not matter. That's not what life is about.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Yeah, and I think that was interesting because when you talked about raising Christian and how the battles were, get your room clean, how he would argue with you and how he was so skilled at telling you why he couldn't.

Speaker 2: 14:41

I know you're just like, please, just support me, just take the trash out, just clean your room. When I think he was probably somewhere about seven years old and I asked him to clean his room and he came down in like record time and I'm like, wow, it's all clean. It's all clean. Went upstairs His room was clean, it was amazing. And then I opened his closet door. It was like a foot of Legos and all his. I'm like it's not clean. He's like that's not technically part of my room. And then we had to have the argument about what was the room and what wasn't your room and I'm like, oh son, please just put it in the bin.

Speaker 1: 15:19

I had three other children and I needed help and I know you're the oldest, I know you understand I'm the oldest and anyway. So I did put a lot of pressure on her and she wanted to alleviate some of that pressure that I was putting on her. And I remember she was about nine I think, and my friend had this conversation with me and I realized I was putting the pressure on her and I had to really stop. And it really opened my eyes when my friend said to me you want her to want to be with you and you want her to want to come home after she leaves the house. And I was like, oh my word, because I was not nurturing that part of the relationship.

Speaker 1: 15:54

And I thought it was interesting when you talked about your need for structure and order, because my husband has a very high need for that. So he was putting a lot of that expectation on us and then I was transferring that to my daughter and so I had to really work on that relationship and just say it's okay if we don't get all that done. I think a lot of us as parents, either because we have a need for that structure and order, or we feel like we need to teach them so that they can be the best version of themselves. They need to learn to obey, they need to learn to do whatever, achieve the goals or whatever, and I think in our culture, obedience is extremely important and sometimes we'll focus on obedience over the relationship. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 2: 16:39

as a parent, oh sure, I just feel like the relationship is so important, my relationship with each family member. So if we're going to go there, we were very strict parents. I would say there's conservative, and then there's my conservative, which is even farther right in the conservative field. The way I look at things, I don't look at things so much like that anymore. So after my son died, not too long after, my younger daughter came home with a tattoo that would have been like over the edge no, we don't do that type thing, right.

Speaker 2: 17:10

But I had come to the point where I was so into allowing them their agency and their choices and their path, their path they needed to take. They will find their path back to God and I don't have to be in charge. And it was the tattoo of mountains up and down, and it was on her side of her foot and I just said, oh, that's lovely, dear, I know that you love hiking and being in the mountains and I didn't take on any responsibility for that. That was her choice and I was okay with it, which, quite frankly, shocked me. A little while later, she came home with a belly piercing, a big diamond there in her belly, and I'm like that's so cool, hon, maybe I will do that. And she looked at me like oh, mom, please do not do that.

Speaker 2: 17:51

And you know what? I didn't take on any kind of negative emotion from it. I was like she's doing what she feels she needs to do. It's not a reflection of me, it's not a reflection of what kind of person she is. It's what she wants and that's the way it is. I don't care, whereas before it would have been a kill, I would have died on right. You live in this house and you do this and you do that. And now I'm like I'm not in charge. I will tell you, before my son died, I thought I was in control of so much and I'm going to shatter everyone's illusion right now is like you are not as in control as you think you are. Yeah, so stop taking that on, stop assuming that responsibility, because it's something you don't control anyway. So just let that go. Be in charge of yourself and Do the best you can with yourself, because we all have issues right and we need to work on ourselves more than we need to work on Other people, especially our kids.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Yeah, nothing that you said. That I thought was interesting. You said you were such a go-getter and you were so focused on achieving and meeting your goals. And then you said but we just need to slow down and we just need to focus on the relationship. But if you are a go-getter and you do feel the need for control in your life, you may feel like go-go-go is the moral thing to do and it also may be a way at staying busy. Keeps you from thinking thoughts that maybe can cause you pain. So how do you slow down?

Speaker 2: 19:24

When I would say yeah about the thoughts. I realized in retrospect that the reason I always had a project or something going on Was that I didn't want to have crazy thoughts. Right like my dad, I I realized that if I allowed myself too much a lull, my thoughts would start to spiral and I could go into depression. You kind of have to watch that. But this is what I've discovered. First of all, I feel like COVID was God's way of saying let's have a reset, let's help the entire world focus on the things that are really important, and I thought this can be a good learning tool for people who are willing to see it. Because, if you can remember, before COVID, I'm gonna say most parents had their kids in maybe two sports music Drama. They were going like crazy Mm-hmm and they were rushing here and rushing there and they were barely able to have dinner, was fast food in the car, something like that, and everybody had all these things that they had to do and be to, and then suddenly we were all at home together and we had time together and relationships, and I feel that isolating and rushing and not creating those relationships is hurting our society and I would hope that people can learn the lesson that Happiness is not outside, in achieving something that's arbitrary, it is relationships, because in the end, that's all you have. And so, yes, I believe in our kids doing well in school and getting good jobs and all of those things, but I also believe that there's a balance and you have to take care of yourself.

Speaker 2: 21:02

I love to walk in a park and I try to walk in the park several times a week. It's near my house. It brings me joy. I'm out in nature. There's lots of dogs in the park. They're running around. They're so happy. It makes me happy. And if I'm so set on achieving the next goal and the next goal and the next goal, I'm never taking time to look at that sunset or To just take a walk in nature and to feel and be in touch with myself and God. That's the secret takeaways from today.

Speaker 1: 21:34

I've always heard that losing a child can strain a marriage to the point of divorce, but lark gave such incredible insights about why this is the case. Her thoughts about the damaging impact of condemning one another Sheds so much light on why we must be so careful to avoid casting blame. It was heartening to hear lark and her husband make the commitment to banish blame from blaming themselves and from blaming each other. It was interesting to hear how lark was highly successful in her corporate career and she kept herself busy to avoid having Love in which she would have unpleasant thoughts creep in. She also had a high degree for structure and order in her life because of the chaos from her childhood. Lark described how she was a parent focused on obedience and saw herself as an enforcer, which caused many conflicts with Christian. I was inspired to hear how lark transformed herself Into a guide to her children in which she focuses on love and increasing connection in her relationships.

Speaker 1: 22:41

Stay tuned for part 3 gratitude and gifts after suicide loss. Lark shares some unexpected blessings and gifts that have enabled her to heal and have given her incredible Hope for herself and for Christians eternal welfare. You won't want to miss lark's profound testament to the power of resilience and the continuation of loving relationships Even though our loved one has passed on. Thanks for listening. I know you're busy. Did you know that you helped spread the love by leaving your review and following? This helps increase our visibility so people can find us online. I really appreciate your help. I'm wishing you lots of love in your own heroes journey.