Imagine you've just bumped into your colleague at the coffee machine. They've clearly been crying, so you tentatively ask how they're doing. Yeah, I'm fine, it's just my dad died six months ago and I'm struggling with it.
“You think, 'God, that's hard. Must be hard being back at work,'” explains Cariad Lloyd, who – as well as presenting the Griefcast podcast – has just released her first book, You Are Not Alone; a much-needed meditation on grief and modern mourning.
“But what if somebody said, 'Oh, my dad died 10 years ago, and I'm just having a really bad day'?" asks Lloyd. Are we ready to have that conversation? Do we know how to create the emotional space for people to talk openly about bereavement? As Lloyd says, if someone is still grieving, “It doesn't mean they're going to collapse, they can't do their job, or they need to be signed off sick for six months…but just allow people the space to be a bit sad sometimes.”
Grief lingers long after we've taken our bereavement leave (usually limited to three to five days). And yet, if people don't appear to be ‘over’ their grief during this time, the workplace is barely equipped to support them.
It's the topic of Caggie Dunlop's new book, Saturn Returns: Your Cosmic Coming of Age.
Here, Cariad Lloyd speaks to GLAMOUR about losing her dad at the age of 15, how the way we express grief has changed with the digital revolution, and how gender stereotypes still impact the way we grieve.
GLAMOUR: Hi, Cariad. Thanks so much for sitting down with us today. Your book You Are Not Alone follows your hugely popular podcast about grief, Griefcast. How have you found the process of writing and talking about your grief with other people?
Cariad: When I started the podcast in 2016, I really didn't know that I needed to talk about it. I just knew I had this thing I hadn't dealt with. And my hope originally was to talk to comedians because then I was like, "Well if I talk to comedians, it'll be funny." And, so even if it's a sad story, your body would've felt the goodness of laughing.
When it came to writing the book, I wanted to gather all that information about all the similarities and differences of grief. Because I think grief is such a unique experience, it's based entirely on you and that person's relationship. And that can be different even within a family. So, it's really important that we acknowledge that our experiences of grief are unique. But from doing Griefcast, these things kept coming up again and again and again. So, when I sat down to plan it, I was like, "Oh, what are the things that just everybody agrees on?" Everyone's like, "Oh yes, this. This is the thing we keep talking about."
Because I think when you do find those similarities, it lifts your grief a bit because you're like, "Oh, “Yeah, it's not just me. It's not just me that's like, 'Oh yeah, we were laughing.' This thing happened. Or I didn't want to go and see them. Or I left the room for a second to get a cup of tea, and they went…'” all this stuff that just so many people kept saying the same thing to me. I'd be like, "This keeps coming up. Nobody knows. I've got to put this down."
What inspired the name of the book, You Are Not Alone?
Yeah, it's funny, I was thinking for ages about a title. I was like, "Oh, what can I call it?" Like The Guide To Grief and all this stuff. And then I suddenly realized that I say at the end of every episode, [of Griefcast] I always say, "You are not alone."
And the reason I started saying that, I'm pretty sure I said it almost from the beginning, was that that's how I felt at 15 [when Cariad's dad died]. I felt really alone and like this really strange thing had happened to me that hadn't happened to anyone else. And it was very odd and weird, and no one wanted to talk about it. And when I started the podcast and I started getting all these emails and so many people being like, "Me too, me too," I thought, "Oh, I see." All these years you spend thinking, "Oh, I'm in this really awful, weird club." And then because I've done the show, I was like, "Oh, the club is rammed. It's packed. It's actually too busy, if anything."
And so, I really wanted the main takeaway, I suppose, to be that people realize they weren't alone in feeling like this. They're not the only people to have gone through this. And even though your grief is unique and how you feel might be impossible to explain to someone, the experience of losing someone is not an isolating process. We all go through that, and we could all empathise with that.
"You need someone to hold your hand and sit next to you and give you that look and be like, Are you all right today?"
Reading your book made me think that – as a society – we're not very good at talking about death. Particularly in your instance, a 15-year-old girl, how do you talk about death to a 15-year-old girl? And that seems to be one of the questions you've grappled with in the book.
Yeah, and I don't think anyone did a great job with me, but I understand. Teenagers are hard to talk to anyway. Back then, we weren't having those conversations that we do now, and there was no social media, so I couldn't find anybody who felt the same as me. As I talk about in the book, I was an analogue griever, and I think we really forget life pre-internet was quite isolating.
As much as social media has its downfalls, the biggest positive is the connection we all feel with each other and how it quickly brings massive communities together.
So yeah, I think it is, it's really hard to know what to say, especially to a teenager. And so, I would never begrudge anyone for getting it wrong. I think that's really important, that it's not about getting it right the first time and never making a mistake again. But it is about trying, really trying to show up as best you can to help somebody. And yeah, being 15 in 1998 was tough. And even most of the charities that exist now – the amazing Child Bereavement UK, Winston's Wish, Grief Encounter that are for kids – they were set up just after I'd lost my dad. So, this is all relatively new for lots of us, this idea that children might need extra support; they might need some help.
I think before that, we were like, "Oh, they're very resilient. They're very resilient. You'd be amazed what they can put up with." It's like, "You'd be amazed at what they don't have the vocabulary to say is hurting." That's what we're saying. So yeah, it definitely wasn't easy, but it definitely has got better.
A first look at my new book, “Butts: A Backstory.”
I love the way you wrote about being an analogue griever and how perhaps grieving has changed within a digital landscape. Has social media changed how we grieve?
I think it's, as ever, with anything new, it's really a double-edged sword and it's important to acknowledge both things. So, on the one hand, it's really positive; there's this huge grief community. If you search #grief on Instagram, there's so much content. There are loads of grief podcasts – I'm not the only person doing what I do.! There are loads of memes and really lovely simple graphics, and you can definitely feel very connected and like, "Oh, lots of people feel like this."
“Social media doesn't really allow for mess… Would we be okay with someone going on Instagram live and just weeping?”
As we know in social media, it's not enough just to have this community online that feel like you do. You also need real-life support. You need someone to hold your hand and sit next to you and give you that look and be like, "Are you all right today?"
I think social media offers this wonderful, wonderful community and connection. I've definitely found it with Griefcast. The Twitter Griefcast is just the most helpful place. People genuinely tweet me and will say, "Can you ask the Griefsters, I'm coming up for my five-year anniversary. Feels a bit weird. Anyone else had this?" And I'll retweet it and hundreds of people like, "Yeah, me too. Try this. Have you tried this book, this article?" People really want to help, but that doesn't mean that your grief will go away. That doesn't mean that you won't feel the pain or the sadness, that you won't need more support.
So, I think it's about curating your help, I suppose might be a way to describe it, of making sure you're not getting just one type of support, making sure you're getting lots of different types of support and that your grief is given a space to be messy as well. Because I think social media doesn't really allow for mess and we're quite happy with someone posting a bit of a sad picture, but, "Thinking of my dad today, but everything's all right." But would we be okay with someone going on Instagram live and just weeping?
I think that applies maybe in the workplace as well. Reading a book made me think about bereavement leave. It feels like there are lots of pressures from the workplace, or just from society in general, to be unchanged by your grief and to be the same person you were before you were bereaved.
I think it's a really valid point. And the bereavement leave in this country, although it has got better, is pretty crap. And I think anyone who's been through it would attest to that… a week for a parent dying is like, "Oh okay, I'll just come back and I'll be fine." It rocks your world, it turns everything upside down. You feel like you can't trust anything. It's like you've forgotten how to walk or speak. It's so fundamental, and it is like having a baby. It's that much of a disruptor. And I don't think, at least in this country, we do expect a bit more than a week for someone to return to work with a baby, you'd be like, "Gosh, oh you're back quick."
The Maintenance Phase co-host shares an exclusive look at her new book.
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Ddo you think there's a difference in how we as a society expect men and women, or perhaps boys and girls to grieve?
It's frustrating, and I wish I could say no; everybody grieves the same. I think we still find it hard for men to be emotional and express that sadness. I think we're still fine with women weeping about things. It's just much harder for men to express that side of it, the weeping side of it. And there is so much in grief, which is just tears, it is just pure ... You're just so sad someone isn't here. It's often, that's the main feeling. And I think women are better at supporting each other with that, having a bit of a cry and not panicking when your friend who's a girl is crying. But it's much harder for men to express that. I think it's changing.
I think it's been really interesting to me that there have been books about grief this year written by men, for example, Rob Delaney's A Heart That Works, Richard E. Grant's memoir, and James Runcie's memoir. So I do think we are ... The door is opening, but I guess we have to acknowledge how long that door's been closed and how hard it is for some men, and how much they feel a pressure to get on with it, be the strong one, sort everything out. And to be fair, that's not always gendered. Sometimes a woman in the family feels like it's her job not to cry and get on with it. It's often is whoever's designated in the family dynamic to be the strong one. And that isn't always a man, it can sometimes be a woman, so I think we ...
And I guess the other thing that might be worth talking about, which has come a lot up a lot in the show, is remarriage. And statistically, if you lose a partner, men are much more likely to remarry in the first couple of years. And also, this may be changing due to generational thing, but some statistics say if men don't remarry, their mental health really suffers.
I think that's taken from an older generation who genuinely can't cook, genuinely don't know how the washing machine works, because that wasn't on their remit. But I do think it can be very difficult for the children of parents when one parent dies. And then I've heard a lot of stories of, "Oh, my dad remarried really quickly." And others being like, "My mum's never met anyone. She doesn't want to; we worry about her." And again, that's not always the case, but there are genuine statistics to back that up. I think when people know that, they can be a bit relieved, they're like, "Oh, okay, my dad's not really cold and heartless." It is quite common for men to feel the need to remarry in the way that women don't after the loss of a partner.
One of the things I love about your work is your ability to use humour to create meaningful conversations about death.
I think performers, and comedians, tend to approach life that way anyway. Everything is dealt with by looking at the world by finding the absurdity, and the silliness, finding what doesn't make sense, and laughing at it. So, I think when it came to grief, that's how I felt was I was like, “Well, this is no different to my accounts, my friendships, or my school life. I will laugh at it because most of it's really stupid. It doesn't make any sense.”
I sincerely believe that when you laugh, you're forced to breathe deeper and get more oxygen into your body. I think that is partly why you make those awful jokes, reminding yourself, "Oh, I'm still alive. Even though this person's dead, I'm not. I'm alive. It's a way of your brain is like, “Don't you give up on yourself.”
You Are Not Alone by Cariad Lloyd is published by Bloomsbury, priced at £18.99.
If you are experiencing grief after a bereavement, there is support available at Bereavement UK and on the NHS website.
