Kim Harms shares about Grief, Guild and Finding Joy | DFS 317

Uh, welcome to Destin for success. I'm your

host, Jennifer Takagi, and we have a delight today. We have

got Kim harms, and she's going to talk to us today about her

adventures on her path to success and what she's up to

now. Welcome to the show, Kim.

Thank you so much for having me. Jennifer,

so tell me, what do you do? What do you got

going on?

Well, I've been around the block in life and in

business a couple of times. I mean, I just, I've been there.

I'm 68 years old, so I've been around the block. And so I'll

start with what were my successes in business, right?

Well, I, I'm a dentist by trade. I learned to be a dentist, and I

had a very successful business in Farmington, Minnesota with my

husband, Jim, and I was the first woman president of the

Minnesota Dental Association, and I was a national

spokesperson for the American Dental Association for 21 years.

So professionally, yay. I have a really good professional resume.

I've done a lot of things outside of that. I was a school

board chair. I lead an international I was president of

an international women's group. I have libraries in Rwanda that

I've worked on. So I've got lots of other leadership things that

I was involved in. So that's, that's, that's my business

background, but that's not where I've had the most success. I've

had the most success, I think, in life, because I lost I lost

my mother and son both to suicide, which was a horrible

issue, horrible thing to try to, to recover from. I lost my job,

my dental job a year after my son died, because I had

irreversible damage to my drilling fingers because of some

neck strain that I had. And I'm missing fingers anyway, because

my mother took the lidomide. So I only you know by good hand,

let me down. Now, the problem was, at the time, I was the main

supporter of our family because my husband had just had liver

cancer and a liver transplant, and then our son died, and then

my brother, my brother died before that. So I just had a few

years of of just spending lots and lots and lots of time down

in the depths of the grief pit. I was down there for a long

time, and it's not a good place to live. And I had a situation

that occurred that really changed my life, a very simple

thing, and sometimes it's a simple things that can change

your life. And this was about two weeks after my son died, or

Sunday. Now our son, Eric, just have to say, was this amazingly

brilliant, golden boy of a guy. He was loving, kind,

compassionate. He was recruited by Columbia University for their

engineering program, and when he got to Columbia, he was elected

to student council at Columbia. He was a brilliant jazz pianist,

so he was playing with the jazz program in Columbia. He was

acting with the Barnard students. He was having a great

time his first semester Columbia, and with despite all

that, he even made the Dean's list. So he came home from his

first semester and he was on top of the world, like, who does

that, right? Who does that? He was on top of the world. And two

weeks later, his girlfriend broke up with him, and he was

gone in 45 minutes. So we went from the top of this just

wonderful, just wonderful, wonderful son who was on top of

the world, to gone. And it was such a shock for both of us. It

just completely shattered. My husband had shattered me,

shattered my daughters. And so two weeks after he died, I was

kind of first couple days back at the office. And I give

seminars all over the place about how to manage grief in an

office setting, because it's really hard to go back to work

when your brain is not functioning well, right? So I

was coming out of the office, it was difficult day, and I saw my

husband standing next to his cousin by the cars, and I walked

over, and they were having a very deep conversation. And to

my surprise, the cousin came over, wagging his finger at me,

a grieving mother right wagging his finger at me, saying, Don't

you ever let your remaining children feel that they are not

enough. And I just, I mean, oh my gosh, it just took me back.

Like, What? What? What are you talking about? But I realized

that he had lost his brother at about the same age, at about 18,

and he felt that he lost his parents at the same time,

because they could never fight their way out of the grief pit

they were down there for the rest of their lives. And he and

his sister felt that they were not enough. He felt he lost his

brother and his parents at the same time, and that shook me to

the core. It was like a lightning bolt that struck me,

because I have a husband who's just recovering from a liver

transplant. I had two daughters who were just, you know, in

emotional agony as well. And I thought, you know, I gotta fight

this. I gotta fight this. And I. Realize that living in the grief

pit affects everybody around you. So for the next few years,

and it took years, I wish I could say it was a something

that I could do quickly, but it wasn't quick, but it but it

worked. I fought, I kicked, I scratched my way out of that

grief pit. I got treatment for depression, and so the biggest

success of my life was getting out of the grief pit and living

in joy, which is where I am now. I still remember my my son is

still part of my life, and my husband, who just passed away

about four years ago, still a big part of my life, but I

learned to fight through that and live in joy so that I can

enjoy and be in the present for my six grandchildren and my two

daughters, and that's my success story.

I My heart breaks for you, because I cannot

imagine the depth of your of your loss. I don't have

children. Always wanted them. We couldn't have kids, so I don't

have kids, but I did lose my parents 12 days apart, which was

horrific. And I remember one time it was before my parents

died, a gentleman came to town from Washington, DC to do

basically an audit of our office. They swore it wasn't an

audit, but it was an audit. And so he we had known each other

for several years, and he said, How's it going? What's going on?

I was like, man, we found out my dad had kidney cancer in

January, and we started going to MD Anderson in March and back

and forth every other week for chemo. And then my grandmother

died, and then my 38 year old cousin died, and then we found

out my brother was ill, and he just died, and and he goes, we

all have years like that, but the good news is they don't last

forever. And I was like, oh, so when you finish this audit, and

I pass, like, I can start over, which is kind of how it felt

when when they left the office, but I look back and there were

just like, those little pockets of a whole lot, um, and I I did

work in the Murrah Federal Building at the time of the

bombing, and I did stay home that day I was sick, and it

literally was voices from God telling me to stay home take

care of myself because I was sick. But I watched people

struggle with survivor's guilt, and I watched people struggle

that they felt that it was somehow sinful if they felt joy,

when in actuality, your grief can become the sin. And so I

love that, that you were able to put it all together, even if,

even if the catalyst for that was a hard slap across the face,

verbally like that, you were able to do that. So if, if

somebody is struggling, and I love the fact that you call this

your greatest success, because you have had immense amount of

success in your life, but if somebody is in that place of I'm

trying to go through the motions, but I feel no joy. You

don't understand what I've lost, because it's not a competition.

It's not we often feel like it is, and that I won, you won

right, like in that moment. But what advice would you have for

someone that hearing this because they landed here,

because this was the message they needed to hear today. What

advice would you give them to be able to get off the couch and

start moving and get into action? Well,

first, I think, just to know you're not alone, that

other people are been there, and we're all surrounding you. When

I lost my husband, I had a woman call two days later, and she was

forming a grief group of widows, because she's 85 and, you know,

the men were kind of dropping, they tend to go first. And she

had a lot of friends who were widows, so I had a group of

people who suffered through similar things. So find, find

other people that will understand you. Because, you

know, you go a little crazy in grief. I mean, you think about

things that you probably couldn't tell very many people,

but you can talk to people that have been through it because

they've thought the same things too. They've been through the

same things as well. So first of all, see if you can find a group

of people that will that are peers in your journey, that's

that's really one of the first things. The other thing is that

everybody grieves differently, and one of the reasons that you

know, my our marriage survived, because many marriages don't

survive when you have a loss of a child, right? Especially a

suicide. Oh my gosh. You know, the statistics are horrible. But

one thing that we did is we chose to accept the way each of

us grieved and respect that, and not to do any blaming we didn't,

you know, the a girlfriend broke up with them. Well, you know

what? Breaking up with someone is a normal thing in life. If

she didn't love them, she should have broken up with them. I

mean, that it wasn't her breakup that caused this, right? It

wasn't her breakup that caused this. And so if you blame

people, it's going to make it very, very hard to get out of

that grief pit. I think blame kind of pulls you down in the

grief pit. And you did mention God. You mentioned God a little

bit. So I just have to say, Bible tells us that the joy of

the Lord is your strength, and that we need to be joyful in all

things so. So when you think about the the guilt about being

joyful, you know there shouldn't be guilt. There shouldn't be

guilt in being joyful, and that, that is that, but that. But it

happens. It happened to me too. Like the first time I started

laughing after my husband, my son, died, or my husband died,

he was like, Oh, well, I can't laugh. I'm, you know, I'm in

mourning. Well, you know what? I think that one of the messages

that I have to my grandchildren is, I want you to laugh. I want

you to have a great time. I want you to enjoy your life after I'm

gone. And that's your legacy to me, enjoying your life. I want

to pass it on to you. So survivor, you know, survivor's

guilt is a false guilt, and you shouldn't be guilty. And living

a joyful life is beneficial to everyone around you. Now, do you

pop up in joy like right away? Heck, no, takes you, takes your

time, right? I mean, it's you know, you have to, you have to

process. There's grief that has to be processed, and that's a

long and painful journey. And I wish, when I lost my son and my

husband, I wish that I could, like, go to sleep, like Rip Van

Winkle and, like, wake up in 20 years, and I'm okay, right? That

doesn't work, even if you woke up in 20 years you hadn't

processed the grief. I became a grief counselor after I lost,

you know, my my job for because of my fingers and so that that

was one of the things I learned, is that is, you have to process

it. So give help if you need it. Get a grief counselor if you

need it. There's no shame in that. I'm treated for

depression. Thank God, I'm treated for depression. My

mother took her life. My son took her life. Hey, I'm, I'm

getting treated for depression. And I'm, I'm, there was a time

when I kind of thought, oh, you know, I'm feeling better. I

don't need this. And my doctor, and of course, I, you know,

didn't respond well to getting off my medication, my doctor

said, Why did you do that? I go, Well, you know, I don't, I

shouldn't be on this. And she said, Well, are you going to get

off your blood pressure medication too? And I said,

Well, no, no, that my blood pressure will go, Well, hello.

You know, you're, you're being treated for something you need

treatment for. So, so get back on that medication. And I did,

and I'm going to be on it for life. And you know what? It's

great because it helps me. It really does help me to live a

better life and to be present for my children and my precious,

precious grandchildren and and anybody around you. You don't

really have to have children or grandchildren. You need to be

there and available for whoever is in your life. And it's so

much better. So it's better for everybody else that you're out

of the grief pit. It's so much better for you. Living outside

of the grief pit is so much better than living in its

depths. So I just want to encourage you to fight, fight,

fight, fight, no judgment. There's no time limit on how

long it takes to get out, or if you can get out, but at least if

you can work your way up, you know from that bottom rung that

will be helpful

well, and I want to bring something up that

you mentioned, and that is the idea that you grieved the loss

of your job. You have this neck pain injury that has impacted

your drilling fingers, and so you literally lost your job,

your career, your livelihood that you had been in for so many

years and so well accomplished. And I think people think death

or a breakup of a relationship are like the only things to

grieve. But there's grief of the loss of a dream. There is the

grief of losing your career. Sometimes I've seen a lot of

people in, like the law enforcement or firemen type

positions where you're basically aged out like you've been here

long enough it's physically not good for you anymore, and they

struggle, right? Because that's all they ever knew or did. And

so it was like, Ah, so I just to the listeners out there today, I

just want to say grief comes in many forms, and we grieve many

different things, and I love that you need peers in your

journey. And I had a conversation with someone today,

and grief actually came up in that conversation as well, which

is interesting. And she said, Be careful that you don't get in a

grief group where every week, a new person comes in and you have

to retell your story to the point that you're basically re

triggering yourself in to the grief pit. Like people pulling

you along versus pushing you down or holding you down is so

important, because there are groups for everything, including

helping you stay stuck versus helping you move forward and out

of the grief pit, this has been so helpful. So what are you

working on now? What book do you have? What course are you doing?

Are they around grief? What do you got going on? On there?

Well, I have a few books that one is Naomi in the

widows Club, which is a devotional for widows. It's a

year's devotion. And now we have a workbook that are eight week

workbook to go along with that. But my main book that I've been

working on now, and if I'm out, I'm working on legacy building.

And so I have the book, are you ready? How to build a legacy to

die for. And it's the first part of the book talks about building

valuable legacies. And remember, the legacy is every interaction

you have with every person. So I'm not talking about money

necessarily here. I'm talking about love, faith, hard work,

all those legacies you can pass on to the people you leave

behind. The second part, it talks about death and dying. I'm

a death doula, and so I I work about, okay, what do people

believe about death and dying? Let's just talk about it. You

know, certain percentage believe I'm a Christian. I believe I'm

going to be, you know, be in heaven with my family that I've

lost. There are people that believe in reincarnation. There

lots and lots of beliefs about death. So I just talk about

them. And, you know, we can't judge those beliefs, because

who? No, we don't. We're, heck, we night. We aren't going to

know until you know, until the time comes right. So hey, I'm

sticking with mine. I think I'm right, but we'll see. And then,

then the last part is a deep dive into all the things you

need to do so that when you pass away, your your survivors can

just come into one place and have everything ready. I talked

about the development of a legacy book, where you have a

three ring binder and page protectors, and you have, at

least, if you don't have your Will there, at least where the

will is. So if you don't have something in the binder, you

identify where it is, and you have everything right there. I

have my birth certificate, my titles to my car, all the

information about my my house, all the all the information that

you need, passwords and so on and so forth. It's a long list

of information so that when you pass away, your loved ones can

come instead of trying to go through all of your closets and

so on to find your papers. My husband, by the way, had his

file system was in paper Bay, plastic bags that kind of looked

like maybe garbage bags, you know, with important stuff in

there. So, you know, don't do that. Get it all organized and

filed so that, luckily I knew luckily I knew it. I've been

married to him for 44 years. I knew his system and I had kind

of arranged things. But just show it's a greatest act of love

you can show for your kids is to prepare them for a time when

they when, when you're no longer there, and also prepare them

emotionally. In fact, I had just a quick little story my my

little granddaughter the other day said, you know, Nana? And I

said, Yeah, Heidi, he goes, Well, if what happened to pop?

Pop happens to you? And I said, do you mean if I die? And she

said, Yeah, Nana, if you die, if you die. And I said, Well, give

a question, Heidi, she goes, Well, if you die, can we still

go to Disney World? They said, yes, yes, you can. And I'm so

glad you brought that up, because when I die, I want you

to be happy. I want you to go to Disney World. That's your legacy

to me, you are doing an honor to me when you do that. And I think

that's what we need to leave for our children. We need to let

them know we want them to be happy and to move forward in

their lives and not be stuck in that grief pit.

Oh my gosh. I love that. And when you said

about the various belief systems around death and dying and where

you go, my dad and I were having a conversation one day, and I

said, Well, you know, she believes blah, blah, blah. And

you know, that's not what we believe it all. And I was grown.

I was in my mid 30s, probably, and he looked at me, he goes,

Yeah, what if we die and find out they were right?

Well, somebody actually asked me that question,

and it was, it was a really in a sad occasion. He had just lost

his son for it was a grief podcast. It was live, and he

just had lost his son, and he just had this horrible, sad look

on his face, and goes, well, what if, you know, you come to

to your death, and, like, 30 minutes before you die, you find

out, it was all a bunch of baloney. And I was kind of

shocked, because, like, what kind of that's, that's a tough

question, right? But then I thought, you know, even if it

was, I'd be sad that I wasn't going to reconcile with my, you

know, my husband and my son and my mother and all of that.

However I'm living my life based upon joy and love. And those are

the those. Those are the the standards that I live by. And

I'm so glad to live that life, because it almost makes a heaven

on earth when you can love people and be joyful in your

life, the time on Earth is so much better. So so I'm pretty

confident that I'm going to be right on that one, but if I'm

not, then living my life the way I do, it's been a huge blessing.

Well, it is, and we all have the choice every

single day. Are we going to find the good and see the good? Are

we going to look for the negative? Because it can be

we're so trained to look for the negative. Um, I was having a

conversation recently and and before I could even get my first

sentence out, this friend of mine just went on a negative

tirade, and I said, Oh, I don't want to talk about that at all.

I want to talk about this because this was amazing and

magical and wonderful. And can I tell you this? Story instead,

and she puffed up a little bit like a toad, but I'm a little

bit of a bully, so I got to tell my fun story instead. We have

choices to make, so as we wrap up our episode, do you have any

final words for the audience?

Well, I'd just like everyone to know that no matter

where you are in life, no matter what happens to you in life. And

I spent some time in Rwanda. So if you want to look at do some

research on Rwanda, for a country that just completely

turned itself around after a genocide through forgiveness and

reconciliation, they were my grief counselor. So I had the

best in the world. No matter what happens to you, can live

your life in joy. It takes time. It takes work. It's it's not

easy, but it's worth it. So I just would love to ask you to

fight for joy that would, that would be what I'd like to leave

you with.

Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. And all of

the information to get hold of Kim will be in the show notes,

so you can get her books, her workbooks, and cannot connect

with her, if you so desire. And I can't wait to get your book

and workbook, because that'll be awesome. I'm Jennifer Takagi

with destin for success, and I look forward to connecting with

you soon. You.