Dear Dougy

Being a plumber doesn’t mean the pipes in your house never leak.  Being a landscaper doesn’t mean your own yard is magically free of weeds. Why is it then that those of us who work in grief sometimes fall prey to the magical thinking that we will somehow be immune to the heartbreak when someone dies? Meghan Riordan Jarvis, LCSW, is a trauma-informed psychotherapist with over 20 years of clinical experience who harbored the same secret wish. A wish which imploded when her mother died in 2019, just two years after her dad died of cancer. While Meghan’s training and clinical acumen didn’t prevent her from experiencing grief, they did enable her to recognize when she started to develop PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder – and that she needed additional help.   In our conversation, we talk about:  - What was different about grieving after her father’s death vs. her mother’s.  - How she recognized the signs of PTSD and the treatment she sought out. - The concept of “meaning making” and how it’s important to cla