Welcome, Late Boomers family! In this deeply moving and illuminating episode, Cathy and Merry sit down with Steven Ferrara, author of "Grief to Gratitude," to explore an experience every one of us will eventually face, loss, grief, and the mysteries of our own mortality.

Most of us avoid talking about death, leaving us unprepared and isolated when loss inevitably comes. Together, we discuss how shifting the conversation and finding new perspectives on death can profoundly change how we live each and every day. As baby boomers, these themes resonate deeply; whether it’s the loss of parents, spouses, siblings, friends, or even children, nearly all of us are navigating these challenges.

After losing his 23-year-old son, Steven Ferrara turned to journaling as a lifeline through inconceivable pain, a journey that eventually became his powerful and bestselling book. In our conversation, he shares what helped him survive such trauma, why our culture often gets grief wrong, and what can happen if we choose curiosity, compassion, and healing over guilt or blame.

Key Takeaways

• Facing Death Changes How We Live: Steven Ferrara reveals that changing our perspective on death isn’t just about coping it’s about living more fully and with greater purpose (01:48).
• The Healing Power of Acceptance: Discover why acceptance is essential for healing and how letting go of blame opens the path to growth and peace (10:05).
• Why Sympathy Isn’t Enough: We discuss why sympathy may not serve the grieving and what genuine, loving support really looks like (08:53, 29:17).
• The Transformational “New Paradigm” on Death: Learn how Steven Ferrara’s view that life is an ongoing, eternal journey can ease fear and shift grief to gratitude (20:29).
• Gratitude as a Healer: Understand how finding gratitude for the relationship, for memories, or simply for being alive is the key to moving through grief and living more fully (47:25).
• How to Support the Grieving: Practical, heartfelt advice on what to say (and not to say) when someone you love is grieving, and why small, tangible acts of kindness mean so much more than “let me know what I can do” (39:31, 40:29).
• Learning from Loss: Why life’s challenges including the deepest losses are opportunities for growth, learning, and spiritual connection (32:19).

If you or someone you care about is moving through grief or facing loss or if you want to live your days with more depth, compassion, and appreciation this episode is a must-listen. Steven Ferrara offers profound wisdom on how journaling, meditation, and reframing loss can bring not just peace, but renewed life, connection, and meaning.

Has this conversation touched your heart or made you rethink how you approach grief or comfort others?

• Share this episode with someone you love who may be grieving or searching for hope and healing.
• Subscribe to the Late Boomers Podcast on your favorite podcast platform, and don’t miss a single episode.
• Join our community by subscribing to our YouTube channel for more inspiring conversations.
• Want to dive deeper into Steven Ferrara’s work? Find his book "Grief to Gratitude" and resources at stephenferrara.com.

Remember: it’s never too late to rethink what’s possible. Let's transform our perspective on loss and embrace gratitude together!

– Cathy & Merry

Mentioned in this episode:

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What if the one thing we fear most in life is also the thing we understand the least?

Every one of us will lose someone we love. Every one of us will eventually face our own mortality.

Yet most Americans avoid talking about death until they're We prepare for retirement, we prepare for college, we prepare for vacations, but almost no one prepares for loss.

And that's why grief can feel so lonely. We don't have the language. We don't know what to say to someone who's hurting. We don't know how to process even our own emotions.

Today's guest believes there's another way, a healthier, more compassionate way to to think about death that can actually change how we live.

So stay with us. This may be one of the most meaningful conversations we've ever had on Late Boomers.

Welcome to the Late Boomers Podcast, where we bring you inspiring stories of people creating new chapters in life with style, purpose, and impact. I'm Cathy Worthington.

And I'm Merry Elkins.

As baby boomers, many of us are beginning to experience more loss than ever before. Parents, siblings, lifelong friends, Spouses, and sometimes heartbreakingly, even children.

Death is the one experience every family will face, yet it's the conversation we rarely have until we're forced into it. We often don't know what to say to someone who's grieving, and we certainly don't know how to— we aren't taught how to navigate our own grief.

Yeah, but what if changing the way we think about death could actually change the way we live?

Hmm.

Our guest today has spent more than 20 years exploring that very question.

After the devastating loss of his son, Steven Ferrara began writing in journals as a way to survive unimaginable grief. Those deeply personal reflections eventually became a powerful book that offers a fresh perspective on death, healing, gratitude, and living with purpose.

Yeah, few people have explored these questions as deeply or as personally as Steven. So Steven, welcome to Late Boomers.

Thank you, Cathy and Merry. I look forward to our conversation. Thank you.

Yeah, Steven, your book grew out of more than 20 years of journals after losing your son. So what made you realize those private writings could become something that would help other people?

Well, you know, it's a good question. I never really did the journals other than for my own self. It was necessary therapy, let's call it, for me to just express such intense, almost unimaginable emotion. My son was 23. You know, maybe like a lot of sons, I mean, he was just my best buddy. I have 3 children, 2 daughters and a son. He was our oldest.

Mm-hmm.

So we were really close. We still are. We have a bond, but we were in business together. We played golf together. We could end each other's sentences. We were literally, you know, two peas in the same pod or two pot, however that saying goes. But we were—

Yeah.

And still are continuing our relationship, which we'll talk about. But when my son died, previous to his death, I journaled occasionally and realized though that I needed to journal on a daily basis, sometimes a couple of times a day, starting the morning after he died. And it just was a place for me to, you know, just put my, my raw emotion. And, and I did that every day for literally almost 20 years. I sold my business almost 6 years ago. And, you know, it was first time I ever looked back at any journals. By then I had a whole huge bookshelf of journals. and decided to start from journal 1 and start reading.

And, um, it took me 2 years to get through them. I must have a million words in these journals. And, um, I was taking excerpts along the way and realizing that I was truly learning some major, uh, life-changing, uh, lessons, uh, as I was going through the months and the years.

Wow.

Just through journaling with stream of consciousness, never really thinking, just journaling. I started to see real turning points in this document of my life, basically, over those last almost 20 years. And I was living my life in a very healthy way by that point, but I didn't really know that there were very specific kind of points where I had, whatever it may have been, a revelation or some kind of a new understanding that helped me continue to move forward in a very healthy way. And so after I took all these excerpts, I had, you know, probably, I don't know, a few hundred pages of excerpts and, you know, was recommended to an editor who has done a lot of editing for spiritually oriented books, which is really the direction that my book comes from. And she said, if we work together, I could turn this into something, you know, turn it into a manuscript. truly help a lot of people. And we did that. And about a year later, we had a manuscript, went to a publisher, and now Grief to Gratitude has just come out a couple of months ago.

Yeah.

And, you know, seems to be really making a difference.

I can only imagine just when you started writing the book or before when you started reading the journals, the emotional trauma you had to go through all over again. Um, because losing a child is every parent's worst nightmare. So you answered this in one way, but looking back now, besides journaling, what else helped you survive?

Yeah, well, you know, in the early, uh, days, um, there was really nothing other than, uh, needing to give an outlet to this, uh, unimaginable amount of intense energy within me. And I was a runner at the time. We lived out in the country area, uh, and I would take these long runs, 5, 6-mile runs, and literally scream at the top of my lungs, usually really pissed off at the universe or really mad at God or just angry in general. Uh, I don't suggest it to everyone. I happen to live in an area where I could scream at the top of my lungs and I wouldn't get the cops called on me, and I did it almost every day. Or I screamed and—

Wow.

uncontrollably into a pillow if necessary. I also, you know, being a baby boomer and coming up in the '60s, Transcendental Meditation came around and I decided to take that kind of a course back when I was 16. So that's— meditation's always been an extremely important part of my life. And that became even more important for me to find a way to kind of cool my jets, so to speak, and just find some degree of peace inside, which was not easy, especially first 6, 8, 12 months because of the looping, just anger, grief, confusion, uh, just questioning everything I'd ever known and learned. I, you know, as you mentioned, I taught spiritual principles for 20 years of my life for an institution, uh, you know, an educational institution. And, you know, I thought I had a pretty strong foundation of understanding, but when something like this happens, All of that goes out the window. And, uh, you question everything. You question everything you've ever learned.

You question life. And, um, Yeah. You know, and, and, um, it was, uh, really through some of these things I was doing, the journaling, uh, the meditating. I would take long walks by the beach. We lived down in Florida and just like let my mind go and just watch all of this intensity coming up, just trying to give it an outlet in some way, shape, or form. I would talk to a few very close people to me that were not going to give me sympathy, but were going to give me an open ear just to be able to talk to. They gave me more understanding than sympathy, which was exactly what I needed. I didn't need sympathy.

And you mentioned—

Oh, for sure. Our society has no idea unfortunately, in many ways, to deal with death. And giving each other sympathy is seemingly the, you know, the accepted way. And yet it does not necessarily help in the long run.

I agree. I agree with that because I've lost my spouse, so has Merry. But you also, you write about choosing between anger and blame. Or the inner path of healing. So how'd you find the strength to make that choice? You seem like you were doing really positive things, both the running and the meditation.

Yeah.

But then how do you make that jump?

Yeah. How do you do it? And how do you not blame yourself too, even though you sh— there's no way you could have blamed yourself, but we all seem to do that.

Well, you know, there's a number of things, uh, and I, I saw these very clearly as I looked back through my journals. Firstly, uh, you know, at some point, uh, even though I may not ever agree that this should have occurred, it makes no sense, but I had to accept that that's the way life, uh, was planned to be. And the only reason I know that is because it happened.

Yeah.

And I don't think that the universe makes mistakes. Uh, it would make no sense that this universe or that God, if there is one, makes mistakes. This universe is just too, uh, immense and incomprehensible and magnificent for it to be making mistakes. So I had to accept that my son's life, even though I'll never understand why, was to only live 23 years for whatever the reason. That was his destiny because it happened. And as I accepted that, I began to realize that no matter what I did, and there was a lot of things when I thought back before I realized this acceptance that I would beat myself up about. I could have done, I could have this, I should have that, I would have that. And you just beat yourself up.

And much of my family, my daughters, my son's fiancée, we all were in that level of just beating ourselves up over what we could have and should have and would have done until this idea of understanding the importance of accepting that life has been unfolding for billions of years. If there was a Big Bang, it's 14 billion years ago, and life has been unfolding since then. And we live on this tiny little planet in a grand galaxy that has billions of suns, trillions of planets, and supposedly 2 trillion galaxies. So You know, it's been unfolding all of these eons of time. And now all of a sudden, just because I'm here for some very, very tiny short period of time, why should life ask me my opinion and/or even ask me my agreement? Life has never come to me and said, hey, do you think that this is the right thing to do? Life just does what it does.

Yeah.

And what we can do, and people say, well, you know, then is it just destiny? No, not at all. Because what we have is a superpower. which I discovered, is the power to choose how we're going to respond to how life is unfolding. That's what gives us freedom. That's what gives us the ability to live our life and experience our life in the way we want to experience it.

Yeah.

And so, you know, even something as huge and almost unimaginable like my son and then later my wife passing away, I had to realize that I still have the ability to choose how I want to respond to this. And I can choose either as a victim and go in the corner and cry out my eyes for the rest of my life, so to speak, or I can choose to look at this in another way. And you mentioned, you know, in the intro about looking at it a little bit more curiously. Uh, trying to understand this thing, death. Don't look at it with fear. Let me understand this in a little bit of a bigger, better way. And in trying to understand, uh, death, it enabled me to live my life in a better way.

Mm-hmm.

And I was able to truly begin to, uh, you know, see this experience as something that I can learn so much from. One of the first things that I, that made a big difference in my life that I saw in my journaling is it was probably less than a year in. And one day I'm just journaling away and it came to me that I don't have to look at this just from my side of this. You know, my side is very sad and that's why society doesn't really understand death that well because we only look at it from our side, which is a sad side because we're the ones left behind and that person moved on. But it dawned on me.

Mm-hmm.

I can look at this from my son's side of this experience. I can look at this as his ongoing journey. And as his dad, who loves him unconditionally, I will continue to love and support him in this ongoing journey. And when I began to expand my context of the way I was looking at this, it opened up like new ways of me understanding this experience. I began to think in terms of, I can think about what can be in our relationship as opposed to what could have been. Like it always was about, could have been grandfather. I could have been in business. Could have, should have, it would.

And you, you just exhaust yourself with all all of the could-haves and would-haves. But then when I started looking at it from Christopher's side of the experience, I realized this can be about what can be in our ongoing and growing spiritual relationship. It wasn't going to be a human relationship anymore.

Yeah.

I couldn't sit across from him and have a cup of coffee and hug him. But could I still have a deep-level, love-based relationship with him? And the answer was, Absolutely, yes. It's just maybe a different way of communicating. And part of it for me was journaling. Another part of it was quieting my mind where I felt his presence. Another part of it was in talking to other people about him, whether it was families or friends, and I could feel his presence. I was so fortunate to have dreams about him. I could walk in nature and, and just feel his presence.

And so it was a different way.

Yeah, you know, Steven, I mean, you're talking about exactly what's on my mind right now because so many people, including, I don't know about you, Cathy, but me, it took me forever to let go. And so many people worry that letting somebody go, that person that they loved, and move forward is something that they should feel guilty about. And what would you say to somebody who feels guilty about moving forward? Because You know, you had a life with that person and suddenly your life with them is over. What do you do? Where do you go? And how do you go on and not feel guilty?

Yeah. And it's a very common thing, uh, Merry. Uh, but it is, and I'll say it to you, I may not say it to somebody that's in the middle of grief at the moment, but it is absolutely completely 100% the wrong way of looking at it. And the reason I say that is that somehow, some way, probably from our religious background, guilt has been taught to us as being a good thing. You know, you should be punished for your sins. You should feel guilty for your sins. You know, I grew up in the Catholic religion. I mean, I know the Jewish religion is big on guilt.

A lot of religions are big on using guilt as a manipulative thing. And somehow it's twisted in our mind like guilt is a good thing to feel. Oh, if I feel guilty, then it means, you know, it's almost like saying, unless my spouse is jealous of me, then she doesn't love me or he doesn't love me. And how completely opposite of the truth is that?

Yeah.

Because jealousy is not based in love. Jealousy is based in insecurity. Jealousy is based in, in anger. Jealousy is not a good thing in a relationship.

And lack of trust.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And guilt is no different. What I had to understand is that love is a bond for you and your spouses. Like with my spouse and my son, love is a bond that's at a much deeper level. It's certainly not just limited to the human form of body and mind and emotion. Love is something that we feel at a very deep level. And when you truly love someone, you know it. I mean, you just feel that love within yourself. And I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, if there's anyone that I can say I loved unconditionally and continued to, it was my son.

We just accepted each other unconditionally. And that bond—

But you never really let go. You're just, you're still with him, but I don't know if you've moved on or how you've moved on. But still, what you were talking about with, with being with your son now and, and, and giving him the opportunity to live the journey that he's on, whatever it is right now. So that's kind of, wouldn't that alleviate guilt?

Uh, I, I guess I don't, I don't look at my relationship with my son as having not let go. I've completely let go. I support him 100% on wherever his journey is taking him. What I do know though, is that the relationship that I have with my son, that I had with him while he was here for 23 years, I still continue to have. It didn't end. Love doesn't end. You know, when you think about it, love is not something you get from someone. Love is not about getting.

Love is about giving. And that's all it's about. But it's another one of those kind of screwy things in our society, like, oh, I gotta get love from him. I've got to get love from her. My children have to love me. Baloney. You have to love them. And in your sharing of your love, that's how you feel it.

I mean, when you think about it, it's pretty simple. You can't feel somebody else's feeling. You only feel your own.

Mm-hmm.

So when you share your love with someone, That's how you feel love. So why would it be any different if I continue to share my love with my son, continue to share my love with my wife? Why would it be any different other than, which is a big deal, I can't hug them anymore.

It is a big deal.

I mean, that's a big deal, but what I come to the realization of is sadness is something that will always be around. And, and I'll say this again to you, and I, you know, maybe going beyond what you— what I'd say to grieving people depending on where they're at, but sadness is overrated. Sadness is a feeling. And you just—

And along those lines, you, you've introduced what you call a new paradigm on death. So what is it and why does it have the power to change people's lives?

The new paradigm is that, you know, we, we get confused in, in, in life that we think that life and death are like the polar opposites. One of the polar opposites is birth and death. Life is something that continues on. It's eternal. If there's any part of us that goes beyond this human experience. And I, I guess I've always been designed to know to some level that I am a spiritual being having this human experience. I truly believe that there's got to be so much more than just this human experience. It would make no sense that we live 80 or 100 years and then we're buried and that's it.

I mean, it just makes no sense. There's just not enough to the human experience to make it the only thing. that there can be. I see it as part of an ongoing journey. And so if we look at life as being eternal and birth and death are, let's say, parentheses in, in eternal time, it's a parenthesis where we get to enjoy a human experience, which when you think about what the human experience is, it's not a lot. It's 5 senses and it's thoughts and emotions. It's not anything else.

That's the experience. That's it.

Just thoughts and emotions.

But what a gift.

What a wonderful gift.

Right, right.

Years, it's almost like a little vacation. Like, you know, if there is a source or God, you know, it's like, you know what? And I just read this the other day. It was amazing to me. Scientists tell us that it's the odds of us being born a human are 1 in 4 trillion. Now, I don't know where they come up with it, but it's a scientific fact, they say, based on all of the variables that, for For us to live a human life, the odds are 1 in 4 trillion that us, exactly as we are, will be here. And so we've got to be so grateful, like you just said, Merry.

What a gift.

That we get to live on this beautiful planet. I wouldn't want to live on Mars. I much prefer to live on this beautiful Earth with its trees and its animals and its beauty. It's something where we get this almost little vacation for 80 or 100 years.

Yeah.

It is a parenthesis in time, this human experience, and we continue on. So the new paradigm, to your point, Cathy, is that truly to understand that life is eternal. Now, science tells us that by saying that energy can never be created nor destroyed. It just is. And if we want to go from the spiritual or religious side, you know, they just say God is, has always been here, is eternal. So both of our authorities, so to speak, you know, both talk about either energy or, or God, or, you know, being eternal, life being eternal. You know, whether I choose to believe or no, I know for me that life has to continue on.

So it If more of us embrace that perspective, how might it change the way we live every day?

Exactly. Really good point, because that's what it's all about. If we can understand death and realize that it's just a transition in our ongoing journey, then we can live life with a whole lot less fear, because fear of death is still the most feared thing in this human race. We all fear dying. That's why we make such a big deal out of it. And I'm not saying that I want to die or anybody else around me should die. We should all live to our fullest life until our time has come. But if we can accept that, you know, and I think about this often, just think about this.

I think that the number of people that die on a daily basis— Like 155 million. It's some crazy number. You can Google it. But it's like, you know, hundreds of millions of people every year die. And if the human race has been here for 100,000 or 200,000 years, imagine the hundreds of millions, if not billions of people that have died. It's the one guarantee that we all know as a human being we have, You know, if we were born, we're gonna die. And yet we still have such a tough time looking at it. And my firm belief from my own experience is because we look at it from our side and we are so self-centric about how I feel and how it relates to me.

And we're always looking at it from me and mine and how I feel. Meanwhile, if we can just broaden that context a little bit, And look at it from their side. You know, many times when people die a more natural death at 70, 80, 90, 100 years old, it's kind of a relief that that person got to take their body off and move on. Why don't we celebrate that? Or unfortunately, the way a lot of people die these days is in a hospital with all kinds of machinery on them.

Yeah.

You know, my wife, My wife, just a quick story on her. I mean, her death was almost more or as much as my son's. She was a healthy athlete. She played tennis, competitive tennis. She was 60 years old. She started to feel some pain in the side of her body. And she, we lived in Florida and they said, oh, you know, it's just a pulled muscle. Just take it easy.

You'll be fine. And over the course of months, she kept playing and it just got worse. And she started to not be able to breathe that well. Anyway, we came up to New Jersey for the summer months, uh, right around Mother's Day, just after that, and, uh, decided, you know what, let's check out a doctor up here and see what they say. They send her for a CAT scan and she had stage 4 lung cancer by time this occurred.

Wow.

Uh, they, uh, from the time she was diagnosed to the time she died was 7 weeks because they threw everything into her chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation. They literally tore her body apart. But it was in their efforts to save her. They felt she was healthy. We're going to do everything we can to help. But they— she died from the, you know, treatments 7 weeks later. Now, that all being said, and getting back to the point I was getting at, my wife, after 7 weeks, went from being an athlete to totally torn apart. She couldn't get out of bed.

She— all of her muscle, everything was taken by these treatments. And as much as I, I knew by then, it was 10 years after my son died. So I understood the process of grieving and death. And while it turned my world upside down, I mean, she was my partner forever. We married, we got, we met when we were 20, married at 21. We were married almost 40 years.

Oh.

Um, you know, but I knew that my wife would never have ever wanted to live that way. And in some way, when I was able to just look at it from her side and take my very sad feelings out of the equation, I was almost celebrating for her. Thank God that it was only weeks and this was not prolonged for a year or two. That's a, in my opinion, selfish way. Well, let them keep living, keep living. No, if they're—

No.

If they're no quality of life, Let that poor person leave their body and move on in their journey. It's got to be a better place where they can take this old body off.

Steven, to pivot back to the— what we were talking a little bit about grief, many listeners that we have are, I'm sure, are carrying grief that has lasted for years. What are the first signs that someone is beginning to move from grief toward gratitude, as the title says of the book?

Yes. And, and, uh, again, a very good question. And, um, you know, what I found for me, and I think it's true of most people, is you get to a point where you don't want sympathy any longer. We don't need— you know, I hate to call it pity parties, but, you know, great. And you need—

Yeah.

You need it. You need people just doting on you, taking care of you, doing whatever they do. But there does come a point where you've got to decide that I got to move past this. I don't want sympathy any longer. And you— I found for me, I even started to surround myself with different groups of people. Uh, I would find that You know, if I saw somebody for the first time after my son died, it might have been a year later, and I realized, all right, I got to go through this. They're going to give me their condolences. They're going to lay a heavy, you know, uh, amount of sympathy, and I don't want it.

I would listen for, you know, be very respectful. And I'm very, uh, respectful that that's a person doing the very best they know how in the way that we've been—

Right.

by society. So I don't put that down, but I just knew it wasn't what I needed anymore. And I almost physically have to shake it off. I mean, after being in a conversation for a couple of minutes, if I was able to get out of it, you know, and go to the men's room and just shake it off, literally, I didn't want sympathy anymore. I wanted to understand a better way to deal with this than sympathy.

Right.

One of the things I realized, and This, I think, is critical as well. You know, when I experienced my son's death at 23, it was of such an incomprehensible traumatic level that I said pretty early on that I will not let an experience of that magnitude to happen in my life and let the effect of it being me only feeling sorry for myself. That would be a disrespect to my son and my relationship with him. I have to find a way to use this unbelievable experience for some good in my life. It can't be just for me to feel sorry for myself.

Such a good attitude.

Yeah. So what are some of the biggest misconceptions Americans have about grieving?

You know, I think generally, whether it's Americans, I've talked to people, you know, uh, in all various countries. Just the other day, Australian people that contacted me to tell me what a difference my book made in their lives. And—

Good.

I think the first thing that we have to realize is that life is not here to torture us. Life is here to teach us. And that's something I've always tried to live my life by. You know, for some odd reason, we as a general society like to complain. We like to sometimes be the victim. We talked earlier about the news. I'll never watch it because it's all victim-based. And somehow we get some weird comfort out of that.

And that is just not—

Yeah.

helpful. Uh, we need to realize that we're here, and, and this is another very strong belief of mine, that we're here in this human experience on this beautiful planet Earth, and it's like a classroom. We've been given however many years of our life to truly be a student on this planet Earth and our experiences, to have an opened student mind about what can I learn from all of the experiences that I'm having in my life? What can I be learning from them all? And if we keep that open student mind and we're curious about things, as opposed to, well, no, I know that's the way it works, or I know, I know, I know, that's closed-minded. Open, curious mind, then we do begin to realize that life is here to teach us and not to torture.

Mm-hmm. So that's, you know, friends, friends often don't know what to say after someone dies. What comforts people the most, in your opinion, and what should we avoid saying?

You know, it's, it's a, again, good questions. Uh, the way we're trained is to give our condolences, my thoughts and prayers. You know, some of that is, you know, just knee-jerk reactionary stuff, like saying, hey, how you doing? Uh, and again, I don't put people down for it. We're just having a very open conversation. I'm being direct. I, I, you know, never ever would disrespect people for acting that way because it's the only way we're truly trained to some extent.

Mm-hmm.

But I'll give you an example. And I talk about this in the book. One of the greatest, uh, responses, let's say, of love that I ever felt, uh, after my son died, it was about 3 months later. And Christopher, uh, had worked at this little kind of Caribbean hotel down in South Florida where we live. And, uh, you know, they— a young couple had bought it and they loved Christopher. We met them once, uh, but he worked there for about 6 months. They loved him, he loved them. He was everything from the towel boy to the butler to the bartender.

He did it all. And it was just a wonderful, loving relationship that they had each other. Uh, so my wife and I were taking a walk and we hadn't stopped in to see these people, didn't know if they knew. We went in and the couple was there, beautiful young couple, maybe in their 30s. And we told them that Christopher had passed away in an accident. And they literally said nothing. They looked at us with these just very soft, loving eyes. There was nothing to be said because I knew they loved him.

I loved— we all loved him. All of our eyes teared up. I felt the presence of Christopher within the love of the 4 of us, my wife and I and this couple. And nothing was said. And I'm not saying that that's the only way to handle it in a good way or a healthy way, but it is one way where all you have to do is be there for someone, give them a hug. give them a reassuring, loving, you know, just look.

It's so interesting that they themselves were on the same page. Yeah, that they both responded the same way. That's kind of unusual when you have more than one person reacting. They're going to react differently, but that sounds like they were exactly in tune with you.

And, you know, and literally we just stood there, uh, I felt strongly the presence of my son. I think we all did. We all shed a tear and we just hugged each other and we left. And that was one of the most warm and loving reactions I ever got. Others were where people just genuinely hugged you. They weren't looking to dump their— I mean, so many people had relationships with my son. They had their own grief they were going through. Of course, you know, when they hugged me, some of them I knew were just there in support.

They weren't looking to leave their grief on my shoulder, so to speak. They were there to truly be there for me. And some just hugged me.

Yeah. You know, some people, I remember when my husband passed away, a few people started to cry hysterically and suddenly I was the one that had to give The care versus them just—

isn't that interesting?

It was very hard because I agree.

I felt the same way. There were so many times that exactly what you're saying, I would feel like I was the one helping them. Right.

Yeah. And it's like, yeah, all of us had happened too.

Yeah. And it was the ones that need, need the hug, but that's—

Well, they're missing their friend too. Yeah, well, everybody feels at a different level, you know. We were married to the person, or it was our son, but, but everybody has lost somebody at that moment. And a lot of times when somebody's— like, my husband passed at home, Merry's passed at home— when you have to call people to tell them that happened, Mm-hmm. then you're the one— like, it's so nice if somebody makes the calls for you. I would say that's a number one thing to do.

I agree completely. And people truly wanting to help. I mean, I can tell you after my son died, again, these are stories that I tell in a book. I don't even know how it happened. But you know, my son, we just had a one, uh, 4-hour day funeral, 4 hours in one day. And that was it funeral. Uh, there had to have been 1,000 or 1,200 people that showed up. In fact, the closed down the streets around the funeral home.

Anyway, we invited them all back to our house. We happen to have a big house. Fortunately, they didn't all show up, but probably 200 people did. I have no idea how everything got done, but my wife and I did nothing, and there was enough food, there was enough drinks, the place got cleaned up. Everyone was watching out for each other and watching out for us in particular. That's that level of support.

That's amazing.

You know, right?

Yeah, it is.

What can you do? Make the phone calls, uh, you know, can I get food? Can I get— you know, and they're truly there to just love and support you and not just, you know, feel sorry with you.

Yeah, that's wonderful.

But also getting back to my question, what should people avoid saying? Is there something specific you have in the book that people should not say?

Yeah, I, I don't really— you know, I can't advise someone on what not to say or Okay. It's got to come from feeling and love to the highest level that someone can come from. Uh, that's all I can say is that people need to be genuine. People need to realize that they're here to give you love and support, even though I understand they're going through their own grief. But you're the one that had the spouse or the child. Uh, they had a relationship. So, you know, maybe you can share in the love. that you had for that person, but you don't, you know, you don't want them to dump their, you know, feeling sorry for themselves on you.

Well, and one of the things that I think both Merry and I found was kind of horrible is that almost everybody says, let me know what I can do for you.

Right, right.

There is no way any of us are going to call and tell someone what they can do for us. I mean, it just doesn't happen. The only people that instead of saying that, just do something, anything.

Exactly.

And, you know, go over and hold their hand or have a cup of tea with them or just bring a meal. But don't say, what can I do? Because they will never tell you what they can do.

Exactly. And this is, you know, the new paradigm is to be Genuine, not to just do the knee-jerk reactionary responses because it's all baloney and we know it. Uh, those of us going through it know it. We're not going to say anything about it. And I think even people that say those things, they may know, but they don't know what else to say. And it's okay. But I agree completely. If you want to do something to truly support someone, just do it.

don't ask, what can I do? Because you're the last person in a mindset to be able to tell them what to do to help you. They should know what to do to help you.

Yeah, I mean, we don't know.

I had people coming over, you know, when my wife died especially, you know, they just show up to wash my— do my— because I didn't even know how to use my washing machine. You know, my, my wife and I were the traditional, uh, you know, husband and wife. She I always said I made a living and she made the life, and she just ran the family. She did everything. I didn't even know what a washing machine or dryer was, but people would show up and help me with my laundry. People would show up and take my dry cleaning, show up and clean the house, bring food. I mean, that's, that's truly—

That's love. So Steven, have readers— you mentioned earlier that some readers have shared stories with you about how your book Help them heal or see death differently. Can you share one story?

You know, uh, I've, I've heard from, uh, many people, but I guess the, the one thing that stands out, and we've talked about it, uh, to some extent, is people have never really thought about looking at it from the deceased's side. of the journey. And when you truly do that, and I'll give you an example, and I think I may have mentioned this in the book, but I was meeting with a good, good friend of mine, known him for over 30, almost 40 years. His wife had passed away maybe 6 months before. And, uh, and he was telling me that, you know, I'm really just feeling so bad. I can't even understand why, you know, I'm walking down the street and people are happy and talking. And he says, don't they understand? Like, you know, he was just so— centered on how he felt and couldn't even understand why other people might be happy during this time. And I said to him, I said, Ron, let me just ask you a question.

Have you ever been able to step back and look at this from Karen's side? Who— that was his wife. And he stopped for a second, never having thought about it, almost looked like a deer in the headlights. And he said, Steve, I've Never thought about it that way, and we began to talk about. I mean, his wife died of cancer, and how of course our side of it is sad, but she was able, like we've talked about, get out of her body and move on in her journey wherever that takes you. It's got to be better than living in that body that was sick, and and we had a really good conversation about it, and it literally shifted his way of looking at it, and that's probably. the main thing that I've heard from people, although, you know, at the end of the book, I've got a whole 8-step summary of the things that I've put together as the main insights that I learned that helped me move forward. And, uh, but that's probably the primary one. Uh, I think another important thing is, uh, you know, realizing that, you know, the subtitle to my book is The Inner Pathway to Healing and Peace.

And the inner pathway is, again, such an important thing for people to understand. Most of us all relate to the outside, from the outside in.

Yeah.

It's all stimuli we're getting. We talked about the news, social media, you know, people, everything else coming in, everything, devices. And we're always in a responding mode. And in fact, many people have gotten to a point where, you know, their mind just doesn't stop. It's just got that constant chatter. And what I realized is that there's no answers there. And in fact, there's no answers even in thought. Thought, you know, is an important thing, but it doesn't necessarily have the answers to the biggest challenges of life.

What I realized is that when I went within, and the only way I know how to do that is either through some form of meditation, doesn't have to be TM, it could be breathing, it could be guided meditation. But some way to quiet the thinking part of my mind. And by doing that, by realizing that all of this thinking and emotion and everything else going through my mind is not who I truly am. I don't have to identify with all those thoughts that keep going through. I don't have to identify with all those emotions. I may feel them, but it's not who I am. They're just passing through. And as I was able to become more of an observer of all of those thoughts and emotions and not get engaged with them all, I started to feel a more deeper part of myself, what I call the inner pathway, a more peaceful place.

It opened up a space for me to begin to look at these experiences in a different way.

So, Yeah.

So that, that, uh, those are a couple of things that I just think are really important to know, that they're— this life is not lived from the outside in, even though that's the way it's lived in many cases, and that's a very stressed out, anxious life. From the inside out.

Many of our— yeah, I'm sorry, many of our listeners are in their 60s and 70s, maybe beyond. I hope we have I, I, I, I know of some listeners in their 80s personally. They're facing more loss than ever before. So what message would you most like for our Late Boomers audience to take away from today's conversation?

Yeah, and we are— I mean, I'm 71. We're all at an age where, you know, people are going to die. That's what happens, uh, you know. And—

Oh, not us.

Oh yeah, we're the only ones.

Yeah, well, I, I, I think about my own mortality at this point. I'm, you know, I'm enjoying every day of my life, but, you know, I know I'm not going to be here for another 30 or 40 years. I'll be here for however long I'm going to be here, and I'm going to live to the best that I can. Uh, but, you know, that's an interesting point, is that there's 8 billion people on this planet. In 100 years, all 8 billion of us will be gone. Isn't that amazing?

Yeah.

And then there'll be another 8 billion, but all 8 billion of us will be gone, give or take, in 100 years. Maybe the infants being born will still be living at 101 years old or something. But, you know, so death is just a part of life. And what I would say to anyone at my age, 80 years old, whatever it may be, is to understand that we've got to find gratitude for the years that we had that person in our life. That's why my book is called Grief to Gratitude, because it's a true journey. Of course you're going to feel grief. We're humans when someone dies, but that's not the end. That's the beginning.

That's when the door opens and we can continue to move through and eventually come to gratitude. Gratitude for the relationship we had for all those years. I was together with my wife for almost 40 years. How lucky am I? I had my son for 23 years. You know, I could have not had a son at all. I had a son for 23 years that I had so much fun with, and I have found a way to have an ongoing relationship with him even after his death. But be grateful for the time that you had, as opposed to resent or be mad about the time you don't have.

Yeah, exactly.

Absolutely. And then maybe if we continue to move forward, be grateful to understand that life does go on. And we can continue to have a relationship with someone, it's going to be very different, it's not going to be sitting at a Starbucks with them. But it can be in the form of many different ways. Some of it might be, you know, people just feel, you know, Mm-hmm. presence of that, of their spouse, and, and, and, and be grateful for that time. Gratitude is the great healer. Gratitude, not that the person died, gratitude for the experience that we're having that's helping us see life and death in a different way.

That's why I say gratitude is ultimately where we need to all eventually get to, and that's the great Thank you so much.

And where can listeners find your book and learn more about your work and connect with you?

Thank you. Easiest way is really just go to my website, which is my name, stephenferrara.com. So stephenferrara.com, you'll be able to get on my Instagram, get on my Facebook. I have Substack articles, I have interviews on it. I try to keep it up to date. It's not the most up to date. If you're interested in the book, certainly you can go to Amazon from there or Amazon directly, look up Grief to Gratitude. And yeah, so stephenferrara.com.

I for sure want your book. I'm going to order it because I'd like to give it as gifts because I think it's a different take on what's been said many different other ways. Steven, thank you so much for opening your heart to us today. You've shown us that while grief is the price we Pay for Love, healing is always possible. Your story reminds us that even after life's deepest heartbreak, hope can still find us.

Yeah, and perhaps the greatest gift you shared is that by changing the way we think about death, we can begin living more fully, and we can live with more compassion and gratitude and appreciation for every day we're given that Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you, Cathy and Merry. This has really been enjoyable. I hope I've been of some help.

And thank you. And if today— for our listeners, if today's conversation has touched your heart, please share this episode with someone who may be grieving or who simply wants to live with a little more peace and purpose.

And for our listeners and viewers, be sure to subscribe to our podcast to Late Boomers, the Late Boomers Podcast, wherever you listen. And we'd especially love for you to subscribe to our Late Boomers Podcast YouTube channel where you can watch every episode and join our wonderful community.

And until next time, remember what we late boomers always say: It's never too late to rethink what is possible.

Thank you, Steven.

Thank you. Thank you.