The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Episode 77 Living Through Loss: Reflections Inspired by Nick Cave

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 77

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We become creatures of loss as we get older. Grief is a universal experience that touches us all, but how do we navigate it? As I reflect on the poignant words of Nick Cave and the profound losses he has endured. In this episode I aim to shed light on the inevitability of loss and how we can learn to live with it.

I discuss how Nick has managed to soften his heart through grief and how much I am inspired by his transformation.

This is the blog post I refer to in the podcast: https://fionakane.com.au/we-become-creatures-of-loss-as-we-get-older/


Warning: this episodes mentions sui*c*de.

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay



Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, fiona Cain. Today I'm going to be referring to a blog post that I wrote recently. I will pop the link in the show notes as well, so I'll be partly referring to that and reading some quotes. So for anyone who's actually watching, sorry that I'm going to be reading a little bit here. That's the way it goes. Now, today, what I'm talking about the name of the blog post is we Become Creatures of Loss as we Get Older. It's on my blog, which is fionacanecomau.

Fiona Kane:

I heard these words when I was watching Australian Story. There's a recent episode of Australian Story and when I'm recording this we're in August, so just look in August 2024, if you're looking for that episode. Australian Story is a program that is on the ABC, so for those of you in Australia, you can find it on the ABC iView app. Elsewhere, I don't know, maybe YouTube. Sorry, I'm not quite sure, but anyway, the show is called Australian Story and it was the episode with Nick Cave. Nick Cave is quite a well-known Australian singer and he said lots of things that's worth watching, so just go and watch it. But he said one of the lines he said was.

Fiona Kane:

We become creatures of loss as we get older and that really stood out to me straight away. I just pounced on those words and was and just thinking about what does that mean? And what does that mean to me? And you know, I think he's absolutely right. I the truth is that we're all born and we all die. So as we get get older, loss starts to, if it hasn't already. If we've been lucky enough to not have a lot of loss in early life which some people are not, and some people have a lot of loss in their early life certainly, as we get older, we start to have loss and we start to have more and more loss in different ways, and it is part of life. Loss is part of life and learning how to live with loss is part of life and it's something that I suppose because I've been in it for the last few years, so it really resonated with me.

Fiona Kane:

So those of you who listen and or watch this podcast, you will probably know that actually I week I'm recording this is the week of the anniversary of my mom's passing. So she passed three years ago and you know I'm not. I know I'm not special when it comes to grief. Just tell them my story. I don't think I'm special. We all have it and we all have lost. So this is just my perception of it, because I'm starting a discussion around it, that's all. So yeah, I know I'm not special. My mother died. That happens to everyone eventually. However, this is a three-year mark since my mother passed away and it has been a big time for me.

Fiona Kane:

For me there was a lot of grief because I grew up with three matriarchs. I grew up with my grandmother, my aunt and my mother, and for a lot of my life I lived with both my mother and my grandmother, and my grandmother was a very strong, powerful matriarch and essentially, there was three women in my family. We called them the Golden Girls and they were in charge. They were the ones that they, the people who nurtured me and guided me and made my life horror sometimes and everything in between. These were my matriarchs, right, and my mother was the last of the matriarchs to pass away. So it was a real end of an era. It's like those matriarchs, those major, main matriarchs in my family, are gone and all gone from living in this world, possibly still there in spirit, I believe they are, but anyway, each to their own and around the same time.

Fiona Kane:

So just before six weeks before my mom passed, one of my very, my very first boyfriend in school. He passed as well, very suddenly and unexpected, and that was really, really sad. I was still friends with his family and we were still friends and we always thought a lot of each other, even though we weren't meant to be together, and that's fine. Then I had a friend actually a couple of friends passed around the same time as well. My cousin passed six months after my mother, and so I had a lot of grief happening all around the same time, and mom was sick for a really long time as well. So it was a really kind of quite a drawn out thing where we knew she was going to pass, but it was where you lose someone bit by bit by bit. It was quite heartbreaking. Anyone who's dealt with that will know.

Fiona Kane:

And on top of that I've had a lot of problems with my business over the years, especially since COVID. A lot of small business people are feeling it and struggling, and then I've been going through menopause. Lots of changes have happened in my life, and so when he said we become creatures of loss, I'm like, well, that is kind of the story of my life at the moment. I'm seeing that everywhere and it shows up in lots of different ways. So when I refer to the article I talked in there, and also I've been having some more health problems as I get older. I had a lot of health problems in my 20s. Now I'm in my 50s, I'm 53 and I'm starting to have some more health issues.

Fiona Kane:

So I sort of talked in there about all of the different kinds of loss that we have and it sort of can be loss of people, loss of parents, loss. I've had friends who have lost children. It's just devastating, and for some people it might be the loss of their pets which is still really devastating. It's not a kind of, it's not a grief. Competition Grief is grief and it can be. A lot of people are losing businesses, they're losing homes or they're losing marriages, you know, or relationships, relationships. I've lost some significant friendship relationships, it would seem at this point in time anyway, and so there's just so many different kinds of loss and for me also going through menopause, it's kind of like that final nail in the coffin to the fertility thing, which I wasn't able to have children and I kind of well, obviously I'm 53, I knew that wasn't going to happen now, but still, when you go through menopause, that is kind of that. Oh okay, yes, definitely, that's definitely not going to happen now. It becomes an absolute certain thing Not that it wasn't a few years ago, but I think you get what I'm saying. So, lots of loss, life is full of it, and I think, ultimately, it's about learning how to live with that, learning how to and learning how to not be hardened by it.

Fiona Kane:

And because I a lot of time in my life, a lot of my life, I've been quite hard. I I had, um, as many people have had, I had a lot of challenges in my childhood and, uh, I had a family who loved me, but they're also a family who a few people in my family had some major mental health issues and we had challenges. And we also had challenges with things like finances and those kinds of things as well Very common, and that was my version of that and in my version of that I did harden a lot. I grew up in an area of Sydney that at the time, was considered to be very rough and you know kind of the unemployment capital, and you know you were treated like you were deadbeat if you were from that place and there was a lot of unemployment there and a lot of desperation and drugs and violence and those kinds of things sort of in the area I grew up in as well, and so I learned to harden quite early on.

Fiona Kane:

I put on a hard shell to protect myself, so I've always had this sort of spiky hardness about me, but that has made it hard throughout life. When life happens to you, it's really hard to kind of sway when you're stiff and hard and kind of immovable sort of thing. And I've learned that this loss, these changes because the inevitability of change and loss and those things in life has meant that it's actually better if you can be softer, it's better if you can sway a little more, which is something that I wouldn't do before. And what I've noticed is I've noticed that Nick Cave this is exactly what he has done. So for those of you who are not aware sorry, I'm sort of typing their background because I'm just looking up some lyrics that I wanted to talk about as well. I talked about it in a previous episode. For those of you who haven't heard or don't know much about Nick Cave, essentially the short version is he's lost two sons over the last few years and so he knows all about the pain of loss and grief and losing children and all of that devastation and all of that missed opportunity In your mind.

Fiona Kane:

As a parent, I know that even though I'm not a parent. I understand that parents kind of have in their mind the idea of the kids are going to grow up and they're going to do this and they're going to get married or get a job or do exciting things or whatever it is. But just have grandchildren whatever. But you have your dreams for your children and so when your children die at a young age, I think Arthur might have been. I think it was Arthur who was the first one who passed away. I think he was around 16. Who was the first one who passed away? I think he was around 16. And Jethro, I think, was a little bit older. I think he was an adult, but still very young.

Fiona Kane:

I could be a little bit wrong. Sorry if I've got the details wrong, but essentially those hopes and dreams you had for your children and for what your life was going to look like with them and all of the upcoming family events and family things and all the rest of it. It's just all gone and it's devastating and it would be understandable for someone to harden around this and you know, I've said in my article I have no judgment for people who do. I understand. I totally understand why you would because you feel unsafe. You feel like that you could get hurt again if you're not, if you don't harden. So you sort of harden for protection but unfortunately, I think ultimately it doesn't protect you because it makes you more brittle and more prone to break.

Fiona Kane:

Anyway, I mentioned in my article that I just was really impressed with Nick Cave and how he seems to have softened into his loss as opposed to hardened into it. Excuse me, I'm just going to have a sip of tea. Yeah, he's really softened around this and I'm just really impressed how he's managed to do that. And I'm going to just read a few quotes in here that I sort of mentioned when I wrote this article. So he for those of you who don't know, nick Cave has the Red Hand Files, which if you just Google Red Hand Files you'll find it, and essentially he started this website as kind of a Q&A sort of thing for his fans to ask him questions. But now it's kind of turned into something really huge.

Fiona Kane:

I think he said in the episode of the Australian Story the other day I think he has something like 13,000 in his inbox questions, like so many questions, and he attempts to answer one a week. Sometimes he answers three or four of them at once, because it's kind of the same thing. So he prints sort of three or four questions and then he answers and he's answered to the whole lot. And it has become this place where, especially I think since his son's passed away, that people are going to him with their grief. They're going to him with their raw grief about losing children and just the most you know, people with major mental health issues, people who are struggling with loss of their children, and he's getting really full-on emotionally charged, sort of beautiful but also full-on letters from his fans and he's answering them beautifully. And so if you sort of want to have a bit of of a cry but also be inspired, go and read some of these letters on his red hand files website. I've linked to it in my blog post as well.

Fiona Kane:

So so someone else had recently wrote him a letter and they'd lost their 16 year old son and their 16 year old son. He'd responded to one of those horrible online scams. Sorry, I think I've talked about this before. Actually, I might have talked about it on my other podcast, I can't remember now, but anyway, this is one of the reasons why you've got to be really careful with your children around mobile devices and different apps like Instagram and that sort of thing. But anyway, this young man, he fell victim to one of these scams where they pretend that they are a young girl, get the boy to send to sort of sext them to send naked photos, and then straight away, they use it against them and try and get money out of them. And, in shame, a lot of these children take their own lives, which is what happened here. Excuse me, sorry, I've got a really dry throat, but yeah, a lot of children have been unfortunately ending their lives based on this. It's just horrific, it's heartbreaking. And so he got a letter from one of these parents and I'm not going to read the letter and I'm not going to read his whole response. I'm just going to read part of his response, just because I thought it was really beautiful. He said this is partway through the letter, he said.

Fiona Kane:

But I want to say something, and even though it will doubtless mean little to you at this moment, I hope in time you will look back and know I spoke a kind of truth. Some years have now passed since the loss of my own sons, and, though gone from this world, I've come to understand that they still travel with me. They're with me now, and, more than that, they have become the active participants in a slow but certain awakening of the spirit. I told you, reading his red hand files makes me want to cry. He just writes so beautifully.

Fiona Kane:

Going back to Nick, he says it saddens me deeply that they never lived their own full lives, but though I would give anything to have them back, these departed souls ultimately served as a kind of saving force that revealed the world to Susie that's, his wife and me, as a thing of outrageous beauty. I found my relationship to the world enriched in a way that I never dreamed possible. I know this to be true, but I also know it is a truth beyond understanding in your time of fresh grief, and so I say these things with extreme caution, and I pray it doesn't come across as a kind of glibness uttered into your despair. That's just beautiful, isn't it? And that's not the whole letter, I've got to get myself back. That's not the whole letter, I've got to get myself get myself. But that's not the whole letter.

Fiona Kane:

But he just writes so beautifully. He's such a deep understanding of grief and a deep understanding of the experience of these parents. Please go and read this. It's just beautiful. And you know what I've been learning. So this is sort of me. This isn't next words anymore, but what I've been learning is, yes, that loss is the doorway to transformation and that it's an opportunity for you to understand that loss is imminent and that life is short and to smell the roses and to see the beauty, or it's an opportunity to harden. There's a few different ways you can go, but what I found like I said before, that the hardness leaves you quite brittle, ultimately leaves you less resilient, more stuck, more sad and I would say, more sad is probably not true.

Fiona Kane:

I think the sadness happens no matter what. The sadness is just there. It's just part of it, that's just part of grief. You just carry that sadness, I, and I think that goes away. You just learn to live with it. But it doesn't mean that you can't also have happiness. I think you can have happiness and sadness at the same time.

Fiona Kane:

Um, or you know, in the same vicinity, sort of thing, uh, and I I just said here in my in my blog that I've just found nick's softening has been really inspirational, has been, and I think it's why so many people are drawn to him and, um, and, like I said, there's no judgment to people who, who harden around grief. I totally understand why, but uh, you know, it's just a beautiful exploration. Just seeing Nick has really inspired me to really think about the way I respond to life and and smelling the roses and uh, and gratitude and all of those things. Uh, because I haven't lost. I haven't lost two children. Oh, my god, like I said before, you can't compare. I know you can't compare. Loss is loss and life is full of loss. Better, but yeah, it's, it's just uh, yeah, but this is Nick's um, and Nick's transformation has been really beautiful to watch from a distance, I don't know him, just from what I'm reading and what I'm seeing. So a big part of life is learning to live with that, acknowledge that loss is part of life and living with it anyway and finding joy in life anyway, and I can just think that's just a really brave way of dealing with that frailty of life.

Fiona Kane:

He also recently, in his Red Hand Files, he described the Red Hand Files. He said the Red Hand Files have become a quietly instructive influence over the way I try to live my life, which is openly and with curiosity. They are a kind of existential condition and means by which to navigate the world, a way to be. So it's interesting how these files it's not just a service of him answering questions to his fans, it's actually or just people him answering questions to his uh, to his fans, it's actually, or or just people who are just reaching out, whether they specifically his fans or not. Uh, but uh, but it's. He sees them as a way for him to try and live his life and an influence over how he is and how he responds to life. And it's fascinating and I'm really loving following the Red Hand Files and I'm trying to learn to be curious and I'm seeing that that's what he's saying. He said like living openly and with curiosity and I'm trying to learn to be more curious. I'm trying to learn to live openly and with curiosity, and it's not always easy, it really isn't, but it's pretty amazing when you do, and so I just wanted to share this with you that there's different ways that transformation can happen around loss, and loss is inevitable. It's part of life, but the way we respond to it can make a really big difference and I think Nick's response to it has been really, really beautiful.

Fiona Kane:

And this is not to say that he didn't have and doesn't have moments of, you know, terrible moments and all of that. What I'm not trying to do here and if you go back to my episode on grief with Linda Campbell like I'm not trying to make it all sugar and spice and sweet and say that you'd go right from having losing someone to kind of you know, everything's happy and I'm so grateful and whatever and Nick's not saying that either. He's saying that to this parent. He's like right now, I get that this isn't going to make sense to you. This is not, this is for later, right? Because so it's not about that. It's not about saying that you can't have grief and that grief can't be, you know, ugly and despairing and all things it is and and all the things that you go through, all that is part of it, so it's not.

Fiona Kane:

I'm not trying to skip that part or say that everyone should just transform and it just becomes like yeah, I think you get. If you've been following me for long enough, you know I'm not saying that. What I am saying, though, is that, ultimately, there's an opportunity for transformation when the time is right, and when the time is right for you may be very different to someone else in different situations, etc. Etc. So it's not kind of a timeline on. Well, if you don't become transformed and soften within so much, so many months and yeah, yeah, of course I'm not saying that. So, just clarifying I'm really not saying that grief is grief and grief is hard, and we all have to walk it in our own way and manage it in our own way. And ultimately, though, if we can learn to soften with it and become curious to life and experience some beauty and joy, that's pretty amazing.

Fiona Kane:

Now now, in one of my very early episodes, I referred to a song called hi ren, and I was just popping back over to that now and to the the um lyrics I referred to in that. Uh, in hi ren. Uh, particularly at the end of it, when ren his name is ren gill was talking about. If you just google hi ren, like h R-E-N, you will find this. It's been watched 20 million times or more, I don't know many times, but right at the end Wren just does a spoken word part and he's referring to. Wren has spent a lot of his life being very ill, almost died and ended up with psychopathy in relation to his health issues and anyway it's all very complicated. I won't go into it in this episode. I've talked about before. He's talked about it. You can go and find out from ren. But essentially he there's this part that he said uh. Again, it kind of relates back into this softening that I was talking about. He says uh.

Fiona Kane:

At the end of the song he said as as I got older I realized there were no real winners and there were no real losers in psychological warfare, but there were victims and there were students. It wasn't David versus Goliath, it was a pendulum eternally swaying from the dark to the light, and the more intensely that light shone, the darker the shadow it cast and it was never really a battle for me to win. It was an eternal dance and like a dance, the more rigid I became, the harder it got. The more I cursed my clumsy footsteps, the more I struggled. So I got older and I learned to relax and I learned to soften and the dance got easier. And I think that is what Nick Cave has done. He's learned to soften to life, and that the dance gets easier somehow when you soften, and I think that's part of it Also with Nick Cave.

Fiona Kane:

He is a Christian and he has found some solace there and, to be honest with you, that's something that I've never really called myself a Christian, but I am starting to find solace in that direction as well. I'm not an expert on any of that, I can't explain any of it to you right now, but I'm certainly finding a certain solace with handing over, a certain solace, with sort of handing over a certain amount of life to something that's more powerful, something that's bigger than me, for which I think I would probably call God, and you call it and be however it is for you. So anyway, I just was really inspired by Nick Cave and his softening and I really, you know, resonated with him saying that you know we become creatures of loss as we get older, because we do, and I think it's not about whether or not that's going to happen, it is going to happen. It's more about how we respond to it and I think more and more, and this is how, like a lot of my clients are women of my age and not all, but a lot of them are and I think that there is a time in life where we are dealing with aging and dying parents, often with children or grandchildren, and sometimes loss around those things as well, or children or grandchildren who are ill, parents who are ill and then changing, and things like losing businesses or having financial challenges or having trouble being in the workforce or staying in the workforce or getting a new job if you've been out of the workforce, along with menopause and all of the loss that comes with that and so many things in life.

Fiona Kane:

And a lot of women my age are going through divorce or loss of a partner in one way or another, with declining health for themselves, declining health for their partners and death of a partner all of those things.

Fiona Kane:

So I just I think it's to, um, wherever you are in life, to understand that loss is part of it. We do become creatures of loss as we get older, and how we respond to that is really important and uh, and I think, uh, nick cave is really inspirational and how he's responding to it. Anyway, I really wanted to share that with you. I thought it was worthwhile and please, if you can like subscribe, if you can give me a rating on sort of Apple or Spotify, if you're listening on either of those apps or whichever app you're listening to, if you're on YouTube or Rumble, you can write a reply as well and like, share, comment all those things. So please sort of give me a little bit more traction, get this word out there, because I'm trying to share things that I'm finding that are really inspirational and special and hopefully they will resonate with some other people as well and be useful for other people as well. Anyway, thank you for listening and watching and and I will see you all again next week. Thanks so much. Bye.

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