“There is no one right way to grieve; everybody grieves differently. There’s no time frame; everybody’s time frame is different. But when you’re in that time frame, remember that you are entitled to happiness… Make yourself much happier than you think you’re allowed to be.”
Grief After Loss Shows You Who Is Really There
When someone dies, plenty of people promise to be there. Many vanish after the funeral. McCambridge suggests taking an honest inventory of everyone in your life. Ask whether each person is a giver or a taker. Givers show up, or tell you plainly when they can’t. Takers offer platitudes and disappear.
For decades, she stayed polite and forgiving toward people who never returned the favor. It made her pain worse. Letting go of those relationships, even with family or coworkers, protects your healing.
Get the Pain Out Instead of Holding It In
Grief you keep inside tends to come back as illness, damaged relationships, or addiction. McCambridge offers two simple outlets.
The first is a gratitude journal. Before bed, write five things you’re grateful for. They can be small, like clean sheets or a roof overhead. You fall asleep with a grateful mind instead of replaying everything that went wrong.
The second is for people who don’t like to write. Scream into a pillow in a private, peaceful place.
She also warns against wearing the victim label for life, and she reminds grieving people that they’re entitled to happiness. Put on upbeat music. Watch something funny. There is no single right way to grieve and no deadline.
Tell Grieving Children the Truth
Children start to grasp that death is permanent around age five or six. Cover stories such as “Grandma is sleeping” leave them confused, and they often lack the words or the courage to ask. Give honest answers early, before someone at school does it for you.
Expect regression, like bed-wetting or clinging. Wearing a sibling’s clothes or holding on to a baseball glove is fine too. A grieving children’s center or hospice group helps most, because hearing another child say “my mommy died too” does what no adult expert can. Also read grief books before you need them, so you’re ready when loss arrives.
Grief After Loss: How to Heal and Help Grieving Kids
Grief after loss can feel endless, and most people around you won’t know what to say. Mary McCambridge understands that. She has spent more than 40 years helping adults and children through the death of a loved one. She has also lived through her own losses: friends killed by drunk drivers, college friends lost to cancer, and her 11-year-old stepdaughter. In 2009, a motorcycle accident added nearly two years of rehabilitation. Here is what she says actually helps.
Healing After Loss Starts With One Hour at a Time
Grief after loss is not something you outrun. McCambridge got through it one hour, one day, and one week at a time, and she chose not to let it break her. Guard your heart, let the pain out, and be honest with the children who are watching you. It does become less severe.
To hear the full conversation with McCambridge, listen here: https://tinyurl.com/Progress-and-Purpose-Podcast
Episode Highlights:
01:04 Meet Mary McCambridge: 40 Years Helping the Grieving
03:18 Guard Your Heart: Removing Toxic People After Loss
08:29 Gratitude Journaling: 5 Things Before Bed
13:17 Release Grief Without Writing: The Pillow Scream
15:48 Grief Myths: No Right Way, No Timeline, Choose Joy
19:42 Mena the Glorious Butterfly: Grief Book for Kids
23:54 How to Talk to a Grieving Child (Tell the Truth)
28:35 Find a Grieving Children Center Near You
33:17 Grief Book Lists and National Support Groups
36:15 Legacy: How Do You Want to Be Remembered?
Resources:
Books by Mary McCambridge:
📖 Holiday Grief: How to Cope with Stress, Anxiety, and Depression After a Loved One’s Death
📖Understanding Your Grieving Heart After a Loved One’s Death
📖Understanding Your Child’s Shattered Heart After a Loved One’s Death
📖Mena The Glorious Butterfly: A Very Special Book to Help Grieving Children After a Loved One’s Death
📖 The Adventures of Harold from the Hood Book Series:
🚙A Trip to the Park: https://bit.ly/40Lvv6h
🤝🏽Friends Like Different Things: https://bit.ly/4ocAQxq
🍟 Fun Time Lunch Time: https://bit.ly/4odUCJ1
😤 When I Feel So Annoyed: https://bit.ly/4l6WSPt
Meet Mary:
Mary M. McCambridge (“Mary Mac”) is an award-winning grief specialist, executive bereavement coach, author, speaker, and host of The Mary Mac Show podcast. With more than 35 years of experience supporting grieving individuals and families, she has become a respected voice in bereavement education and advocacy. Her work draws from both professional expertise and profound personal experiences with loss, enabling her to provide compassionate guidance, practical resources, and meaningful support to people navigating grief.
As Founder and President of the Foundation for Grieving Children, Inc., Mary has dedicated her career to improving grief support for children, teens, young adults, and families. She has authored numerous grief-related publications, trained professionals who serve crime victims, and developed educational resources used nationwide. Through her coaching, writing, speaking engagements, and podcast, Mary continues to help individuals heal, build resilience, and find hope after the death of a loved one.
Quotes:
“It’s so important as you move forward, especially in this day and age, you cannot surround yourself with toxic people if you’re going to get through the death of a loved one.” —Mary McCambridge
“You have to remember that you can’t keep all this inside you because the more you keep this kind of pain inside you, it’s gonna come back to bite you in the butt. Get it out of your system…because it’s going to affect you in some way, and you don’t have the luxury of that.” —Mary McCambridge
“There is no one right way to grieve; everybody grieves differently. There’s no time frame; everybody’s time frame is different. But when you’re in that time frame, remember that you are entitled to happiness… Make yourself much happier than you think you’re allowed to be.” —Mary McCambridge
“Unfortunately, most children are not taken aside and told the truth. They are left to their own devices.” —Mary McCambridge
“Don’t ever lie, because it’s going to come back. Don’t lie. Make sure you comfort them, the little ones.” —Mary McCambridge
“It’s traumatizing when you’re used to seeing someone and then all of a sudden they’re not, and you’re trying to understand and pick up the pieces to be able to navigate all the feelings that are attached to what you’re going through.” —Dr. Jim Price
“How do you want to be remembered? —that’s what it comes down to. You build on your legacy; you build on what you’re trying to do to help others and inspire others.” —Dr. Jim Price
“Be better, do better. Understand that life is short and you need to be able to prosper and grow and nurture those yourself in the way of having a better understanding.” —Dr. Jim Price
transcript:
Mary McCambridge: And I can say to your audience so strongly that no matter what you’re going through right now, I’m talking right to you. No matter what you’re going through right now, there will come a time where it will become less severe. It may not feel like it right now, but it will. And if you have faith that God is watching over you, that Jesus is there for you every step of the way, then you know there’s another place you will be in where He will move you toward. And so the biggest part is to guard your heart, to guard your heart from all the people in your life who are not for you.
Dr. Jim Price: Hello, I’m Dr. Jim Price, and welcome to The Purpose and Progress Podcast. This is the place where we explore how purpose can guide our actions, and how growth can become a part of our everyday lives. On the show, I talk with amazing guests, from educators and creators to everyday people with extraordinary stories about the challenges they face, the lessons they’ve learned, and how to keep moving forward. My goal is to share conversations that inspire you to live intentionally, embrace growth, and take meaningful steps to your own purpose. Let’s get started.
Hello, everyone. This is your host, Dr. Jim Price, and this is The Purpose And Progress podcast show where we share inspirational stories, motivational stories to inspire you and others for change, for the positive, and for the better. Today is no different. We have a wonderful, fabulous guest. She has overcome profound personal tragedies, including the drunk driving death of two friends, the loss of college friends to cancer, and the unaliving and tragic death of her 11-year-old stepdaughter, and a life-changing motorcycle accident in 2009 that required nearly two years of rehabilitation. Drawing on these experiences, and more than 40 years of helping adults and children navigate grief after the death of a loved one, she shares compassionate, practical insights on resilience, healing, and finding hope after loss. And today, we have Mary McCambridge. Nice to have you, Mary.
Mary McCambridge: Pleasure to be with you, Dr. Price. Thank you for the invitation.
Dr. Jim Price: Absolutely. So we were talking a little bit before the show about the ideas of grief and how people deal with grief, and your story is so incredible in terms of all the tragedies, traumas and stuff that you’ve gone through in your life. And how do you feel in the sense of your tragedy, I kind of have shaped you to be where you’re at and doing the things you do today. How do all those experiences kind of shape your mindset or just your overall well being when you talk about all the trauma and all the things that you’ve been through in your life?
Mary McCambridge: Well, I can tell you, if I didn’t have my faith, I wouldn’t be sitting here. That’s for sure. Christ has been my roadmap. There’s no way around it. I’ve been through some horrendous years in my life, and what I found along the way is that I had to intentionally decide that I was not going to let that break me. And when you’re going through something of such intense capacity, you have no idea how you’re going to get through it. Honestly, you don’t. You just think to yourself, okay, I’m just going to do one hour at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time. Because there’s no other way to do it. You are so profoundly in despair that you don’t know how to keep moving forward. And I can tell you that one of the things that was so difficult for me, especially when Angela had been killed, murdered, that’s what she did. She was murdered. I know that that might not be the correct terminology for this day and age, but that’s what happened. It took us 18 years to solve that crime, and it completely devastated the marriage I was in with her father. It took us another two years to get to trial, a whole month to have the trial, and the person only received nine years to life because he had been juvenile at the time.
So in New York State, if you’re 15 years or younger and you kill someone, you don’t serve an adult sentence, which would have been 25 to life. So all of those additional tragedies that happened as a result of this really puts you in a bitter place. Unfortunately, even when my friends were killed by drunk drivers when I was in high school, those people didn’t go to jail. They weren’t even charged with drunk driving. Society acts like it’s no big deal, and so the people who are left behind have to learn how to cope with all of this. Have to decide, are they going to be a victim the rest of their life, or not? And I can say to your audience so strongly that no matter what you’re going through right now, I’m talking right to you. No matter what you’re going through right now, there will come a time where it will become less severe. It may not feel like it right now, but it will. And if you have faith that God is watching over you, that Jesus is there for you every step of the way, then you know there’s another place you will be in where He will move you toward. And so the biggest part is to guard your heart, to guard your heart from all the people in your life who are not for you. Now, I know that sounds really terrible because we’re supposed to forgive, and we’re supposed to be nice, and we’re supposed to do the right thing. And I did the right thing for very, very many decades, but it did not help me. It made it worse because I was trying to be a good person, but the people around me were not being the good person.
And so I want your audience to know that it’s so important as you move forward, especially in this day and age, you cannot surround yourself with toxic people if you’re going to get through the death of a loved one because there are going to be plenty of people who are going to say to you, oh, I’ll be there for you. And they come to the funeral, and they give you all these platitudes, and you believe it because you need to believe it. But it doesn’t work out that way. I want you to understand that there’s going to come a time where you’ll be sitting in your house and wondering where all those people who said they’d be there for me, but they’re not there. And they’re not going to be there, and it makes you really angry because you’re like, how come they’re not here? They said they would be here. But unfortunately, they just say what they think you want to hear at the time, and that does you no good. So it’s more important that you look at all the people in your life and think clearly about every single one, and think to yourself, are they really for me, or not? Okay, most of them are not. They’re takers, and you’re looking for the people in your life who are givers. And if you surround yourself with the givers in your life, you will be so better off. So much better off, because a giver gives from their heart. They give to make sure that you are well. They give as much as they can. And if they can’t, they say so. They are very upfront about it. No, I’d love to be able to go to the movies with you Friday, but I have X, Y, Z to do. And you’re fine with that. And you say that everybody’s in the open. It’s not a big secret. It’s not like someone will say, sure, I’ll go with you on Friday night, and then they don’t show up at all. That’s worse. It’s terrible.
It’s really important that you take an inventory of the people in your life. Those that are not for you, you have to let them go. That can be family, it could be friends, it could be coworkers. You come to work and everybody’s all nicey-nicey to each other, but they don’t have your best interests at heart, unfortunately. So it’s more important that you take the time to pray, and ask the Lord to give you guidance every day. Thank Him for everything you have. The most important thing you can do for yourself is get a journal. I have a collection called and you could find them on Amazon. You could find them on Mary Mac. Info. But I want you to get a journal because it’s really important that every night before you go to bed, you write five things that you’re grateful for. And you would say, well, why do I have to do that? Because when you go to sleep, you go to sleep with a grateful heart. You go to sleep with a grateful mind. And then you wake up in the morning and you’ll feel better instead of worrying about all the things that you know went wrong today. All the things that are not coming together for you, you’re dwelling on the good things in life. You’re dwelling on all the goodness that comes your way, and it could be the easiest thing. It could be, I have clean sheets to sleep on tonight. I have a roof over my head. And even if I live in my car, I have a car to live in right now. And with everything that’s going on in our world, it doesn’t look like things are going to be getting all that much better.
So we need to be thinking to ourselves, what can I do in my life? How can I think that I am motivated every day to make something better of my life? I might not have everything I had before. I understand that there are places in this world who have a lot less than we do, and it’s really important for you to realize that you can do anything you put your mind to. It might not be the perfect thing. It might mean you have to go live with someone else, and maybe we’re going to go back to the ’50s where grandma, mom, dad and all the kids all lived together in one big house. When I was quite young, my nana on my Italian side, that’s how they lived. They had a huge house, you know many stories. And in all different stories, there are different family members, and that’s how they had to do it to survive during hard times. And it looks like we might be getting to that point. I just want to let you know that you are capable of anything you put your mind to. You are thoroughly capable of anything. And if you stick close to the Lord, any time you are afraid, just talk to Him. Talk to Him like He’s your best friend, because He is.
Dr. Jim Price: Absolutely. I do the same. And a lot of times it is about who you surround yourself with too. When you talk about toxic people, it’s maybe family members, friends and stuff like that. All those things kind of play a role if you’re healing and trying to heal. If somebody drinks a lot and then they went to rehab, and now they stop drinking, but then they go back to the same neighborhoods and hanging out with the same folks who are doing the drinking, having a relapse, and then the next, it definitely can be connected to who you surround yourself with in that aspect. I love to talk about the journal aspects of it too. Could you touch upon that a little bit more? About the journal part.
Mary McCambridge: Actually, I have four different journals that I developed with five different covers, pretty covers. Mountains, sea, ocean, daisies, teacups, real pretty things to make you feel good when you pick it up. And one of them is called My Journal, which you could use for basically anything. The next one is My Grief Journal, My Remembrance Journal, to talk all about the person who died and write to them in that journal. And The Gratitude Journal, which I touched on. So picking up any of those will help you along your journey, because you have to remember that you can’t keep all this inside you. You just can’t. Because the more you keep this kind of pain inside you, it’s going to come back to bite you in the butt. Now, that could be with illness. It could be with poor relationships. It could be going down the road, as you mentioned, Dr. Price, about alcoholism, or drug addiction, or getting involved with gangs or people who are not for you. You don’t want that, so I encourage you to get it out of your system.
Now, if you’re not a writer, that’s okay. I have an idea for you. So you go and take a pillow, right? And you can either bring it in your car by yourself, go to a nice place, a park, or a seat, or the lake, someplace peaceful, and put on nice music, and scream into that pillow. Or you can scream into that pillow in your bathroom, or you can do it in your bedroom when there’s nobody home. Do it in private, and just scream. And whether you’re screaming at God, because we’ll touch on that in a minute, or whether you’re screaming at the person who died because they left you too soon, or the manner in which they left you, okay, or you’re just screaming because you feel completely out of control and you don’t know how the hell you’re going to get through this, okay? You don’t know, and so scream that out into the pillow. Now let’s touch back on the, now I had a senior moment.
Dr. Jim Price: It’s okay. It’s okay. Hey, we are all in the same thing.
Mary McCambridge: Well, my goodness, right?
Dr. Jim Price: Yeah. Progress in the best way we can.
Mary McCambridge: My God, I just want you to understand that you can’t hold it in. You just can’t because it’s going to affect you in some way, and you don’t have the luxury of that. You can’t play victim. Whatever you do, please do not play victim. Unfortunately, when we were involved with parents of murdered children, there were so many people who wore that as a badge of some kind. They would say, well, I’m the parent of a murdered child. And I thought to myself, that is not a badge you want to carry forever. It’s not healthy for you emotionally, physically. It’s not healthy, and so I encourage you to never play victim. Even if the person who died a violent death like the murder, or they took their life, or they had a tragic car accident and they died instantaneously, that sudden death is a completely different type of death than a person who may have died of cancer or elongated illness like a Lou Gehrig’s disease, something that was a chronic illness and it took very many years to complete itself, unfortunately, like Parkinson’s, something like that, every single type of death is different. How you approach it is different. How you grieve for those people are completely different. And also too, just a few myths about grief. First of all, there is no one right way to grieve. Everybody grieves differently, and there is no time frame. Everybody’s time frame is different. But when you’re in that time frame, I want to make sure that you remember that you are entitled to happiness. Even when you feel so miserable, even when you’re grieving someone’s death, you’re entitled to be happy. You’re entitled to put on happy music, dance around the house, make yourself much more happy than you think you’re allowed to be. Don’t fall into that trap. Go to a happy movie, watch funny things on TV, watch funny movies, funny skits, comic nights. You know that will all help build your body up.
***Looking for books that spark imagination, and teach valuable lessons? The Adventures of Harold From The Hood has four wonderful titles: A Trip to the Park, Friends Like Different Things, Fun Time Lunch Time, and When I Feel So Annoyed. Kids can enjoy animated videos, fun coloring pages, and interactive activity books that make learning about empathy, friendship, and social skills exciting. All books are available on every platform. Dive in today at jimpricebooks.education. jimpricebooks.education. Stay blessed.
Dr. Jim Price: Sometimes, trying to understand grief can definitely be something that is difficult. I know, Mary, that you’ve actually put together a book that goes into a lot of elements of that, and how to deal, heal and understand grief. Even with myself, grief is something that sometimes you never really, the sadness goes less and less, but you still deal with that. You know those aspects of the tragedy, the trauma of losing someone, can you touch upon that with your book that you have, and maybe even show it?
Mary McCambridge: Well, actually, I have four books on grief. One is on the holidays to help people to deal with. The holidays that are coming up and how to deal with them. One book is called Understanding Your Grieving Heart After a Loved One’s Death. That’s for all adults to help them to better understand what they’re going through. The next book is Understanding Your Child’s Shattered Heart After a Loved One’s Death, and that’s for adults to read so they know how to help grieving children. And the most recent book I’ve created is called Mena the Glorious Butterfly. She’s right there behind me. Can you see her?
Dr. Jim Price: Absolutely, that’s so beautiful.
Mary McCambridge: Beautiful book. It really is. It’s 8×10. It has 50 pages. Usually, a children’s book is between 24 and 32 pages. But Dr. Price, I had so much to say. I couldn’t do it, so I had to go to 50 pages. So when you open this, the first page, this book is especially four. Now that was very important to me because whether a parent’s giving it to a child or someone’s buying it for a different child, they get to put their name in the cloud, and write whatever they want if they do. And then the first page is Mena. There’s Mena, and she says, hi, I’m Mena. This is my job. I come to help children who are grieving. And then it goes on. And these are some of the children, that’s Victoria and Matthew. Victoria lost her sister, and Matthew lost his dad. And so I wanted to have one lose a sibling, one lose a parent. And then as the book progresses, Mena answers their questions. She flies into their lives. They’re in a park, and she knows them. And Matthew says, how do you know me? And she says, I was told to come and visit you. I was called to visit you. And so he says, nobody understands me, Mena. And she says, Matthew, I understand you. What’s on your mind? And so they start to have this conversation, and everything, every page talks about different issues. Children don’t really know what a funeral is. This is for 5 to 12 years old. Okay. So for very young children, it’s a little bit too much. You have to read it to them if the child is like three or four. But I have to tell you, at that age, they really don’t know what death is anyway. It’s not till they get to be like five, six where they start to realize the permanence. Like daddy’s not coming home. I don’t know why he’s not coming home, but he’s not here. So Mena starts to tell them the truth. Because unfortunately, most children are not taken aside and told the truth. They are left to their own devices, which always bothered me. And a lot of adults have horrible memories when family members died and nobody said anything to them. There was this one movie a long time ago called . I think it was with Whoopi Goldberg, and she was taking care of a little girl. Do you remember that movie?
Dr. Jim Price: Yeah. Little Corrina.
Mary McCambridge: Yeah. It was based in the 1950s, I think. The mother died, and the father had to go to work. And so in this movie, there is a scene where a furniture company is delivering furniture that the mother had ordered before she died, and Whoopi Goldberg is taking care of her. She goes to answer the doorbell, and they say, we have the furniture that Mrs. so and so ordered, and she doesn’t know what to say. And she says, oh, she’s not here. She’s in the bathtub. And the little girl goes and runs into the bathroom to see where her mother is, but she’s not there. So that’s a perfect example of how we try to cover up on what’s really going on. Or we tell the children, oh, grandma’s sleeping. Well, when is she going to wake up? Or we tell them that grandma went to go see aunt Joe. Well, she never came home. And why are you throwing out Grandma’s clothes?
Dr. Jim Price: Yep.
Mary McCambridge: They just don’t have the vocabulary to ask, and they’re afraid to ask. And most parents, they don’t have the courage. They don’t have the courage to sit their little one down and tell them this stuff. So that’s why I wrote this book. Because now, you can take me into the glorious butterfly, and you can have her with the other two books that I wrote, three books that I wrote, and have them in your home library now before you need them. So when tragedy does happen, you’re ready. You’re ready because it takes a while for a print book to get to you nowadays. And especially with this, the UPS taking longer than usual. Because diesel’s so expensive now for truckers, and so it’s gonna be harder to get them faster, or as fast as you would prefer to have them. And they’re not always in bookstores. You think you could go up the street to a bookstore and it would automatically be there, but that’s not necessarily the case. So what I would encourage everyone to do, because there are two groups of people out there. There are people who have enough courage to read books like this before you need them. And there are people who like to act like flamingos who keep their head in the sand and act like this is never going to touch me. And then when it does, they are shocked. They’re like, now what do I do? Don’t be that person. Be the prepared person no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
Please get books like mine now. Read them now. Read Mena for yourself now. So when your child encounters the death of a loved one, and let me tell you, it doesn’t have to be somebody in your household. You might have a little one who’s best friends with their little boy down the block and he gets leukemia. And now, your family and their family are trying to pull together to support both children. One day, the other little boy dies. Now, you have a grieving child who is really grieving, and you have to answer his questions truthfully. You can’t skip around on this. Because I’ll tell you why. Because when he goes back to school and somebody starts saying what really happened, he is going to feel miserable because you didn’t take the time to tell him what happened to his friend for real. And there’s going to be bullies at school, for sure. And Mena addresses how to deal with bullies. And what you need to do for your child is to find them the support they need in their community as soon as possible. Now, what does that look like? Well, if you are grateful enough to have a grieving children center in your community, you will bring your son there, and you will go with him. He will go in the group with the little kids, and you’ll go with the parents so that you can learn better how to help your child. If you don’t have that near you, then you need to go and find out if there are support groups at a hospice, or are there support work groups at some other center, the hospital that helps grieving children wherever it may be. And the easiest way to do that is just go and research grieving children centers near me, and see if you get anywhere. And if you don’t, then you just contact the ones that are there and ask them. Do you know any contact people around this area?
But I can tell you right now, there is no substitute for a grieving children group. Sending them to a psychiatrist who’s like 40 years older than them is not going to help them. Getting in a group of children who can say, my mommy died too. Yeah, that helps them. So be aware of that. That’s really, really important. Don’t ever lie because it’s going to come back. Don’t lie. Make sure you comfort them, the little ones. You have to realize that they may regress. In other words, they may start to wet in the bed again. They may cling on to you because they’re afraid you’re going to die too, especially if the other parent died. And if their sibling died, now they feel like, how am I supposed to be both children? How am I supposed to be the goody two shoes my sister was when I’m not that? And sometimes, they will wear the clothing of their deceased sibling, which is fine. I mean, they want to feel closer. They may take their baseball gloves and hold on to that. You may see them rocking back and forth like this to try to soothe them in a chair. Fine. It’s all fine. You know what I mean? There’s a lot of things, so it’s so important that you get my books, read them now, and have that knowledge. And when the time comes, you already have them in your personal bookshelf, and you can take them right down, reread them, and sit with your young ones. Even your older ones, read Mena to them because it’s very basic, but yet gives all the answers that they need.
Dr. Jim Price: Wow, that’s so amazing. I know, being a school counselor myself, I deal with kids who go through and deal with a lot of grief and stuff like that, it’s traumatizing. When you’re used to seeing someone and someone’s there, and then all of a sudden they’re not, and you’re trying to understand and pick up the pieces to be able to navigate all the feelings that are attached to what you’re going through, the experience and everything like that, I think that book is so helpful. I have an audience, and you definitely have kids. And even for the other books in your series too. Like in terms for the adults and stuff, there’s something for everyone. And definitely, there needs to be a connection with the kids and stuff in that passing to be able to have them understand and explain in a way that was more catered to them to understand better in that way.
Mary McCambridge: Absolutely.
Dr. Jim Price: Where can our audience be able to purchase all your books?
Mary McCambridge: I have Mena only out in hardcover. I did that intentionally because a children’s book needs to be sturdy.
Dr. Jim Price: Yes, yes.
Mary McCambridge: And so it’s worth the investment. It’s the thing that you’ll keep forever. And all of my books are evergreen. I made them that way. And the two books for adults in the back, you’ll find over 175 other books that I’ve reviewed, every one of them, and they’re all based on your need. So there are books on widowhood, suicide, cancer deaths, homicide, death of a child like four miscarriage, still birth, all of that. When you’ve gone through the stillbirth death of a child and your older child is waiting for the baby to come home, how do you deal with that? There’s a lot of nuances in grief. And so in the back of my books, I give you other options to go look if you have that particular need. I have an extensive list of support groups that are the national support groups. So for instance, want groups for widows, widowers groups for suicide survivors, both survivors of suicide loss, homicide loss, so many different groups. There’s even a group for twinless twins. It’s amazing what’s out there, and so you’ll find all of that in the back of my books.
Dr. Jim Price: That’s amazing. Your story is amazing. All your books are amazing. I know the audience has definitely pulled out a plethora of knowledge, understanding and tips on how to go about on their own healing journey in terms of grief, loss and stuff like that. It’s a topic that sometimes can be difficult to navigate. But if you’re able to do those things, and even include the children in aspects of trying to understand all the dynamics of death and grief, it can only be beneficial and helpful.
Mary McCambridge: I completely agree. I know that this is a difficult topic to talk about. But unfortunately, this is part of life, and we’re not getting out of here alive.
Dr. Jim Price: They say, how do you want to be remembered? That’s what it comes down to. You build on your legacy, you build on what you’re trying to do to help others and inspire others. And at the end of the day, how do you want to be remembered? How do you want people to portray the idea of you as a person as how you carried on things, and tried to help and inspire others? And this has been such a fabulous conversation. I think it is much needed too in terms of dealing with grief and things like that, so it’s definitely been such an absolute pleasure having you on this show today, and sharing all your knowledge and wisdom in terms of grief. I always like to say, when you’re trying to motivate and encourage others to get through adversity and challenges in their lives, that’s always meaningful. Always meaningful in that capacity. As I always close out, I said, hey, be better, do better. Understand that life is short. You need to be able to prosper, and grow, and nurture those yourself in the way of having a better understanding. So stay prayed up, and stay blessed. This is your host, Dr. Jim Price on The Purpose And Progress Podcast, and we’ll see you next time.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of The Purpose in Progress Podcast. I hope today’s conversation gave you insight, inspiration, or a fresh perspective to help you move forward with purpose. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a little encouragement. You can also support the podcast through the donation link in the show notes. Every contribution helps us keep sharing stories that uplift and inspire. Remember, your purpose is waiting, and progress never stops. I’ll see you next time.