Thomas Pisello 0:02
I have a really special guest and she is the author of the book, A Heart Returned. She is Juliette Brisman. Juliette is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist LMFT.
She’s the author of this book. And it’s the story of the life and family she created with her husband, Mark, and the tragic loss that she did experience on September 11, the journey of the challenges she experienced, and the miracles, and the purpose that followed.
Welcome, Juliette.
Juliette Brisman 1:06
Wow. Thank you, Tom. That’s a very nice introduction. It’s good to be here. Thank you for having me.
Tom 1:11
I absolutely love origin stories. Tell me how you and Mark met.
Juliette Brisman 1:18
Well, it was like many of those things that were never supposed to happen.
A friend and I had made plans. I had just finished, graduating from high school, and it was early in the summer. And she really wanted to go out, and for whatever reason, I wasn’t feeling it. I worked all day, it was a rainy night. And she wasn’t having it. You know how a lot of friends are. So she was determined to go out and I was dragged along.
And that’s the beginning of the story. We went to a very popular club, if anybody is from Long Island it was called Uncle Sam’s or Spit, depending on the night or the year that you were there, It was a very popular hangout for the 18. and over crowd, I think it was 21 and over on certain nights. So that’s where we headed. And she was there to track down a guy she liked/ Now remember, this is before iPhones and social media. So you had to kind of go and see if people showed up at places. This was in the 80s.
So, we went to this very empty club, and no one was there. And I was thinking, Okay, we’ll be out of here shortly. And my future husband, Mark and his friend were there, and they just sort of caught my attention. And I was really fixated on them. Not because necessarily I was, you know, drawn but something made me look and I was staring forI think a bit too long. And t he saw that and thought that was an invite to come over.
So that’s how we started to talk. And we realized that we had a lot of people in common, living in towns nearby. We had a nice conversation. I thought that was it. It was friendly. It wasn’t really flirtatious, really. When I went to leave with my friends, I said, bye. And I thought that was it.
But like it was fate, we didn’t leave right away, as we saw someone we knew. We started talking. And he kind of caught up to me right before I was out the door and said, you know, can I have your number? I want to call you sometime. And I said yes. And that’s howwe met. That was the night we met.
Tom 3:33
That’s amazing. And I was a little further out on Long Island at that time. And I did go some nights to Spit. So definitely the popular place. The book, you actually have a picture where Mark had saved the number that you gave him, on a card?
Juliette 3:54
Yes, it was a tiny scrap, I think I must have had a little tiny piece of paper. And I wrote my name and number on it. And he, just like everything else, he saved it. And I had it with his things. And I still have it in there.
There’s a picture of it in the book. And we have the first picture we ever took at a photo booth on our first date. So I have a lot of little mementos, and some of them are in the book.
Tom 4:32
That’s so special. And then you built an amazing life together as well. Tell us a little bit about that.
Juliette 4:39
Yes, well, that’s also detailed in the book. I was 18 and he was 19 when we met, and that’s very young, even then. And I wasn’t necessarily on board with having a serious boyfriend and a forever person. I was really always very mature, and only had a few close friends, and wasn’t so sure of the relationship. So it really took me many years to sort of catch up to him.
I detail that process in the book. I had said to him, “Look, I’m going to college”, he was going to a different school, it was going to be a long distance thing. By the end of the summer, I was very attached, but I wasn’t necessarily sold, let’s put it that way. The amazing thing about our relationship is that he was always very sure. He always seemed to be very sure about us, and he was patient, and very good about letting me “find my feet”. Really, that said a lot about him as a person that he wasn’t impatient. Of course he wished we weren’t going to different schools, but he didn’t really let on that much that it bothered him.
Tom 5:53
I am always amazed at how fragile it can be relationship wise that you might not have gone out that night. It was raining, you didn’t feel like it or, and you guys were so young and you might not have lasted it out. But as a result of that, you created a great family and beautiful children, right. Tell us about the family that you had with Mark?
Juliette 6:19
Well, we got married in 1993. And our daughter, Rachel was born in 1996, followed by William in 1999. And we we were lucky, we had one of each, and perhaps wasn’t necessarily sure if our family was complete, but at the time we we were raising our kids, I was a stay at home Mom, he worked in the city as an attorney, and eventually down at the World Trade Center, but down in lower Manhattan at first. And our lives were just really very wonderful. It was almost like a storybook. There were those really small issues here and there. But we really created our life together, and grew as a family and had our prospective roles, very traditional, so to speak. And that’s really how we built a very nice family life.
Tom 7:21
And then there was that absolutely horrible, tragic day of September 11. Talk a little bit about that as you can, as I know it’s probably tough even this many years later,
I think back of where I was on the day, and I was launching a new company with my late wife. That day, our press release was ready to go out and we had to pull it back. But that’s nothing compared to the tragic events and the uncertainty, especially that you were experiencing.
Juliette 7:53
Right? Well, for me, that really was a tragedy, but it was more that the protective bubble that I had around my life that had burst, and I talk about that in the book, I really had a very sheltered, upbringing, and my family never had anything significant happen. So this was really a huge thing. And so that’s one part of it.
The second piece of this was just like the day we met, there were a lot of things that happen that I detail in the book that literally helped me get through it. Twists of fate. Like, for instance, my sister who lives in Boston, my only sister, happened to be visiting. It was a midweek and she happened to come in with her two year old son. My kids had literally just started school, but she said, “Okay, I’ll visit and stay for a couple of days”. So I wasn’t by myself. She was there at the house. So I was really fortunate that someone just happened to be with me for that time period.
But there was a lot of uncertainty in terms of whether people had seen him. Was he there? Was he not? So that really made the day a lot more emotional ,where there were a lot of people that were in the office, most people got out. There were only five from the whole office of the many people who were there, dozens of people that morning. So the impression was that he was alive and that perhaps he had gotten out, but we just hadn’t heard from him. So there was a lot of calling hospitals and trying to learn more, especially in the hours at the beginning of that day.
By the time it was the evening, I had that feeling. I had not heard from him, but people were so hopeful that you’ll hear from him. Maybe he’s at a hospital, maybe he’s hurt. But I knew in my heart, I said this. I knew him, and I knew he would somehow wrestle a phone out of somebody. He would get a phone call to me, that was just the type of person he was. So I knew by five or six o’clock that evening. I knew that he wasn’t coming back. I didn’t have assurance of it, but I knew
Tom 10:03
And then you had to start picking up the piece, literally from that that day. Talk about,, certainly in a condensed version as you go into it a lot in the book, but talk about the children that had certainly a lot of questions, and a lot of feelings that you thought they would never experience in their life … Talk about the aftermath.
Juliette 10:30
Okay, well, for people that are widowed and have children, it’s like a blessing. And it’s a challenge at the same time, because you have someone other than yourself to think about, right? So that sort of, for many people, prevents you from falling apart. It sort of propels you to say, “Okay, I gotta get a hold of myself and figure this out”.
So there’s really not a lot of time for self pity or feeling sorry for yourself, as you are in go-mode. So that’s kind of how I was in the days following. But I was also numb and in shock. And I really, except for that first evening when I mentioned that I really had an emotional outpouring, but I really held it together most of the other time. And now that I look back on it, it was almost stoic, I was really in shock. And people that had seen me, family members, people in the community misread that.
I think that’s something people do with widows and widowers, where their responses can vary so much. People mistook that stoicism as if I was cold, or that I was not feeling the grief, or that I was detached, or there was something wrong with me. At the time, I even realized it when I would interact with people and they would be crying, and they would be emotional. And I watched this almost like an outsider saying, “Wow, they’re very upset. Look at this, like, wow”. And I didn’t know what to do with it.
I knew they were probably expecting the same for me. I didn’t know what they expected. But I found it surreal in the weeks and days after that they were more upset seemingly than I was. Or I wasn’t in touch with that part of myself. That was very curious to me. A very curious thing. And now that I’m a therapist, I understand more about it. But at the time, I didn’t.
Tom 12:21
Yeah, I definitely fell into that too Juliette, where as a man, and as a lot of men often do, they put on that really tough, stoic mask, like “Hey, I’m going to be the rock of this family”. And it really did get misinterpreted, especially with my girls, I don’t think they realized until I started this mission and this purpose with Growth through Grief. I don’t think he realized how hard the loss really did hit me, and how much it hurt, because I wasn’t crying. I was trying to be that strong guy. “Okay, you got to pick the business up. It was neglected for a little, and you’ve got to pick up the family and go o”n. And like you said, you go into go-mode.
I know for me, though, Juliette, that not only hurt some of the relationships in my life where I had to kind of reestablish the fact that, “Yes, Dad did care”. But it also meant that my healing process was delayed dramatically, because I really wasn’t healing. When I had that stoic mask on, I wasn’t in touch with the more emotional, sad part of my feelings, because I needed to “be there and be strong” for everyone else.
Juliette 13:23
Right. But that is part of healing Tom. It’s adaptive, and it’s protective. When your grief is delayed and you’re avoiding it, for many people that is what you need for your body, your emotions. That’s what you need at the time, until you can deal with or process what’s happened and what’s coming. So that’s okay.
I’ve realized that there’s no guidebook. If you keep the stoicism indefinitely, that can be an issue, but I think right at the beginning, whatever that means” the beginning could be months could be weeks, that’s part of your grieving journey. That’s part of what happens, right? But people on the outside, misinterpret that.
Tom 14:09
I want to talk about, and I’ll hold up the book for those who are on video. A Heart Returned is the name of the book and there’s a picture of a ring in the shape of a heart on the cover. Talk about this miracle. Oh my goodness, you have it there (showing it on-screen). I’m gonna cry. All right, you’ve got me crying.
Juliette 14:31
It’s not uncommon for folks to cry, and me too, when I show it to people I come to. In 2004, this was almost three years after the tragedy happened . It was August. It was the summer. At that point. I had done a lot of healing. I established a new normal, but I was feeling kind of detached and away from him. I was feeling a little sorry for myself. It was kind of “This is my life” and it was just really a kind of a “downer” time for me.
And then, I got a phone call from Michael Henley who was from the New York Police Department evidence and property control department. And he called me up. And this was odd, because I had, in the days after, I had gotten a lot of phone calls from police and investigators about personal effects that were on him, asking for identifiers and things like that. So it was weird to get a phone call so much time later. And I thought possibly, they were asking more questions.
But he called me and he said, “I want you to tell me again, what some of the things that your husband was wearing”. And I said he was wearing a gold Azizah, a Jewish medallion. And it was very intricate. And I thought perhaps if I describe that in detail, I could get that back. So it’s very unique piece. He had a black watch, a Seiko or something, just a regular watch, and he had a gold wedding band that was very plain, but it had a hammered edge and no inscription.
Those were the three things he was wearing. So I explained to him about those three things again, and he says, just matter of fact, he says, “Well, I have it. I have the wedding ring”, just like that. He says “I have it”.
So I remember thinking, “No, he doesn’t, right? He can’t, he can’t have it”. But he was pretty insistent. And he followed up and said, “When can you come down and take a look, and come get it?”. He was just really very matter of fact. Right. So I said, “Okay, I’ll come down there”.
So I arranged to go down to the city. I took my son out of preschool. My daughter who I think was in first grade, or being summer, maybe it was camp, let me leave her where she is. I’ll take him along. Because I don’t want to go alone. I didn’t think I was going to find it. So it’ll just be a day in the city. That’s what I thought.
So we go down there. Sure enough, as soon as I got there, I had my ring with me as a match. Right? I had it. And sure enough, he was right. He was right. He had it. But that is part of the amazing story. And I I know I’m doing spoilers here. But it’s really about the story behind it.
I said “This is three years later, and I’m getting this back now. Do you have any information about how the ring was found? Or what were the details?”. He looks at the notes. And he says, “yeah, it was found pretty shortly after, in the days after, you know, kind of in plain sight. Someone picked it up. So we had it for a while… “
Tom 17:45
If you think of the amount of rubble, and just that fact that it was just there in plain sight. And then that it was found right away. But then not returned back to you until so much time later just when you needed it most, right?
Juliette 18:03
Yes, exactly.
Tom 18:05
That’s absolutely beautiful. I know part of where you are now. And the new you and the new purpose you found out of this. I think this is so important.
You started to get help. And there were many organizations that were set up to help the widows and widowers in the aftermath. Talk a little bit about the influence of that. And then how you found your way down this path you are on now, in mental health and counseling, because you weren’t educated the first time around in the mental health field, right?
Juliette 18:42
Correct. Not only was I not in the mental health field, I had no experience with it. I hadn’t gone to therapy. My family almost didn’t believe in it. It’s sort of the “airing dirty laundry, don’t tell people your business”. It’s typical in certain cultures and ethnicities, where it’s just not something you do.
So I really had no experience in it. I didn’t know what to make of it and avoided it really from the very beginning. I luckily had a lot of support from a good community, I really didn’t need the outside help or therapy. I stayed with the people I knew and felt comfortable with and they helped until they didn’t. You get to a point where people can only do so much for you. And then there were things that only through professionals can you process or, or groups or peers.
So there was a point in time. and I detailed this in the book, that really all of my resources kind of dried up. They were really as helpful as they could be. So I decided to seek therapy for myself, and seek therapy for the kids. And I really was surprised by what I had found. I was pleasantly surprised. Not only with professional therapy and counseling, but also from the peer led groups for widows and for you know, helping children. And many of these people were volunteers, and they had been trained facilitators, and I was just so amazed by the healing and the effort and just how much they could do for us as families and as individuals, that I just remember putting that in my memory bank and saying, well, one of these days, maybe I could help.
And sure enough, that date came about, I don’t know, 10 years later, or whatever it was, I called up the director, who was now a different person. And I said, we were family members and I’d like to help. And I remember her response was, “Wow, we’ve never had anyone call before”. I said, “Really, I was the first person that called and said, I was applying?”, and now I want to, I want to be a volunteer. So that’s kind of how it got started. This was at an agency in Greenwich, Connecticut, called the Den for Grieving Kids, they’re still in existence, they still help families. And I was placed in the school district, where they have a school program during school hours, and they pull kids out two had lost a parent, sometimes it was a grandparent or someone significant. And I learned through this how to facilitate and sit with people that had been, grieving themselves. And that’s kind of how it got started for me.
Tom 21:11
And then you went back to school and got your degree in mental health and got licensed and then started a practice, right?
Juliette 21:20
Yes, yes. That was by chance. I wasn’t much of a student, I’ll admit that. When I graduated, I said, I’m never going back again, this is it for me.
And sure enough, with the encouragement of other people that I facilitated with as a volunteer, I would be with other young interns in social work programs, and they all thought, “Oh, you must be a school psychologist, You’re so good at this.” and I said, “No, I’m just a Mom and a volunteer”. So they gave me encouragement, I didn’t have it in myself, even though I knew I loved what I was doing. I didn’t have the courage, the self confidence to do it, and they kind of pushed me and said “Hey, why don’t you Why don’t you try it? Why don’t you sit in on a class or two?”.
And so I did very sheepishly and said right away, that this is not going to work. And sure enough, before I knew it, I was signed up, and I really, I was shocked. And I was so involved in learning. Everything is really based on the time in your life, and when it makes sense in your development and you know where you are is where you were supposed to be, and it just was the right time. And, I loved it.
I’ve been doing this for a couple years. And I just love working. I don’t just work with grief, and a lot of it is dealing with many different lifecycle changes and transitions in people’s lives, all kinds of things. You know, much of it is tied to loss. It’s not just death, it’s loss of a relationship, a job, and physical abilities. There are many types of losses.
Tom 22:49
Yeah, so loss and hurt, there’s certainly no shortage of either, when we start to talk to other people, sharing our experiences with them. I know sharing can really help to bring that out in other people. And it really was an important part of my healing process, turning my loss into purpose and into service. And I really don’t feel like I healed more completely until then. Did you have that same kind of feeling?
Juliette 23:15
Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. I almost felt like the purpose is in giving back. I felt like people have given us so much. And I know how valuable that is for people that are grieving to have resources in your family, your friends, but you don’t want to burden them. And having those volunteers are professionals that just did so much. It does so much.And it’s so helpful, that I wanted to be a part of that. That was part of what I was thinking.
And the second thing, believe it or not, was, I wanted to be a role model for my kids, because their Dad was. He was the professional. He was the guy who did this and that. And I felt as though “Yeah, I’m their mother”, but I really didn’t feel like I had this defined role. And part of that was I wanted them to see what it looked like to have a mother that was active, that was volunteering. I did it at first for them. And then once it got a hold of me. I was like, “oh, I need this”. This is not just to show them, you know?
Tom 24:23
Well, you’re helping so many other people now. But it really does help you too. I get so much out of every interaction and in helping. It really helps to reveal some things that maybe I haven’t completely worked on. When you’re trying to help someone else who needs help and is doing their own work.
Juliette 24:39
That’s right. It’s a two way street. And we’re students. I always say I didn’t invent the wheel. I’m just passing on information, and you can pass on the information, and we’re all kind of learning and trading secrets and tips, and that’s what we’re doing.
Tom 24:56
When you started your practice and certainly from your own experience, what are three areas that you think are the most challenging to the grieving widow or widower? What are you seeing in your practice and from your own experience?
Juliette 25:13
I think that there’s a tendency, especially early in the process to panic, right? People, once they get over the shock, or the grief or the initial kind of overwhelming feelings, there’s a tendency to sort of reach for things quickly, right? Whether they indicate, “I’m going to sell the house and move”, or “I’m going to get another relationship real quick, because I can’t do this myself”, or, you know, people tend to get very scared that their life is as the way they see it, is over and they’ll never have any joy. They’ll never have any security, whatever they’re thinking, they really bury that hope and joy with the person that died. So I think that’s number one challenge is figuring out who you are now, and that you’re still there somehow, and reclaiming that identity, that self. So that’s, that’s kind of the first thing that I try to help people
The key is to get yourself grounded, without doing anything super extreme, or panicking and doing something. Right. So that’s number one.
The second thing is to really try to have a flexible mindset, which is tough for a lot of us, right? We have a fixed mindset, where you say “I’m not that type of person, I could never, whatever it is, do this, go back to school, work outside the home or whatever you’re thinking”, right? You have this fixed mindset. So it’s really trying to encourage people to have a flexible mindset, Because you are what you think. So it’s really getting them to stretch their limitations and say, “Okay, I can be open minded in terms of my future, my interests … to be flexible and not have a fixed mindset”
And the third challenge deals with anxiety and forecasting the future, where it can be difficult to keep people present and mindful. Right. Once we once we get a hold of that anxiety, which is crystal ball reading, I call it right, this is what the future looks like. And it looks pretty bad, or it looks pretty lonely. Right? You need to worry about this week, worry about today. Don’t forecast, to ease your anxiety.
Tom 27:39
Yeah, we project what we were seeing today as the future. We are linear that way, as opposed to, when we think about what our lives were, like 10 years ago, or 10 years before that, or 10 years before that, how different it all is, right? And there’s no way you could predict or project.
Juliette 27:57
Right? Even if things are going well, you can’t predict if you’re going to land that job, or if you’re going to get that house that you put a bid on. or anything. You really can’t.
So it’s the same thing with your life, right? You may want certain things to happen. You might be prepared. But at a certain point, you really don’t have control over a lot of things. And that’s what the anxiety is trying to do is to make the Now the end of the story. Don’t do that.
Tom 28:26
Now, our brains, in order to help us survive, are prediction machines, right? So they’re wired to do it. And you have to get control of it, and bring yourself into the Now and make sure that you’re staying there. And going into all the regrets and the guilt of the past. We all have those about the one we lost, or projecting the sadness and the loss you’re experiencing today into the future.
Juliette 28:51
Right, exactly.
Tom 28:52
Julia, I know that afterwards. Especially when something happens so suddenly as what you experienced, it can be really easy to lose your faith, and be incredibly angry at God. Many widowers that I coach, they’ll say flat out “I’m angry at God”, and “I can’t believe that this is what He wanted for me and intended for me”.
You didn’t do that, and from what I read, you really held strong to your faith. Talk about that, and the importance of faith in healing and importantly, some of the miracles you experienced that certainly helped to reinforce that.
Juliette 29:27
Yes, exactly. I talk about this in the book. I really take you to where I was as a person, and sort of where I am now to some degree. And spirituality really wasn’t a big factor. It wasn’t a really large factor in my life until after, and I really didn’t know what my feeling was toward God or faith or religion. I wasn’t sure.
But the meetings that I had went to where the people, like you said had very strong feelings about how disillusioned they were. I remember seeing those people and saying, “Wow, I don’t know if that’s me, I don’t know if I feel that way. I don’t know if I could feel that way”. So that made me think, well, “what if I don’t feel that way? If I’m not angry at God?” I didn’t have a negative feeling about, but how do I feel about it?
So I started to explore it. I started to explore the opposite of the people that I ran into that were disillusioned, and focused on those connected with there faith. Does their faith help them? Are they in a better place? In the opposites let me see, let me score how they are doing. And I did find that, Wow, this does help other people. This seems to be a safe place. It seems to be a happy place. It seems to be a healing place. Let me try that.
So it was really by trial and error. And now that I’m a therapist, and there have been studies and research that people who have a strong spiritual base, and that’s not even religion, just spiritual, they say that tit is the key to overall happiness and overall contentment. Not even with loss.
So having faith as a key or exploring what that means to you in how spirituality or religion or both fit into your into your healing, or into your life is something that if clients do have that, I encourage them to explore it, or if it’s something they haven’t thought about, we talk about it, So I don’t ever tell people go do it, go to services.
Tom 31:41
I had it when I was young, as a teenager I didn’t grow up in a great town in Long Island and faith, it really helped me through. I don’t think I would have survived honestly, to get to where I am today. Then I lost it completely. And through the whole illness process, we went through a 10 year battle with cancer on and off. And it really wanes during that time, even more.
Afterwards, I definitely felt like something was missing, kind of like you did. And I went on my own journey. And in particular, about a year and a half, two years ago, I really found my faith again, and I don’t think my healing was complete, just like it wasn’t complete until I had found purpose and service. I also didn’t think that my healing was near complete until I found purpose and faith and could transcend a lot of the sadness by leveraging that.
And so I loved reading that about your own journey in the book as well. And I think that, you know, just sharing those stories, like you said, it’s each person’s individual grief journey, and each individual person’s faith journey as well. And I don’t think we can push it on anyone. But I think sharing some of our experiences can maybe help people to revisit that aspect of their healing and say, “You know what, hanging on to this anger with the Divine might not be a great way to go through life”.
And that takes me to my favorite quote from the book and you close the book with it. “We must translate pain into action, and tears into growth”. Talk about that, quote, what it means to you and who it came from?
Juliette 33:11
Yes, that is a quote from Rabbi Schneerson, which if anybody is familiar with the Chabad movement, he was the head of that movement. He was someone who had all different types of religious people seeking him out. He was considered a real influential person in terms of how to live one’s life. And the book is Towards a Meaningful Life, and it was written by somebody who was a scholar and really worked with him closely and wrote about his feelings about different things, different topics, different subjects. And that’s another thing, you’ll have to read my book as I’m not going to spoil that miracle about how the book came into my possession. And the quote is really something that inspired me that, pain can be translated into action, right? It’s something that is within us, and it could eat away at us, or it could be something we use toward healing or purpose. And that’s really a very fitting quote, in terms of how I live my life and how I run my practice. How I paren, how I manage my relationships in general.
Tom 34:50
Yeah, and I also love how you close it out with the story of where everyone is now, because the book takes us along the journey,, and I loved reading about where your children are now, and how successful and wonderful they’ve turned out to be. Blessings.
What’s the one thing you’d like to leave with our widowers, our growth warriors with today Juliette?
Juliette 35:17
I say that the widower should focus on their emotional health and stability. Do those things. first and focus on that. Get comfortable with who you are. before you go forward in your life. Get comfortable with yourself as he person that you know now, who is on this journey now without your partner, I think that’s really about looking inward to finding who you are now.
And you can even use the values of your late partner, even though they’re not there. And that’s really what’s helped me in my journey, is really taking Mark along with me sort of in saying, “Okay, what would he think? And how would he react? What would he do?”. Because you’re making decisions now, and you’re doing things by yourself. So I really try to bring that person, even though they’re gone, try to figure out where the relationship is. Figure out how you can keep that relationship with that person, even though they’re not here, and it’s changed. But that’s up to you to sort out how it’s gonna look. So those are the two things
Tom 36:33
A Heart Returned. Juliette, thank you so much. We’ll include the book in our recommended books section. I highly recommend it. It’s just a beautiful story of love and of challenge and of healing and of new purpose. Thank you so much for sharing it with us today.
Juliette 36:57
Thank you so much. This was a pleasure.
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