I didn't really set out to write a book. I started writing right after my dad was diagnosed and I would write at 2 in the morning when I couldn't sleep. I would ride on airplanes. I was just writing.

And early on I really had no intention of creating a book out of it. But as I was writing,

eventually, maybe six months in, I started sending chapters or essays to people in my life.

Like I'd have a conversation with someone about someone who just got diagnosed with cancer and I'd say, oh wrote this little thing it might be helpful to you I'll send it along and I would maybe post little things on social media and it became clear over time that I wanted to speak to this kind of pain. So I guess all that

to say like the book was mostly written before I decided it was a book and I think in a

way that was very helpful because it has a little bit of the purity of just storytelling.

Hello friends and welcome back to the Light Watkins show where I interview ordinary people just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, their heart, or their mission. And in doing so, they've been able to positively impact the lives of many others who've either heard about their story or who've witnessed them in action or who have directly benefited from their work.

Today I'm in a beautiful conversation with the author of a book called Touching Two Worlds.

Her name is Dr. Sherry Walling. And Dr. Walling is a clinical

psychologist who's been treating patients through trauma, stress, grief, and

burnout for 20 years and back in 2017 she lost her father to esophageo cancer and then six months later to the day

she lost her brother to suicide and Dr Sherry got to see what it was like to negotiate the grieving process from the other side which of course fleshed out her understanding of that

her grieving process far beyond the clinical research and she felt called to journal about her personal experiences

with much depth and nuance and then eventually her journal became the book touching two worlds

which centers around her journey in navigating that process of grieving after losing her

father and brother so close together.

And in our conversation, Dr. Sherry goes into depth about the grieving process.

We talk about how to care for grieving people properly,

how best to cope when you feel triggered, if you're

the one that's grieving, why we need to change the way we talk about suicide, and we also

went over how to talk to someone who's in the grieving process and if we're the ones in the grieving

process how to talk about it with others. Obviously grieving is a very personal experience but like all human

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