Turning Pain Into Purpose - Episode 111
Today's episode is extra special. I sit down with Dr. Kimberly Harms, and let me tell you, this conversation touched my heart in ways I didn’t expect. Kim has been through so much—losing her son, husband, and mother—but she has learned how to find joy again. She shares her journey of love, loss, and healing and gives us real tips on how to prepare for the future while still living fully today. We talk about grief, making peace with death, and leaving behind a legacy of love. If you or someone you know has ever faced loss, this episode will inspire you. Grab some tissues and listen in!
About our guest
Dr. Kimberly Harms has been around the block in life. She has served as a Commissioned Officer in the United States Public Health Service, a dental school professor, a grief counselor, a death doula, a civil mediator, a clinical dentist with her late husband Jim in Farmington MN, a school board Chair, President of an international women’s organization, the first woman President of the Minnesota Dental Association, a National Spokesperson for the American Dental Association (21 years), Coach for Widows, an award-winning, best selling author and international speaker on the topics of grief, conflict and legacy planning. She has also suffered many personal losses, including the deaths by suicide of her mother and son and the death by broken heart of her husband after their son’s death. Her most important role now is mother to her two surviving children and grandmother to 6 precious grandchildren.
Dr. Kimberly Harms' Website
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema: [00:00:00] Ooh, you guys, before I read this bio, I just have to say that never in my life have I cried so much during a podcast interview. So I apologize in advance, but I think you guys are going to get so much out of this interview and I hope you can share it with other people. Yeah, let me introduce this guest.
So Dr. Kimberly harms has been around the block in life. She served as a commission officer in the United States public health service, a dental school professor, grief counselor, a death doula, a civil mediator, a clinical dentist with her late husband, Jim in Farmington, Minnesota. A school board chair, president of an international women's organization, the 1st woman president of the Minnesota Dental Association, a national spokesperson for the American Dental Association for 21 years, a coach for widows
[00:01:00] an award winning, bestselling author and international speakers on topics of grief, conflict, and legacy planning. She also suffered many personal losses, including the death by suicide of her mother and son and the death by broken heart of her husband after their son's death. Her most important role now is the mother of her two surviving children and grandmother to her six precious grandchildren.
All right, my financially intentional people. I am joined by Kim Harms. We're going to have a conversation that a lot of people don't like to have. And it's around death, but in. Empowering you in dealing with that and how we can better cope. And Kim has an incredible personal story of a lot of love and a lot of loss and a lot of lessons that we can impart on our [00:02:00] lives.
So thank you so much, Kim, for joining us. I really appreciate you being here.
Kim Harms: Oh, thank you so much for inviting me. This is a fabulous opportunity for me. Thank you.
Naseema: Of course. So just go ahead. You have so much experience. I don't even know where you want to start, but just give the people a taste of who you are and the work that you do.
Kim Harms: I've been around the block. I'm a baby boomer. I'm 68 years old. I'm a grandma. And I just have been through a lot in my life and I've learned a lot and I have learned that you can have no matter what happens in your life. And I've lost a mother and a son to suicide. And I've been in the bottom of that grief pit, sucking up the mud.
Thought I'd be there forever. Then I lost my husband to a broken heart. I was married to Jim for 44 years. I was married at 19. After my son died, he, he was just never the same. And I realize, and many of us, when you become a widow, especially you look around and go, what the heck? Who am I now?
And I was a dentist and I had to give up [00:03:00] dentistry because I had nerve damage in my drilling fingers of all places. So I had to give it, my career, I identified with that and identified as a wife and a mother and it all went kapooey. It's all that stuff is gone and all the plans that I made for retirement.
My husband and we built this beautiful cabin on the up in northern Minnesota that we're going to retire to and that didn't happen in either. So that no matter we have to realize, first of all, we don't have control of our lives. We can plan and we can set goals and that's great.
But sometimes they don't work out and we have to realize that we are enough alone and we can have joy in our lives alone. No matter what happens to us. And it is such. A good place to live when you can live in joy, because I've been at the bottom of that pit for a long time. I was going to live there. I bought curtains for it, and I just learned that we can live in joy, but it takes work and it takes a desire to get there, but the benefits are so wonderful.
Naseema: love that live in joy. I think we're so [00:04:00] inundated with so many negative messages of doom and gloom that is hard to come back to and find that joy that we can live in and I just, I want to take a moment to just acknowledge the fact of how powerful just that message alone is and how much she likes.
Oftentimes we don't know that we need to hear that and we hear it and it's really touching. I really appreciate you sharing that. But, how did you like get out of that place? Like you basically lost everything, your identity, your family, your everything that you worked hard for, like what stopped you from giving up?
Kim Harms: I have a strong face, so I think God didn't tell you that. I just have to say that people interpret that is however they will. But I did, all the way through my life, I had people that pick me up when I was down. I had people that comforted me [00:05:00] when I was down. I call them my little angels.
I haven't had any supernatural experiences, but I think still think they're angels. And 1 of them was very an unusual situation. This is after my son died and, my son, Eric was this beautiful boy. He was loving, kind, caring, compassionate and incredibly talented. He was recruited by Columbia University to study in their engineering program and that was his dream school because he was also a brilliant jazz pianist.
So he thought, oh, my gosh, I can study. Engineering and do piano in New York City. What the heck? He was on top of the world and he went to Columbia. He had the best, best 1st semester. He was elected to student government. What the heck? Again at Columbia, because he didn't downgrade any of the other opponents.
He just. Told the kids what he was going to do, and he was just had such grace and he was he was in the jazz program. He was just living his dream and he came home that 1st semester. He was on top of the world. He made the [00:06:00] Dean's list and everything was going his way, everything and then he went back to school and 2 weeks into a 2nd semester.
His girlfriend broke up with him, which is a normal thing. That's what happens, right? That happens to us. Mhm. But this kid wasn't used to failing at things, and 45 minutes. After his girlfriend broke up with him, he took his own life as my mother had done 35 years earlier. And we have depression in our family and so on.
So I, anyway, it completely destroyed my life. It destroyed the life of my husband, my family. We were, I was just, I can't even tell you the depths of the despair that occurs when you lose a child. It just. You can't even describe it. And I was at the bottom of that grief pit and I was just planning on staying there because I had some, other things going on.
I thought, what the heck, I'm why get up? Because, I'm just going to get pushed back down into this place again. And I really thought I'd never smile again. I truly thought that. And I was coming out of my office and going back to work. [00:07:00] Anybody that knows when you've had a loss, going back to work is really hard, especially as a dentist.
Naseema: Yeah.
Kim Harms: And Eric was well known in our town. We lived in a little town and people. Every day after he died, we would meet our patients and they would want to, acknowledge the loss, which is a wonderful thing to do. And I'm so grateful that they did, but it was hard for us because, you try to, you're trying to get back into life.
And then every, every so often we have another person and it was very difficult. And I was coming out of my office a few weeks after my we went back to work and, I was in that zombie stage. And again, anyone that's had a loss knows that when you're in the zombie stage, you're dead on the inside.
You're just trying to look like a human being on the outside, walking through like this. I was walking out of my office. My husband was engaged in a very intent conversation with his cousin
Naseema: Mm-hmm
Kim Harms: saw me and he came over to me with his finger wagging it in my face and he was angry and I thought, I'm a grieving mother.
Don't like don't yell at me. I don't know if I can handle that. He [00:08:00] came over and he was really angry and he said to me, don't you ever allow your remaining children to feel that they are not enough. Don't you do that to them? And it was like a lightning bolt. Okay. And looked at him and I realized something so critical.
He had lost his brother at about the same age that we lost our son, Eric, and he felt that he lost his parents
Naseema: mm mm.
Kim Harms: at the same time. And I get goosebumps when I just even talk about this, because it was so important to me. He felt that he lost his parents. I could see. The pain in his eyes, he felt that his parents were so focused on the son that died.
They couldn't even see the ones that were alive. And you know what? I got that. I was there at the time. I felt, I could see that. I looked at my husband, my husband had just had a liver transplant 6 months before it was a really bad time.
Naseema: Okay.
Kim Harms: One more thing, right? And I looked at my husband who was doubly [00:09:00] suffering and I looked at me and I thought of my girls.
And I thought I can't do that to them. I can't do that to them. And that gave me that will to fight and kick and scream and just claw my way out of that grief pit. And it didn't took a long time. I don't remember the first year. Let me just tell you, it took a while, you just it's I don't know, but I was able eventually to get my way out of that pit.
And it was so wonderful, not just for me, and it is living at the bottom of that pit is a horrible place to be living near the top is good. And sometimes you get kicked back down. But I never got kicked all the way down to the bottom. You get kicked down. Obviously, my husband died down there again for a bit, but I realized how important it was to just breathe that air, breathe and to look at people and see my life without the shroud.
When you're in green, you're walking around there's a shroud you everything you see is, is [00:10:00] encased with that grief that you can't see things clearly. It was so important for me to do that. And it took work and it took dedication and it took fight a fight the fight and I remember that at the time I thought I can't have grandchildren because, I love now I had two daughters and a husband that I loved and I couldn't, I lost one of them.
I didn't want any more in the mix because then I would have other people that I could lose, that my odds were, your brain goes crazy, when you're everybody knows you've been through grief, your brain goes
Naseema: Yes.
Kim Harms: But in those years, and it's been 15 years since my son died, but in those years, I have my two daughters ended up getting married to wonderful men.
And I have six grandchildren right now that are just the love of my life and I just do, and, and I just want, I just feel that God sent me so many angels, people to help me lift me out to help like that one guy surrogate his finger in my face. I needed that. And I had my [00:11:00] pastor. My church was fabulous.
I had friends that supported me. I just had people helping me. And so I realized now, because all of a sudden your purpose in life, gets, I was a dentist. I'm not that anymore. I'm not, don't have a son, and now I'm not a wife. And then you're left by myself. What the heck?
And my children are on their own. They don't really need me that much. I'm trying to, I'm a raging pain. How do I just keep my, I'm there for my grandkids, but I'm not in their face. All these things that happen. And I realized that I've been able to navigate that because I've had so many, so many people helping me.
And so I really feel that my purpose and the purpose for many people that have been through these things now is to like, okay, what can I do now for the next group of people coming along? Because, we need to know how to navigate this stuff. So I wrote some books. I wrote 2 widows books, Naomi, the widows club for widows.
And then I wrote are you ready? How to build a legacy to die for to help us? Yeah. Learn to get ready to die because the next step I'm also a death doula and I'm becoming life coach. So I got death to a life coach because there's so much [00:12:00] joy. You can have in this stage of life. No matter what happens to and I would like to spread that word.
I'd like for people to understand that. Because, living and joy is just a great place to be, because otherwise we're living in fear and that's a bad place to be.
Naseema: And that exactly, I think that's where a lot of people are and a lot of people don't know how to shift out of that space because they just don't have the resources to know how the people in their lives that can help them transition out of that space. And so I'm glad that you share what you do. Can you explain to people like, what a death is exactly?
Kim Harms: So when my husband died, I didn't go as far down in the grief pit cause I had learned how to fight. So I went down and his was more of an expected death. And I thought, okay, what do I do now? What's the plan? Because, we plan everything, we go to work, we go to school, we finish work and then we retire.
And then what I find is a woman I'm in between that in that valley between menopause and death. Right? That's like, Hey, [00:13:00] I know what? What the heck? What? What? What the heck? But what I do now? And so I started to research that because I'm a research. I love to research. I started researching. And then, as I researched it, I decided we need to this is fascinating stuff.
We need to get the books out there. So I wrote a book and about basically how do you manage this part of life? And in writing the book, I realized I needed to know more about death. So I became a death doula and help people. Just like a birth jewel, navigate death and many times death tools are used in a hospice setting where someone knows we're going to die.
And I know I'm in the 4th quarter of my life because I can do the math at 68. Really, I can do the matter. We got so many years. But we don't know. Nope. The rest of the people who don't know that younger people could be in the 4th quarter of their life. I just, I had a beautiful 54 year old niece that passed away this year of cancer.
So we don't know. We don't know what life's going to bring. We don't know when we're going to die. That's just. Something we aren't given a list. So I [00:14:00] became a death doula to help people face their death. And we're just starting a podcast with another death tool. And I called the rethink death that life.
Because really, when we're thinking about death, we need to think about living as much as we can now. So that when we go, we've left a lot behind and I talk about death to my children and my grandchildren. My grandchildren all know that, someday Nana's going to die like pop up did. And in fact I know that this is a good thing because I want them to live fully.
And I had just a real quick story. My little granddaughter just was at the table a couple months ago, and she looked up at me. She was eight and she said, Nana. And I said, yeah, Heidi. She said if what happened to pop up happens to you. And I said, do you mean if I die, yeah, man, if you die, and I said, yes, what, what question do you have?
She goes if you die, can we still go to Disney world? And I said, yes, I'm going to go to Disney World. I want you to be happy.
Naseema: yes.
Kim Harms: And then I, and then I called my daughters, who are also attorneys, and I, who do my will, and I said, [00:15:00] okay, I want you to write into the will that you're going to have to take a trip on me.
I'm putting a certain amount aside for a family trip on me to enjoy your life, to remember that , the way you honor me is to enjoy your life after I'm gone. So it's, it really is, I've been having a ball just researching this and working on this. And, even though I had my hip replaced, and I've, I've got all those things that happen to you when you're old, but I just feel this is really important for us to really take that 4th quarter of our lives and make it useful.
Naseema: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Thank you. Thank you for that, it gave me a giggle. I love
Kim Harms: telling the kids that I'm planning a trip. I don't want them to look forward to my death, but, You don't want to think, okay, aren't you, I need a trip, aren't you about ready to go now? I I want to go that far.
Naseema: I love it. I love it. Can you talk about you said your husband died from heartbreak. Like what happened there? Mm
Kim Harms: Well, after my son died, he, Jim had just, he'd had liver cancer. Six months before my son died, our son died. [00:16:00] He had a liver transplant. Now they aren't going to give you a liver
If your heart's not good, right? They check every other part of your body out. His heart was evaluated as healthy and good.
6 months before our son died, but a year after a Sunday and so after a Sunday, I got treated for depression. I went help me. I need help my husband. I called him. I stubborn Norwegian farm boy, because that's who he was and he just super stoic and he, I don't help. I could manage this on my own and I think by not.
Understanding and coming to terms with depression and seeking help, it can translate into other problems. And there's certainly a lot of research will show that people that have depression of higher rates of heart disease and strokes, and things like that. And a year after Eric died, Jim needed quadruple bypass surgery and a valve replaced in his heart.
That was a year and a half before that diagnosis healthy. So I think he died. I consider him dying of a broken heart. And [00:17:00] eventually he actually died. From heart failure, but it, it's hard. It was healthy before Eric died and it just deteriorated afterwards.
Naseema: the literal heartbreak in the literal sense. Dang. Thank you for sharing that. Oh,
Kim Harms: so get treated for depression. And I think your generation is much better than baby boomers. We. For some reason we somehow separate the brain from the rest of our bodies. And I think it helped when there's a brain issue, but it's, I can tell you, I'm successfully treated for depression.
I'll be treated the rest of my life and I'm so happy that I because I can be useful to my family.
Naseema: definitely. Mental health is definitely taboo in the baby boomer generation. And I'm glad that in my generation, mental health treatment, therapy, medication is starting to be more normalized. But I think, in different communities is still heavily underutilized. I can say a community of color is definitely heavily underutilized. And women, yes, and we [00:18:00] carry a lot of trauma, there's that yes, you have the, you're a perfect example of not being afraid to seek help and get that help and utilize that help in order to help you transition. But I want to talk about 1st of all, you're like, oh, I wrote a book, just a sentence.
I wrote a book. Like, how did you have the wherewithal? And also the meant like the capacity within yourself with all of these things going on to write a book and, how did the book creation process work for you? Because that's a whole big thing in itself.
Kim Harms: I've been as a dentist and I wrote many articles, I was also a speaker, so I wrote articles and I wrote presentations. I know I spoke about grief and dentistry and other things in dentistry. So I kind of had had a background where I did a lot of writing and speaking, but I never put a book together until right before I actually did some widows books.
I put together right before that. But I, I thought I just yeah. Got into the habit of getting up [00:19:00] in the morning, which is hard for me because I get up in the morning early, but getting focused on something, sometimes it's a little hard, but I got up in the morning. I would just focus the 1st, hours of the morning in writing.
And I just found that this book just came out of me. It just, and I had, when you get to be 68, you got a lot of material. I have a lot of people, the first part of the book is built on building up a legacy and the, of course, the most important legacy and the universal legacy is built is love, just love people.
That's the greatest legacy ever. And then I started thinking about other legacies, like hard work, determination, resiliency, encouragement, all these legacies you can leave ,
and when you're 68, you have a lot of them.
So I just started writing about and who knew I have libraries in Rwanda in memory of my son. I've got 65 Eric harms libraries in Rwanda. And if you ever want to look for people. A group of people that I believe are the most amazing people in the world are the Rwandans. When you think about the genocide that occurred in
Naseema: Listen. [00:20:00]
Kim Harms: which neighbors, it wasn't even an invading.
It was their
Naseema: Is their neighbors.
Yes.
Kim Harms: When you think about that, and the way they manage that was to say, if to realize that if we don't forgive and reconcile, like, how do you do that with our country? Our children will live through the same horrendous things that we live through. What they did is, there was punishment.
There was, the killers went to jail for 20 years, so they did have justice, but the country itself focused on forgiving the perpetrators again. How do you do that? And then. Reconciling them, and they have little community called the culture courts, community courts that helped to when the prisoners were getting out of jail to come back into the community and explain what they did and then help the victim out.
Sometimes they would build the victim a house, or they would just, it would come to terms and reconcile with the victim. It's just an amazing thing. And I just to [00:21:00] give you an idea of who they are, which is completely. Changed my life and my view of things we were driving down there about 2011.
I was there and we were in a car out in the country. And at that time, the prisoners are still in jail and there would be long lines of prisoners and pink jumpsuits who would go out and they would grow their own food. So they had the. The sickles and the hammers and the hose and all these things that were the weapons of the genocide.
Actually, there'd be a long line of 30 prisoners with these. Weapons, the farming tools, but could be weapons in their hands and then they had 1 officer in front of them 1 in the back and they had rifles and I was driving down the road with somebody said that looks dangerous. They could there's 30 of them
Naseema: Yeah.
Kim Harms: and then there's only and he looked at me like I was crazy, which is why I think they're so wonderful.
And he said they wouldn't do that because they have nowhere to go. Their families would just turn it back into jail. They know what they did and they know what, and I thought, hello, how did they get so far in that way of [00:22:00] thinking and the way of thinking that we need to do what's right as a country, we need to all take.
Responsibility, do what's right as a country to rebuild and they rebuilt that country. It is one of the safest countries in Africa. In fact, my friends think I'm crazy sometimes because I go there by myself. This old lady going out to Africa by herself
Naseema: Oh, Africa is just a dangerous country. Why would you want to go there?
Kim Harms: that's what they're thinking. And I say, I say afraid if I went to Canada by myself and they said I said the State Department ranks Rwanda.
As a safety level one, just like Canada. In fact, if I go to Europe, it's more dangerous. So it's just interesting how, our thinking has changed, but that is probably, I just would recommend anybody who wants to go visit Africa, go to Rwanda. It's fabulous. It's the most, it's a beautiful place. It's like Hawaii.
It's just gorgeous. And they have gorillas and they have, all other things too. But the most important thing they have is an amazing people. And it's one of the cleanest countries too. They don't have plastic bags in the country. It's just an amazing
Naseema: That's amazing. I love that. Thank you for sharing that because number one, I'm a huge proponent of [00:23:00] going to Africa. I'm. American to I'm from West Oakland, but I did travel abroad to Ghana when I was in college and just the perceptions of Africa, especially in America is just so skewed.
Anytime I hear people big of Africa, I'm always like. Thank you. Thank you for sharing because Africa, first of all, it's a continent. It's a humongous place. It's very diverse, but there are some amazing places that are underrated because of these stigmas. And so thank you for first of all, breaking those stigmas within yourself, but also in sharing that I really appreciate it.
Kim Harms: 1 of the things with that too, is it because , I do these, we have 65 libraries all over the country now, and a lot of them have computers is we have these young. Men and women who are getting involved in and learning through computers, they have the same education available in their small little village and, northern Rwanda, as we have here, because of the Internet, because of so there's so many young people in Africa [00:24:00] that now are being able to get an education from anywhere in the world.
So it's going to be, I think, in 10 or 15 years, they're going to start probably thinking that way. Don't go. Actually, when my, when that priest that I was talking about that it was driving with me, when he came to America to go to a Books for Africa event, all of his villagers were saying, Oh, no, don't go.
Don't go to.
Naseema: That part, that part.
Kim Harms: You know, so it's think about that the same way. Yes.
Naseema: But these books, so you have a background in research and writing and that's one of your things that you've done. So like writing a book, like for most people, it's just what, especially for me, I still have PTSD from the one book I wrote. It's gonna be like overwhelming, but that's just been your thing.
And I can only imagine that it gave you A platform or a way to actually dive into and work through those things for yourself. So as much as you're writing it for other people, I [00:25:00] can imagine that is helping you be able to work through those things, but also work through it from a place of having resources in a way to deal with them.
So I love that. I love that.
Kim Harms: Very therapeutic
Naseema: Yeah. So, you wrote 2 books, you said, and then you wrote the book about,
, the legacy building. Let's talk about legacy building because we talk about legacy building just that, we only talk about the wealth building component of it. We never talk about.
What's gonna happen to help people transition like physically through death and dealing with those feelings around death? Because let me tell you something, anytime there is a death, the emotions are crazy and you can never predict the range of emotions that's gonna happen within an individual person, but in the family.
So yeah I just wanna get into that 'cause I know we can talk about that forever, but let's talk about this, this legacy [00:26:00] building. Mm-hmm
Kim Harms: Well, I talk about building wealth, but emotional wealth, which I think is even more important than physical wealth. So building a legacy, your legacy is every interaction you have with every person you have in your life. That's your legacy. And so it doesn't you don't have to win a Nobel Peace Prize, or, an Oscar and that stuff is not really that important when it comes to your children, grandchildren, right?
And the people that you affect your legacy or the people all around you. So building a legacy. First of all is love or anything you can give. I'm hoping to build a legacy of encouragement, in this part of my life, because I was encouraged by others. So legacies can take many, many forms.
It's what you're giving. It's the knowledge that you're passing down to the next generation. And of course, teachers have the best. They're in the best place to get legacies, right? Because they teach and help young people, but you might not be teaching. You might just, it just could be the people that are in your lives when you're building a legacy.
And in order to, when you're dealing with death and dying, what I found was again, as we [00:27:00] get older, and we see things happening around us. I know of many cases where the, a person my age who just decide I don't want to deal with all that stuff, getting a will and getting all the stuff together.
I'll have some money or I have some property and I'll just die and they'll get the property and they can figure it all out. Many people have done that. And I think you, most of us know that you're setting your family up for conflict and confusion and disaster. Sometimes when you do that.
Because it's so overwhelming for them to try to figure all that stuff out. What I recommend in the book, the 1st, part of the book is I'm legacy building. There's 15 different legacies. I talk about the middle of the book is on death and dying because and it explores different ideas about death and dying.
I'm a Christian. I think I'm going to see my family again. There are people that have other beliefs that. That feel differently and then the 3rd part is a workbook because unfortunately, you have to get all that stuff done to really set your kids up for financial wealth. Because you need to make sure you make sure your [00:28:00] will is in place.
Also have a really, really good solid health care directive available because I know with my husband when he died. He did not want to be in a hospital infected. The doctors and they don't quite tell you now maybe they used to when you're dying. You might, if you're in there and you're in the hospital, you're trying to get better and trying to get better.
And people aren't getting better. You have to start asking some blunt questions like, okay, what does this mean? Because my husband absolutely positively did not want to die in a hospital. He had been into before. She says, I don't want to be intimate.
Naseema: Not interested? Yes.
Kim Harms: just take me home. So I did, and he left a beautiful healthcare directive.
That clearly outlined that he did not want to go back to the hospital because as you're dying, you might want to get him. He wanted to just go die at home. And that was so such a wonderful gift to me , because then nobody really could question because sometimes when you take people home.
Certain parts of the family, depending on what their belief system is, might say you're going to [00:29:00] kill him. You're going to take him home and they're going to die. They could be, they could last longer. Sometimes when you put him in the hospital, he might say, oh, no, they're going to suffer too much.
When they decide, when you decide, and you leave that gift saying, I'm If this happens to me, I want to die at home, or I don't want to be intubated. I don't want to be resuscitated. That's a gift. To the family members, because they don't have to make those decisions and they don't have to be 2nd guest.
By other family members again, that's a cause of conflict right there. If other family members don't like the way somebody died. That can cause conflict. The 2nd thing you need to do is to get your will your trust. I would recommend a letter of intent with a letter of intent.
Something you can write up yourself. It just says, okay, guys, this is why I'm doing this. For instance, many people, my age might need some help in their last days. And maybe a family member is going to come to help and rather than paying that family member right away, which means they'd have to pay taxes.
If it's income, they just leave them more money in the will. Okay. They need to explain that they need to explain. I left so and so more little [00:30:00] more because she took care of me over this period of time. Because what happens is that when you die, your family members are in grief anyway.
And you don't want to confused and conflicted because of what you did not do. And the more you do really the better more. You're right. The more you explain the better. The last part of my book talks about how you can build a legacy binder, which is I have a binder. That has all of my stuff in it.
It's all in page protectors. I have my social security card. the titles to my car, any real estate documents, everything they're going to need to take care of my state when I'm gone is in that 1 binder. So they can just it's right there. They don't have to try to search through all my drawers and figure out where I put things.
But also include, so when they, when I die, I can just see my family, opening up the binder and they're and I'm sure they're going to say, oh, mom loved us so much because she did the work to put this together. But just in case they don't, in case they miss that part, I also recommend writing legacy letters, a little Valentine, the 1st [00:31:00] Valentine was written to be delivered after Saint Valentine died
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Kim Harms: the post death Valentine.
And most people don't realize that, but look at the impact that made. Okay. And so I write little valentines to my family members. All the time, and I have 1 Valentine letter, which just tells them how much I love them and how I was so happy that they were in my life and how they benefited me. It made a difference in my life.
And then throughout the month or so, every once in a while, usually it's. Can't sleep at night, I have to get up in the middle of the night. I write some valentines and I write a little valentine. You can get them on, online little bunch of little valentine cards and I write the little valentine.
So they're going to, when they open up that binder, they're going to go through all of this and then they're going to have little valentines and little packages for each of them so that they remember what a difference they made in my life. And then I want them to thrive and flourish. And be happy when I'm gone.
And I think that's important for all of us to leave.
Naseema: Wow. Those are some like incredible tools and I was, I'm like taking notes while [00:32:00] you're writing because I'm just, man, this is so important, and I know that you mentioned that your daughters are estate planning attorneys. Wow! But,
Kim Harms: after you die. It's gotta be clear.
Naseema: do you think that what they had to endure from their brother first it was their grandma, brother, dad um, influence in any kind of their career trajectory, their
Kim Harms: what they do, they specialize in dentistry, too. They're not dentists.
Naseema: Oh, they're, they're a state. Okay.
Kim Harms: Both of us were dentists. We had our practice. Our dream was to bring our children into the practice, right?
Naseema: It was like, no, thank you. Wow,
Kim Harms: both became attorneys.
That's where Erica's headed as well. And I thought, okay I guess I won't be working with my children. When we were selling our practice and my husband retired, my [00:33:00] daughter, oldest daughter handled the sale. And she said, oh, my gosh, she was doing family law at the time.
She said, oh, my gosh, mom, this is fabulous because it's just like family law, except there's no kids. So I don't have to worry because she was really, she was just getting emotional.
Naseema: invested with the kids. Yeah. That's why I don't do Pete. I understand.
Kim Harms: right. Because you just and so she became. A dental attorney to do she works in a practice acquisitions and when associates come into a practice, she works with their contracts and then she also does their estate planning. So she does just the focus basically on dentists. And then my other daughter, when her, she was a prosecutor down in Kansas City.
And when her children, she had her 2nd child she stopped working and then now that the kids are getting a little bit older, she now has joined my other daughter in the practice. So it's so my. Okay. One of the greatest legacies I can leave are these two daughters that just love each other. And so I don't want to mess that up by not having a good
plan. I don't want to screw [00:34:00] that up. That would be bad.
Naseema: That is so that's beautiful. Yeah. I love that. I love that. You raised to sounds like very successful daughters. You have 6 grandkids out of it. That's amazing. But also I feel you. I have developed this wherewithal with about estate planning that you have tons of insight about that. Most people don't and I get to see it every day.
If you don't know, my background is I'm a labor and delivery nurse and every time I admit a patient, I ask them, do you have an advanced directive? It's part of my job and doing that mission is part of my job is doing the admission and. Oftentimes, I can tell you on 1 hand in the 15 years I've been practicing how many people have had an advanced directive and I explained to them the importance of it.
Of course, I'm 1 of them. The other 1 was like, in the state planning attorney and then the rest of the other ones were like, Jehovah's witnesses because they make them have a state plans. [00:35:00] Are they advanced directives? Because. They don't get blood products, right? So they have them do their health care directives in advance as part of their religion, right?
So I think that that's very interesting, but for me I have a lot of things going on. I got a lot of baby daddies. And so I, I have to dictate who's gonna talk for me if something happened, but oftentimes people think, Oh, it's just going to be my husband. My husband is going to speak for me.
And the other day I had a conversation with this young patient. She's young in her twenties. And she was married. Yeah. But, very young, but very responsible, very much in love, like the beautiful couple. However, the guy was like, obviously I'm going to speak for her. I was like, no, because you look like a little boy.
Like what's gonna happen if her mama comes up here and it's just no, I speak for her. She is my child. She is still my child. She is only 20 something years old. She is still my child. And he was like, you know what? Her mom would do something like that. We have to [00:36:00] look at this.
Kim Harms: I'd be there.
Naseema: Yeah, For your kids, it ain't wrong.
They grow and this is what they do, right?
And so, I just want you to as part of your legacy, speak to the importance of those advanced health care directives and the ability to speak like your husband and say, I don't want to be intubated. I don't even want to be in this hospital.
Take me to the house. A lot of people don't know that they have that option.
Kim Harms: Yes.
Yes. And you can get those online. Just go to your state because you're different. You could just go online and print them up there. They're not even hard to get in. In Minnesota. Every state's different. But in Minnesota, you just need 2 signatures from 2 witnesses or a, yeah, that's it.
That's a word. When you're 16, the
Naseema: cuz I do this every day.
Kim Harms: a flip. The notary was a word. So yeah, you can get your notary or you can just have two people sign. So it's it's, they're so easy to do, but they're so [00:37:00] critical because I don't know what I would do. I if he's struggling or if he's not breathing or he needs more oxygen, I, and I think there's That he could live longer, my natural instinct would probably agree to take him back to the hospital.
So someone can help him, but that's not what he wanted. And he died so peacefully. Actually died twice. He died 1 time for 20 minutes. He didn't breathe
Naseema: It was like not done yet.
Kim Harms: but each time. It was just, he was talking and then he just went like that. It was just unbelievable. So I want to go he went, because it was very peaceful, but he said he was right.
And he went on his terms and he went the way he wanted to go. And I was so grateful because the day before, because we had that, we had a 24 hour interval between the 1st time and the 2nd time, and we got the whole family over. So that his last day was spent with his daughters and nieces all on the bed with them.
I'll snuggle. it is.
All the diet coke he wanted, he got all the food, whatever he wanted. People were waiting on him. He was [00:38:00] surrounded by his family and he had a wonderful, almost like a living funeral before he died and he went out the way he wanted to go out. And I just think we need to think about cause we don't like to think about death.
We don't think we're going to die. And so sometimes having those directives admits. To ourselves that that might happen. It's going to happen. Just
get it. it's going to happen. It could happen. It's good. You're going to die at some point. So it's just so critical to think about your family and the people that you love and know that this is a gift to them when you can do this.
Naseema: So same thing, ideally, like with my grandfather, we all got to say goodbye, we were there, he was laughing and joking with us all the way through the end. It was the most beautiful transition. He was talking, asking questions and close his eyes. Like he was going to sleep, and, he had the most ideal life.
He lived to 97 he was my best friend. We party together. Just like a fantastic person. And I couldn't have imagined a [00:39:00] smoother, way to. but still in that, in everything that went right, it didn't it doesn't make you feel good as a person being left behind, right? And I love that you have these resources that help people, Navigate through that, because we, we, we ignore it so much that, you know, we don't have the tools to help those people left.
And so speak again about the tools that you have to help the people that are left behind and what building this legacy these legacy things that you have in place does for that.
Kim Harms: love to have met your grandfather. It
sounds like he left lots of big. Like, when you take a look at people in the world and who you admire, it's these people that I didn't know personally, and probably wasn't famous. Didn't have a Nobel Peace Prize. But he left [00:40:00] a legacy. That was just amazing. And that's what I wanted.
That's what I want to aspire to my family, my grandchildren. 1 of the things that I learned after my son died, and then I lost my job because of my ridiculopathy and my drilling fingers. So I could no longer be a dentist. That happened a year after my son died. I was having a bad year there. I became a grief counselor because I wanted to learn more about how to manage this and this would get out of that pit.
Right? 1 of the things I found. 1 Really touched me. We all know the stages of grief, the Kubler Ross stages of grief, and the last one is acceptance. There's another thing in there, another group of tasks, actually, for mourning, and I clung on to that, and I don't hear about it very often, but they've, it's been around for a long time.
It's called the Warden's Tasks of Mourning, and I really clung to those because I like tasks. When I was Trying to get out of that grief pit. I like to work on tasks. Okay, I'm going to get this part done. I like tasks because tasks give you the feeling of empowerment that maybe you can do this.
The task or 1st, 1 is [00:41:00] acceptance, which was the last stage of grief. You have to accept that. It's happened. Okay. Your grandpa's not here anymore. All right. This is a new chapter in your life. And grandpa's not here. Accepting it's hard. The second part is processing the grief. Oh, my gosh.
That's the hardest part of all. It's just proper. It takes a long time. It took me many years to, for each 1 of the deaths. I suffered my family many years but I was able to do it. You're just everybody's different. Some people can do it faster than it doesn't matter. We're all individuals and we just process it through our own.
Way, but that process and the grief is a very hard part, but you set it as a goal that, I'm just trying to get through this, I'm trying to get through this, and then adapting to your new life. So adapting to your life without my son or
without my mother, or without my husband. I'm a widow now. What the heck?
What does that mean? What? I'm alone. I'm, I lived by myself. I never lived by myself my entire life. I got married. 19. What the, how do I adapt to this? You [00:42:00] have to accept and adapt. To where you are, and it's okay to be where you are, and I'm enough alone. That's not that's another thing.
We many of us have to struggle with feeling that we're good enough by ourselves. I'm enough alone. So I had to do that. And then the last part, which is really. I think I've gotten to is you keep the memories. I'm at the point now where I could look at pictures of my son. I couldn't look, I couldn't walk into his room for three years.
My husband would sit there every night. I couldn't even walk into his room. I couldn't look at pictures. I couldn't hear his voice, but now we talk to our children. Now our grandchildren about Eric and we have pictures of him. He was hilarious. He was just funny guy. And he was a Robin Williams type kid.
And. So we have so many fun stories to tell about him and now about my husband. I can do that now about my husband. I talk to my kids all the time about my husband. So you need to find the spot in your heart to put them, but not to allow that memory to cover you with a shroud to allow to live your life [00:43:00] as it is now with who you have now.
With that memory in a very sweet spot and live your life in joy and clearly and in the moment and we have the libraries in Rwanda really have been, they've been very helpful. And of course, my experience in Rwanda was very helpful. They're the best grief counselors ever, but you don't have. Okay. And I'm a little bit of an overachiever.
You might have figured that out. You don't have to build libraries anywhere. Basically, it's just take that sweet spot. Remember that person in your heart and live your life. Joyfully as much as you can, because if that person loved you, they don't want you in sorrow. The rest of your life. We don't want you to have that shroud over here.
They don't want you in that grief pit. They want you out of that pit. They want you to enjoy your life. As you move forward,
Naseema: I love that. I love that. This has been such an amazing conversation. I don't think I've cried so much in a podcast interview, but in a lovely way, but in a lovely way. And. I just feel blessed to be in a position where I get to interact with people like you [00:44:00] and build these kind of relationships.
So I appreciate everything that you do. Your work is so needed. Your voice, your stories are so amazing. I just thank you from the bottom of my heart for who you are and what you do and how you show up in this world. And it means a lot to me that I was able to spend some time with you.
And it means a lot to me that I am blessed to be able to share you with my audience. So I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. And I also just want to give you an opportunity to make sure people know how to connect with you, how to get all of your resources.
Kim Harms: yes. Thank you. Thank you as well for what you do and for giving me this ability to speak here too. I just want to give you a big hug. The best way really to find the resources would be just to go to my website, which is Dr Kimberly harms and D. R. K. I. M. B. R. L. Y. harms at. Dot com Dr. Kimberly harms [00:45:00] dot com.
If you go there, there's resources for the book. The book is on Amazon. There's a link to my book on my website. There's also information about my course. I love after life blueprint. So I'll give you ways to lead that love to your family after you die. So they know how much you love them. And that's probably the easiest way to get.
I'm also starting a new. Podcast with a friend of my death, Jula called rethinking death that life. So that's coming up next month. And I'm, and I would like to ask you to be one of the guests on my podcast. So, um, Anyway, so I'm so excited about that. And and just thinking, I just like to leave you with no matter what happens, fight for joy, just fight for it.
Fight, fight, fight, and don't feel guilty. Fight for joy. I think that's what I just like to leave everybody with. It's so worth it.
Naseema: I'm a born fighter, but to fight for joy is better than anything else you can fight for. So I'm taking those words to heart like you just don't know, but thank you, Dr. Kimberly harms. You [00:46:00] are the bomb. We, I love every minute chatting with you and I just wish you all the best. Thank you so much.
Kim Harms: Thank you back at you and we'll talk soon.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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