Latest / The Bold Lounge / Annie Orenstein: Bold Lessons in Love, Loss & Healing

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Annie Orenstein: Bold Lessons in Love, Loss & Healing · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Annie Sclaver Ornstein.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She is a qualitative researcher, oral historian and storyteller who has spent over a decade collecting stories from people around the world.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Her work has been featured on NBC, nightly News, comedy Central, huffington Post, politico Time and Motherly In 2020, driven by the desire to share these stories beyond the walls of corporate America, annie founded Dispatch from Daybreak, a collection of letters written by women to their earlier selves.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: She lives in Connecticut with her husband, children, dog and chickens.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Lounge.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I'm excited to be here.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the one thing we didn't mention in your intro, so I'll just add it here is she's also the best-selling author of Always Sibling, the Forgotten Mourner's Guide to Grief, and we're going to get into discussing that today.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: We have that in common as siblings who have lost someone yeah, the club that they don't want to be in.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: We did not vote for this.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Anyway, we will get there.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: We will get there.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: So let's start with your definition of bold.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: What does bold mean to you?
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think that bold.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I think bold is incredibly personal, because I think that what's bold to one person might not be bold to someone else.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: But, I think that what is bold is doing something because it feels right to you, even though it's scary.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: I love that, and so I think that you know both of those things what feels right to you and feel scary are both extremely personal, right, because what feels right to one person might not feel right to another, or maybe it feels right but to someone it comes very naturally and to someone else it's a terrifying prospect, and I think being bold is doing that thing that feels right, even though it scares you.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just facing the fear, facing the feeling that I'm not sure, but I'm going to do it anyway.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Right, yes, exactly.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: When you think of your life, where is a bold moment that's memorable for you, that lives that definition or looks like that definition?
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: I've been thinking about this and there's like an obvious moment and there's a moment that feels tiny and insignificant, and I feel like I want to say the tiny insignificant.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think one of the things that the listeners have heard me talk about but bold is a continuum.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: It's quiet and it's loud.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Those are the two ends and there's a lot of in-between and they're all significant to you because it's personal, like you said, so let's hear it.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: So one thing that came to mind growing up and for a lot of my life.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: So one thing that came to mind, you know, growing up and for a lot of my life I did a lot of things based on how I thought other people would react.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Right, do something.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: As a kid made decisions because I didn't want to get made fun of.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: So what was the thing I can do that wouldn't get me made fun of or whatever?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: it is yeah, you wanted to fit in.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Wanted to fit in, and I've always been a little bit weird and a little bit different than everyone else, right?
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: And so I really suppressed that because I didn't want to get made fun.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: And.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I wanted to fit in and I knew I was a little bit different.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: And one thing that stuck out was I remember a day in high school where I had these green plaid pants that were ridiculous looking.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: They were cool pants.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: They were cool pants.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like, I like fun I had had them for a while and I was afraid to wear them because I thought I was going to be made fun of.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: And I remember the day I wore the green plaid pants and how'd it feel?
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what happened on the way to school I got in a car accident and what I remember.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I was terrified.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: And what?
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: I remember was standing next to the car my neighbor had driven by.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: They had gone back to get my mom.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: I didn't have this was the 90s, I didn't have a cell phone and I remember my mom coming to pick me up and my mom was still in her pajamas and I was wearing these green plaid pants and I just was like, well, this is, this is what I get for wearing green plaid pants you know, what I mean, and it was it.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: She was like she took me to Dunkin Donuts and then she dropped me off at school the car was fine, I was fine.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: And then I dropped me off at school, the car was fine, I was fine.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: And then I wore the green plaid pants the rest of the day and I think there was a little bit of like perspective in there where, like I had just gotten into a car accident, you know by myself, and she came and helped me and I went to school, and I don't even remember if anyone commented on the pants, yeah it wasn't about the pants anymore and I think it was.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: You know, those pants.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: It felt like just like such a big thing to do and then something so much bigger happened, yeah, and it was like a little bit of a perspective moment and I remember getting up the courage to wear those pants and that feels like a moment where I projected my personality.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, you are.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: My uniqueness, yeah, and that felt like a moment of being bold for me, who had really tried to kind of hide that for a while.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: And you were a teenager, right, yes, so that's even a harder time to do that, you know.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: So I think you know from the perspectives of the nineties, like I'm a nineties person, so in that sense it wasn't, I think, as harsh as it is now, at least as harsh as I think it is to be a teenager, meaning the social media and those type of things, like we didn't, like you said you didn't have a cell phone, I didn't have a cell phone, people didn't carry anything like that.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, so it was a whole thing.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: But just being yourself and standing in, who you are, and I'm wearing green plaid pants and I like chickens and I like a bunch of dogs and you know I'm going to wear a hat.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was something like for me, like wearing a baseball hat or, you know, not a cowboy hat, but I have worn one, but just hats in general I really like hats.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: But I got into, like the corporate world where, like you, couldn't actually show all that personality and I think there was actually at some point a no hat role.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Certainly in school there were no hats.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: So it was interesting, just kind of being yourself and I love that you did in your teens.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Did you pull that through?
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Then?
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Were you able to feel like that was the beginning of you going?
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be me and just starting to turn up the volume on it.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I think it ebbed and flowed for a while, okay, and now I am fully out there, me, yeah, but I think that it wasn't like a consistent.
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: Okay, now I've you know, now I have arrived.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: I think it took me a while to figure out what I actually liked, what my style actually was, without anyone else's thoughts or judgment.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Right, cause you would spend a lot of time trying to fit in, wanting to be friends or not be made fun of.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Probably that was the main thing, right, you know.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, you know I remember bullying and it definitely still existed in our time.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So you know I was bullied a little bit in high school and middle school I think less in high school, probably more so in middle school, you know, just by the mean girls or you know people that were models or whatever.
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: I think I was an easy target because I cared.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Like I think bullies like to get a reaction from people and I think I really wanted to be accepted and I really wanted that's such a good point People to like me, and so I think I really wanted to be accepted and I really wanted that's such a good point people to like me, and so I think I was an easy target.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Just because I reacted, I cared.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: You know, once I stopped caring, the whole world opened up.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: You know, once, once I stopped, once I started thinking like do I actually care if you like me, like I don't even like you, why do I care?
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I know what is that?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: is that all about?
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Like, even as adult women, like I think, in moments I'm like why does this bother me so much?
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I don't even like her, I don't even agree or align with how she thinks or her mission or whatever we want to say.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Why does this bother me?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, because I think it can creep back in right.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah for yeah, for me at least, I think.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: At times I'm just like oh well, she didn't like my post or she didn't do this or that, and it's just like.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I do much less of that than I did, I think, in the corporate setting, because I think when you're in that setting every day, it's almost I don't know.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: It's just a lot of relationship building, which is a positive thing.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: But there's also this do they like me?
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Not like me, you know, cause I'm someone that usually ticks people off with what I'm doing, meaning we're innovating, we're, we're doing things at an agile pace, we're not sitting around and you know, voting every single time we make a decision, we're getting stuff done.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: So that cannot make everybody happy all the time.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: And I think one thing I love.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: You know where I am now, so I, you know, I wrote this book, obviously, which we'll talk about, but I also have a full time corporate job in tech and I work at YouTube and I lead one of the research teams at YouTube and last week we had an offsite for a few days with the whole UX team so all of the researchers and designers on YouTube and I wore this brightly printed two-piece matching, you know, top and bottom to one of the dinners.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: And not only did I not think twice about it, it wasn't even the only patterned matching set I had brought with me for the record.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: But not only did I not think twice about it, but someone else was wearing the same pattern.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Not the same color, though, right, just the same pattern.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: No same color, same pattern, same everything, just a different cut.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Okay, and it was like that little high schooler, you know, in the back of my mind was like you found your people.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: You know you're around other creative people who are, who also like to wear bright patterned clothes and be themselves, be themselves.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't like it was exciting, you know, and, and we took a picture together and like it felt like, okay, I, you know, maybe I am in a world where people are similarly creative and showcasing their creativity, you know, outwardly.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: And I think the inner high schooler in me felt really good about it.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's good to be you.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: It should be the easiest person to be, but somehow in the middle, like I think between 18 and me 48, I wasn't fully me and you know I understand at work, you know you have to do certain things.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I don't mean like you can be a hundred percent you all the time, but if you can find a job where you can be the majority of you and there isn't, there isn't workly and homely.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I remember, you know, whether it was my mom or my daughter is like oh, that's the work tone right now, or that's the work laugh.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Or you know it's like what do you mean?
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: And I totally agree with them.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Right, you know.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So it's just nice to like be one person now.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And it feels certain times, you know it can feel uneasy because you're like I don't know if they'll accept it or they'll accept me, but you're just like I'm still going to do it anyway and that's.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: That's a quiet, bold moment, I think, for a lot of people.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so as you think about stepping into the book, can you give a little bit of background about your experience and as much as you feel comfortable sharing about your loss that you experienced in your life that led you to write this book.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: I am the youngest of three.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: I have two older brothers and you know, if you would ask me as a kid, annie, tell me about yourself.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: Having two older brothers would have been the first thing that I would have told you.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: It was the number one most important thing.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: My mom always jokes that she raised two kids and then her two kids raised me.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: So you're very close, yeah, and I would do anything they told me to do.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: I idolize them.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And we're all four years apart.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: So okay, four years older.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Yes, my mom said, as soon as a kid was out of diapers she was ready for the next one.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: She was like I could only have one kid in diapers at a time.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: One was out and then I could have another kid.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: That's good, that's a good plan.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she knew her limits.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: So my oldest brother, ben, was, you know, the leader of all of us and he was in the reserves.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: He joined the Army Reserves in 2000 or 99.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: So it was 2000, before 9-11.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: And he was very into international affairs and diplomacy and that was always what he studied and he thought that, you know, having an Army title and having that experience would be really good for him.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: And then we suddenly were at war.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: His first deployment was in 2006, to the Horn of Africa, and then he was deployed again in 2009.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: And this time he was deployed to Afghanistan.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: And three months into his deployment he was on foot patrol.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: He had gone out, he believed or as far as I know, he believed he had gone out to meet with a local official in town and was instead met by a suicide bomber and he, one other man in his unit and their translator were killed, and that was October 2nd of 2009.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: And everything, you know, my whole life crumbled at that point.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: We had this beautiful family and it all got along and, you know, my big brothers were my everything, and then one of them was gone, and how old were you when he passed away?
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: I was 25.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: I was 25.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: I was in grad school and I my brother, sam, so if I was 25, I guess he was 29.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: And he had a one-year-old and I was babysitting my nephew.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Sam and his wife were out on a date and I was babysitting my nephew and he was asleep and about maybe an hour or two after they left, they came back and something was wrong, clearly, and Sam was the one who had to tell me what happened and it just felt like everything fell apart.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: The world didn't make sense, nothing.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: It wasn't a world I wanted to live in and I had been terrified that he wasn't going to come home and convinced that he wasn't going to come home.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: And I had tried to.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: He was called up Because he re-upped right, he re-upped.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: He didn't re-up but he was called up on a stop-loss order, so he would have been.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: He had joined over the summer, so it was something like his service would have been up in June and he was being deployed in July and so he could have gotten out of it.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: At that point he was working for FEMA and he had worked for the CDC for a long time.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: He could have basically pulled strings to get out of it and what he explained because we tried very hard to pull all the strings- yeah.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: He was being deployed with the same group of guys that he had gone to the Horn of Africa with, and he was the captain of their unit.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: And so he felt that he he didn't, he wasn't going to abandon his he felt a responsibility.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: He felt a responsibility as the leader to go.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: And you know, not everyone has strings that they could pull to get out of it, and he didn't think that was right and so he went.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: And when, you know, I write about this in the book.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: But I have this very this moment, where the first few months you know a lot of, I don't remember a lot.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: Right, there are a lot of kind of flashbulb memories, but one of them is that I went, I was living in New York and I went to the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, which, if you've ever been there, it's like a five story, it's huge.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good place to get lost in.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, and I went there to find a book that would help me and I went to the grief section, which is very large.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: There was nothing.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: There was nothing about siblings.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: I remember, looking in you know, the index, like maybe there's a chapter and there was nothing.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: And you know, siblings are very diminished in their grief.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: We are known as the forgotten mourners for a reason.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: And I, when there was no book in this enormous bookstore, when publishing is an enormous industry and even bigger industry in 2009, I thought I guess everyone's right, Like I guess I'm supposed to be fine, because if there's not even a book, if no one's talking about this, then you know, I guess I'm.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'm being dramatic, Maybe I'm overreacting.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: No, maybe I'm not supposed to be this upset.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you couldn't talk to your parents or your brother.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: You felt like I needed to figure out it myself and the reason I asked that.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Obviously you and I talked a little bit before we started.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: I was six, my brother was 11 when he passed away.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: It was an accident and I was in first grade versus, you know, being 25.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: So I think you know different experiences.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: But there is this moment of like specific things you remember with clarity, like crystal clear, which was like me standing in my lunch line when I went back to school and someone's saying I know why you're not, you weren't in school, your brother died and I like just lost it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: You know like crystal clear moment and I remember her name, but I won't say it, but she didn't mean anything, like she's six, she didn't know.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: But you know, there's some things you remember but, like you're, you're seeking this, help, help, you're seeking kind of this.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: But did you feel like you could talk to your parents?
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Or or you felt like did they were going through their own process?
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: I felt like I could talk to them, but I didn't want to burden them, right?
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I knew that if I, you know, tried to talk to them or reach out to them about it and I did many times but I knew that they would be there and that they would listen I also knew that they were going through something horrendous and that I didn't want to make it worse.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: I didn't want them to worry about me.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: You know I, I didn't, I didn't want to.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: You know I, I didn't, I didn't want to burden them.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: I can totally relate to that.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I never asked questions or anything like that, even though I was tiny.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Like, yeah, it was just like keep doing what you normally do, like don't make anybody upset, be very good.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Like that was my thing, be very good.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if that, like extrapolated into my life of like my thing is not being good enough, like even though I know I am like that, like extrapolated into my life of like my thing is not being good enough, like even though I know I am, like that's my thing.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Like be better, be better, be better.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking maybe it had a little planting moment of a seed in that time where I was just like do everything as right as you can.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: So like, yes, no one gets upset because they're already upset, you know no-transcript.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Now Sam and I talk about our emotions and I think actually the writing of the book helped a lot yeah, I was gonna ask you that, yeah, at the time.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: I spent a tremendous amount of time with him, but it was like we just needed to be near each other, and so I knew that he was struggling, but I didn't.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: You know, I I don't think I asked him like have you found any books, you know, or anything?
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was more so.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Like, are you okay?
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: How are you doing?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Like, just start there and we would just like I ended up moving to his neighborhood and it was.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: We would just be physically near each other all the time.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was kind of the unspoken thing.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you didn't have to talk about it In your book.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: You specifically talk and divide your book into three sections, which is with, without and within.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Can you give an overview of those sections and why you divided it up that way?
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: So there was a lot of research that went into the book, both secondary research on any academic literature on sibling loss and sibling relationships, and then also really extensive in-depth interviews with people who have lost siblings due to different causes of death at different times in their life, different types of relationship positive relationships, negative relationships, et cetera.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And one thing that became very clear, kind of very early on, was that siblings are very good at qualifying their grief and making their grief smaller, because that's what we do, right, what that's what we were just saying right yeah, don't worry about it.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, don't worry about me, I'm good, yeah and so I had a lot of people who said things to me like you know, oh, but it wasn't as bad as yours, because you know they've been sick for a long time.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: So we knew it was coming.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: And my thinking is so you had to watch them suffer before they died for an extended period, and you're you think that's easier, you know, or they struggled with addiction, so we always knew this was a possibility.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, well, that sounds.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: That sounds like it would be really hard, you know, but siblings are very quick to make their loss smaller and I felt very strongly that the first thing we needed to do was stop making our loss smaller and acknowledge that sibling relationship is significant.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: It will impact you for your entire life.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: It impacts who you are and why you are the way you are, and we need to put like weight and gravity on that so that people could feel permission to actually grieve without the qualifiers.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: And even people who were don't remember their sibling, you know, the sibling died before they were born or when they were very, very young.
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: Well, that's going to impact their entire lives, because now their parents are parenting them in the aftermath of losing a child.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: So, everything, everything that happened to them, you know in their family.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: After that point is impacted by that loss Filtered to that?
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's filtered to that experience, and so all of that is significant.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: And so with is really about the sibling relationship and, you know, getting to a point where by the end of that section, you can say, like this is significant, this is a significant loss.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: So it talks about you know the sibling relationship.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Like this is significant, this is a significant loss.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: So it talks about, you know, the sibling relationship and the impact that has.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: It talks about the impact of memories and spending that early childhood together.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: I uncovered a lot of fascinating statistics, like more kids grow up in a household with siblings than with fathers.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Wow, mind boggling to me.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, siblings spend more time alone together in childhood than with their parents.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which makes sense.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Like my kids are off somewhere right now and I'm here talking to you.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: And so with is really about that wet being with each of that sibling relationship good, bad and ugly.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: This is a big deal.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And then we move to without, which is really about that acute loss and about the, the anger and the deep sadness and depression and those.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: You know that really those first few years.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, can we stop here for a second?
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Because I think it doesn't.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: It doesn't for me.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: My experience is it doesn't go away, like it's just, you know, for me I remember my mom saying it's kind of like a scab, like you're going to feel it's healed and then something's going to kick off the scab and it could be like you made a cherry pie and it was their favorite pie or you know, you see a football or you know, whatever it may be, but I think, you know, I think as I've gotten older, it's probably a scar now, like I still will have moments, even like talking about now you can hear my voice a little bit like it is emotional and it's just there, but it doesn't go away, and so like healing is like a lifelong thing.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: I think when you have any loss most likely I'm not an expert on loss in any way, but certainly having a sibling loss I don't think it's something that just kind of, oh, I'm better, Like I don't really even think about it, or whatever.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: So like when you talk about the grieving process which is, you know, within the without phase, it's just an interesting thing that happens, you know, and like I always remember his birthday and I think of my mom on his birthday.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: You know, like you don't.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Those things don't go away, you know.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: So when you're writing this chapter, is that some of the things that also come out.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: You know for others.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you know there's like the acute grief and then there is the living with it, right, the living with the scab that gets kicked off and and that's really I talk about that a lot in within, where you know, within is really like how we maintain that relationship, if we choose to maintain that relationship right, like if we choose to kind of establish continuing bonds and continue to feel connected to them or not.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: But it's like carrying that loss with you for the rest of your life, because biologically, naturally, siblings should be our longest relationship.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: They come into our life before any kind of partner and they should remain with us past the loss of our parents.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so there's no part of your life where you're like, oh yeah, they wouldn't be here anyway, like they would always be there and so that loss will always be there yeah
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: and I think there's no, it's how you learn to live with it.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: You, you know, and how you learn to integrate it into your life, if you choose to do that.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: And so that last section of within is about that integration and like, how do you keep their legacy going and how do you form your own identity in the aftermath of all of this?
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: And I saw a really there's.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: There's an excellent, I think, theory, and I saw kind of a graphic of it recently.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: That reminded me where, if your loss is like a hole, it never gets smaller.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: It's always that hole, but what happens is that over time, you have more and more experiences, that kind of build up around the whole, and so the whole is the same size, but your life has expanded.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: It looks smaller because your life is bigger.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Exactly, your life gets bigger.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: There's an image of like it.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: It kind of bounces around in there, so when your life is only slightly bigger than that hole, it hits the edges all the time Got it.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: And as your life continues to get bigger, it's still going to hit the edges, but it's going to hit the edges less frequently, right, but it's still there.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that really resonated with me.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't even like the idea of the whole closing up, because at this point I'm like, no, no, that hole is all I have, like I have like a bend shaped hole and you know I want to stop it, full of love and everything, but I don't want it to be gone because I don't, I want him with me, right, but the rest of my life continues to grow around it and so it's less acute, it hits those edges less often, but that doesn't mean it's not there.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: And I think that's really what I explore in within is, when your life starts to grow around it, how do you continue to?
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: You know, keep track of it or or do whatever you want to do with it, but just how does that continue to exist?
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: So, as as you go through the grief and you go through the grieving process, is there anything unique to a sibling loss versus you know another loss that you might have in your life?
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: How is it different for us that you've found?
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of ways.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: I think the first is that it changes your whole nuclear family significantly.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Sibling loss is known as a dual loss, because you lose your sibling but you also lose your parents to some extent.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: You know, I've talked to a lot of people who said, like I've never seen my mom smile the way she used to.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Or, you know, whatever it is, you lose an element of your parents when they lose a child, and so you do experience that dual loss.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: You're also then thrust into like, depending on whether or not there are other siblings, like, are you now going to be the sole caretaker as they get older?
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Are you being parentified and having to kind of do things that are beyond your developmental stage in order to help them and support them?
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: So I think that's very unique to siblings.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Another thing that's very unique is just our identity development.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: You know people who have siblings.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Their identities are developed often either to be similar to their siblings or there's something very common called sibling de-identification, where you're like, my sibling likes this thing.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to do the opposite, because you want to try to be unique and you know a unique individual, and so when our identities are developed so much in relation to each other and now that person's gone it can really kind of send you spiraling out into who am I and what am I.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: And the studies that have been done on sibling loss, depending on life stage, you know show that especially in childhood and adolescence and young adults who lose a sibling, they'll report having compared to their peers who have not lost a sibling.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: You know these folks report lower rates of feeling meaningfulness in the world or, you know, a sense of purpose in the world, benevolence in the world.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: They have lost something that taints the way they see the entire world, increased behavioral issues and all sorts of things.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: It impacts long-term mental health and physical health in significant ways and it's remarkable that it's not more research.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Basically, every study ends in this is very significant and under-researched and there should be more research, and you're like, but where is the more research?
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot that's really unique to it and it's just amazing to me that it's not like you know.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: You see these stats of like less meaningfulness in the world and you, yeah, so why don't we support that?
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, why don't we learn more about that?
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: And I feel very lucky hearing that because I've never felt that.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I think my parents really did a lot of things I didn't even know they were doing, you know, and I think they were coping with so much on their own, you know, personally, and then as a couple and again I didn't see anything negative, like I didn't see fighting, I saw sadness, I mean I remember that vividly and you know, I do think part of their happy was lost.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, a lot of levels, but I think you know what was interesting is I kind of that's where I think my YOLO came from.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Like I really realized that life isn't guaranteed.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: He was my middle brother.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: I had two older brothers at that time.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I now have two younger sisters and so you know our family grew, but you know it was I was the youngest and so my oldest brother and my brother were extremely close and best friends and you know the whole jazz.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: So I think he experienced it at a different level than you know the six-year-old little sister.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: But I think you know, from the experience of that, like I realized that it's.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: You know you should be, you should be really valuing life, like even at that little age, and like living it hard, you know, live life like, go for it.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: And of course all your parents want to do is like protect you, like sit on the couch, don't go anywhere.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: It would be like kind of like my mindset.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: But my mom actually, you know, I think she's one of the first bold people that I, you know, recognize in my life, my parents.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: But you know, she let me live my life, but she was following the bus or she was you know, you know, and there's these moments where I realized she was there and I didn't even know like she had done some of the things just to make sure we were safe.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: She let me play soccer in second grade and on the boys team, which I got laid out all the time, but I loved it, you know, you know, so like she was letting me live, which must have been very hard to do.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: So I'm glad I'm not one of those statistics specifically, you know, because I think it can change you and you can feel like you know why be happy because you could just lose something, and things like that.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I think for me, probably the biggest impact it's had is like, sometimes I get scared to be too happy because something could happen and so and I recognize that now, but I don't think I recognized that earlier, so like, but I recognize that now, but I don't think I recognized that earlier, so like, but I think it goes back to that you know moment.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: You know last thing we did was play football walk.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: You know he had the football, we were walking back from the bus and you know we were just joking around and of course I couldn't catch and that kind of thing.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: You know, like I remember those types of things.
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: But I think you know you remember those moments, but it's, it's, it's those that you just you think okay, like it's something.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I was just so happy and now like, well, that just happened.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: So I try to keep it in the middle.
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: You know, yes, yes, and that's really common, that's really common and there's.
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: You know, I have a whole chapter on joy and the, the terror of joy and the terror of joy because you don't want to feel too much.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: You don't want to feel too good and, and you know, for some people it's like when you feel that good, there's guilt.
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and for some people, when you feel that, good, there's that like terror of like wait now something bad is going to happen, Exactly, and it's hard to like, it can be hard to allow yourself to feel the happy.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I'm getting better at that, but I think you know that was definitely something that I kind of went through.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: So when you think about writing the book and the ways that we can use writing to heal, was writing the book a healing process for you, incredibly yeah.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: Incredibly, the book took a lot of different forms as I was working on it and ultimately, I think it got me out of a really bad cycle that I was in and it kind of propelled my healing forward in a way that it where it, where it had been stagnant for a long time and in the book there are exercises associated with most of the chapters, and the exercises are pretty much all things that, like I did in the course of writing the book okay, that were ultimately extremely helpful.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Like there's nothing in there that I that you didn't do, didn't do, yeah, um, and there's nothing in there that I that you didn't do, didn't do, yeah, and there's nothing in there that I did but wasn't helpful, so that I could just include the ones that I thought would be helpful for people and nothing that wouldn't be.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Got it.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's nice.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I could talk to you for a very long time and so I think you know, and just even we didn't know when.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Well, I knew obviously your story, but you didn't know I had lost a sibling when we saw the podcast.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: So I thought that was interesting.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: So I think there's more of us out there than we know, and that's another thing I learned, which my listeners have heard me say before on my podcast.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: But I also learned from you know that experience.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: I talked about standing in the lunch line because I went home and told my mom and I was so upset and she's like not everybody knows what you're going through.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: So remember this in life and this was like a life lesson at six, because I think this type of loss brings a lot of lessons, and one of those lessons was she told me, like people aren't going to wear name tag and have like this is how she said to me they're not going to have like everything that's happened to them, so their people don't know and therefore you don't know what someone's going through.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: So always be kind that was like always be nice, you know, and so I love your mom, right, yeah, so it was like this learning of like, oh, okay, she didn't know.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: So she wasn't trying to be mean or hurtful, and so I think there was also this positive presupposition too, that like that I learned too.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: It's like, oh, they just didn't mean it.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: So don't like go around with a like a chip on your shoulder of like the world's not getting you and how could they be happy today?
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: And you know, because it can really kind of wreck you and I look at you like your brother was in his early 30s and I'm just like, wow, I wish I would have known my brother that long, you know, like so even that is just like something you think about too, like well, you know, 11 years I'm so happy I knew him for, for you know, the time that I could remember right and, uh, you know, just realizing that there there are good things to remember and there are ways to do it.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: So, when someone's kind of going through that process and you talk about collecting memories and kind of, you know, preserving them, just as someone's thinking about, or maybe kind of going through this loss, or what are some of the things they can do to preserve in a way that can help them heal?
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think one of the things that led to the initial creation of this book, although there aren't really many traces of it in the final version.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: But we were approaching the 10 year anniversary of my brother's death and I really wanted to collect memories.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: I wanted more of him and more pieces of him.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: And that was when I reached.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: I reached out to people from his life and asked if I could talk to them and interview them, and that was really rewarding for a lot of reasons.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: It reconnected me with people who knew him, who you, you know, some of whom I hadn't talked to in a decade or ever.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: You know, I talked to people who were like in his unit in the army, who I had never spoken to before, and it gave me little pieces of him back that were really amazing.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: And it even gave pieces of him back to me in the way that, like his best friend told me a story about him and blues traveler, the band nice, and now when I hear blues traveler, I think of him yeah right, like I get.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I get that reminder back and when you think of him, it keeps them with you right?
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly yeah you don't want to forget.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: That's like when you said that you didn't want the hole to close because you don't want to forget.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Right, and I think one thing I realized was that I would often, you know, turn things over in my head again and again, and again and again, because I was afraid of forgetting them.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: But if you capture them, somehow you could write it down, you could record yourself talking, right, you could.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: However you want to capture them, you don't have to listen to it or reread it ever yeah right, there's no like.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: you don't have to then play it back and hear yourself talking, which everyone hates to hear themselves talk.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: You can just capture it and know that memory is safe.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: Now I have a record of that memory and, should I want to go back, I have it, and so now I don't have to turn it over again and again and again in my head, you know, for fear of forgetting it, because it's, it has a home and it's captured somewhere.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: And so for me, you know those those interviews, like where all the stories came out.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: I, you know it was audio.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: I, I recorded it and now there are a gazillion AI tools that will transcribe it for you, right?
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I have it, and I can even just do like a search and find like for certain words, right, yeah, that's super cool, like I don't think what happened.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: You know, for me, which is kind of sad around this is my parents had a full house fire in 2004, around christmas, and so my parents have been together for 60 years.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: So at that point, uh, you know, just, they had everything you know in their, in their house was gone and it was a, it was a candle that created that and all of any pictures, if you think of those type of things, and this was in early 2000.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: So there maybe wasn't as much digital, or we didn't have it or, you know, my parents hadn't scanned everything you know who has time for that and so they lost all their pictures.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: So really all they had was whatever we had and so, like I had some pictures my mom's sisters, so it was so sweet is like everyone started sending my parents pictures so that they had them.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of like talking about kicking off the scab.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: It was kind of one of those moments like we just had this huge loss of a house and pets and just tremendous, huge loss of a house and pets and just a tremendous.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: That isn't self as a loss.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: All those you know worldly things.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: You know they were okay, my brother was okay, so like that, we were thankful for that, but then it was like the inpouring of like the pictures, but it was, you know, it was meant in a really positive way, which it is now.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: So I think just realizing and hearing what you said is so important, because I think how you do it's probably very personal and, like you said, you don't have to listen to it, you don't have to read it, but you might want to someday.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: I think that there are these little, you know, these little things, these little pieces of them that like just holds so much significance, yeah, and they're like it's like a little talisman, right, like that thing.
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: And I had a moment in it was like 2012, 2013.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: I remember being at my office at the time and my gmail had like been hacked and the password had been changed or something.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: I couldn't get it.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, and I was terrified because I had emails from ben oh and you know when he was deployed and stuff like.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: He sent letters.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: He was very good at writing.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: He also kept a lot of diaries, but most of them were emails.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: And I had all these emails and I thought they were gone and I was having like a panic attack, thinking they were gone.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: And there was a company at the time I don't even know if it still exists where you could kind of sign in with your gmail and and say I want to collect all of the emails from this.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: You know, know that had this this person or this person?
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: and it would print them into a bound book like a physical bound book.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I made one of is it on your shelf?
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: There it is, and when I finally logged back in, I made one of all of the emails between me and Ben.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's cool.
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: I think I opened it twice.
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, even during the writing of this book, if I needed to find an old email because I referenced things in there like I just went and searched because I have access to my Gmail back.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: But knowing that it exists, knowing that I have a backup physical copy of it, is like it brought me so much peace and calm there.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: There are companies now that that will do that right, when you can like, tell them all the stories and they they bind it together in a book or whatever it is.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: And I just think having that, like having that backup, it's like a second brain, right A lot of people talk about, like the sex, having a system for a second brain where you can like cause your.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Your brain is meant for thinking, not for storing.
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: And so you can.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: You can back everything up in like a second brain and I feel like I have a second like Ben brain, and so I think there is a lot of that and everything feels much more precious than it did before.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: But knowing that you have them so you can get it out of your brain, I think is just like such an important thing and knowing that they're safe and siblings.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Another unique thing about siblings is they often see themselves as the memory keeper right, because we spent so much time together, because we were peers and you have this responsibility for your parents and all of that.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: Like a lot of siblings really see themselves as the one who, who carries the legacy and carries the memories and carries all of that with them.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: And so, having getting yourself a little bit of help in doing that job, it's not that we shouldn't do that job If you feel that you should do that job, if doing that job, you know, fills your bucket, it's been great but you don't have to do it alone.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Have a little support.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: You don't have to do it alone.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you so much for sharing your story.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story, for writing the book, you know, because I think it is a needed piece of literature that we have not had, you know.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: So I'm very thankful for you and what you're doing you know as your own healing journey, but that has now helped others and left a legacy, so very appreciative of that.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to my story today as much as sharing your own, and all the information is below in the episode notes.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being on the bold lounge.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the bold lounge podcast.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.