Latest / Life and How to Live It with Dr Rocco / Finding the Life That is Waiting for You After Tragedy

Transcript

Finding the Life That is Waiting for You After Tragedy · Life and How to Live It with Dr Rocco

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you sometimes feel like life is passing you by?
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: How would you like to get more out of life?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: We explore all things life on this podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Life and How to Live It podcast with Dr.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Life and How to Live It.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Dream, create, connect, just live it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of the Life and How to Live It podcast with me, Dr.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I am delighted to introduce today's guest, Ann Greer.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ann and I met about 25 years ago or more.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was a time when Susan, my wife, and I met Anne and her husband Boyce and their three girls because our children were all going to school together in New Hampshire.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember the Greer family, you know, back in those days, the Greers, they were so dynamic and adventurous.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: They were always up to something, and it was always something super cool, you know.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um, the Greers would have big parties at their house, you know, where they would invite a whole bunch of families over.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And those are some incredibly just fond, beautiful memories of when our kids were young and they were out running around, playing, having a great time, and all the adults would be, you know, eating great food, having having wine or other adult beverages and laughing and just enjoying being together.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And at the center of all this was Anne, just the mighty Anne Greer, who is still a a dear friend and and a best of friends with my wife Susan.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they just returned from a week-long hiking trip in Ireland.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh Ann's husband, Boyce, and he Boyce and I bonded over a common love of soccer and just life in general.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And Boyce was, you know, one of the most impressive people that I've ever known.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Boyce was incredibly successful in his career, but he was also a world-class kayaker.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: He was highly intelligent and funny, generous, just a very larger-than-life figure.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, one of my fondest memories is uh a trip that we took to the Kentucky Derby back in the mid-2000s.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's just all these incredible memories and connections between our families.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I invited Ann to be on this podcast to talk about hiking.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And her response to me was, well, Rocco, I could talk about hiking, but I would rather talk about this.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I immediately knew that she was right.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is a much more important topic to discuss.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna stop talking and introduce Ann.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, Ann, thank you for being here.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the show.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having me.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: We really did meet.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: We met when your now very adult youngest daughter was not even born.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: Susan was pregnant when I met her.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: So we've been friends for a very long time.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: Our children did go to school together back in their wee years, and Susan and I, and all of us are still very dear friends.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, your friendship with Boyce was an incredibly lovely thing to be part of.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I should probably tell you why I said I don't want to talk.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it was hiking and van life.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: Those were the two things you had you'd introduced or suggested.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, let's talk about why I like to go why I hike now and why I have this van that um, you know, van life has become kind of an overused hashtag.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of people are doing it as kind of an alternative lifestyle for me.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: The time that I spend off in my van, which is sometimes short and sometimes long, is more about being independent and being somewhat solitary and solo, but also being um being active.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I said I'd rather talk with you about why I do those things because those didn't used to be part of my um part of my daily life in any way.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: And um it's kind of a hard one to introduce, but so Boyce and I were married for um, I've lost track now.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's been um we got married in 1993.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And in 2011, Boyce died in a kayaking accident in Idaho, where I'm a few minutes from where I'm sitting right now.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um he was, in fact, a you know, really incredibly accomplished kayaker with a um a wide and deep bench of kayaking friends, and he was with one of his dearest friends.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he had an accident where he died very um immediately.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: I was not there when he died.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: I was downriver playing in the same river, um, about five miles downriver when he died.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so this pretty um, I call it apocalyptic, this pretty unexpected sudden kind of chasm was formed.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I think we all think of our lives in stages.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: There's, you know, when I was a kid, then there's my college years before I got married, after I got married, before I had kids, after I had kids.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: You know, our lives kind of get thought of in those pieces.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, there's this very, you know, extraordinarily massive line, this moment in time that I can um I can really say was just there's everything before that and everything after that.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to catch or pick up on one thing you said, which is, you know, we were sort of doing all these amazing things and all these extraordinary things.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Boyce lived large.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Boyce, there were no, there were no boring days.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um we I can traveled.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's true.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: We traveled all over the world for kayaking, we traveled all over the country for kayaking.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he could fit more in a weekend than most people can fit in two weeks, and he fitted in every weekend.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was a stay-at-home, I'm an attorney.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: I had a really phenomenal career for a couple of years, and then I chose to stay home and raise our kids, and we had just this truly extraordinarily happy marriage and happy children and a rich and full life.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: So before I go to the after, after the chasm, I um I just want to strongly endorse the live a rich and full life.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: And part of that is just to be to have the gratitude for having someone that you're building a life with.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be always perfect and always happy and always blissful.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: But if you look across the table at someone that you've been with for years or decades, there's something extraordinary about that, just that building of that life together.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it should be appreciated.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we did, we really appreciated it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, and I think Rocco can attest to the fact that we we I'm not just remembering that we were happy because it's easier to remember that way.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: We were truly happy.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we were truly, truly extraordinarily happy.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: So then this day came along in 2011, and everything changed.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember thinking minutes and hours later, we had these three daughters, they were all going into high school, you know, they're all going to be in high school.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: The youngest was gonna be a freshman, the oldest a senior.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: I remember thinking, we have done this amazing thing.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've raised these children in a to be happy and empathetic and hardworking and ethical and extraordinary.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's where they're heading.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: And now I want to keep, how do I keep that going?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that was sort of my primary focus for a long time was just keeping my children.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: I I sort of had this vision of them being in a um in a path and trying to keep them going down that path and and help them to succeed.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I have to say, for many years I put myself on hold and sort of um just tried to focus on that, which I think is the right thing to do.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it was a huge loss for them as well.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: But then there came a point where I thought, all right, well, I was happy before, I can be happy again, and I started trying to rebuild my happiness.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the piece that that I said to you, I thought was um was important to me, and I hope may be important to other people who've had something unexpected and staggering and awful happen.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: And there's lots of examples of that.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just loss of a spouse.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that is how do I create, how do I go forward happy and fulfilled when my life looks so much different than it did and I was so happy and fulfilled before?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: How do I, how am I not disrespecting what we built together if I then do something incredibly different?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll just give you a silly example because I'm I'm sitting here right now.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we were looking at houses in Idaho.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: We were going to sort of end up retiring here.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: And Boyce wanted nothing to do with living on the lake here.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: He wanted to be out in the in the you know, in the hinterlands and the at the end of a dirt road.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'm now living in a house on the lake.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's a house that Boyce would not have wanted to live in.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: I love living here.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm enjoying it very much.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: How do I lean into enjoying that when I wouldn't be enjoying it if it was here?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Does that make some sense, Rocco?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think it's a really interesting thing that you bring up.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's this idea of uh am I betraying what we had if I take a little veer off this path exactly the way it was, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And do something that I want to do, right?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, yeah, it sounds like something you had to kind of come to peace with, is how to be comfortable with that.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the precursor to it was how do I parent these children?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: So for weeks and months, I would think, what would Boyce do?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because I we had this very collaborative marriage, but I absolutely trusted his judgment.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: And if I turned to him and said, What do you think about letting such and such kid do such and such a thing?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, for sure, then I knew it was a good idea.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: So there was this kind of what would boyce do?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: What would boyce do mantra?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: And at one point, I remember making a decision about one of the kids she wanted to study abroad.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought he would think this is a ridiculous idea.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then I thought, but he's not here, and we are not in the same place.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: What's best for us now is not what would have been best for us if we were still this intact family of five.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that was, I remember that moment of and thinking, I need to make different decisions, and that doesn't disrespect the fact that we had what we had and it was lovely.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I've been listening to your podcast, and there's this, I think, amazing kind of recurrent theme of how do I change my life for in a positive way?
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: So how do I read more, stay in touch with my elders, um, exercise more, have better nutrition?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: How do I wake up and say, I choose to make a change for the, you know, to improve my life?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't wake up one morning and say, I'd like to not, you know, I'd like to make this change.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: This change got thrown at me very abruptly.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: And for a long time you just try to survive it.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: But then at some point you say, huh, how do I wake up and change even though I don't really want to?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to change, I didn't want anything to change, but it did.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: So there was this quote that somehow occurred to me at his memorial, and I'm gonna I'm gonna bring it up because I was having dinner the other night with a friend whose wife recently died after a very long and very happy marriage, and he reminded me of this quote that I that I'd given or spoken, and he said it comes back to him often as being helpful.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: So the quote was that Boyce, the hole that Boyce filled was much bigger than the hole he left behind.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And the question is, how do you still hold on to the to all the things that he gave us and gave me and the life we built and still try to fill this hole that was left behind?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that's when I got into hiking and living in a van, and which I don't do full-time, um, was trying to figure out a way to live with this new hole.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think you ever fill the hole, you just learn how to live with it.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: You kind of build yourself around it and you live with the hole.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so for me, it was a matter of doing things that I really hadn't done before.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: They were really a stretch for me.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: And hiking is one of them, but I'm gonna tell you the bigger one was you know, Boyce died in a kayaking accident.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I was always, I always had kind of great trepidation about whitewater activities.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: I would I'm not a kayaker, I would ride in a raft if someone else was rowing it.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: But I was really nervous of whitewater and I was really proud of his kayaking, but for me personally, I was nervous.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've learned to row a raft.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: I own a raft, I row a raft on um what I consider to be challenging whitewater.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: I do it with a lot of help from a lot of friends.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: But for me, that was a huge um combination of how to remember Boyce and how to how to sort of reinvent myself and how to be happy without him.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if if that makes sense, but yeah, yeah.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: How to fill how to fill the hole or live with the hole.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I think um I think it's it's I think it's very difficult for people to adopt a change in their life, whether it's nutrition or lifestyle or to leave a unhealthy relationship.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's lots of examples.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think those are difficult decisions for people to do when made by choice.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's a different kind of difficult to have change kind of thrust at you.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I mean, when I say knocked to the floor, I have this also this very vivid recollection of the day after Boyce died.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: And we were here in Idaho, so there were a lot of friends around.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I remember kind of like col like just feeling like I can't stand up anymore.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm and I remember kind of lying on the ground in the middle of the kitchen thinking, I don't think I can get back up again.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think I can, I think I can't do this.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember someone coming over saying, You can you can get up, you'll be ready, you'll you'll be able to get up.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And it's kind of what do you want to look like when you stand back up?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you're gonna get knocked down by something.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's gonna get knocked down by something.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: And the question is, what do you want to look like when you stand back up?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so for a while, what I wanted to look like when I stood back up was exactly who I looked like when Boyce was still alive.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: I still want to be the incredibly active, vibrant, incredible mother, active member of the school.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to be all of those things.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: And after a while, you realize I have to put on, I have to put on a new skin, I have to put on a new coat because I can't be the person I was before because part of it is no longer here.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: So how is it kind of difficult to have it thrown at you and not want to change?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: And then how do you change in a way that where you become someone you weren't before without saying, oh, I'm how do you the struggle is to be happy in my new um my new skin without that being the same as and combining that with being sad that I had to do it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's the kind of um unsettling combination, I guess.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to figure that out.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's so that's very well stated.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I And I think the easiest way for me to do it was to do things that sort of celebrated my independence.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, my dad, my mom died when she was pretty young.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: She was 61.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: My dad remarried very quickly.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think for him, he really his way of um leaning into his new reality was he needed to be married again.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and I really have a great deal of respect for that.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: For me, I needed the opposite.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: I needed to continue to be Mrs.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: Greer and still be remembered and still surround myself with people um who remember Boyce, but I also needed to be my own, develop some of my own independence and some of my own strength.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: So hiking um all over the world at this point was something that I hadn't done any of.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's a hilarious story in our family about the first time I went hiking.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: We were living in Boulder.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: This was a couple years after Boyce died, and there's a little mountain in town, and I now know it to be nothing, but I thought it was huge and I thought it was terrifying, and I went to go out on it and a thunderstorm rolled in.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I called my oldest daughter, Tessa, and I said, I'm on this mountain, and the thunder is out, and if something happens to me, I need you to know what trail I'm on.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Aren't you like three blocks from downtown?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Yes, but I'm on the top of a mountain and it's storming.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Mom, if you had binoculars, you could see the house from where you're standing, like you're okay.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that was sort of my my beginning point.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so hiking was really scary for me and really an unknown, and now it's not, and now I feel really capable at it.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: And feeling capable apart from a relation, apart from the relationship, apart from my role as a mother, was a really difficult thing to feel happy about because I liked being capable as part of a team.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: I liked, I liked what we had.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: So it takes a little uh a little getting used to.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, and certainly rowing a raft, which remains terrifying, was um was something.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: And and the anecdote on that one is that um my middle daughter shares my fear of white water.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember thinking, I think I need to learn to row a raft.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope she's gonna be okay with that because I don't want to scare her and I don't want to worry her, and I don't want her to to think she's gonna lose another parent, but I really think I need to learn how to row a raft.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I called her with a lot of trepidation.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Corey, I think I'm I think I'm gonna get a raft.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna buy a raft and learn to row it.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of paused and because this is this is like a massive reinvention for me.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Oh mama, daddy would be so proud of you.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that to me was this moment of like combining all the pieces where everything we had is still alive and part of us, but there's this whole other this whole other piece that now gets to be figured out.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you talked a lot, you made it you may say you knew him so well.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: You made this choice to uh to move forward, to do things that and be independent, right?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I uh I really want to, you know, kind of lean into some of your experience and and things you learned that you can share with the listeners too.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get there, just uh tell us a little bit about that journey of of becoming this incredible hiker.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I know you had your experience on top of the little mountain in Boulder, and then what happened after that?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I wouldn't, you know, I'm not sure I'm an incredible hiker.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: I think the best way to summarize how I hike is that I'm inherently nervous.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm inherently thinking about what could go wrong, not because of what happened to Boyce, but just because I didn't grow up doing these things.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: I was not an athlete growing up.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't do extreme sports, I didn't ski.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't hike, I didn't, you know, huck myself off of things.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, everyone teases me, but I carry this big backpack.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: I have first aid in it, I have all the things I could need.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: I have a little, you know, inreach device.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: I sort of overdo the um preparedness, and that lets me be brave enough to go out and do something that I might otherwise not do.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: That allows me to go 12 miles into the wilderness where someone says, oh, there was a bear there last week, or somebody, you know, fell because the trail was icy or whatever it was.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm not doing technical hiking.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just doing, you know, sort of long hikes, and I'm doing hikes in other countries by myself, which to me has become very not frightening and not overwhelming and really not all that remarkable.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: But it would have been the me of 20 years ago would have said, you're gonna go hiking in New Zealand for three weeks without any plan and any um, you know, anybody with you.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, it looks like I gradually built into it.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I didn't go from the day on that mountain and boulder to going to New Zealand.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I just kept doing it and it felt really good.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the feeling really good that kind of has a double-edged sword.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, yeah, I can really do this thing.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: I can do this by myself.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: I love being out here.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just happy when I'm out here.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm happy even if my feet hurt, I'm happy even if it's raining.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: I just am happy out here.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I think some people feel that way about biking or running for me.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's being in the woods and being on hills.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Boyce did not like hiking.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: We did not hike as a family, we didn't go hiking.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: If Boyce was still here, I wouldn't be hiking at all in all likelihood.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's back to that kind of how I'm out there and I'm really enjoying it.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: And the fact that I'm really enjoying it doesn't mean I'm glad he's not here and I get to do this thing that's making me happy.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: It means that I found a new way to be happy.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: So um I think my advice to someone, I just want to grab that before uh before I forget, you kind of have to plow through the being really, really sad first.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: You have to allow yourself to be really sad.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: You can't just say, I've got to be happy right away.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: I can't, I can't stand being sad.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it's hard to describe, but there's this um this illustration that I've shared with a lot of people where you're this little jar with this big ball of grief in it.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the ball of grief, the what you want is that ball of grief to get smaller and smaller, but it doesn't.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: It just sits there, it's parked, it's always going to be there.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: I can, I can fall apart at the you know, drop of a hat.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: The ball of grief stays huge, the jar gets bigger, your ability to hold the grief gets bigger and bigger, and you have to let yourself grow that jar or grow that strength to hold on.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to give it some time.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you get to a point where you wake up in the morning and you're not just sad, and it's incremental.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's how it's baby steps towards leaning into being happy again and and reinventing yourself and reinventing yourself whether you choose to do it or not.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Really, really difficult.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: I don't mean to suggest that someone who wakes up and reinvents themselves by choice is doing something less, less difficult.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's very difficult.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I think you have to give yourself time to get used to what it's like to carry this grief around, this loss, whatever the loss or the grief is that you've experienced.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: You just have to give yourself time.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: I have a funny story about your wife who couldn't reach me.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: This was early on after Boyce died.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: She couldn't reach me one day.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't know, she must have tried me six or seven times.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: And she got kind of panicky and finally I returned her call and she said, Are you okay?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I'm fine.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just like, you know, one of the kids needed this.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the kids really needed a lot.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, I had this image of you sitting in the shower drinking gin.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, I don't have time to sit in the shower drinking gin.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: I just, if I'm gonna be sad, I just have to be sad while getting other things done.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think I'm not recommending sitting in the shower drinking gin, but I think giving yourself time to just be sad.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be every minute of the day.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: You can take care of other people, but give yourself time to be sad.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: But then be willing to notice the the new things, or sometimes it's the old things that make you either feel happy or less sad or calmer, and um, and just try them out bit by bit.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: And um that's my that's my advice.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_02: Don't waste your life.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great advice.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I find that, you know, to me that's a very interesting statement.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like allow yourself to grieve, allow yourself to be sad.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's something about our culture, American culture, it's like we don't we don't really want to be sad.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to be sad.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I I come from a culture, the Italian culture, where, you know, grieving, you know, it's just it's accepted.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, you know, you don't you never just move on like immediately.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: You have to go through a process, and sometimes it takes a long time.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's in that culture, it's more socially acceptable to just say, you know, just be kind of openly grieving.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Here, I think it's less acceptable.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I like that you're saying just give yourself the grace of being sad because something terrible just happened to you, you know.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you you use the expression move on, and I think that's the crux of the struggle.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think when we start when I started to feel happy again, the first time I remember feeling incredibly happy, just like happy, happy, was surfing.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was out on the lake that's 20 feet over my right shoulder.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: We have a boat, it creates a wave, you're on a surfboard, you're not holding on to anything, and you're carving into this wave.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I somehow it just got up on this wave, and I remember thinking, I remember feeling euphoric.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember falling in the lake, you know, you f eventually you fall, and I remember looking up, and I'm I remember thinking he would be so happy that I'm happy.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't think you have to, I don't think becoming happy again means you've moved on, because the crux of what I'm saying is that I couldn't bear the idea of moving on.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to move on.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: I want, you know, I did not want to move on.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: So to be able to keep that him alive and and and his, I mean, we talk about him all the time without it becoming dysfunctional in some way, the ability to kind of become happy again does not necessarily mean that you've moved on and have and left your sadness behind and forgotten the other person and that what you had with them doesn't matter.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: And this can apply, I mean, losing my mom, which was when my kids were little, was incredibly difficult.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: This doesn't have to be the, you know, catastrophic sudden loss of a spouse.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: This can be the loss of a dear friend, this can be the loss of a parent.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's the same experience that this person who was an incredibly important part of your completeness is just no longer there and you don't want to move on.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I think and then surround yourself with, yeah.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: I I surround myself with people who I love talking about him.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I he was extraordinarily loved and has just so many people.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I could pick up the phone and call 200 people right now, and they would all just want to talk about him and and have wonderful stories about him.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: He had friends in just all aspects of his life who I'm still in touch with.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel really fortunate about that.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: So um I encourage that as well.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: I encourage not moving on, I guess is really what I'm saying.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Don't move on, just um find a way to make this.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I could show you the picture, but this bigger jar that you're building so that you have this space to carry this ball of grief.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: That bigger jar include can include new aspects of yourself, can can include a little bit of reinvention.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I am unrecognizable for the person that I was 30 years ago.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I just I'm doing things that I never would have done.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't know that I'm any better or worse.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just different.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: So it's okay to change.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: And don't waste the life you have.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Give yourself time to be sad, but don't, don't, uh, don't just be sad.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, perfect.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Being sad is is totally acceptable, but don't don't live in it for the rest of your life.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you'll always carry it.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: I love your analogy of the ball of grief, and you have to it grow that jar so that it can contain the ball of grief.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: But move forward, not move on, move forward.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: Move forward, yeah.
• 27:21
  unknown: Yeah.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_02: And really, I can't, I just want to, I know this isn't what the topic is, but boy, just be grateful for the people you have.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: There, I mean, we hadn't we were exceptionally lucky.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: We really did have an extraordinary marriage, and I feel really fortunate.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, I understand marriages are difficult and friendships are hard, and relationships with your children can be a challenge, but don't look for perfection in them.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Just be so grateful that you've built what you've built with these people.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because one of the greatest things that I get to um wake up to every morning is sort of thinking about what we built together.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I look back on this marriage and I know that we we enjoyed that.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, all the big crazy things we did, really what we really enjoyed was just this kind of mundane day-to-day, what we had built.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: So enjoy a bit of the mundane day-to-day with the people that you have.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's a side note, but I believe it.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's uh it's a very central note.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to be resilient if you don't have people and you don't appreciate the people that you have, you know.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a big thing that we're you're talking about is resilience, you know.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, how do you how do you become more resilient?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: How do you figure out like a new way to be, a new way to live that still honors the way it was, but it is moving forward.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um, any other things you'd like to share, more advice or more parts of the story, anything at all?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's this expression do one thing a day that scares you.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I used to kind of roll my eyes at that.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was like maybe a Lululemon or something that came up with it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the I I always thought it was like you had to jump off something really big and scary, or you had to do anyway, something scary every day.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: Do something every day that you feel proud of.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be scary.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it just should be something that maybe you th that you thought you couldn't do.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's I don't do something scary every day, but I try to notice when I do something that required a little extra resiliency, a little extra strength.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I look back on, I hope that this is true.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: I look back on how I took care of my children right after Boyce died.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that was terrifying.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope that I made decisions throughout that that were right for them.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: I know I did it, you know, with with great love and great um commitment to them, and I think that in the end is really all that matters.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: But notice your own small accomplishments, notice your small moments of bravery.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: The doing something scary doesn't have to be something that the rest of the world would find scary.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: It can sometimes it's just getting out of bed.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's not sitting in the shower drinking gin.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't drink gin, but um, it's uh it's it's those little things and notice them in yourself and and applaud them.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: And don't they don't have to happen every day, but notice them when they do.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting up off the kitchen floor.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: Man, that was a hard that was hard.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: Getting up off that floor that day was hard.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, there's I'm gonna tell you another story about one of my kids.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: So my middle daughter, who's just um highly empathetic by nature, within a year after Boyce died, and all three of my kids were just incredibly rocked by this, but in different ways.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we were in a grocery store, we were in the checkout line, the cashier was pretty grumpy and snarky, and I don't tend to engage in that, but I was about to kind of you know give a good old retort of some kind or something, and my daughter kicked my leg to shut me up, and and so I didn't say whatever it was that I was going to say to this snarly clerk.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: And um, we got outside and I said, Thanks for stopping me.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Mom, you just need to remember you don't know what happened to her today.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe she woke up this morning and found out her dad had died.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, huh, this kid has taken this horrible thing that's happened to her, and she's not looking at the world like everybody's just had something awful, but she's she's able to see the world through a new lens of empathy in a way that um that I don't think she had before.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: So notice that in yourself as well.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: Whatever incredibly wonderful things have happened to you or incredibly awful things have happened to you, they will change your perspective.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: I know that I notice things differently now than I than I used to.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and you can call that the silver lining, you can call it uh whatever, but it's um but it's worth noticing um in yourself.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: So look for those little things in yourself, um, whatever they are.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for sharing this.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Even though it's many years, it's still raw.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is hard stuff, and and I appreciate your willingness to be so open and just talking about it.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: You got me on the edge there a couple times, but but I kept it together.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you know, there's there's this question I ask everyone who's a guest on the show.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is um, if you had the opportunity to put a message on a billboard in your town and you knew lots of people drove by it every day, you know, what would your message be?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't have a really good voice ism to share because um he didn't have one-liners like that.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: But my mom, who was extraordinary, and I could do a whole episode just about my mom, um, we lived for many years until I was in junior high school in a very, very tiny house.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: But on the only large wall, she had this kind of um corny framed poster, like those ones you used to see at bookstores.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just like in your face every day when you walk down the hall, and we all rolled our eyes at it.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: But in retrospect, it was um it was perfect.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the poster is what I would put on my billboard.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: It said, today is the first day of the rest of your life.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: So that's my quote.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that you have to get up and accomplish a lot and do something extraordinary, but you're allowed to hit that restart.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: You're allowed to move forward, you're allowed to um to say, what's happened before today is incredibly important to me and incredibly meaningful, but I'm now gonna take a step forward and it might look, I might veer left a little bit.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: So today's the first day of the rest of your life.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe I'll go buy a billboard.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Ann Greer, thank you so much for being a guest of the show today.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, everybody.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have a quote here that I found from Joseph Campbell, and I think is very apropos of the discussion that we just had, and here it is.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's it for today's show.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being with us today.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed our conversation.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, so long.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to the Life and How to Live It podcast with Dr.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Rocco.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to book a coaching session with me, simply visit the show notes and schedule a discovery call.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if today's episode encouraged you or added value to your life, please subscribe and leave a review.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, life is not a dress rehearsal.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, so long.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just live it live and how to live it.