Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / Life is for The Living: with Nora McInerny

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Life is for The Living: with Nora McInerny · QUESTION EVERYTHING

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle robe and each week my guests
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: and I have conversations that put a new spin on pretty.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: This is pretty smart.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Hello, Hi, I hope you're great.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I'm recording this back in la after spending a week
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: at home for the July fourth holiday in Chicago. I
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: stayed with my parents. My brother came home, and we
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: were all hanging out. We played golf on July fourth.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Family is such a funny thing. It's constantly teaching me lessons,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: or at least that's how I try to look at it,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: because also I never really get angry, except for with family.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Something about going home and living in your childhood house
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: with your parents or your siblings sends everybody back to
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: their old roles.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Like all of a sudden, I am ten year old Danielle.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I am no longer thirty three.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Except for that I am thirty three, and it's so
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: hard to figure out my new role in the family.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's probably a universal thing, and I'm
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: not even describing it well.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: But.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Part of me was so grateful for
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: that time, and part of me was so happy to
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: be back in LA in my own space, even in
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: my one bedroom apartment. Also, I don't know about you,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: but I didn't even see fireworks this year, and I
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: love fireworks, but I fell asleep too early. I was
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: exhausted after playing golf and I fell asleep at like
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: eleven o'clock didn't see the fireworks. So I hope you
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: saw some fireworks for me and ate some delicious food
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: and had fun no matter where you were. And I
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: have some fun life updates for you, but I'm actually
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: going to save them for the next episode because I
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: want to get right to our guest today with.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Us today is Norah mcinerneye.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Now, you may know her as the author of several
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: hit books like The Hot Young Widow's Club or Bad
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Vibes Only, or you may know her as the host
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: of Terrible Thanks for Asking, which is a podcast that
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: lets people be honest about the hard things in life.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: And if you don't know her from those acclamations, you
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: definitely know her from being voted most humorous by the
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Annunciation Catholic High School class of nineteen ninety eight.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: To know Norah McInerney is to love her.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: She makes everyone and I mean, everyone feel comfortable in
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: a room. And if I had to guess, I'd say
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: it's because she's so comfortable with herself. And if I
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: had to armchair therapist guess again, I'd say that part
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: of that comes from the fact that she's been through
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: so damn much, and another part comes from being absolutely hilarious.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: And she somehow combines those two things.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: She brings a lightness to every conversation that makes it
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: possible to approach even the heaviest of topics. It's so rare,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: isn't it. Basically, Nora is like a living aperture. So
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: like the lens of a camera, Nora can widen to
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: let the light flood in, but she can also narrow,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: which means the picture will be a little darker, but
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: it has a profound depth of field. Nora's wisdom in
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: navigating darkness comes from her own dark times. She's been
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: through some unimaginably hard things. A decade ago, within mere weeks,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: she endured the heartbreak of losing a pregnancy, her father,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and her husband Aaron, to brain cancer. Now, after the
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: bewildering experience of her own grief, can you imagine Nora
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: has made it her mission to change the conversation around
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: brief exploring how we can face the toughest stuff that
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: life throws at us, and one of the things that
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: she's learned is that no amount of pretending to be
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: okay will make it all okay.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: I wish that I would have been honest.
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: That's where terrible thanks for asking came from. I wish
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: I would have told the people close to me that
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: I was bad, because every time I lied about it,
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: I made it impossible for people to show up for me.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: So what came next was a life that she says
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: she could have never even imagined for herself. Now she's
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: a podcast host, speaker, best selling author, remarried, and a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: mother to several kids.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: I have like an exceptional imagination. I have to say
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: I imagined a lot of things. But I think I
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: typically use my imagination like most people, for evil to myself.
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: You know, let's imagine the worst case scenario. Let's imagine
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: the worst possible thing that could happen. No, this is
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: not is something that I could have possibly imagined. And
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: I have to remind myself of that on days when
• 5:07
  Speaker 4: I'm stressed out.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: You know, I think we tend to think about grief
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: like it's an emotion, but the more you experience it,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the more you move through it. It's really so much
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: more complex than that. Grief is kind of like a
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: bigger container that's filled with complicated emotions like sadness and
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: anger and denial and shock and so many others, And
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: it can mark a chapter or a series of chapters
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: in your life.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: It can even redefine your life.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: And it's kind of like a lens that changes the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: way you see, experience, and feel everything around you. There's
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: so much profound advice about loss out there, but there's
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: one that really sticks out to me, and it's a
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: moment from a Billie Bob Thornton interview with Oprah's Masterclass
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: years ago, where he talked about losing his younger brother.
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I've never been the same since my brother died.
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: Melancholy in me that never goes away. I'm fifty happy
• 6:03
  Speaker 5: and fifty percent sad at any given moment. And the
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: only advice I can give people for when you lose
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: someone like that is you won't ever get over it.
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: And the more you know that and embrace it, the better.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Off you are.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I find this idea of embracing grief oddly comforting. There's
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: no erasing it, there's just learning to live with it,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and that's what Nora has had to do.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: So today's conversation is not about telling.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: You that everything is going to be okay or a
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: lesson in the power of positive thinking. It's just Nora
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: and me talking about the heart stuff and finding the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: lightness where we can. So Norah, ten years ago this year, Yeah,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: you had suffered a miscarriage, you had a baby, you
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: lost your dad and your husband Aaron, to cancer within
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: weeks of each other. And then in those ten years
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: you've gotten remarried, you blended your family, started this new career,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: including a hugely successful podcast and a roster of books.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: And I think you'll probably have shows on television pretty soon.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: As you're sitting in this chair today. Could you have
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: imagined any of this?
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: No?
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: No, and I have like an exceptional imagination. I have
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: to say I imagined a lot of things. But I
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: think I typically use my imagination like most people, for
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: evil to myself. You know, let's imagine the worst case scenario.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Let's imagine the worst possible thing that could happen. But no,
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: this is not something that I could have possibly imagined.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: And I have to remind myself of that on days
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: when I'm stressed out, that like, this is a life
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: beyond my wildest dreams, and that even like the real
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: stressors are a symptom of getting what I really wanted
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: out of life with a huge asterisk and some things
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: I didn't like.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: Like when you're having one of those days, like today's
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: a Tuesday technically, but.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know about you.
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: It feels more like a perpetual Thursday in January for me,
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: And there's always like a never ending list of things
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: to do professionally and personally, and I'm not at my
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: best when.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: I feel stressed out.
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: Or when i feel like I'm not doing a good
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: job at things. But the things that are stressing me
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: out are the fact that we have four kids who
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: need and love us and need attention from us, and
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: that I do have a career. That you know, before
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: all of this, I was sitting in a cubicle making
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: PowerPoint presentations and I could have done that.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Forever, right, I was highly skilled like that.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: But what's interesting about that is when you met aarin,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you like you had decided on your life, which I
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: think is so interesting because I don't know if many
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: people had done that. But one of the things that
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: you decided on was you were going to go to
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: work and he was going to be a stay at
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: home dad. Yeah, but you decided that while you were
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: making PowerPoint presentation?
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: Did I decided that on our second date because I
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: said I wanted four kids.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: He wanted to.
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: We shook on three and I thought, this man's a sucker,
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: Like I know, I'll.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: Get four kids out of him.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: He's obsessed with me. It's our second date, and I
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: can ask him how many kids he wants. I mean,
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: he's just like, oh, two, very normal conversation. Yeah, he
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: was willing to do that. And we both worked in
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: advertising in the city of Minneapolis. And I thought, well,
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: I'm twenty seven years old.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: Clearly it's too late for me to change my career.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: I've put five whole years of my life in to
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: one thing and explored no other options.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: It's this or nothing.
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I thought, we will just get married, have
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: four kids. Maybe he'll stay home in freelance. I'll be
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: you know, riding the girl boss trained to the top
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: of the Midwest advertising scene, and we'll take two weeks
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: of vacation a year, probably go to Florida. I don't know,
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: you know, like we'll just have like a nice little life.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: And honestly that would have been enough for me. That
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: would have been enough for me. And also, if I
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: could travel back in time, I would tell every younger
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: version of myself. Your life is not a runaway train.
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: You're allowed to change tracks being twenty seven if not old,
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: and if you were interested in something else, you could
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: pursue it.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I'm sort of shocked to hear you say that you
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: got everything you wanted.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: I know, I know the most way I wanted it.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like you do you have four kids?
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: What else?
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: I have work that means something to me. I remember
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: my dad also worked in advertising. My dad wrote infomercials,
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: which is filled with stories for another time. But my
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: dad told me the point of life was to find
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: work that was meaningful to you and find someone to
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: share your life with.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: And that's it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: And it's not as though, you know, writing fitness infomercials
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: was the most meaningful thing in the world to him,
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: but it allowed him to take care of our family,
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: which was meaningful to him, Yeah, and it allowed him
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: to make like lifelong friendships, which was meaningful to him.
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I got everything I wanted, not the way
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: that I thought I would, not the way that I
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: thought I would.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So I want to set the stage for everyone who
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: doesn't know about your story with Aaron. You're in your
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: twenties and you're dating and you meet this guy, yeah,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: and you describe this not just as a partnership but
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: as a romance.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: Yes, we were flirting on Twitter, which is such a
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: moment in time in twenty ten where we were connecting
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: over Taylor Swift and in twenty ten, right when it
• 12:16
  Speaker 4: wasn't that cool to like Taylor Swift. Yeah, and we
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: were connecting over Mandy Moore as like a musical artist, and.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: We were connecting over like pop culture. Right.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: And then he just showed up where I was one
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: night and everything just clicked into place. And it was
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: the first time I hadn't had to pretend because this
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: person just liked me, and he liked me, and I
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: was writing this is like the era of the first
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: person essay online, and I'm writing all of these essays
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: for audiences of dozens. Right, I've got a Tumblr blog
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: that seven or eight people are reading, and he's one
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: of them, and he thinks that everything I say and
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: write is like and interesting and he wants to talk
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: about it.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: And I'd never been with somebody who was interested in me,
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: which makes me so sad.
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: But that's why it was so easy, and that's why
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: it was just so magical. It was literally your most
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: annoying friend who's like, oh my god, I found him
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: and I wasn't even looking. And you wouldn't believe it
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: right off the bat. You know, we're talking about our
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: lives together.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just knew.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was just so easy.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: It's funny you say the word easy. I used to interview.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: I did a morning show and I would interview this
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: matchmaker all the time in Chicago. And I went to
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: lunch with her one day and she's kind of like
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a life coach matchmaker. She's not like one of those
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: like snake oil salesman. And I was like, what are
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: all the couples you set up have in common? And
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: she was like, it's so interesting. They all use one word.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And I was like, what is it like big love romance?
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: And she goes, they all say easy.
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was easy.
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think and also like the like of it all.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: You know, I was raised by a man who was
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: not terribly who would say things like, if you want romance,
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: go watch a movie.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: Marriage is not that romantic, right, Marriage is partnership. Marriage
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: is like commitment and like, but Aaron was romantic, but
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: he was also just he just liked me, Like it's
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: the like of it all. Like you can love somebody
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: without truly liking them. Yeah, but like when your basis
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: is just like I like who you are, it's very easy.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I just never experienced that.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: It's actually hard for me because I listened to almost
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: every podcast you do. It's hard for me to hear
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: you talk about him. Yeah, I know, yeah, it must
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: be really weird. And other people cry about your dream.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: It makes me like it truly, there's no better compliment
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: because it means that, like I got him across you,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: did you do? He was like he do?
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: You would feel like you the party could not have
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: started until you arrived, even if you were the only
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: person who didn't know anyone else in the room.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Like that was his magical power.
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: And I do not automatically feel at ease in situations,
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: and his power was like making people feel at ease
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: and making them feel like they belonged, And like, I
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: feel that way about people that I've never met who
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: have died because the people who loved them did such
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: a good job of like.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Expressing them so and telling their story to me.
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like goosebumps about that.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: I do thank you for that. But he gets diagnosed
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: with glioblastoma.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, four years in one year in one year, one
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: year in Yeah, we've been dating for a year as
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: a seizure at work.
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: We both work in creative environments where like pranking as
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: normal and like, you know, like where if you left
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: your computer open, he might send an email to the
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: whole agency being like, sorry, I delet home.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: You know, I had to go home. I poop my pants.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: I'll be you know.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: Like So when his coworker called me and said, has
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: Aaron ever had a seizure?
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I thought bad prank?
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: And I was like, okay, idiot, Yeah, yeah, seizures all
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: the time. And you know, it wasn't a prank. And
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: we had to go to the hospital and I met
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: him there and they did all of like the imaging
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: and the magical thinking of it all. When you're young,
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: and when bad things just kind of happened to other people,
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: we truly were like, well.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: You know, let's go home. Yeah, you know, how bad
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: can it be?
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: And they did an MRI and he had a brain tumor,
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: and a month later we got married and then our
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: third wedding anniversary was his funeral.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: So wow, yeah.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we had like one really normal year and then
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: we had three really really good years. I know, it's
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: strange to say that because he was sick and he
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: had chemo and radiation and two brains are but like
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: those three years, even when he was sick, were some
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: of the happiest moments of my.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Life really because we were just so focused.
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: You know, not unlike the sickness, but on just like
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: our presence with each other. It's almost like knowing that
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: there's an alternate universe that you are sort of like
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: walking the plank, yeah, you know all the time, like
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: just sort of on the edge, wondering if you're going
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: to get pushed out down into the sharks. Like you
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: do appreciate the moments that feel safe and light, and
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: he just had a natural way of focusing on the
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: good that was there, and like the fun that was there.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: It's weird, Like it's weird. We'd be like, oh, yeah, well,
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: we'll be at the hotel this weekend. Hospital, we'll be
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: at the hospital this weekend. Not because the hospital was
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: particularly nice, but just like, you know, he's packed an
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: Xbox and.
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Oh totally he's backing an Xbox. But that's for his
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: own time.
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: And you know, like we're ordering food in and our
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: friends will come visit, and like, what can you do
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: to make even the terrible stuff palatable?
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: So terrible? Thanks for asking. Yeah, yeah, we're going to
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: talk about that later. It was a hugely successful pod.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Did the name come out of that time? Yeah?
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: Terrible? Thanks for asking. Was actually a rejected book title
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: because the publisher thought it was too negative for a
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: memoir about my husband dying. So it's like, okay, I
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: will I'll keep that for something. But that came out
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: of Aaron dying.
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: Actually, it came out of like the aftermath and without him.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: I really was untethered.
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: I was not equipped to navigate life without him.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: Without him, you know.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: What does that look like? He passes and then the
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: next day.
• 19:09
  Speaker 4: Then we're at you know, then maybe two days later
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: the obituary comes out and we'd written it together and
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: you know, revealed his identity as Spider Man, and included
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: his first wife, Gwen Stefani, and.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: She's are you kidding or no?
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: She's never responded, And can I tell you why we
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: had to include Gwen Stefani. This is I love men
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: because I love how delusional they are. And this is
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: what I loved about Aaron. He would tell the story
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: and he would say that he almost went to prom
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: with Gwen Stefani because she was touring, like right before
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: Tragic Kingdom came out, and he saw her at Seventh
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: Street Entry in Minneapolis and he asked her, will you
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: go to prom with me? And she said, oh, no,
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: I'm on tour.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: And he heard that as like a yes.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: When he told me that, I was like, sure, okay, yeah,
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: like you almost went a prong with Gwen Stefani, Sure
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: for sure.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: It was like it almost happened, It almost happened, So
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: it was included in the obituary, included in.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: The obituary, and like the number of people who were
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: like I had no idea who was married before, Like,
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: oh my god, it was so classy of you to
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: include her.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: And like we.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: Like that obituary when viral and this is like twenty fourteen,
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: Like that was a simpler time. You write one algorithm
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: to rule them all. We're all we're all seeing the
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: same stuff online pretty much.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: So he was making you laugh even in debt.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: Yes, and he was just like doing what he did best,
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: which is like making everyone else feel like they were
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: in on the joke. So when you go through something hard,
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: everybody asked you how you are, even though the answer
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: should be somewhat obvious, and they don't blame them, right, Like,
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: there's what else are you going to ask besides like, wow,
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: how about this weather?
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you've reading anything good? How's your debt? How are you?
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: It's just it's so hard. We all want to do
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: or say the right thing. It's so difficult. Everyone's an amateur.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: I'd never had Aaron die before, neither of anybody else,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: you know. But I could just tell that people needed
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: me to be okay, and so I said that I
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: was fine. And the number of people, complete strangers who
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: emailed me after reading that obituary to spill their guts,
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: their secrets, their traumatic ephemera all over me to a
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: complete stranger was honestly life saving.
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: It really was.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: That's not what I thought you were going to say.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: No, I know me neither.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: Like I would just get these emails and I'd be like, oh,
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: it's not just me. You know, all these other people
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: are also out in the world. I might see them
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: and think they're fine. You know, like when you go
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: through something and you're out in the world and you're like,
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: does nobody know, Like the world's over right, Like we're
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: not doing this.
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: You can't just be driving a car like the world
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: stopped spinning, Like you can't just be at the mall
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: yeah right now.
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: I mean I am, but I'm shopping for a dress
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: for my husband's funeral. When you tell salesperson that it'll
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: ruin their day, okay, But yeah, I wish that I
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: would have been honest. That's where terrible thanks for asking
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: came from. I wish I would have told the people
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: close to me really that I was bad, because every
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: time I lied about it, I made it impossible for
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: people to show up for me. You know, when your
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: sister is like, okay, are you okay, and you're like
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: mm hmm mm hm and you haven't slept in like
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: four days and you're, you know, checking your child's breathing
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: every two seconds, and you know you think you have
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: a brain tumor because you have a headache, Like, you know,
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: you should tell somebody. You should tell somebody, and you
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: should tell the people who care about you, not the
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: check out boy at Target, Like he's not getting paid
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: enough to hear the truth.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, sometimes it's easier to tell those people.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: That was kind of the magic of the podcast, was like, come,
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: come tell a stranger, Come tell stranger the truth.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Is there anyone you did feel comfortable talking to after
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: he died.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: People who are like a little more on the periphery,
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: people who were new to me and didn't have like
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: an expectation of who or how I should be. I
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: met my friend Moe because both of our husbands had died.
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: We had literally nothing in common except for that, and
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: we went to the same coffee shop, and the ladies
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: at the coffee shop like you guys got to meet
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: you both have dead husbands, And we were like, I
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: don't want to meet her, you know, like I don't
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: want to. I don't want to, but we did want
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: to maintain our ability to go to that coffee shop.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: So we met and it was like wow, because like
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: we understood the experience and we could say things to
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: each other that we couldn't say to our loved ones,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: not because they didn't care, but because like.
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: It's a lot, it's a lot. So yeah, find one person,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: one person?
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: So what it's that called? Just like that? The New
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Sex and the City season, towards the end of the season,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Carrie goes to this like widow's convention and there's a
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: woman that gets on stage and she starts being very
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: funny about her husband's death, and the people in the
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: audience at first are kind of freaked out. Yeah, and
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, everybody's laughing and she changes
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the whole state of the mention. I kin'd I watched
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: that and I was like, oh, that's Nora, Like they
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: based that character off of her. You founded a Facebook
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: group called the Hot Young Widow's Club.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: I know, I know, yeah, yeahs TV writers do.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Though, you know, did you also think that was about you?
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: I'm not the only one. I mean, I think everything's
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: about me, right, Like you know, No, I mean you think, uh,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: who knows? Who knows?
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of people who have who have started
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: Facebook groups and things like that. But I'd say the
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: one unrealistic thing about that scene was every widow thinks
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: that shit is funny, Like it is. The number one
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: like thing that a widow will have in common is
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: just being like, we have to say something absolutely on
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: hinged that only we will laugh at. Yes, and it's
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: like kind of like a little bat signal that goes out.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, this is sort of an intense question.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: But yeah, do you ever cry over Aaron?
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: Cry about Aaron all the time?
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Still?
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: I do? Yeah, I do.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: And the strangest things, like he really did love Taylor
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: Swift when Cardingen came out. I just remember when when
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: Folklore and Evermore came out. Matthew, who I'm married to now,
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: was like, do you need a day alone?
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: And I was like, no, I kind of want you
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: to sit here with me, and I just put on
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: headphones and like held his hand and like cried, you know,
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: Like there's certain things that I know he would love
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: that he never got to experience. And our son growing up,
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: you know and looking exactly like him and having mannerisms
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: that there's no way he could remember when he was
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: twenty two months old, you know, when Aaron died, Like
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: these are like hardwired into him. There are moments like
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: that and even moment it's with like this new version
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: of my family too. These other kids have no genetic
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: tie to Aarin, but they know him, you know, and
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: they love him too, and like that means so much
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: to me too.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, I think it will be.
• 26:17
  Speaker 4: Like it will never not be sad that somebody dies
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: when they're thirty five years old, you know what I mean,
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: That will never not be like tragic and will I'll
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: never ever in my life be able to forget.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: The sound his mom made, you know.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: And I mean sometimes I like cry because I'm so
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: happy about the way that, like his family and I
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: have kept each other. You know, his mother is truly
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: the person that I've learned the most about love from.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Oh say more.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of tragically rare when you lose your
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: husband to not also lose his family. Yeah, for so
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: many reasons, right, It's just loss is hard.
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: Everybody is sort of like the spoke of their own
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: social emotional wheel, and it's hard to maintain connections. Things happen,
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: But like Aaron's mom is she's like a grandma to
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: all of our kids, you know what I mean, Like
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: seeing her like hold the baby that I had with Matthew,
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: you know, like seeing the way that that baby just
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: like knows her as may may like as grandma. Like
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: seeing how she has all their pictures up on her
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: little mantle, and just the way that she like she
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: really truly shows up for all these kids and for me.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: And there was a moment after Aaron died where she said,
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: someday you're going to fall in love and I just
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: don't want to lose you. And I just remember being like,
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: oh you'll you never could, you know, like you never could,
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: Like just her ability to say that out loud and
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: like express that, because I was afraid of the same
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: thing too, you know, like if I meet someone, am
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: I saying and no longer care about Aaron? And it's
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: such a if you've experienced it, you're like, well, no,
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: of course not right, Like, of course not. But that's
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: a normal fear because we do think of love as
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: kind of a zero sung like you either love.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: This person or this person, right, yeah.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: Not that love can continue and exist in many forms.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: But the way you talk about Mathew, I think is
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: so interesting. I was gonna say rare, but it's actually
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: really interesting because I've heard you talk about how Matthew
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: helps you keep Erin's stories and personhood alive too. There's
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: this movie Past Lives that I watched on an airplane,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: and the whole idea is basically like, can you be
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: with somebody who you love and can they make space
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: for past love? Yeah, it's different when somebody passes, but
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: not everybody can.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Not everybody can.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: You guys have done it really beautifully.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's really special, which I kind of hate to say,
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: because he shouldn't be. Yeah, you know what I mean,
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: Like that shouldn't be rare. He kind of shouldn't get
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: a medal for like accepting and understanding the fact that,
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: of course I would still love Aaron.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: But I'll give him his.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: Medal and I will give him those flowers because I
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: know enough people who have not gotten that from other partners,
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: Like whose other partners feel like threatened by that or
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: just feel like insecure about it in a way that
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: I just kind of can't understand, but only because I
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: guess I've never been in that situation. And we all
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: want to think of ourselves as expansive and bigger maybe
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: emotionally than we might be in a situation. But yeah,
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: Matthew's never made me feel like there was any competition
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: or insecurity, and falling in love with Matthew happened alongside
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: like me really accessing my grief for Aaron, because I'd
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: been in survival mode for that whole year, not feeling anything,
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: barely going to like going to therapy against my will,
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: to the point where there's like a chapter in my
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: first book that I would just like to say, like
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: I rescinded writing.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: About how I don't need to go to therapy, like
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: what I.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Was, like, you were writing in the mess It's okay, it.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Right, I was writing in it. I was like, no,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: not me.
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: Other people sure not me, Like you have PTSD, you know,
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: like you're it's not normal to like you shouldn't be
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: having flashbacks, you shouldn't be like waking up in a
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: panic attack, and like having a safe place, which was
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: Matthew like allowed me to truly grieve Aaron. So those
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: two were like linked, and they're also like LinkedIn kind
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: of magical ways.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Was looking through I still.
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: Have so much of Aaron stuff and always will and
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: I have a box of his old concert stubs and
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: I was looking through them and Matthew.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Was like, I was there. I was there. I was
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: kidding no, is that nuts?
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Wow?
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: And like bands I would never go see or like
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: have heard of, and he was like, yeah, I was there, Yeah,
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: I was there.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: It's just really like to know that they were both
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: in the same rooms, you know, is magical to me.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: What's the most erin thing that Ralph does? Now?
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: He does these like little expressions and eye movements, the
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: way he crosses his legs every He also calls me.
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: We're on a first name basis my child and I.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: But he'll call me Aaron.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: I always said I never had a nickname because Nora's
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: kind of hard to nickname, you know. Yeah, And he
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: was like, we're gonna come up with one, and like
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: two seconds later he was like Chronicles of Narnia and
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: my dad was.
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: Like, oh, I can't believe I missed that.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: I'm just like, oh, literary reference and then you shortened
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: that to norn And the way that Ralph says norm
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: is so errand wow, and like like the shape of
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: his hands, his eyes, they are just these like little
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: glimpses where it's like I see him, I see him,
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: but mostly like his sense of humor and the jokes
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: that he'll find in the moment.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: I'm like, that was good. That was good. That was
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: really good.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you talk a lot about death aversaries. I think
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: as you grow in grief, they change here to year.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you want different things. What do you find yourself
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: wanting on the anniversary of Aaron's death?
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: I want quiet?
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: You know, there are I think, I mean, honestly, there's
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: nobody does grief like Jewish people.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Judaism is like the ultimate.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: Like I'm so bummed that I was re cath like
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: because like we're good up until the funeral and then
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: that's it.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: So you know, when I was introduced.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: To like yard site candles like that, having like a remembrance,
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: like a yearly remembrance that lasts like the length of
• 33:12
  Speaker 4: the candle.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: Well could be more beautiful than that. I do that,
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: and I usually like I reserve that day for.
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: Whatever, you know what I mean. It's just kind of
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: like I don't know till I get there what I want.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: But you're not working.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: I'm not working, but I feel I felt a lot
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: of pressure the first year, the first death diversary to
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: be like, I have to market, right, and I have
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: to a market and it has to be meaningful because
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: I'm setting a precedent and like it could be anything. Yeah, right,
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: it could be anything. And the day that means the
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: most to me now is actually Aaron's birthday.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: So he was a big birthday guy. He loved birthdays.
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: He memorized all of his friend's birthdays, never missed a birthday.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: So the way that I remember and love Aarin is
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: like remembering people's birthdays, making a big deal out of
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: other people's birthdays, and then holding a birthday party for Aaron.
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: He always called it Aaron Fest.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: And I buy all the kids in my life, my nieces,
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: my nephew's, my kids something dumb and extravagant that their parents.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: Won't buy them, you know.
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: So I'm like, in the month's leading up to it,
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: I'm like, what do you want that your parents think
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: is a waste of money? Because Uncle Aaron doesn't believe
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: that money is a.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: Waste, right.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: He thinks he'll let you have anything you want and
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: we'll like watch a Marvel movie, or we always get
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: to Taco Bell.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: Always Taco Bell. A Baja blast, mountain.
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: Dew, garbage food, watch a movie, and like we really celebrate,
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: and that'll be like Aaron's family, my family, Matthew's family.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and like that makes me feel close to him.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: But I also know that ten years is going to
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: feel different.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and as Ralph gets older, it's going to feel
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: different for him, And so I really want him to know, like,
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: you can reserve the right to change your mind about
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: any of this and decide what feels meaningful to you.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: When you google your name, one of the first lines
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: in your bio that pops up is that you were
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: voted most humorous by the Annunciation Catholic School class of
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight.
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: And that's wrong because I graduated ninety seven. Okay, my
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: nan are I didn't know. I didn't know I had
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: to do that math and I was like, yeah, I
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: guess it was ninety seven, but yeah, yeah, most humorous female.
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: Andy Hannon was the most humorous male, So.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Quite a superlative. Where's Andy now?
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Andy's coaching basketball.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: So he's not really using as humor.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: We he remains one of the funniest people. Could I
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: ever like if I run into that guy. If I'm
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: home and I run into Andy Hannon, he knows this,
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: I will turn into a middle schooler again. And I'm like,
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: oh man, should I go barf on mis Murphy's shoes?
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: Like I just I'm just back to idiot status, Like yeah,
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: Most Humorous nineteen ninety seven.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: So Most Humorous. And then your first book is It's
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Okay to laugh, Crying as cool too. Yeah, And you
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: better than anybody I have ever met, or anybody's work
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: that I have read, you are able to hold the
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: duality of your life, the humor and the pain. So well.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: How did you learn how to use humor through that time? Oh?
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: I mean I learned from the best. I learned from
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: my dad, and I learned from Aarin.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: And Aarin was never trying to like make light of
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: a situation or of his situation. Like we knew serious,
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: we googled it, we knew we had like three to
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: five years to live. But he also just had a
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: way of identifying like the light in a moment. He's
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: like on his deathbed. He's in our guest room in
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: a hospital bed, and like we're just having like an
• 36:49
  Speaker 4: amazing conversation. He's like, I will always be here. I
• 36:52
  Speaker 4: will always be here no matter what. I need you
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: to close the kitchen cabinets the way because his pet
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: people is like, I'm just taking a glass out and
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: make well, I don't know, I'm gonna get another glass someday.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: Let's just leave it open, and you'd close it all
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: the way and please, for the.
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: Love of God, stop picking your nose.
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: And I was like, I will, and I'm lying because
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: I never will, and yeah, no, I hate it.
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: I hate it. I hate it. Like he just was like,
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: There's people and moments where you can tell somebody is
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: trying to like erase the reality of what's happening, you know,
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: or distract you from it, and in that case, like
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: humor feels bad, you know what I mean, Like when
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: someone walks into a room and you're like, dude, just yeah,
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: like and then there's just like finding those moments and
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: like seeing them and like acknowledging them.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I grew up in a family that is like silly, yeah,
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: you know, and then I married like a very silly,
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: buoyant person, So I think I just absorbed it that way.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: You quote your dad so much as I was prepping
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: for this there's a few quotes I actually wrote down
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: that I really liked. One of them was something I
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: think I need to remember. Your dad said, don't try
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: and wait for your life to be perfect, just do
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: the things when you feel them. Yeah, and you said
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Aaron was the first person who really got that, like
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: why over plan?
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah? Yeah.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Do you think you're about your dad a lot? Still?
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: I do think about my dad a lot. I think
• 38:18
  Speaker 4: about my dad a lot because our relationship was really
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: complicated and he loved us and also was a very
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: injured person.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: You know. My dad went to Vietnam when he was
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: seventeen years old.
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I have a lot of compassion for him,
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: but I've had to sort of process all of that
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: without him. So we had a movie worthy death experience
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: with our dad, gathered around him, you know, and I
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: told him, like, I love you, you did a good job,
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: you were a good dad, and he literally looked up
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: at me like a child, like are you sure really?
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: You know, because I know he felt that too, And
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: I think at the end, you do see things a
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: lot more clearly. But I've had to kind of put
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: those pieces together without him. And my dad was not
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: the kind of person who would say like, I love you,
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm proud of you. But he would like,
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: at the most random moments, drop something like that on you,
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: which I think was his way of like trying, you know,
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: trying to say, like I love you, I care about you,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: I can see something in you. That was also something
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: I needed, And let me give you this little piece
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: of advice without you know, opening up too much of
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: a conversation about our feelings.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: You had so much loss in a short period of time.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: When hard things happen in my life, I think about
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: time so differently. Yeah, do you like, how did everything
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: you went through impact your relationship with time?
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: I was almost meaningless to me now, truly, like, I
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: don't know, how did it impact yours?
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: I this sounds so weird that I realized like nothing mattered. Yes, yeah, yeah,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: and I released and like surrendered to uncertainty. I used
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: to think I had a lot of control over things,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: and I realized I have almost no control. In a
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: weird way, it was comforting. Yeah, did you ever feel
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: like you were running out of time? Because you're such
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: a driven person.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: I do have I think that I was experiencing, especially
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: in that first year, almost like a mid life a
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: true midlife crisis. My dad was sixty four when he died,
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: and so I was. I turned thirty two in the
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: year after all of that, and I was like, Okay,
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: this could very literally be the halfway point. And I
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: didn't feel like necessarily like a TikTok pressure, but I
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: did feel, I think, a very real pressure to do
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: everything that I could while I could do it, whether
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: or not it was the right time. And that's my
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: dad's influence, right, Like even writing that first book, you know,
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: I had an editor be like, are you sure you
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: don't want to wait like five or ten years? And
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: I could have, and I would have written a very
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: very different book. But like, this is a perspective, you know,
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: like when you're in it, that's a perspective too. It's
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: not the only perspective. But I've read plenty of books
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: that were written from like a safe, comfortable distance where
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: you can turn something into something meaningful.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: And it wasn't.
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: The death wasn't meaningful, right, Like there's no like meaning
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: to Aaron dying of brain cancer. Like the meaning is
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: like the love and the life and what you make
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: of it. But I think having all of those things
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: happen have made me very good about not worrying about
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: big things honestly, you know, like one of our kids
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: and it needs an MRI.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, well we'll know when we know, right, Like they'll get.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: It and then we'll know been through those yeah.
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: And you know, people like, are you worried that Matthew's
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: gonna die? I'm like, I never think about it. I
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: never think about it, right, right, No, I'm like he
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: will or he won't, right, And that's you know, hopefully
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: I get to go first this time, but you never know.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Do you feel that way?
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I want to go first next time.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Like it was too traumatic.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: Also, I mean I won't be any better at it, yeah,
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: you know, because it'll be totally different.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: It'll be Matthew instead.
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: Of Erin, it'll be all of these kids, it'll be
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: you know, a totally different version of myself.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: But we talk about it a lot.
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Like we talk about it a lot with our
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: kids too, because I don't want them to be scared
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: of death, you know, and I don't want them to
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: be like afraid to talk about things that matter to them,
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: like before it's too late.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so say you're saying, say, say your feelings the
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: way that Aaron's mom did.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Yes, and like say, like you know, make sure that
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: you're like maintaining and like building those connections that will
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: sustain you and like my kids know, right, like when
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: I die, like bury me in a bed of moss,
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: you know, like Facebook's trying to sell me a hot
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: pink coffin right now. Moro virus for two days. So
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: I'm not ready.
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: And that's not how I'm going matches your outfit.
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it really was as it is, shiny no moss, okay,
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: moss forest death.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, I want to totally switch it up. Yeah, because
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: I think we covered grief.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: We did, we did covered it. What are you drinking? Oh?
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: This is magic mind. It helps me with my focus.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Do you want one?
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: I do?
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: Actually okay, Okay, it's like a little bit of caffeine,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: but it's all natural.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Oh you have just shake it Okay, I just did anyways, right.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: You just shake it up? Do more stress less cheers?
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Should I tell you to chug chug chug.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: Chunk chunk jump. M Oh that's nice.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: I get like the burst of energy without the coffee
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: jitter jitters.
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can only have one coffee and
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: then I'm I feel like I'm gonna fly through space,
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: but not a good way, Like I'm like I'm about
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: to levitate.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: I'm just vibrationally unwell.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: Do you drink coffee all day?
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: No? Now, I have one in the morning, and like,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: if I have one afternoon, I know I know what
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: I'm doing. I know I'm ruining tomorrow.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: I feel the same way.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: I'll be up at like eleven at night being like
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: like I can't.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Go to bed if I drink it past eleven am.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: That's why I'll drink these if I need.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: A little boost, Okay, and it won't like jack up tomorrow.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: That's great.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's nice. It's like a little bit sweet, but
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: not sweet sweet.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: So you are someone who never shies away from the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: messy truth you just said you wrote the book up
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: here in this season of your life. Is there a
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: messy truth that you feel like you're facing?
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and I'm a sort of cir for a
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: long time and like showing glimpses of it, right, And
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: I wanted to call it something else.
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: I wanted to just call it stress. I wanted to
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: just call it transition. I wanted to just call it life,
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: but like I am and have been like profoundly burned out,
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: and I thought that I could, I guess, like still
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: work my way out of it or work my way
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: through it, because like there is still a huge part
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: of me that knows that kind of still wants to
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: like compare myself against anyone else and be like, okay,
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: but like who cares?
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: Right, Like okay, okay, you know, like who gets to
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: be burned out? Even right? Ring everybody burned out?
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: We are recording this in downtown La, Like do you
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: think anybody living under the one oh one is like
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: not burned out? You know, Like do you think anyone
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: down here is thriving right now?
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: No?
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: Right, It's like it's a horrible time to be a
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: person in the world. Like it is really difficult for everybody.
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: We are like drinking from a fire hose of human suffering.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Or experiencing it.
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: We have never had a higher cost of living in
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: lower wages. There's never been a huger wealth gap. Like
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: we are really confronting generations of issues all at once.
• 46:20
  Speaker 4: My mom is seventy four, and I'm like, was it
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: this bad in the seventies and she's like, what, no,
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: you know, well I don't think so. So it's a lot,
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: and it's easy I think to be like, well, okay,
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: so I'm not it's not that bad for me personally.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't matter how you're not allowed to be
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: burnt out. Yeah, how do you know where it's coming from?
• 46:38
  Speaker 4: I think it's coming from myself. The call is coming
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: from inside the building. And I think for a long time,
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: part of my work in therapy was part of the
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: reason why I worked so hard.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: The minute that Aaron.
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: Died was because I had to write, like we were young,
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: we had not saved money. You can't get life insurance
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: once you already have brain cancer. I had resigned from
• 47:07
  Speaker 4: my job, I'd stopped going.
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they didn't want to pay me anymore for not
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: doing a job.
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: That's fair, right, that's fair. I was like, no, you
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: still still pay me. Yeah, I won't be coming or
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: doing any of this work. But like, come on, So
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: I didn't have like a steady source of income. I
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: was not thriving, and I just replaced my feelings with
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: actions like I replaced like I processed through a lot
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: of my stuff through work, but also a lot of.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: It was like a way to avoid feeling stuff, Right.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: That's what I do. Yeah, I'm not into drugs or alcohol,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: it's not for me.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: No, I'm addicted to work.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: I avoid my I think I avoid my romantic life
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: by working because it's a productive thing.
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah. No, one's going to judge you for it.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: No, now they applaud you. Yes, yeah, yeah, I just
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: realized that.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: When did you realize you were burnt out?
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: Oh? I mean not long enough. Right.
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: I did a whole live show and a tour where
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: I got on stage and I talked about how, you know,
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: sometimes when I'm walking home from dropping the kids off
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: at school, I just kind of like cross my fingers
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: and hope, like I get clipped by an suv, I
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: can just go into a coma for like six weeks,
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: like not. I don't want to be physically marred, not,
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: you know, I just want to be forced to rest
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: for six weeks in a hospital like setting so that
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: nobody can be mad at me that I can't do
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: these things that I said I would do, And I
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: just want the world to like stop.
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: I don't necessarily want to die, like I do want
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: to come back, but for a while. I want to
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: be just like I want to hit the reset button
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: at the back of my skull, power down, and then
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: like reanimate.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: You're not the first person to sit in that chair
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: and tell me that, right, yeah, right.
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: I was at school drop off and a mom said
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: to me, sometimes I just like kind of want to
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: get hit by a car.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: And I was like, girl, oh my god, me too, Like,
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: oh my god, me too.
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: Like it's all like it's all just too much, and
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: like I'm my own boss and I'm the worst boss
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: that I've ever had. Yeah, you know, I'm like, oh,
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: you think you can go You can't go to lunch?
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: What are you talking about? No, no, no, you can't go.
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: You can go work out in the middle of the day.
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: During the day you have to work, and then also
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: at night after the kids go to bed, you should work.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: And then on weekends, why don't you work, right, you're
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: on a trip.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: From your laptop.
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: Get some work done, get some stuff done, right, Yeah,
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: And I did that. And it's been ten years almost
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: of just like more and more and more and more
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: and more, and any one of these things would have
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: been a lot. But when I finally said that to
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: my therapist. She literally went, welcome, I've been waiting for
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: you to reach this conclusion.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: That's the worst when they freaking know and don't tell you.
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: I was like, She's like, you've gotten so close, You've
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: gotten so close, and now you're here, and now you're here.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: So what are you going to do about it?
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: So to echo her, as you are here in La on.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: A work trip, on a work trip, ye, yep.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: Doing a podcast for work? Yes, yes, what are you
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: going to do about it?
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: The first thing I did was that I tried to
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: look at the way that this was affecting other people too,
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: because it's I think it's very rare that just you
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: are burning out, and I think burned out people burn
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: out other people. And we had a conversation as a team,
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: the whole team who makes like you know, it's going
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: to be okay and makes terrible thanks for asking, and
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: like the team of people that I make podcasts with,
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: And I asked, is anyone having fun? Does anyone want
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: to keep doing this? And this is like our main job,
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: right Like this is like the biggest show that we make.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: It still has an audience.
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: It had never occurred to me until I asked that
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: question that we had a choice in what we were doing.
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: And you know, it's a scary choice, right, Like we're like, Okay,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: we're just going to not get paid to do this
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: thing that we've we've been doing, but does anyone want
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: to do it?
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: And like when you have a conversation with a twenty
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: four year old who's burned out on like the work
• 51:17
  Speaker 3: that you hired her to do, like you got to
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: make a change. You've got to make a change. So
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: that's the first thing. Wow, I didn't drop like the
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: lowest thing. I dropped like the biggest thing.
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: And that's scary.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: Scared for me, Everyone scared for me.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: I'm not scared for you because you're a person who
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: takes big swings, so and you're an idea machine.
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: And what's the worst that could happen? Like, no one's
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: going to die because of this podcast. And there's been
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: a couple other things that I had let go of
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: in the past, like you know, the Widow Group being
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: one of them, and like where I just got like,
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: oh god, but other people need it, right, But other
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: people want me to keep doing it. And I could
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: truly hear Aaron being like stop, I am here for work.
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: But what did I do before this? I sat in
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: my hotel and I read a book.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome.
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: Would you read I'm reading. It's called April May June July.
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: It's by Alison B.
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: Hart.
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: It's her second novel, and it's a four person narrative.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: These siblings named April May June July. We're dealing with
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: the disappearance of their dad as a contractor in Iraq
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: in two thousand and four. The book takes place in
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: twenty fourteen, when one of them believes she saw him alive. Cool,
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: and I'm like, you know, this is just for fun, right,
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: I'm like literally just reading a book for fun.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Just reading about her dad being taken.
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: I'm like so addicted to me, Danielle. I literally was like, well,
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: what can I turn this? You know, like, how could
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: I How can I make anything into work? Like I
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: got myself a Nintendo Switch to like relax the only
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: game I play. I work in the game. I play
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: Stardu Valley and I'm like running a farm. I'm in
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: the mines, you know, I'm like selling my crop.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: So I have to learn how.
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: To like live. I'm not saying anything you haven't thought of,
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: But it just sounds like you've been surviving understandably.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: Yes, and now you're kind of Yeah. Now I gotta
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: like live like life is for the living. I gotta
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: figure out how to live.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: You write one thing about growth. It sucks.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: It sucks so bad.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: It sounds like you're in a growth period.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: What's been the hardest part of yourself to face throughout
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the last ten years?
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: Oh? I think that.
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: The hardest part of myself to face over the time is,
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: like myself is like trying to figure out who I
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: am outside of what has happened to me and what
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: I do, and like to see myself, like to actually
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: see myself. I have almost a pathological level of like
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: guilt and shame about like anything anything at all, right,
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: Like I hate disappointing people, which is like intense codependence
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: and like needing to like fix things for other people.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: A part of that was, you know, I truly could
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: not understand why Aaron liked me so much, you know
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: what I mean?
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: He was so easy to like.
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: No one didn't like Aaron, right, Like plenty of people
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: are like Nora, Oh God, not for me.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: No one ever said that about.
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: Aaron, And so I really did let that kind of
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: grow into a like, well, why would I be alive?
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: You know, I better earn my keep here, right, I
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: better prove that like I deserve to be here.
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: And that's huge, Like that's really hard, and it bums.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: Into a lot of pressure.
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of pressure.
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: And it's also like to be, you know, in your
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: forties and be like, oh, I wish that I would
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: have like looked at at myself like with compassion a
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: little bit earlier, so that he didn't have to do
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: so much catch up work now.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: I just interviewed a psychologist about optimism, and in her
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: I've always been a proponent of self esteem, like who
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: isn't right? It's like who doesn't want to raise confident kids?
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: And she's actually she says like she doesn't really like
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: self esteem. She doesn't focus on it. She says that
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: self compassion is way more important. And that's the shame
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: part you're talking about, which I just was kind of
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: shocked by. Yeah, I think we've been like I've been
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: going towards something that I'm not sure it's the right thing.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Like we talk about confidence with women in particular, like
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: maybe it's a different C word it's compassion.
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because like if you make the wrong choice as
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: a woman, like the world is harder on you. Yeah,
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: we really do forgive women a lot less than we
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: forgive men. And like you can see that in even
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: just like casual conversation, and you can see that in
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: like bigger meta conversations too, around like pretty much any
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: celebrity you know, like, yeah, you know there are men
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: who have done like horrible things if you like, I
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: think you suffered enough, and then there are women who
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: have just like dared to be like slightly unlikable, and we're.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Like or like j Lo right now, yeah gets so much.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: It's like what she just took a big swing. It
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: didn't really work for some people.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, when I watched.
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: It, I truly watching the Jlo documentary built self compassion
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: for myself.
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: Oh why I really did.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: I was like, this is a woman who has four
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: hundred million dollars and is still tortured by the way somebody,
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: a stranger in Cincinnati, Ohio, views her and her romantic relationships.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the.
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: Seeking of that external validation.
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: I just like I wanted to like reach through the screen,
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: like pick her up, hold her like a baby and
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: be like you're good, Like you're great, you're good, You're okay,
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: no one needs to understand.
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: But like I love external validation, yeah, you know, and.
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: It's like that's I really do think that is like
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: a lack of self compassion. Like it is like there's
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: not a person in the world I would love to
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: meet them who can't you know, my friend didn't meet
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: her husband when they were like fifteen. Aside from Gia
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Bella me, okay, there's no one in the world who
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: can be like, yeah, I don't know. I just dated
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: and everybody was like wonderful. Every relationship made perfect sense,
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: and I have like no regrets.
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: Like who amongst us as not like you know made.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: It's so interesting you say that I my mom is
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: always like very critical about my choices, and it deeply
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: hurts me because I'm like I had to make the
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: mistakes to get it to learn.
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, motherhood parenthood is like the biggest examination of
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: your own ego.
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: There's so much projection in parenthood.
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: Like I have said this on the podcast, but like
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: the the most unconditional love goes from a child up
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: because you are born and you're like, hey, this is
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: these are my people no expectations, and like when you
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: have a child, adopt a child, to acquire a child
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: in whatever way, like your family comes together, there's so
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: much expectation. You have thought about what your family is
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: going to look like, what this child's going to look like,
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: what their path will look like.
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: It is very hard to hold yourself.
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: Back for not, like, you know, pushing a kid onto
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: a path that you wish you would have taken. And
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: there's something about mothers and daughters where like we are
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: like naturally inclined to like see ourselves in them and
• 58:40
  Speaker 4: be like that was something people didn't like about me.
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: I want to make sure you don't get that like
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: or that something that I don't like about myself. I
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: don't want you to like it too much.
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: It's so wild and like I have to try all
• 58:55
  Speaker 4: the time to just like let my kids be people.
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: They are whole people, even when they're little, Like even
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: when they just want to you know, wear mismeat shoes,
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: listen to whatever music they want to listen to.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean. I'm like, kids are I'm embarrassing.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: Being a person is embarrassing.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: We're all so embarrassing. Yeah, every time I post something
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: on Instagram. I'm like, I'm so embarrassing.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's so it's like, oh god, just the humanity
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: of it all. Yeah, humanity of all.
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: I think that's what people are reacting to with j
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: Lo too, Like they're embarrassed because they're like, oh, at
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: all of our core, right, Like we want to have
• 59:29
  Speaker 4: seen and heard and understood. And this is a person
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: who's like pushing for it, right, Like who's pushing for it?
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: That's so interesting. I think a lot about We have
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: a mutual friend, Elise Lunan, who I know, you love,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: and she has this quote that I talk about all
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: the time about how like we have to be careful
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: about how we treat women who dare to be seen
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: because it's not just like their celebrities. It really is
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: like a warning shot for everyone. And I can't help
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: think about that j Lo, and like we're watching an
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: unhealed person and we're all unhealed.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: Yes, all of us, all of us.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: It's like if we could, you know, read our mother's diaries,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: you know, if we could like see each other's like secrets, right,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: we would see that a lot more clearly. And I
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: think like when you give somebody else, like that kind
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: of compassion, like you do sort of.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: By default give it to yourself. So like there's also
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: like all life is is a series of choices and
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: you never know what the right choice was until it's
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: too late. That's it. That's it. There's like you you
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: did what you could, and that's.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: Kind of it and kind of look at it like
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: part of the whole thing is just making the choice
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: you made right.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, I think you said that to me once.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: Really, yes, you're like, make the not don't make the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: right choice, make the choice right?
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: Or do I see that one of your other interviews.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was me.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: I feel like you just I feel like you said
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: I deeply believe it. Yeah maybe I did.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, cool, I like that.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like what is the right choice. It's like
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Who knows, I don't know.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: We'll never know, We'll never know. You know. I hated
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: my name growing up.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: I wanted to be like Kristin or like you know, Stacy,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: And now I'm like, oh I love my name.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: Good choice. Parents. You don't know.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: Right in fifth grade, if they would have let me
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: change my name, I would have been like I'm Kristin Stacy,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: and I would have changed my last name too, you know, Johnson.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we all had that moment. Yeah, okay,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: I want to do some rapid fire with you. Yep, okay,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: what's something you know for sure?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: Something I know for sure? Rapid fire or the slowest
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: fire you've ever seen? A rap starting a fire from
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: from scratch?
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: Oh? God, that I don't really know anything. That, I
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: don't really know anything.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: Your dad seems so wise to me. What line of
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: his plays over and over in your head.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: I think all the time about when he was in
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: the ICU and he told me we never really leave
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: one another. We never really leave one another, and that's comforting. Yeah.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: And he is Catholic, right, it's kind of a mystical religion.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: But also he's a very practical person. I've never tried
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: to speak with him through a medium because I feel
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: like you'd.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: Be offended by that.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: But I like feel that, truly, like I really do
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: feel that, and I can feel his presence in my life.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: I talked to a medium one time. My grandpa was
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: very similar, and she was like, your grandfather's coming through
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: and he's laughing. He thinks this is ridiculous. I was
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: like him for sure.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I I've been like, oh this bullshit. Yes, all right, okay,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: what do you need?
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: What what does a man who would like call me
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: and then turn his phone off?
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: I'm like, yes, I can't call you back.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: I can't.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: Okay, you've turned it off.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: Down. There's something about that generation of Midwestern men.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: Too, like just yell at me with the long vowels.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the long a's and o's. A quality in yourself
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: that you really like.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: I like that I am excited about other people, you
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: know what I mean, idly about other people's excitement.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: You know, it's very erin of you.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: I think so.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a quality you wish you could change.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: I wish I was more patient. I wish I was
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: more patient.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: The best advice you've received about love that love is
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: more than romance. A book that should be required reading.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: Alice Lunan's Book on Our Best Behavior, and also The
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: Four Agreements, and also Victor Frankel's Man Search.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: For Meaning, Check, check, and check.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 4: I give Man Search for Meaning to every teenager. Yes
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: that I know, because that's such a time of existential
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: dread and feeling lost. And I got that book from
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: a family friend who had studied with Victor Frankel, like
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: a one hundred years ago and I remember it gave
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: me like the like just the oldest, oldest edition of it,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 4: and I was like, oh, I don't want to read
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: something and that's like a life changing book.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: So cool. Yeah, okay, grab the question everything deck.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: Oh this one is so fun, Like it's so I
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 4: just a plug for the question Everything deck.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: This is so fun to do with kids. Really, Yes,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: it's so fun to do.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: With No one's ever told me that, Thank you.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I dealt with our with like just over dinner
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: with our kids and yeah, my I can't remember, like,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: but my seven year old was just like cracking love.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: It takes it so seriously.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: I think kids hate being asked like how was school?
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: They hate it.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: So it's good. I like that you're using the deck.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: They don't want to hear, but they don't want to
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: talk about school.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: They don't want to talk about like you know, like
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: they really kids want existential questions, they really do.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: They contemplate them all the time, like why is this
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: guy blue?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: Yes?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: Why Like my seven year old asking me casually in
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: the cars, like why do you think we're here.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: I was like what. He's like, yeah, why do you
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: think people exist?
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: And I was like, huge question, buddy, It's like when
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: here we are a McDonald.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: Okay, my drawing one?
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, which everyone you're drawn to?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: Okay? Oh, what is the smartest decision you've ever made?
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: Wow?
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: Am I asking you? No?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: Oh, the smartest decision I've ever made? Oh, proposing to aarin.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: I proposed to erin the night that he was diagnosed
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: with a brain tumor and we were laying in his
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: hospital bed and I was like, yeah, we're gonna get
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: married as soon as you get out of here.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: He was like, you can't marry me. And I was like,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: I'm going to marry you. We're going to get married.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 3: We're going to get married. And that was the smartest
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: decision I made.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: It felt right in your gut. Yeah.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, that's just what we're going to do.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: It's just what we're going to do. Yeah. And the
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: easiest too.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: Thank you, Yeah, thank you, You're wonderful.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is, Today's a good day.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: To have a good day.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: I'll see you next week.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: I should be there for you.