All There Is with Anderson Cooper - Andrew Garfield’s Grief

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Andrew Garfield's mother Lynne died from pancreatic cancer in 2019. In this deeply moving and emotional episode Andrew talks with Anderson about how grief is now the only way for him to feel close to his mom again. “The wound is the only route to the gift,” Andrew says. “The grief and the loss are the only route to the vitality of being alive.” Visit the All There Is online grief community at cnn.com/allthereisonline and watch the video version on YouTube. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wherever you are in the world, and wherever you are in grief, I'm glad you're here. This is All There Is, Season 3. Your father once said to me, I don't think we will live to be very old. I didn't know what he was talking about. When he died at 50, then I understood. My mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, made this audio recording of a letter she sent me several years before she died in 2019. He had his first heart attack in 1976. Then the next year he had another. He was placed in intensive care. When a patient was very ill,

the hospital relaxed its rules and allowed children in to visit. We made plans to spend Christmas Day with him and brought a tape recorder to create a memory of our conversation. But on Christmas Eve, he had another heart attack and was moved into a unit with dying patients. I was permitted to be by his side only briefly. Much of the time he was unaware I was there as he gasped for breath. One day he seemed to suddenly focus on me and said, this was not part of my plan. But you're not going to die, I shouted back. He looked startled as if I knew something he didn't. I'm not? he asked. No, you're not.

And I believed it. The next night, January 5th, I followed as they wheeled him down the hall on a gurney to surgery. He appeared as a man taken from a crucifixion, his body limp, stuck with needles, face unrecognizable, covered with breathing equipment. I walked by his side, leaning in close, telling him I loved him. He didn't know me. I waited in a small private room. Angel, the nurse on the floor, put her head in the doorway as she departed her shift.

Be brave, she said. Hours later, we heard footsteps coming down the dark, empty, silent hall. It was nearly midnight. We did the best we could. I went home to wake you and Carter. Daddy's dead, I said. Last season of the podcast, I came to realize just how much my dad's death when I was 10 and my inability to grieve completely altered the course of my life.

His death forever changed the lives of my brother and my mom as well. There are times even now when dark thoughts take over, wishing it had been me who died instead of your father. How much better he would have been at guiding you and Carter. Far better than I could ever be. Carter, my brother, was 12 when my dad died. He too was slapped into silence by the heartbreak and terror and rage we both felt. We never talked about my dad. We never really talked about anything. Carter killed himself 10 years later. He did it in front of my mom. I buried my grief over his death too. Carter died at 23. If your father had been there, it would not have happened. He understood

your every mood and would have had the power to get you both through anything that was happening in your young lives. When your father and I went together to parent-teacher meetings at your school, I would look around at the other mothers and marvel at how much better equipped they were to be mothers than I could ever be, how much more suited to be wives to my beloved husband. These were thoughts I never voiced, but they were there, hidden, so painful I tried to block them, believe that everything was going to turn out all right. But it didn't. It was your father who died when it should have been me. In my deepest heart, I know this to be true, and I will know it till the day I die.

A lifelong sentence with no reprieve. The last year has been perhaps the most difficult of my life. The grief I've tried to keep buried for so long has finally risen. It's banging on my door, but I don't yet know how to face it. Hello, my name is John Hood. My father took his life when I was 16. I'm 62 now, but the unresolved grief, rage, anger is still with me. I've spent months listening to the more than 3,000 voicemails we received at the end of last season. I'm struck by how many of you have tried to bury your grief as well. We couldn't share our grief. We had to hide it. We had to stuff it. It's a very debilitating life.

I have tried to avoid grief my whole life. But grief waits. All these feelings came up that I never knew existed. But it will be dealt with at some point. Like an extinct volcano that erupted violently out of nowhere. I've spent so many years being angry. I haven't been able to grieve. I just continue always to keep moving forward and being strong and saying, I'll be fine. A few months ago,

I admitted to myself that I wasn't fine and I couldn't just keep moving forward and being what I thought was strong. I decided to reach out for help, and it's been one of the best decisions I ever made. We'll be right back with my guest, actor Andrew Garfield, whose mom, Lynn, died in 2019. In 100 meters, turn right. Actually, no, turn right. Actually, no. Turn left.

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They sound amazing. Bet they taste amazing, too. Ah. Wish I had a mouth. Take your morning into a delicious new direction with McDonald's new breakfast wraps. Add a small premium roast coffee for a dollar plus tax at participating McDonald's restaurants. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba. This episode is brought to you by Canon Canada.

From street interviews to vlogging or filmmaking, great content gets even better when you're shooting with great gear. That's what Canon's Level Up sales event is all about. With awesome deals on their range of cameras and lenses, you can grab everything you need for that shot or scene you've been dreaming of for less. Whether you're helping that special person take their content up a notch or adding that extra quality to your own shoots, Canon's got you covered. Shop the Level Up sales event today at canon.ca. Welcome back to All There Is is my guest today is andrew garfield he's probably best known for his roles in the social network and the amazing spider-man he was also nominated for an academy award in 2017 for his performance in hacksaw ridge his latest film we live in time comes out this week it's a love story and it's also about loss and grief. In 2019, Andrew's mom,

Lynn Garfield, died after a struggle with pancreatic cancer. Had you had much experience with grief before your mom died? I had a certain amount of experience, nothing like this absurd, surreal event of the person that gave me life is no longer here. It is surreal. It's bizarre. It doesn't make any sense. It's crazy. Yeah.

But before that, I had lost friends, yes. Grandparents, yes. Mentors, some. Mike Nichols. Heath Ledger, I think, about Philip Seymour Hoffman. Tell me about your mom. Her name was Lynn. Lynn, yeah, Linda Diane Garfield. She was a whole person that is still a mystery to me in certain ways, even though I am a part of her and she is a part of me. She was a person that felt most herself when she was able to heal,

care, nourish and contain others in a gentle way. On her hospice bed, she was more concerned with the nurses than she was with her own pain and discomfort. It was she who encouraged you to look into acting? Yeah, so I was in a bit of a lost place and she had the trust in me or the trust in my as yet undiscovered soul that it would emerge if given the right space and the right encouragement. She was a very creative person herself, but it was always applied to things that were practical. She was an amazing cook. She was a draftsperson for an architecture firm. She was a lampshade maker for my dad's lampshade company.

But I imagine if she was given free reign of her own creativity, she could have made masterpieces. She was desperate for me to find something that I could connect to. Maybe there was a part of her that was speaking that had been unlivedived that she was saying, maybe give this to Andrew. Maybe Andrew could take some of what we didn't get to experience. And I tried art. I tried painting, sculpture, you name it, music. And then I did the last resort, which was join the circus and do an outside of school drama class when I was 15.

Not literally join the circus. No, not literally. But ultimately, that's kind of what's happened. Stranger than the actual circus, perhaps. Yeah, more grotesque. And basically, I did my first drama class, and I loved it. And I felt accepted. I felt like I belonged. And it was really the beginning of the rest of all of this. I'm reminded of a moment the night before the Oscars when I was nominated for a film called Hacksaw Ridge. And I took my parents to this night before party at the Fox lot.

And my mom had a glass and a half of wine, which is a rare occurrence for her. And she got loose and she got bold and we were all dancing and we were with jack black the wonderful jack black and he's dancing with my mother and he says you must be so proud you must be so proud of him what is it is it nature or is it nurture and my mom i love that he's saying this on the dance floor shouted at the top of his lungs. Exactly. And my mom goes right up to him and grabs him by the lapels. And she says, it was me. It was all me.

And in those very rare flashes of expressed, this is who I am. She would never do that without some alcohol in her system which was very very rare and yeah I think um I do I do owe her her unmet dreams her the sacrifices she's made her longing you know I think like it probably emanated from her own deep deep longing to encourage me in that way she died in 2019 of pancreatic cancer. Just before COVID. Yeah. How long had she been ill for? About a year and a half. So she, she hung in, man. Like I was about to say she fought it for as long. It's like, I don't like that language. I don't like the idea of defeating cancer. It doesn't feel fair to me that that language is used because my mum fought until she couldn't fight anymore. And it doesn't make her not a success story.

I reject the idea that she was defeated in any kind of way by any kind of thing. She fought it for a long time. We treated it in lots of different ways. She suffered. That's the thing that I still am struggling with when i really think about it that i can't reconcile with the concept of a higher power or the concept of of god or some universal cosmic design the the suffering the pain she felt yeah like the physical agony there was no way of avoiding it.

We did everything we could to avoid it, to circumnavigate it, to heal it, to treat it. She went through two of different cycles of deciding whether she was going to continue to try to stay alive. You were able to be with her at the end. Yeah. Yeah. I was able to do that with my mom and it is among the most extraordinary experiences of certainly of my life.

Yeah, same. And I'm so happy that you had the privilege of that. And I think the fact that she died at the end of 2019 was a small blessing or a big blessing, because if it had been a few months later, my family may not have been able to have our skin touching hers and read her poetry that she loved or rub her feet or be the ones to be putting the ice around her mouth and to hear her cry out when she was in pain like the idea of not being there for that fills me with a kind of a borrowed grief from those people that have lost their closest people and had not been able to be with them. I can't imagine anything more horrific. I had the best possible version of a goodbye with my mother. Without the ending that I had, I'm not sure where I'd be.

I'm not sure if I'd be able to eloquently talk about it, to be honest. I heard something you say, there was a moment before your mom's death where you were walking along a beach. Yeah. Do you remember this moment? Mm-hmm, I do. What happened? Yeah, so I've had some profound moments with nature. And this one was one of the most, I think.

It was before she passed. She was really sick, and it was unsure what the future would be. And I could feel in my body this stuckness in my solar plexus area. And you know, it's like, oh, there's something there, and I can't cry, I can't, like, there's no release here right now. I'm just anxious, and I'm stuck somewhere, and I can't relax, and I'm fidgety, and I'm maybe having like a low-level panic attack.

So I go for a walk on the beach, and it's not a very pleasant day. It's kind of cold early autumn and the waves are pretty wild and gray and choppy. And without thinking, I stripped down and I find myself submerged in the ocean. And it just kind of happened like a flash. It was like a download of information. I get a bunch of information or a bunch of knowledge, and then I'm able to put it into some kind of words. It's a bizarre thing that happens. The quote that I read from you, and which is why I bring this up,

and it was this particular part which I found just so fascinating. You said, as soon as my full body and head were submerged, it was like I got the medicine and my chest released and I let it all go. My interpretation of that moment was that it was the wisdom of nature, the wisdom of the earth, the wisdom of the ocean letting me know, hey, yeah, it's hard. It's horrible. I'm not taking away this unique pain you're feeling. But just so you know, us out here, us water molecules, we've been seeing this for millennia. And actually, this is the best case scenario for you to lose her rather than for her to lose you. is a much better situation and again my ego was holding on my ego thought i knew better my ego said no this doesn't make sense no no no it should be this way it should be that

way but actually it took the ocean the greater opponent to just hold me under and say it's really horrible and sons have been, and sons have been losing their mothers for thousands and thousands of years and they will continue to, and you've just been initiated into that awareness and into that reality. Some illusion has been lifted. You're in a realer version of the world now and it's painful. Thank you for connecting with it, with your heart. I know that it's true

because those aren't my words. You know what I mean? Like that's not, I take no credit. You said those, but those aren't your words no no I had I guess my ears were open enough to hear or my body was open enough maybe it was

maybe the pain in my chest was like a depth of longing to understand and to want it was like I was asking for comfort like I had to understand and to want come i it was like it was like i was asking for comfort like i had to we have to ask to be helped in these moments otherwise we don't we don't get any medicine we don't get the help we have to be in enough pain and enough longing to say help me and only with that with collaborating in that way with approaching the mystery and in that way of

with all that vulnerability and with all that confusion and with all that lostness do we get any kind of answer i think and i think the answer is relative to the question and the willingness to ask the question and the willingness to not know the answer. So I think the only thing I can take credit for in terms of receiving that information was I allowed myself to feel broken. I just allowed myself to be in pain. And I didn't run away from it. I ran towards it and I said, help me. And the ocean had a great answer, a really tremendous answer. And I say opponent there about the ocean had a great answer, a really tremendous answer. And I say opponent there about the ocean,

but for me it's more like it's a mentor. It's like a grandfather or a grandmother. That idea, sons have been losing their mothers for thousands and thousands of years, and they will continue to, and you've just been initiated into that awareness and into that reality. I find that so extraordinary, And that idea is something which I had never put it into words like that. But there's something comforting about, I mean, grief feels so lonely. And yet, this is a road that has been well traveled. We live in apartments that belong to other people before us.

And we don't know anything about their lives. And we're living in their rooms. And we think that what is happening to us is so unique and so tragic and so horrible. And yet, it has happened to our fathers and to their fathers and to their fathers before them. That's beautiful. And as you're speaking, some images came up for me of indigenous people who, we're just playing catch up here. descendants of colonizing Western Descartian kind of values, cut off from the concept of death and integrated connection to death. What you just described so poetically is something that all indigenous cultures know and practice and keep close to themselves. And the tragedy of the culture that we've been born into,

one of the main tragedies is this dislocation from that reality and the humility that it brings. The humility that an awareness of death and an awareness of our fragility brings. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Andrew Garfield. This episode is brought to you by RBC Student Banking. Here's an RBC student offer that turns a feel-good moment into a feel-great moment. Students, get $100 when you open a no monthly fee RBC Advantage banking account, and we'll give another $100 to a charity of your choice. This great perk and more only at RBC.

Visit rbc.com slash get 100, give 100. Conditions apply. Ends January 31st, 2025. Complete offer eligibility criteria by March 31st, 2025. Choose one of five eligible charities. Up to $500,000 in total contributions. you said that you allowed yourself to be broken and that you asked for help i i've just really in the last year been struggling a lot and i came to the realization that i have never actually grieved that i buried all of that as a little boy and propelled myself forward. And it is only within the last

year that I woke up to that, going through the boxes, my things that belongs to my mom, my dad, and my brother, which had never been gone through. A year ago, I opened up the first box and it turned out to be a box of my dad's papers. He was a writer. And the first file I opened up was an essay he wrote called The Importance of Grieving. Oh my God. And in it, he wrote about what happens to children who don't allow themselves to grieve when they're kids. Oh my God. Holy shit. I mean, I'm not a big believer in things like that, but it's made me. Come on, man. Come on. I know, I know. And I realized that's exactly what I've done. And so for me, the last year I've been trying to understand how to turn toward that grief that's been buried. That's a really, I mean, that strikes me in such a profound way.

And in terms of, I guess, like, sorry, I'm just caught. I'm so caught on finding this essay on top of this box. And like, what made you go for that box? I know. Literally the first file I opened up and I've read most of my dad's writings. I'd never seen this essay before. It's remarkable.

Yeah. It feels, I don't know, it helps support the theory of divine plan and our interconnectedness. There's a poem by Rilke and it sort of relates to stuff that I'm thinking about a lot. He wrote, It's possible I am pushing through solid rock

in flint-like layers as the ore lies alone. I am such a long way in, and I see no way through and no space. Everything is close to my face, and everything close to my face is stone. I don't have much knowledge yet in grief, so this massive darkness makes me small. You be the master, make yourself fierce, break in, then your great transforming will happen to me. And my great grief cry will happen to you. I love that poem. And I

love Rilke. And I haven't heard that poem in a while. Why is that speaking to you particularly right now? I mean, I'm trying to learn how to grieve basically. And what I've come to realize is the little boy that I was who buried that grief, that little boy is so still very much present in me and comes to the surface more and more in a way that I've never experienced before. And I've realized that the voice inside my head is this voice that I have been using to protect that little boy my entire life and keep everything safe and at bay. And by doing that, I've not allowed myself to experience great sadness, but also not allowed myself to experience great joy. Because I don't think you can have one without the other. I would have to agree.

So this idea that I do feel small in front of this massive darkness that I feel lays ahead of me. For a lot of people, I think the first time they learned perhaps of your mom's death was when you were on Stephen Colbert's show in 2021. I just want to play the question that Stephen asked you and some of your response. Okay. I know that you yourself have suffered great grief just recently with the loss of your mother, and I'm sorry for your family's loss. Thank you. And I'm wondering how doing this show,

or any show, how art itself helps you deal with grief. Yeah. I love talking about it, by the way, so if I cry, it's only like, it's only a beautiful thing. This is all the unexpressed love that I didn't get to tell her. And I told her every day. We all told her every day. She was the best of us.

Has that grief stayed with you? Yeah, it's here now. You feel it now? Yeah, and it's the only route to feeling her close again that's the crazy thing it's like again it's it's the it's the longing it's the it's the it's the admission of the pain it's the crying out hey i need you what are you i miss you so much and only in that absence only in really inhabiting that absence being that little boy at the bottom of that empty cave in vast darkness and just kind of crying out that's the only moment that she that she comes like it's a necessity and

it's so weird it's like the longing and the grief fully inhabiting it and feeling it is the only way i can is the only way i can really feel close to her again the grief and the loss is the only root to the vitality of being alive the The wound is the only route to the gift. I really am grateful for you sharing what you've shared about yourself as a little boy and the little boy that continues to live in you and the melancholy that seems to have followed you. I don't know. It is a tragedy that we aren't educated earlier. It's a tragedy that we aren't educated earlier. It's a tragedy that we aren't encouraged earlier.

And I think no one is exempt from that to a degree. I think it's cultural. It's a taboo, even though your dad was writing about it. It's so wild. Or maybe this is part of the grand design as well, and maybe you needed to run away so that you could be here to then reveal it there's a writer francis weller who we've interviewed on the podcast but he talks about developing a companionship with grief and i do think to your point it is the only time i i feel so close to my dad and to my brother. And what I have found just in the small steps that I've begun to take to turn toward the

grief and sort of touch it and then come back and touch it again, I'm actually able to feel them in a way that I've not allowed myself to for a long time. And it's, yeah, it's lovely's lovely yeah and does it feel like you is it like small doses yeah because it still feels overwhelming um yeah but i do think i can envision a day where for the first time i think it won't be this giant enormous black abyss which i feel like this little boy is standing on the edge of. It'll be something which I can carry with me and have space for and live with.

Right, right. Visit and know that you'll be back in a moment or you can hang out for as long as you want. Or even, I mean, the ultimate feels like to be able to travel with it constantly as a companion, as a key chain, as a talisman. Were you surprised when you said that on Colbert? Yeah.

It got a huge amount of response. And I'd done an interview with Stephen several weeks after my mom died. And I'd asked him a question. And that had also gotten a similarly huge response at the time. And it really struck me as I just think there's such a dearth of people talking about this thing, which all of us go through and which all, I mean, every single person goes through this. It is wild to me that we're not talking about this all the time. People aren't like on the bus, like who have you lost? I mean, like, it just feels like this enormous

thing, which we're all just ignoring. I don't know. Yeah, absolutely. Why? Why is that? Why is it not a supported topic? Why is it a threat? Why have we exiled the conversation?

I'm genuinely curious about that. I feel like death is seen as this weakness, as this shameful thing. So yeah, I'm really, really curious about our fear of it, our avoidance of it. Your new film, We Live in Time, it is a lot about grief. Yeah, it feels like every scene's about grief. It follows just a couple of ordinary people who love each other and want as much time together as possible and want to create a life together and there's a burgeoning awareness of that time being short and conditional and therefore every single moment feels very sacred tiny little moments big expansive moments it's like a meditation on the shortness and sacredness of life and

yeah it's a beautiful film and it feels very wise and it feels full of rage as well raging against the dying of the light you know it's um yeah it was a beautiful thing to inhabit do you feel rage do you feel anger i have i absolutely have yeah um i not as strongly as i expected to or so yeah that yeah the suffering as i said before it's the suffering where i can become job on the mountaintop and because this doesn't make sense because she was a pure spirit and would never hurt a fly. So you, you, you explain this shit to me and there is no explanation. Again, it's like, it's a, it's a mystery why she had to have that ending. I don't know. I'm never going to know. Do you find it hard to live in a world where there isn't a why? In moments? Yeah, absolutely. And then you bang your head against that brick

wall enough to where you're brain dead, exhausted and dizzy and bruised. And then you go, OK, you win. Like mystery wins. The ocean wins. You know, history wins. It would be egotistical for me to to demand more answers, it would be, and I just, there's something beautiful about finding out the limits of our comprehension. I think I, again, it's humbling. I'm perpetually longing to be humbled in the face of the greater opponent. So like, yes, I, I, I think that helps temper any rage or anger I have. I have so much memory to hold on to. I have so much, I have, you know, I know her smell still. I know her voice. I know all the different phases of our relationship. Do you have recordings of her? Yes, I have recordings of her and lots of photographs

and I have a perfume bottle of hers and she was a craftsperson. She would make things. I have a large crocheted blanket that she made, a paper mache dog that she made that was covered in lines of her favorite poem by Mary Oliver, Wild Geese. Oh, yeah. No, The Journey. It was The Journey.

I love Mary Oliver. I love Mary Oliver too. I would mostly read her Mary Oliver when she was in hospice. And she was so polite and so considerate. She would never tell me to shut up. She would never ask for what she needed. So after every single poem, I would say to her,

again, another or quiet. And I would give her three options and she would say, again. So I would read Wild Geese to her again. I'd be like, again, another or some quiet. And she's like, maybe some quiet, darling. Like, I had to force her to ask for what she wanted. There's a line in the Mary Oliver poem, Wild Geese. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile, the wild geese, something, something, something. I think we should pull it up quickly, actually, because it is exactly what we're talking about. Should I just read the whole thing? Sure, yes, something. I think we should pull it up quickly, actually, because it is exactly what we're talking about. Should I just read the whole thing? Sure, yes, please. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like

the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over, announcing your place in the family of things. I heard you say something a while ago that after your mom died, you felt like your psyche had been rearranged, that things tasted different. Can you explain? Yeah, probably not, but that's true. And it still is. I'm still adjusting to a new reality.

Do you feel like a different person? No, I feel like the same person. I just feel deeper in the same person, more expanded, more cracked open. It's like the heart breaks and breaks and breaks and lives by breaking in times of great loss. And you expand, hopefully. You become bigger.

The heart becomes bigger. You become more confused and less certain of anything. And for me, what I want to be is more curious about what we're all doing here rather than narrow and driven and certain. I want it to break me open. I want to be lost. It feels healthier than to feel like you know where you're heading. It sounds scary. Yeah, it is and real. It's like the rest is illusion. Like the idea that we have any jurisdiction over where we're going or control, it's a fabrication. I really relate related to what you said about

that drive to create a life, to build something, to run towards achievement and success. When my mom passed, like two thirds of my ambition died with her. Or let me say differently, two-thirds of my previous ambition, or the style, the type, or the feeling of that ambition died. It's unequivocal now. I know for a fact that this is a short life and the things that mattered before don't matter anymore. And I think when I say things taste differently, I think, I think things can taste much more sweet now because of the sorrow that I've felt and they can taste much more bitter. Like a friend of mine, Spike Jones, talked about it so beautifully to me when he was going through something similar and

he would say it's like the landscape gets rearranged it's like where there was once a hill that you knew really well there's now like a waterfall and in the place where the river once was now there's just desert and behind you where your house was there's a swamp it's like the world is being re-revealed to you or revealed in a deeper way is there something you've learned in your grief that would help others who are listening i remember when when mom died i had i have a really incredible group of friends and they were very very they were ingenious in how they handled it emotionally very genius and I feel very grateful for them they would send me messages and it would literally just be

I'm here I've got you it was like, sorry, it was like this web. It was like this net of love and care that a handful or two or three handfuls of friends assembled underneath me where my mother's net used to be. It was like they all kind of joined hands and created a container for me to feel safe in the loss. And I was an orphaned, you know. I was to a degree, but the love that held me,

and it was profound in its simplicity. It wasn't complicated and it wasn't fixing. None of these people tried to fix it. They didn't try to run away from it either, but basically they were saying, if you need us to sit with you while you cry, we can do that. So maybe that feels more for people that are with other people who are going through grief. Cause I know that that was a profound life-saving thing for me and allowed me to continue to stay in that process with myself and with the spirit of my mom and with my family because I knew I was I was held by a larger web and I include the ocean in that group of friends I include the Redwoods in that

group of friends and I include my mother's spirit in that group of friends and ancestors and art and artists and writers and poets and filmmakers and theater makers and actors like you know i was held by great generous vulnerable artists who also said i need help with this and made me feel less alone adrian garfield thank thank you so much. Thanks, Anderson. This is wonderful. Thank you. And it's a service, this, what you're doing here. It's like the beginning of a cultural shift for people and welcoming of this, this topic,

this experience that we're all heading towards, whether we like it or not. So thank you for all you do here. And thank you for letting us know about your mom. Thank you. There's a couple new things we're doing with All There Is that I want to tell you about. You can now watch the video episodes of All There Is on CNN's YouTube page. We're also starting an online grief community.

If you go there, you can hear for yourself some of the thousands of voicemails I've received from podcast listeners. I think hearing others talk about their experiences with grief is so powerful. It certainly has been for me. You can also leave comments of your own. They won't post right away because the comments are going to be reviewed. We want this to be a supportive place for everyone.

You can check out the online grief community at cnn.com forward slash all there is online. That's cnn.com forward slash all there is online. It's a work in progress, but I hope you find it helpful. Next week, Whoopi Goldberg is my guest. Her mom died in 2010 and her brother Clyde five years later. Grief comes when it comes. It comes in very strange ways. People would come up to me and say, oh, I'm really sorry about your mom. And I'd say, okay, thank you. And I'd get mad because I'd want them to stop asking or saying, are you okay?

No, I'm not okay. That's next week on All There Is. All There Is is a production of CNN Audio. The show is produced by Grace Walker and Dan Bloom. Our senior producer is Haley Thomas. Dan DeZula is our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is our executive producer. Support from Nick Godsell, Ben Evans, Chuck Haddad, Charlie Moore, Carrie Rubin, Carrie Pritchard, Shimri Chitreit, Ronald Bettis, Alex Manasseri,

Robert Mathers, John D'Onora, Lainey Steinhardt, Jameis Andrest, Nicole Pesereau, and Lisa Namero. Special thanks to Wendy Brundage. Hey, Prime members. Are you tired of ads interfering with your favorite podcasts? Good news. With Amazon Music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts included with your Prime membership. To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts. That's amazon.com slash ad-free podcasts to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.