Good Life Project - Erin Moon: Walking The Path Back To Life

Episode Date: October 2, 2014

Sometimes you can do everything right in life. Give to others, live with compassion, love with every fiber of your being and fill your days with work you love. By all rights, the universe should be rallying to support you. And, most days it does.But then, one day, it seems to abandon you. It pushes you off a cliff and, instead of flying, it clips your wings and pulls the net out from under you. It thrusts you into chaos, devastating loss. Darkness so deep, you wake up every day wondering whether to move ahead or end it all.How we handle those places, how we rediscover life in moments of deep darkness, that’s what this week’s episode is about.Our story begins with an old friend, Erin Moon. Erin and I first met about 10 years ago, when she wandered into my yoga studio in Hell’s Kitchen. Back then, she was a working actor looking for free yoga. All I really remember was, her smile made everyone smile. She was also in love. Living her dream. It’d last a while longer. Then, in a moment, everything would change… Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every decision that I made from that point forward had one of two ways to go. And one was going to lead to me killing myself. And one was going to lead to me living. Sometimes you can seem to do pretty much everything right in life. You give to others. You live with compassion. You love with every fiber of your being. And you fill your days with work that you love.

And by all rights, the universe should just be rallying to support you. And you know what? Most days it does. But then one day it seems to abandon you. It pushes you off a cliff and instead of flying, it clips your wings and pulls the net out from under you. It thrusts you into chaos, devastating loss, darkness so deep you wake up every day wondering whether to move ahead or to take your own life. How we handle those places, how we rediscover life, that's what this week's episode is all about. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Our story begins with an old friend, Erin Moon. So Erin and I first met about 10 years ago when she wandered into my yoga studio in Hell's Kitchen. Back then, she was a working actor,

pretty much looking for free yoga. All I really remember was her smile made everybody smile. She was also in love. She was living her dream. And that would last a while longer. But then in a moment, everything would change. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

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previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. We've known each other for, what, 10 years?

Yeah. 12 years? Something like that? When did you, you wandered into? I think 2004, I wandered into Sonic and started doing the work study. I used to own a yoga studio named Sonic Yoga in Hell's Kitchen, New York City. Yeah. And you wandered in one day.

Yeah, I wandered in because I heard that you could get free yoga. You volunteered. And I was a poor actor and I volunteer and I volunteered for the work study program. And I think I was practicing there for maybe three months and you guys had someone drop out of your training program. And I had shown interest. Oh yeah. I'd shown interest in the training program and found out how much it was. And I was like, okay, really? I have, I'm on unemployment. And, uh, and so you guys had someone drop out at the last minute and you guys sponsored me.

So I worked off my tuition while I did my training. I had no recollection of that whole part of the story. The manager at the time was like, just trust me, guys. Aaron's cool peeps. Awesome. Very cool. So you went through our training program and became a yoga teacher. And you've been rocking that for 10 years now, I guess.

And acting. Yeah, acting and yoga. Tell me about your career. My career. I mean, I did the normal stuff that actors do, which is a lot of auditions and not a lot of work. And, um, and then I, but when did you drop into New York? Cause let's see, I'm a New Yorker. So there's like a bit of an accent there. 2002 from Canada. Excellent. And, um, I've heard about Canada. It's supposed to be really cool. Wild, wonderful nation up upstairs. I call you guys the big guys downstairs. We're like the

nice neighbors who put, especially for New Yorkers, who put carpets down on their hardwood floors so that they don't disturb you. Yeah, we don't do that here. We don't wear our shoes indoors and we're just, we're just nice people. No running with high heels on wood floors? No, no, no, no. All right. So what part of Canada? So I'm from Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Got it. And born and raised. And I went to school there for acting, kind of working my way north. I went to two different schools there. And then I met my husband at Colorado Shakespeare Festival, where a teacher of mine was working. And we kind of went, we fell in love that summer and he was American and I was Canadian and we went, oh no. And we went to immigration actually in Denver and they told us that our options to stay together was I had to be a nurse, a doctor, like a rock star or movie star, or invest a million dollars in the American economy.

And you're like, uh, no, no, no. And no. How do we do this? Yeah, it was bad. And so we spent a lot of time crying and trying to figure out what was going on. Because we were just, I mean, we were young kids. We both graduated from our programs. And we fell in love and didn't know what to do.

And so one time Stafford called a lady at immigration somewhere and called me his fiance. I mean, we'd met three months ago. And did you hear him say that? Yeah. And I went, excuse me. And he, uh, so he said my fiance and she said, oh, well, you could do a fiance visa with no idea what that was. And basically you apply for it. It takes a while for them to get it all figured out. And then you have three months in which you have to get married or you go home. And there's like there's medical tests you have to do before, too.

It's bizarre. So Stafford was always nine ways to skin a cat like he could always figure it out so he said so I guess are we engaged then as we're walking back across the quad to do our shows that night and we were in different casts and I said I don't know and he said do we get rings I had no idea so he kind of fumbled our way. Like to recall parents or something like that? Yeah, because to us, it was a handshake. It was us going, I love you. I think that this is maybe something, but I have no idea. It was buying time.

So we bought the time and we went to Ireland and we traveled and hitchhiked and lived in a tent for six weeks together. And his dad said, if you don't kill each other by the end of that trip, marry her. And just kind of worked our way towards until the fiance visa came. Then on Valentine's day, um, I was in Vancouver cause you have to go back to your country of origin to get the visa. And on Valentine's day, they granted me the visa, which was kind of cool. And then a week later we arrived in New York city in February, 2002. Yeah. And then it was just working our butts off to try and get acting gigs and serving food like actors do in New York city and typing. It was so interesting for me because I look, you know, so I own a health,

back then I owned this studio in Hell's Kitchen. And so, which is like the heart of the theater district. So everybody, I mean, you know, that you're part of the community, right? Everybody, it was all singers, dancers, actors, some like real, real working ones, but the vast majority just like scrambling. And I hadn't, I had never really had exposure to your world, to that world before until I dropped in there. And we lived in the neighborhood too, but actually having that, building that community really just immersed me in that world every day. And it's like, and I can, I would always think to myself, I'm like, this is freaking brutal, man.

Like, I can't imagine, especially coming to New York, which is maybe what, you know, it's where everyone wants to come to make it, but it's probably the hardest place to make it. And I would just see everybody like going out all day long and just like, boom, rejection, boom, rejection, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, every single day, all day, showing up and trying to get gigs and having people slam doors on your faces.

Man, you have got to so love the craft to just to live in that space. Yeah. Well, and it's that part of you, I feel, that goes to the trunk and puts on the cool clothes. Like somebody is going to pay you to pretend, to tell stories, to be part of a community and to make believe. So who wouldn't bust their ass to do that for a job? But at the same time, it's brutal. Yeah. And that's, I think, one of the really systemic issues within a lot of the acting community, especially in New York, is that people are working.

Then they're working jobs that they can drop on a dime. Right. So they aren't invested in the thing that they're doing between the shows. And so they need those shows so bad just for their soul. And it took me and Stafford both a while to kind of figure out how do we, because we were always seeking balance. And I don't think we knew at that time in our life, but we kind of did later. We were the ones who would book tickets to go see our family. Our friends wouldn't because they're like, well, what if I get a call back and I've got a flight to go see my parents? And what if that is

my big break? Always this idea of the big break or, or the show that I, you know, it's going to be the thing that leads to the thing that leads to the thing. And your health insurance is also dependent on how much you work because of the union, which is really also another added pressure in the United States. How much you're working as an actor or how much you work just in general? As an actor. Okay. Yeah.

So you had to, even if you were getting paid nothing, you just had to book a certain minimum number of hours to make sure that you kept your health insurance. Yeah. 12 weeks to get six months and 20 weeks to get a year, which for actors is a lot of work, right? It's actually, you are a working actor, which is as it should be for depicted by a union and blah, blah, blah, but it makes for a pretty stressful life. And it was, I think like four years in and you spend so much time away from your partner. So we, we were spending close to six months apart from each other in the early

parts of our quote unquote marriage and relationship with each other. So you are also negotiating all of these other young people who are, you know, going out drinking and everybody's gorgeous because they're all actors, you know, and, and vibrant and interesting. And you make these really quick families that don't really know each other. So it's kind of a faux family. So it was a lot of negotiating within a relationship and just in life. And it, it was about, it was a 2005, 2006 that I started working at recorded books as a recording engineer and editor for the narration of books. And that job gave me health insurance and it was, it didn't pay well, but I could make my own hours and they let me go and

do shows and come back. And the second I got that job, I started booking more shows because I didn't need to. Yeah. Isn't that always the way that it happens? Yeah. It's really interesting. There's, my philosophy on keeping a full-time gig as an artist is actually really evolving a lot. You know, there are a lot of people where I was like,

look, if you can make your full-time job, like your art, your craft, your passion, rock it on. And some people can. But what I've also seen happen, and it was interesting. I was reading a book called Daily Rituals, which is a fabulous book where they track the daily rituals of, I don't know, 300, 400, 500 of the world's greatest actors, writers, scientists, all these different things. And there was an interesting thing. A large number of them, more than i thought um had full-time gigs

and they would write on the side or they would do this thing on the side there was never a thought of like i can't wait until i can just do my writing and quit my phone they were like no the fact that i actually i have something which is i'm not madly passionate about but but i'm okay like i like the people it's cool i don't have to worry about money at all. That actually gives me the freedom so that when I go and do my arc, the three other hours of the day, I don't have to worry about modeling it to anyone's perception of whether they think it's good or viable or juicy or anything. I can just go do what I need to do. And if it lands, great.

And if it doesn't land, that's okay because I'm doing what I need to do. And if it lands great. And if it doesn't land, that's okay. Cause I'm doing what I need to do. And what I've seen is when you get to that place, that's when your game rises because you don't need, it doesn't have to be commercially viable. Yes. So you're willing to take risks in a way that very often you would never take risks if you know this has to find an audience or I'm out of my apartment. So it's really interesting because a couple of years ago, I probably would have said, you know, like you've got to try and make that thing your full time thing or I'm out of my apartment. So it's really interesting because a couple of years ago, I probably would have said, you know, like, you've got to try and make that thing your full-time thing. I'm not as convinced anymore

because I've seen some really top-notch creators, makers, innovators have their full-time gig and then do this other thing three to five hours a day still and be totally cool with it. And also, you know, have creative output. That's astonishing. So I'm, I'm kind of more on the fence these days, which is kind of an interesting evolution for me because I didn't think it would be like that. But it's like what we were talking about earlier, where your definition of yourself doesn't lie in, in the

things that you do, which is, I think then you have to parse that out a bit because it is, and you want to be authentic in the things that you do. But if what you are doing is taking the garbage out, then that is what you were, that is the thing that you were doing. And so that if I'm working at recorded books as an engineer and I'm an actor, I define myself as an actor and a Yogi, then how do I do that? Well, and I don't know if it's that Protestant work ethic thing. I don't know what it is. Yeah. Or Canada thing. It's me being nice.

It allowed me to let yoga be yoga. Yeah. So I was pursuing my acting career and pursuing the crap out of it. Like actors do in this town. Although not as much as some people I know are doing it in this town. Like I didn't go to all the right parties. I didn't make sure I was going to all the right readings and having people see me all the time. Because I want for me, like my tribe and my authentic tribe, it was important to me, my friends, my family. And I didn't want to be inauthentic. And so just schmoozing for a job was not authentic to

me for it wasn't good for me I couldn't couldn't do that couldn't rock that well and and so letting having that job not only allowed me to get the acting gigs when I did but it also allowed yoga to be yoga and so yoga evolved and I went from everything from teaching a bunch at Sonic to teaching like Ion Hersey Ali. I taught her private lessons, um, that I, and I got in touch with her three recorded books for a year. And it was an amazing gift for me to be in contact with, with this really beautiful woman who's gone through an incredible amount. She's a human rights activist. Um, and, and that would have never come into my circle if I was just actively, wholly, crazily pursuing all of these careers that you kind of have to do that to supposedly get to the top of them. And then I eventually started narrating and then I stopped editing

the book. So now I was narrating books at Audible and it recorded books and some other companies. So I had that. And then, you know, the acting gigs and yoga being yoga. And, and on top of it, I had of my friends that it was like Stafford and I you know we're going along and like many people in your 20s you're really ambitious about that job and you're like I'm gonna do that job and I'm gonna kick the crap out of that job and I'm gonna get to the top of it I'm gonna be in Broadway you know and uh then we realized that love was better than career we were like oh so Oh, so this love thing, this is awesome. Like I am willing to go and book the trip to Puerto Rico to like spend a week on a beach with my lover, because this is fantastic, this love thing. And then we started to look around even more. And I was talking to you about having this awakening that we had, like,

just as we were kind of bridging over 30 in our early 30s, where we just, it's like the blinders came off and we saw, oh, I participate in this world on a whole nother level. My footprint and what I lie down, like what interaction I have in the food I eat, in the clothing I buy, in my consumerism. How do I vote? How do I make this world a better place? And we talked about internationally volunteering.

We kind of talked about that. And we started also in our acting careers, getting a chance to work together a lot. So we were like, Oh God, being together is so much better than being apart. And now love and life are better than career. So it's that where the things that define me or the things that make me want to go live my life are the love and the life and the career is actually a pretty distant third. And, and then my husband got sick. Um, just as we were, we were actually supposed to be leaving. We were doing really good in our careers. We were, we'd done all these shows together and we were supposed to be leaving that day. We'd postponed it for a week because his leg was hurting him a lot. And someone had said it was a hairline fracture. We'd got an MRI done on it. We were supposed to be leaving for Ecuador that day

to go and volunteer for two months. And we'd been learning our Spanish. Our whole apartment was labeled because Canadians, there's no self-respecting Spanish speakers in Canada. I mean, really, it's too far away. It's too cold. So I was learning Spanish and he grew up in the state, so he knew Spanish. And it was that day that he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in his leg. And we learned that was on his birthday. And then on my birthday, we learned what, what kind of cancer it was and that it had actually gone to his lungs as well. It was presenting in his lungs, which is very odd. It's also a children's cancer. So he's maybe one of 10 people in all of North America who had it that year at his age, it's kids between 11 and 25 who get osteosarcoma and it usually only presents in

the leg for it to then immediately also be in the lungs that's kind of the next place it goes because your lungs filtrate your blood and so that's where it goes next but and it's got a pretty good chance survival chance if you catch it in the limbs and then he went through a year and a half of treatment and i remember both of us at that point, we were like, really? © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Thank you. We have sublet at our place. We're going to do international volunteer work. We don't need to learn this lesson. We don't need to learn how to see that everybody's story goes deeper than the person who's honking at you. Like, why honk?

I don't know your story. You don't know my story. We already felt that way about our interactions with people. We were already really, really trying to see the permutation of our life and how we could live our life and like make an eco home and still do a show once in a while to like feed that beast. We love gardening and we loved the idea of contributing to society in a way of not making such a big footprint and thinking about babies and all of those different things that we had said no to for a long time. And then he went through a year and a half of treatment where we got three months off kind of in the middle of it, of multiple, multiple surgeries, interior prosthesis on his leg and multiple lung surgeries. And then we got three months off where it looked like it had been cleared.

And then he actually did a show, which was really cool. He got to do a show with an interior prosthetic in his leg. So half of his femur bone's gone. His whole knee's been replaced. There's a rod inside his leg. So he's had to learn how to walk again and stuff on top of going through chemo and everything. And he was doing a show in Boston and he had gotten tests the week before he'd come back to

New York and gotten tests. He was actually getting treatment at Sloan Kettering for a drug that hopefully keeps the cancer away. And, uh, he'd gotten his tests. You get three month tests after you're cleared. And we got back after he closed his show and we found out that it was back in his lungs bigger than it had ever been before. He got surgery for that. He came out of that, was recovering. He was starting to get a big headache and his vision was getting weird. And his headache got really bad and he was acting a little off, forgetting things and stuff.

And we went in and they did a scan of his head and it had gone to his brain. And they did brain surgery and he survived 10 hours of brain surgery and he was recovering from that and he we got his leg tested again because his leg was starting to swell again and then he was acting really odd and i it was beyond just the post recovery of the was he aware of the fact that he was acting on it was just something you were I mean he he was it's interesting when people are put on steroids because they kind of become lovers or fighters and I it was so amazing to me I was once again amazed by him and he was just such a lover it It was just, he went totally to the lover, but he was like, Hey, I love you. It's four o'clock in the morning. How are you doing?

How are you doing? My heart is beating like a mile a minute and I'm going, I'm going, I'm going. And so he, he was aware that there was agitation going on, but not a lot because he was so in this like euphoric kind of loving place and he knew something was wrong his leg was bugging him he knew the vision something was wrong with his vision he was but he wasn't concerned about it he was still in the lover place i think my sister actually was helping him because i was recording a book because i was the only breadwinner and we don't come from families with money we We don't have any trust fund. We're totally blue collar kids. And you're living in New York city. Yeah. Yeah. As actors and yogis. Yeah. So, you

know, we make the big bucks. And so my sister came in from Canada to help out and she took him into the hospital because he was acting odd. And I came in and he needed to get tests done that day because he was going to get radiation to get rid of whatever was left in his brain. And then we were going to kind of get him back in treatment. And they found it in his left atrium. And at that point, we didn't know at no point along the road, did I really allow myself to have a time when I thought there was anything but hope? And part of that was, I think, my need to acknowledge that I needed to be there for him as his rock. And the early stages when he went through really deep depression of,

I mean, he was the picture of health. Young, 34-year-old guy, just the picture, or 35 at the time, picture of health, absolutely, and should not have had that cancer i mean it just made none of it made sense and it plummeted him into a really bad depression and i thought i was going to lose him to that honestly and then he came out of that eventually and got some help with that and was a rock star through horrible horrible treatment um treatment not by doctors but by to kill the cancer i think they basically it was the night before he passed away that i finally asked a doctor i was like i didn't understand that i knew

at that point but for three days only that there was nothing else they could do but we were talking about leaving the hospital and riding off into the sunset we were like we'll get some oxygen tanks because he had to be on oxygen because of how it was working with his heart and lungs but we were talking about leaving the hospital and riding off into the sunset. We were like, we'll get some oxygen tanks. Cause he had to be on oxygen because of how it was working with his heart and lungs. And we'll just ride off into the sunset. Like, this is what we do. Last Aaron and Stafford adventure. We're going to go. And so we kept thinking that that was going to happen. And I finally kind of dipped my head out and I said, are we going to get out? Like, is this going to get better? Cause he was declining again.

He'd gotten better cause he'd gotten pneumonia because of the backup of fluid. And then we thought he was going to get better and we were going to ride off into the sunset. And it was that the night before he passed that they said no. And I was really lucky to have a little bit of time with him that morning before he kind of went into a coma, essentially, I guess, where we had a little bit more time. And even then he said to me where he's like barely able to kind of keep his focus on me. He's like, you need to go to the doctor. So this doesn't happen to you. Like his care, all he cared about was me. And all he said to those doctors would just, just buy me as much

time as you can. So I can be with her, do whatever you can. I don't care. I don't care about anything else. Just let me be with her for as long as I can. And then that's where I've been after that for the last two and a half years. So that's when he passed. Yeah. Two and a half years ago. It's been, amazing, in an awful way, journey. And what I find interesting is to get to the point where I don't even identify with the Aaron that was before. Because the naivete of what can change, you know, I said love and life are the things that were the most important thing. Well, when love is the thing that gets taken away or what I consider to be that in my life, then what do I have?

I don't care about my life. And he made me promise to not kill myself. So then I'm faced. And he made me make a lot of other promises, too. But it's like, well, then what? So where do you go from here? Yeah, what every decision that I made from that point forward had one of two ways to go.

And one was going to lead to me killing myself, and one was going to lead to me living and how that has been actually the defining way that I have lived since I lost him. It's hasn't changed even as I become more able to accept who I am now, because I have had no idea what this is now. What am I? My whole definition of myself was wrapped wholly in our very healthy codependency and love. So how do you live? And it's that whole put one foot in front of the other thing, but it's quite literally that. It's like, well, if I don't, I stay in this bed and I don't leave and then inevitably I kill myself.

Okay, so for me, okay, that means I need to get out and I need to do all these jobs and just distract myself. Because if I don't do that, I will lock myself in my apartment and I will kill myself. And I promised him I wouldn't. So how does that? And at the time I wasn't cognitively aware of that. I was in severe shock. I don't remember a lot of that time immediately following about six months kind of after. And then how, as I've become more used to or able to deal with the sadness that is now the depth of my sadness, which it was different than it was before.

How do I do that and get better at that? And, and I went to Ecuador where he said I had to go and finish what we started, what we were going to do. Cause this was like this big life plan. We were thinking about, you know, afterwards, maybe we'll join the Peace Corps. We'll move out of New York City and we'll build our eco home. And so I went and that was the thing. And that was a year and a half after he passed. And that was the thing that jumpstarted me. It got me out of a really bad depression and it got me interested. Just interested.

Just like curious. Yeah. What we were going to do in 10 minutes. I was on this mountain in the Andes looking at this big, big, um, a dormant volcano called Chimborazo. And we were at, on a mountain across from it with a bunch of other volunteers. And I was looking at it and I, I said, thank you guys. And they were like, what? it with a bunch of other volunteers, and I was looking at it. And I said, thank you, guys.

And they were like, what? They're a bunch of 20-year-olds. I'm grandma. International volunteering in your mid-30s is like your grandma. But they're like, what? And I said, I'm really excited about what we're going to do tomorrow. And I said, you don't understand. I'm cognitively aware that I'm excited about what I'm going to do. And this is the first time since I lost my husband that that's the case. Thank you. But it was the cognitive awareness of that.

Right. So it wasn't even that you were interested. It was that you became aware of the fact that I can be, I can be alive again. I can be interested. I can participate in this life again. Like that awareness of like, there's like cracks up in a window of possibility. Yeah.

Maybe things can be okay. Or different than this. And, and being away from him. And I thought before I went, no way I have lost everything. And now I'm stupid enough to put myself in a position where now I'm going to lose. I'm not going to be in our apartment. I'm not going to be, you know, by our cats, our friends. I'm not going to be in a place that speaks my language by myself. I'm going to take myself away from everything I know. Like I have nothing. I mean, I didn't, and I don't according to many, many, many people's standards, but according to my heart, I have less than what I could ever

imagine that a person or me, I could handle. I'm going to take anything that's recognizable away. What the hell am I doing? And I was petrified and I didn't even know I was depressed. Like I didn't, I wasn't aware of it. And it was a friend of mine who said, Oh, sweetheart, you're depressed. You don't care about what's going to happen the next day. You don't know. All you have is fear and you don't, and not caring. And it was, and she's like, you know, you have is fear and you don't and not caring and it was and she's like you know you can come back after a week and i was like yeah i know because i was so scared that just shook it up enough for me to go oh okay now i'm actually interested in what i'm gonna do yeah i mean i think um it's having been through from the outside looking in um depression with other people one of the things i was never aware of is that the most devastating part of it is the belief that it will never end yeah i had never understood that about it and uh it's an

interesting experience being the person who's not going through it also, but supporting somebody going through it. But yeah, so, so for you, there's this awareness that maybe things can be different. Yeah. Cause it's the malaise. It's the, I'm in the same apartment, I'm in the same place and why bother and who cares? And just, I'm doing the things. And like, I was recording books. I was teaching. I had started teaching at a university actors, teaching at a university in, in New York. I was teaching. I mean, I was doing nice things. So from the outside looking in people like, Oh, she's moving on with her life. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what everybody wants.

They're like moving on. You want to, you want to, you do to do that. And I always think the idea to me of moving on is that I'm cutting off from something before. Whereas it's like that you're actually continuing the path that you're already on. You just are maybe aware of it in a different way or have that interest or something. And I got back from Ecuador. A month later, I booked a ticket to Kenya. Because I was like, okay. And it wasn't because, oh, that did something for me. I just went, why the hell not? I mean, I jumped out of planes a year before that because Stafford sent me on this huge, big European thing that we had wanted to go on. And I went to New Zealand first. And I remember this was six

months after he passed. He was like, you're going on the trip. We were going to go on and you're going to go when we're good. We were going to go. And I was in full shock. And that just shook me up from shock into denial. Really. I remember being on the plane on the way up to jump out of a plane outside of Auckland in New Zealand. And I was like, just don't open. Just, I didn't want the plane to go down because that involved other people. And even then the guy who was my tandem, I was like, he's really nice. I don't want him to go. But I wasn't even, I mean, really, I wasn't even thinking about that. I was just like, it could not open and I would not care. I just, somebody make this decision for me. And I was so calm and everybody

else is freaking out. You know, we're jumping from 15,000 feet. We're going to have a minute of, you know, a free fall. And I'm just like, whatever. And when the parachute opened, I immediately had a really bad breakdown. And I told the guy on the way up, I'm like, I'm not, this is what's going on just so you know. And he's a yogi, actually, so he's pretty cool. I think part of that release was the physical release and the endorphin release. But it was also, maybe I wanted that to happen. Like, maybe I wanted the parachute to open. Or maybe I was sad that it did.

And then a year later, to be at the point where I'm interested. And then now to be at a point where I'm finally accepting that I am that sadness. And that that sadness actually depicts the level and depth of my love as well. And that those two things are not separate. I mean, they kind of are, but they flow together. That I can love with my sadness. And that I can love and I can be compassionate because of how much I miss Stafford and that I can open myself up to love again, which was also a strict requirement of his because I don't have to hold packages around everything anymore. I can just be the mess and kind of go and move away from the city like we had planned to do, like I had planned to do, and try to figure out how to live all of these different permutations of life instead of having that single definition of I am an actor, I am, you know, a yogi. I'm doing a singular career. I can just, I need to find all and everything all the time because I know now that it's just,

it's so fickle and to not live authentically in every moment that you possibly have and to live with compassion is a waste of everybody's everybody's time and energy now we're moving moving home moving vancouver do you feel like the sadness is still there do you feel like it's something that will will ever go do you feel like it's okay if it never does that you can still live a good life but it's just a part of who you are. It's a part. There's this idea that sadness is something we're trying to avoid or tiredness or boredom or these negatively connotated states of being. I mean, if you certainly, if you looked at Eastern philosophies, we're not.

And I don't think I am. Being aware of what sadness is, being aware when I'm feeling it, having awareness about my emotional states, that's a great thing to be aware of and to cultivate. Because then I can be happy. It's like what Brene says. Then I can be happy about the little things. It doesn't all have to be symphonic. Joy and happiness is not symphonic. I was talking to a good friend of ours, Jen Winan,

and she was saying, you know, it's the acceptance of our failures. When we do that, whatever failure means in and of itself to semantically in that moment, we give ourselves hope. And hope is actually potentially what happiness is. It's not joy and oh my God, my baby's born. God, wow, amazing. It's those tiny moments. That is the living. And it is the sadness as well. That it's all to avoid it.

It's inauthentic. Like I can't avoid that sadness. Do I need to hold on to it and define myself by it? No. Is it always going to be there? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Because it's a horrific thing.

And the sense memory and the trauma that we went through and that I've gone through will never not be part of who I am. And if I go forward with that in mind, the level and depth of my compassion and therefore my interactions with people, which is, I think, kind of what we're doing. Otherwise, we wouldn't be we wouldn't have tribes. It has a chance because I can't see you if I can't know my sadness. And I can't see you if I can't know my love. And I can't see you if I don't know my boredom. And I can't see you if I don't know my anxiety.

And I can't see you if I don't know these things. But I need to be able to hopefully for balance, be able to see them in myself too. But like, I can't not, I don't need to hold onto it. And it will go through many different stages. I'm sure actually like this new Aaron, this like new person that I am walks beside the rabbit hole, the black vortex that is that depth of sadness that I have never known in my life. And I was wide open, all about love and everything's going great. And like always bright, open, positive person. And I am still, I just have a really big rabbit hole now that I can fall down to the bottom of, and then I can climb my way back

out and meet whoever's going to reach a hand down. Yeah. You know? And I mean, just thinking about your life looking forward, and obviously every day you wake up and it's a new day, but you know that and how that's, and of course, neither of us can prognosticate how your feelings may evolve or change 10 years from now.

Who knows what you'll be feeling. But you know, if you find at some point later in your life, another love, you know, and, and just how does this, how does your current emotive state, how does it evolve? How does it change? And, and like I said, nobody knows, but I think what's so powerful to me about where you are right now is this astonishing sense of awareness of where you are. And that you do have, you're very aware of the slippery slope. Yeah. But you're also very aware of the possibility.

Yeah. You know, so there's, and you know, that you're walking, you're walking along a path where, you know, a step to the right or step to the left and can create radically different outcomes. Yeah. But it's, it's that awareness that kind of keeps you traveling along and hopefully continuing to step to the side that, you know, elevates rather than descends. Cause it's so powerful. Yeah. And I, it it's it's interesting because i feel like through the process i have or processes my canadians would say part of that i've been playing catch-up i kept saying i notice after i've gone through a stage or whatever a time that oh oh my gosh i was in really big denial and now i am in grief like now I'm finally able to be just sad all the time. And then to get to the point where I'm like, wow,

that sadness led to a pretty deep depression. Oh, and now, and it's, I've been playing catch up. And now I feel like I've been playing catch up better to a point where I'm like, okay, I am here and I'm finally able to dream again. I'm finally able to imagine possibility in a really true way and see that I can start to dream the potential of my life. Instead of the future that we had planned, which was so beautiful and filled with such gorgeous dreams. And to, if I'm going to let go of anything, it's not letting go that we had those dreams,

but it's letting go of me living those dreams because I can't without him. So then what does that mean? And that's what this whole time has been. It's how do I let go of that? And to be at a point where I'm like, okay, I'm fabulous mess, just like everybody else. And now I get to figure out how I dream what my, our life is now in the capacity that we, I live it. Like, how do I honor what I've learned from him and the guidance that I feel from him continually and will probably feel for the rest of my life and actually allow myself to fully dream my life. And it, what, it's what puts that vortex a step further away from the path, you know, where I know I'll go there and I have really sad days and really sad moments, but I also know this too shall pass and I will find my way back out of it because now

I'm learning how to, like you said, see the potential, which is a whole place. So you're about to embark, speaking of potential and seeing your own dream, seeing the future. You're about to, like, it's interesting, like we're reconnecting right now, literally on the eve of your departure from the city that you've called home for the last dozen years. Yeah. So what's happening? You know, I think I have been leaving New York for four years now because we were leaving New York when he got sick, and that was four years ago. And almost maybe even longer than that when we really had our kind of awakening

and started to really see. And the thing that is hardest now is it takes a long time to make old friends. And I know that. And these friends are a decade in the making and they know Stafford and they've seen me through what will hopefully be the hardest time of my entire life, which is a lot to take it in your mid thirties. My sister's there, which is great. And there's so many things that I want there and that I can have there that I, that I lack here, but I've left the city, the city itself, the feel of the city and what the city gives and, and like the, the fun culture of the city and all of that that fed me for so long. I left that a long time ago. I'm ready for mountains and ocean and climbing and hiking, kayaking and snowboarding and that culture and a culture of people who live in a place because of the nature that surrounds it, I think. And that's why Vancouver is calling the leaving of the access,

the immediate access to, I mean, the ease of old friendships. I think it's a lot of what keeps people from never stepping forward. Not that I'm judging good or bad, but just the further you get into life, I think the harder we find to find those people that we fall in love with and who are there. And there's just this old story, this ease. I mean, you and I haven't seen each other for a long time until this year. And yet there's still just an ease. It's like old story. Yeah. So there's a few friends that are there like that, but that's the thing that's honestly, that's the thing that's hardest. And because also because of what I've been through, I don't spend a lot of time having anxiety about the future.

If we were on the path already to learning living now and then being dealing with sickness and that is living now in a raw, raw way. To me, there's so little use, even though I was just talking about dreaming and everything, but it's kind of like dreaming loosely as it goes to dreaming hard and fast and being like, I'm going to go to this place. I'm going to get this job. I'm going to do this thing. Instead now it's kind of, it's broader. So I'm not too caught up about it yet.

We'll talk to me in a week before I leave. When the boxes are packed. Yeah, exactly. When I move my storage unit to the UPAC pod and it travels 3000 miles. And then I get on a plane with my cat and wave goodbye. That might be a different story, but I don't know right now. The best that I can do for right now is the most that I can do. And it's a, it's, it's a nice way to live in it.

I feel like I give more within the moment to even people I don't know on the streets and get through living in New York and not have the mantra in my head of too many people, too many people, too many people. I've never had that much. Especially at rush hour. Of course not. I'm excited to see where you're going. It is so interesting. We literally didn't see each other for, I don't know, eight years or something like that.

And it's just like, boom. Twice. Old friends. That is something I think so many of us take for granted and we forsake to a certain extent once we get into life and job and all this stuff. And then when you bump into people where you just like there was a connection in the beginning, but you haven't seen and you're like, oh, that's nice. Yeah. I have no doubt you'll find those again in Vancouver.

But like you said. Takes time. It's a process. Yeah. Takes time to make old stories. Takes time to find the ease. I'm going to tell the same story a lot, which is, has been part of traveling and healing from the loss of Stafford has been, you can have two conversations with me without knowing what happened and without me saying,

Oh, Stafford would say, or, Oh, that's totally Stafford or because my entire maturation as an adult has been with this amazing person. And, uh, and so having to talk about him helped me also process a lot because I had to say it and I had to say it repeatedly. And I'm going to have to do that more again. It's, I'm learning that that's an okay thing. And I'm learning how to deal with people who don't know how to respond to that. Well, because of the age that I am, nobody, I mean, people are used to people, 65, 75, you know, dealing with the death of their partner. And we were together for 10 years. So married for 10 years together, 11, and people aren't used to that. And so they do that. years, so married for 10 years, together 11.

And people aren't used to that. And so they do that, oh, I couldn't do what you're doing. And I just think you have no idea what you're capable of. And you have no idea when you make promises what you have to do. If I have to go through this, you have no idea what you're capable of. And you have no idea when you make promises what you have to do so so the name of this is good life project and and i always ask everybody one question as we wrap up the conversation that is what does it mean to you to be out in the world living a good life i think for me it's accepting in yourself and in every being that you meet that we're all an awesome mess.

And that there's no end to your compassion if you're willing to accept that all of those pieces fit into every single person and every interaction with every single person you have. And so if you can cultivate that, then that means we all get to have a better life. At least that's what I think today. I so love this conversation. It's wonderful to be back together. Thank you.

Signing off with my fabulous guest, Aaron Moon. Thanks so much for listening to Good Life Project. If you liked this episode, we'd be so grateful if you'd share a quick review over on iTunes. It helps us get the word out to more people and make a bigger difference in the world. And while you're there, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

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