Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Creating and Cultivating True Soul Friendships with Sah D’Simone

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Have you ever met someone and felt an instant connection, like you’ve known them forever? Isn’t it amazing how some people seem to resonate with your very soul? That magical feeling isn’t just coincidence; it’s what we call a “soul friend,” and trust me, it’s more enchanting than you might think! In this episode of The Language of Love Conversation, I’m excited to sit down with the incredible Sah D'Simone—meditation teacher, artist, and bestselling author of Spiritually Sassy. Together, we’re diving deep into the power of community and connection. But here’s a thought: can you really grow without a support system? Sah introduces his transformative "SAH Method," focusing on somatic activated healing, and shares insights from his latest book, Spiritually We: The Art of Relating and Connecting to the Heart. Here’s what you can expect from this enlightening conversation: The magic of soul friends and how they help us grow Why social media can’t replace real, meaningful connections Sitting with discomfort and why ‘cancel culture’ doesn’t help How vulnerability and somatic healing practices make us stronger The link between emotional well-being and physical health How loneliness impacts personal growth and relationships Tips for deepening your connections with others The importance of radical honesty and authenticity in friendships How to start meaningful conversations that lead to real connection Make sure to grab a copy of Sah’s new book! You can also connect with Sah through his website or find him on Instagram for more inspiration and insights. Looking for more support on your healing journey? Head over to my website for courses, including the popular Good Grief course. Remember, you’re never alone in this journey.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers, and celebrities about love, sex, and relationships from a mind, body, and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love. Saad Simone is a meditation and spiritual teacher and artist, best-selling author of his last book, Spiritually Sassy.

He created the SA method, which is somatic activated healing. It's healing the body through the body, all kinds of trauma. He's also a chaplain in the spiritual care department at Cedars-Sinai Hospital and even received the CARE Award from Los Angeles for his work with at-risk youth in Venice. His new book, Spiritually We, The Art of Relating and Connecting to the Heart, is such a beautiful book that really describes the transformation that happens when we heal in community and how crucial connection is to our personal evolution, not to mention our peace. Too many of us are isolated and suffering in silence or imagining that we're not because

we have so many social media friends who we never see in person. So I'm really excited to dive into this topic of spiritually we and what that means, how to recognize soul friends, what a liberatory, as he calls it, friendship looks like, how to find those friends, how or when to separate from friendships, because he's a proponent of not canceling or cutting off anyone, something very different than we're seeing in the common vernacular right now. So I'm so excited to dive into all of this on the language of love with Sade Simone. Sade Simone, I am so excited to talk to you. Thank you for joining us on the Language of Love. It's an honor, honey. I have been hearing about you for a minute. So to be

here and you're excited to talk to me, it's literally the pleasure is mine. So thank you. Well, we have a mutual fan club because I think what was happening for many years, it feels like at least for me, I was circling your orbit. You were circling mine. I've been a fan of yours for a long time. And then out of the blue, guys, he just like reaches out and is like, hey, I guess it was Maria, our mutual friend, Maria. Yeah. Yeah. You know, told me that I should talk to you about grief. I was like, let's go. So I'm in. So we just met. And usually I don't say it out loud. I feel this often when I meet a soul aligned person, which is very relevant for our conversation today. We're going to be getting into that in a minute. But there's only been

a few people, Tina, who you met when you was one of those where when I meet them and I feel the recognition, my soul feels the recognition. And then I feel deep, true love. Like even though I don't know you, I know you, my heart knows you. So I usually don't say it if I feel it, if I don't really know the person, but I don't even know if you noticed, but I was like, as we were leaving, I was like, I love you. I feel it too. It's beyond that. Like you like my preferences or you like my hairstyle.

You're like this about me or that about me. There's we go into what we are, not who we are, not the what makes up me. But we go to that deep celestial plane of just like, yo, this shit's crazy. Let's have some fun. I've missed you. You know, I love you after like meeting you for two hours. And it wasn't like an L.A. love you, baby. It was like, yeah, you.

Yeah. And I love you, too. I said to Tina, was that weird? But I just told her I loved him because I really do. And she's like, no, that's who you are. You tell people when you love them. So anyway, this is relevant. It's relevant to our conversation.

The book, your new book is Spiritually We, the art of relating and connecting to the heart. And it's so powerful and so needed for these times. and we're going to be getting into, I mean, I have so many questions to ask you about it and so many things, tracks I want to take, but this idea of friendships that are liberatory or liberating, you call them liberatory, like these soulful, soul aligned friendships, so needed, so required. And we're going to talk about all of that, but also just this concept. I have questions about this because I was really inspired reading and thinking about a lot of things in my life in ways I'm not as bad as a lot of people are. But like, I don't subscribe

to cancel culture. I don't just write people out of my life. But, you know, I'm not quick. I get annoyed with all the toxic talk and narcissist talk and all of that. But one of the things that you talk about and one of the reasons I think maybe inspired this book is this whole idea of how, you know, there's all of this stuff happening on social media and in the ether and now around politics and around the Middle East and around the environment and around LGBTQIA. And like, if you don't agree with my politics and my positions, you are canceled. And this too much emphasis on isolating in service to spiritual evolution. And so it feels to me, and I think you essentially said this at different points in the book, that the purpose, like this idea of

spiritually, we were not meant to be in isolation. We're meant to be in collaboration and in connection. And that a huge part of our spiritual evolution can't happen in isolation. Beautiful. Can I jump in? Yes. That was my very long question. I don't even know what the question is. Oh, it was, it was a deep question. And I love that you said, I don't subscribe to cancel coach. I don't subscribe to writing people off of my life. And look, I think all of that, my love into everyone listening, it's a symptom of our inability to be with this comfort. It's a symptom to our inability to be with unpleasant feelings, which are passing sensations. If we

can simplify and get to the core of what an emotion is, a feeling is, it's a passing sensation. I think we are so driven to storify, conceptualize, pathologize our feelings, and that's what drives our desperate desire to say, away from me, please, out. So this is the backbone of Buddhist somatics, I should say, or Buddhist philosophy. This is a big understanding within the philosophies that all the, I'm going to use reductionist language now, but all the bad things that we do from abuse to war, to alcoholism, to murder. I mean, you name it, all awful things that we do all the way to online shopping and to overeating, to canceling people, all of that stems from a very simple cause, our inability to be with

discomfort. And if you trace all of it back, I was at a party yesterday and I was feeling really uncomfortable around a group of people that I haven't seen in a while, but I love them so deeply conversation kind of died out. And I was just like doing that thing of like gazing out. And I was going to start filling up the space with random things. Oh, this, oh, that. And I was like, nope, be uncomfortable, be uncomfortable, feel the awkwardness. And then I walked into the kitchen, had a glass of water. I said, I'm going to drink some water. If I'm still hungry after, then I am hungry because I breathe. I gave the coordinates of my mind, the direction of my body, and I was in my body. I was tracking to this comfort. And I said, I'm going to drink water.

I'm going to relocate myself to my body. I'm going to do the somatic coming home. So I'm not trapped in a story. They don't like me. I should leave. I'm not welcomed here. All the things that I don't fit in all the, all the things that I would have so quickly done to a passing feeling in my body. Literally, I would have created an entire store and written off seven people that I want to be friends with, that I want to deepen. So then I drink the water. I found myself back in my body and I said, okay, cool. I'm going to have another slice of the cauliflower, cashew cheese pizza. I'm not having dairy right now or wheat. So there was some sausage on there. So it was cauliflower pizza, cauliflower dough with cashew cheese and some sausage on it. It was delicious.

I had a couple of slices. Then I came back out. I was in my body. All of a sudden, all of a sudden, all the nonverbal cues that I was associating with, cues that I don't belong, that they're not interested, were all gone because it was my mind making up stories based on a passing feeling. Are we tracking? This is the cue. This is the key right there. Are you talking about the food piece? Because this is what I'm on, is when you're uncomfortable, if you're not conscious, you go to soothe with food and you didn't want to do that? A thousand percent. I bring a snack with me everywhere. Literally. Oh yeah. I bring a bag of nuts. I mean, I, I do bring a snack because I eat so particularly clean these days. Cause it's

the way I eat ties to like a flare up or like psychological imbalances. My body's so fragile after the grief through the grief, through death, through loss. It's like nothing goes undocumented unseen in my body. Yeah. It's just like, if so anything could lead to a flare up. So that's why, But the snacks are always there for two reasons. One, because I'm so particular about how I eat. And two, as like emotional coping. But I am trained. I know when I'm uncomfortable and I want to self-soothe, breathe.

Come home to your body. Track what's going on in the body. Be with that feeling until it passes. Offer the feeling, the awareness, the light of your awareness. Anything that's exposed to a lot of awareness changes because the light of awareness has warmth. anything that's faced with warmth changes. Look at a pile of garbage. It gets composted.

It becomes the greatest fertilizer with warmth. This is the same thing that we can do with our feelings. One of my students called my work learning how to take out the garbage without having to go through it. And this is what we're not doing with our feelings. We're constantly giving a reason why I feel this way. And there's always someone else to blame

for how I feel and when I feel. But if you really study and get really clear and really silent, you really realize that no one can place a feeling inside of you. And it's hard to have that much sovereignty, that much responsibility. And to trace it all this back to how you open this, this is one of the reasons why we are in a loneliness epidemic, because we are literally two things. We are cutting people off too quickly because we feel an unpleasant sensation. we say, bye, you're boring. You're not safe. I got to go. Or the other side, when an unpleasant

feeling comes up, which might actually beat your body, your psyche, your spirit, your heart begging for connection. You're like social media will do, food will do, masturbation will do, Netflix will do, whatever we'll do besides me sending a message to someone and say, I need a friend. I need connection. We are deeply deprived. We have this deficiency of connection because we have our muscle, as my friend Shannon Algeo, a great therapist says, our muscle of connection has been atrophied through technology. Technology was meant to connect us. And granted, now we know what's happening in every corner of the world, which is wonderful. We have global thinking, but we're not acting locally, not only politically, not only with our activist efforts,

but with the needs of our body, with the needs of our heart. We're not right here right now saying hi to the neighbor. You get into the elevator right now with three people in your building. What does everyone do when there's like three floors to go up?

Phone. Yes, or line somewhere or sitting in a restaurant. I do this experiment all the time because I'm aware that I drift with technology and I'll be like, holy shit, I've been scrolling

and I meant to go downstairs 10 minutes ago, right? You just lose time, lose consciousness. That's why we do it. And lose life, lose life, be bold about it. Be honest about the profundity of it. You're losing life before not associating that with it. That's a really good point.

And life force. And so I started doing this thing when I'm in a restaurant and like maybe the person I'm with goes to the bathroom or goes up to order another coffee or whatever. And the natural inclination is to pick up my phone and I don't do it. Make it a practice when I'm with someone to put my phone away unless I'm expecting a call. But otherwise, my phone's away. And then I look around the room and I spend a lot of time just looking. I love people watching anyway. But every freaking person, it's not doing anything but looking at their phone. It's like really is like those cartoons of zombies when you look around the world. And so there are all these ways we numb ourselves out. But what I hadn't really thought about until I read your book is that this canceling, this isolation we do with ourselves in order to keep our peace or to get away. You know, I'm just going to eradicate all toxic people from my life and I'm just going to go live on a mountaintop somewhere.

And I've been there, too, is a form of spiritual bypassing, which I never thought of it. I certainly have thought of positive talk and not letting yourself go all the way into the pain you're trying to. You know, it's the same thing as social media or alcohol or something else when you're just like, oh, no, I'm not going to make that negative thought. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And gosh, darn it. People like me, like Stuart Smalley would say from Saturday Night Live. But but this idea of like isolating or cutting people out actually be a form of spiritual bypass. That's such a great question. And I want to offer a little bit of contradiction, a little bit of paradox, because it's the nature of my work. It's the background of this of relating. It's paradox because contradictory. So from one side,

yes, you do need to do some of the self-revelation work alone. Some of the deep insights has to come from you and you, you and the mountaintop or you and your meditation cushion or you and your yoga mat, whatever. You and you have whatever the correct English word is to do it between you and you. You got to do that. However, this is where a lot of people stop. It's a psychological trip versus the spiritual trip. The psychological trip is if I have revelation between me and me, that's good enough. How do I hold on to that? Which then says protected against everyone else above everyone else's needs, above everyone else's, everyone else's humanity doesn't matter. It's about me, mine, and I. Psychological trip leads you to strengthen the self to such a place

that it's all about you. Spiritual trip then offers you an opportunity to test your material. Can I test the peace, the forgiveness, the kindness, the sweetness, the glimpse of God, God is divine benevolence that I tasted in my cushion this morning with a stranger, with my mother-in-law, with my ex-boyfriend, with whoever. Can I test it? And is it stabilized enough? Only when it's stabilized enough, that's when you've gone from the psychological trip of me, mine, and I to the spiritual trip of like, how can this benefit us all?

And that's the hard part to do. And that's the practice is being able to hold your peace and your inspiration and your enlightened moments and feelings in the presence of triggers of those people who trigger you. But let me ask you this, because this is where my personally, my mind started going as I was trying on these concepts for myself and and really challenging myself, which I always like to do for my blind spots. Two things have happened for me. One is I haven't had friend breakups since I was in seventh grade.

And I would say over the past year or two, I think because my vibration has changed. I don't know what's happened, but several friends have gone cuckoo on, like literally just basically said, I don't want to be friends with you anymore. Now, I'm sure I have my hundred percent in there. And in one case, I can kind of figure it out. In another case, I can't. And then part of it is also on the part that's on me is that I can get impatient so I can see the soul in them. I can have compassion.

What I was touching into when I was holding this question, reading your book, is that and this is a part that I judge in myself, is that when someone is committed to be stuck in pain and wants to bleed their pain all over me every time we're together. And it's like so unpleasant and you're not willing to do anything about it. I may pull back. I'm not going to say I want to be friends with that person anymore, but I'm sure as hell not going to want to hang out with them every Saturday night. Like, am I supposed to now is the ultimate spiritual practice being present with that and being with the frustration, like, which I haven't been doing, I've been more avoidant. Is it about being, not trying to change it and not trying, you know, which I think, yeah.

And here's the thing. I don't really love offering a prescription because it requires more context, but I love the enough context you've offered me. And here's what I can say. It's yes. And it's that, that great improv acting capacity. Yes. And yes, pull back because it may just be too much.

And also lean in. If your habit, the listener, everyone who's listening, if your habit is to constantly pull away from anything that doesn't feel good and you're only happy when things feel good, then your goal is to lean in. Because if your happiness is circumstantial to only when things go your way, you've missed the plot. You're not going to be happy very often. However, if this person has historically played out the same habit of trauma dumping, of gossiping, of toxicity about this and this and that, then you have to see like, does this conversation inspire me? Does it lift me? And then you also have to go a layer deeper. Where in the concentric circles of your cognitive ability to hold enough people in our lives? Because let me just backtrack and say this in a clear way. The Dunbar research, which is this incredible dude who put together this research that I quote in the book extensively, he says that we only have the cognitive ability of knowing

150 people at any given time. That's faces, personalities, names, whatever. It varies during the different seasons of life. Now, where is that person that you're hanging out every Saturday with? Is that person in the 15 or is that person in the five? Let me then explain the concentric circles a little bit. So there's 150, which is the people that will go to your wedding or funeral once in a lifetime event.

Then you go to the 50. This is the people who are going to come to your 40th big birthday bash or your 60th or whatever may be your big sort of a thing that kind of happens once a year and people come to it, right? People that you don't really see often. Now, this is where you got to get really clear. So my prescription now to the listener and to you and to everyone who will have access to this material is to pay attention to who are the 15 because that is when it can get that's when

you can actually like you know that saying like you are the the people they spend the time with yeah this applies not only in the vernacular of a target mug it applies to the spiritual knowing that like you are literally made up of your environment like your your your inner world is part of your outer world and vice versa. So it's important for you to know if that person that's Saturday trauma dumping on a regular is she or he day in the 15th. Because if they are, then you do have to address it.

And that's when a hard conversation has to come into the picture. Two things I tell people that I've learned in 10 years of serious spiritual practice. One, I feel connected to life. I feel connected to people. I see a homeless person outside of my fancy gym and I'm eating a bar and I'm like thinking of throwing across the street to them because I

feel them. So that like, I'm able to feel connected to all of life, not all the time, but most of the time. And the other thing I can have hard conversations. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. I don't hold back. So that's the offering. Yeah. Think about it that way. Yeah. And, and I do the same thing in terms of, especially in this three years post trauma of this horrible loss. And we're going to get to grief in a minute because we share that journey. I am radically honest. Sometimes I try to be as gentle as I can, but sometimes people take it partially, but, but that is part of a liberated friendship. That's part of having, for me, at least if you're going to be, if I'm going to consider you my soul friend, we are contributing to each other's

growth. I have these conversations with my friends all the time. Like I got triggered when you were saying that earlier and I just want to out it. Or, you know, when you didn't call me back yesterday, I had a story that you didn't really want to hang out and I just wanted to check it out with you. And so like my friends do that with me, but they're very used to me doing that with them. And sometimes they still like this friend still, and she is and was in my 15, but she still didn't change. But I don't mean to focus on that. I do have one other question though, because these, my peeps know this and it's something I, I do carry some, I guess, shame, although shame, you know, you have a whole chapter on shame and I know that

doesn't serve us and I'm working on accepting it, but I am estranged from my one sibling, mostly because I won't even say toxic, although that I don't want to disparage her. She's on her own journey. But every time I have had interaction with her, it leads to so much proactive, intentional visiting of pain on me afterwards. Like she has so much, I can't even guess.

I could guess, but I'm not going to all the- Even through the death of your son, she hasn't softened? He actually was horrible to me after the death of my son. Horrible. And that's when I cut her out of my life. And I ran into her. This is just an example. I ran into her in a garage, spoke to her for five minutes for the first time in three years. And now she's suing me. So like every time I see her, it's like this drama, craziness happens from her side. And I'm just like gobsmacked again and again. So I have completely a straight. So I guess my question is, and it's actually brought me, you know, it makes me sad sometimes because I'm basically an orphan, both, you know, family and she has created a split with

my nephew and niece. They've been told all kinds of stories, so they don't want to have a relationship with me. And I think it would be hard with me not speaking to their mother anyway, that might put them in a position. But I guess my question is, where do you, if you're going to keep being bludgeoned, where do you set the boundary from a spiritual path perspective? I could speak from a psychological and whatever practical perspective, but from your perspective, I'm curious. Hmm. Thanks for bringing that up. And I do have a lot to say, uh, cause this is such a great example. It's kind of extreme what you're going through, but everyone has this, this version in their own lives, you know, everyone has that specific experience. So, you know, Sharon Salzberg offered me something so profound once. And she said, I'm going to tell a little story and in my

land and my not, but essentially there was one of her students and I'm paraphrasing obviously from having heard the story a few years ago, Sharon is a great Buddhist teacher. And she was saying that one of her students would come to her and say, I just moved into this new neighborhood and someone keeps scratching my car and I get the car fixed. I get the scratch buffered and it's a new car. And week after week, there's a new scratch on the car. And then I decided to get a camera to see like who's scratching the car because it doesn't happen at work. It happens overnight in my house, the car parked outside. And the guy gets a camera, figures out that it's a neighbor across the street and brings who he's never met before, brings this question to the great Sharon

Salzberg. And Sharon says, look, what if you did a forgiveness practice from your side? What if you just said, for whatever hurt that I have done consciously or unconsciously to you in this life for all past lives, please forgive me. And truly go to that place of that you feel remorse in ways that you don't even know for. And then from that place, then land in your body without guilt tripping, without going through a shame spiral,

just go to that place, feel the profundity of regret over things that you don't even remember doing, but you know you did. Open yourself to that realm of past lives. Open yourself to that realm of ways that we are harming each other, that we're not aware of because we're so myopic.

Our perspective is so myopic constantly. So he did that practice and then brought a chocolate basket to the neighbor across the street and just said, my name is this. I hope you like this. I'm sorry. And it's never happened again.

Wow. Literally never happening. So I was probably lonely. Yeah, I have done the whole point of, I do it a lot to her, the whole point of prayer by myself. Obviously I don't do it, I don't speak to her, But yeah, yeah, I would say at least once a week because it really causes me pain. It's like this feeling of not feeling peace and comfort that I'm not in contact with her because I'm safe if I'm not in contact with her.

And it's a relief because I don't have to deal with the crazy drama every time I am in contact with her. But there's also all of this sadness and grief over the fact that I don't have a sibling and we're estranged. So and she, you know, would be very happy to keep torturing me in a relationship and maybe in the way that neighbor was part of the reason she's torturing me is because I am estranged. You know, it's that catch 22. But it's a really interesting question on where of like that really requires a tremendous amount of self-awareness and I think body awareness to figure out where that line is, where when you're like spiritually bypassing and not taking accountability. and when it really is important to protect yourself and set that boundary, you know? And I want to say something too, because Laura, you named this earlier on.

You said, I do name to my close friends, oh, when this happens, these are the stories that I tell myself. You kind of brushed by this quickly. I want to just highlight this and raise this because that is a masterful skill. That's not a skill that 99% of people that I work with, that I've trained, that I see, that I've engaged with.

And girl, to sound humble right now, I have seen it all. Global superstars housed to former slaves. The only two places I haven't been at is a refugee camp and a prison. And that's my dream. I'm working towards that. So I can say-

I can see you in prisons. I know some people that work in prisons. So let's get into it. Let's do a grief circle in prisons. I think this would be our thing, our next thing together. But I want to say that you brushed by this and it's profound.

What if, I'm not saying that you haven't perhaps done this with your sister, but what if there is a point that you just write the letter to yourself first and just see what comes up. Hey, when this happens, I, these are the stories that come up. And when these stories come up, I want to do this. And when I want to do this, it leads me to all these other feelings. And then that just offer the paper first, your inner inventory of, I feel, I think I do.

And when I do, I feel, I think I do. go to that circuit, which sometimes I call a circus, of inviting people into that depth of your inner world and see what cracks. Nine times out of 10, what I've noticed is if you do tell someone that you have a difficulty with, or you have a trigger, sometimes it's not the most charged trigger that this comes up. Opening the door for that depth of inner vulnerability will soften. When you say, we're going to do this. And then when you say, you're going to make this introduction for me. And I check in about it and say, I'm doing it tomorrow. And you don't do it. I just tell myself the stories like, you don't care about me. You're not my friend. You're not reliable.

I'm not good enough. I should probably stop what I'm doing. And then when I think these thoughts, I want to go across the street, buy a two liter Diet Coke and a pack of cigarettes. And I just want to like throw myself down the hill after. If you invite someone into that, something may soften. Because when we get to know the depth of each other's neuroses, it's almost impossible for us not to soften because we're constantly just pretending that we've got it all together. Yeah. And you're being vulnerable and authentic, which to me are two of the keys of true, authentic, free friendships. And one of the things that I know you've said, I don't remember whether I've heard you say it or if I read it in the book, but how social pain, the pain of

rejection or the pain of loneliness is as biologically painful as starving. It's like a key physical need. I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. That's in the book. You're quoting the book. Yeah. So thank you for raising that. That's very beautiful. So the need for connection is strikes the body in the same way as a cue for hunger. The only thing is we don't do something about the need for connection. We do something about the need for food. We go to the fridge, we grab a snack, an apple, whatever. And this is where we have to unlearn the habituated ways to deflect, neglect, avoid the need for connection. So the Need for connection strikes in the body the same way as the need for food.

One thing to hold on to it where the spiritual need for friendship, the psychological need for friendship has scientific evidence to back it up. Another beautiful thing that's written in a book from talking to these amazing scientists is that social pain strikes in the body as physical pain as well. So being rejected, being neglected shows up in the body as physiological pain, like you stub your toe or you hit the funny bone or you bang your head or whatever. It feels like physical pain. And then what do we do with physical pain?

We numb. So this is why people who are chronically lonely, which is in America, research has shown like 60% of the population is lonely, don't have social support, don't have people to reach out to, don't have people who are not only for them to reach out, but people who are reaching out to them, asking, checking in. And it shows that people who are chronically lonely do have the part of the brain that's connected to addictive tendencies. And it's so easy to understand. An addict is seeking refuge away from the pain, is seeking a solution through numbing. So same thing. If you are in pain, what are you going to do? The pain may be different. One may

be all because of capital T trauma or whatever it may be. The pain of loneliness shows up in the same way. So we want to escape and numb by self-soothing and loneliness makes the brain more susceptible where the reward system is heightened. So any little hit you get of whatever it is that self-soothes, it's like, oh my God, it feels orgasmic. So you're like, I need more of that. So we do more of that and less of like, let me make eye contact. Let me say the hard thing. Let me walk across the street without my phone. Let me walk my dog without my phone. Let me sit at the coffee shop without my phone. Let me just do things without this numbing device, you know, that's doing the opposite than it's supposed to.

Here's a shout out to any woman who has experienced a horrible loss is going through grief. I just want you to know, you don't need to do this alone. And you also don't have to go through this. You can grow through it. You can come out the other side of horrible loss, a more self-actualized, tapped in, tuned in, empowered version of yourself. You can continue a relationship with your loved ones on the other side. I am living proof of that.

With the losses I have had, especially of my sweet boy, Sammy, who's forever 16, I can tell you that you actually don't have to just suffer through this. And that is why I am holding a retreat for women in Chicago called From Heartbreak to Healing. I'm bringing in a whole bunch of my favorite healer teacher friends, and we are together going to take you through the process, not only of showing you how to heal, but making it inspiring, uplifting and beautiful. It's only women this time. I'll do some for men and for couples as well. But this time it's only women. So come and be embraced by a sacred sisterhood,

meet other like-minded people and learn how to not just have to go through this horrible pain, but grow through it in beautiful ways. Just go to the link in my bio on my Instagram page of Dr. Laura Berman or go to Eventbrite and search for Heartbreak to Healing Chicago.

and it'll come right up. I hope to see you there. And you speak in the book about this concept, which I love so much. And I do the same thing of what you call radical kindness. I was wondering if you could speak to that for a little bit and also some examples, because I thought you gave some beautiful examples of just like, because people cringe or don't know because we're also now socially awkward from our social media. We speak in soundbites that don't really make sense. And so people don't really know how to make conversation with a stranger and give a compliment in a way that's going to land

or even start a conversation. And you gave this example of saying, how are you and a different way to say it. So I was wondering if you could get into that. This is such a good question. And thank you for raising that too. I was doing this podcast with this host who really popular podcast.

And the guy was saying, so how do we give a compliment to somebody in the elevator and I was like am I being pranked like I literally was just like what are you talking about he's like no no I mean it like I genuinely mean it and I recently saw uh Emma Sapola who was this like um amazing scientist on happiness and I saw one of her reels saying that people who are genuinely happier are people who are constantly sprinkling happiness everywhere they go and they go and one of the things she said is that lifting people raising people up compliments compliments. Every goal, there's always a glimmer. There's always an opportunity to connect with

their divinity. There's always an opportunity to say, I like your hair, nice shoes. Wow, you look great. Have a nice day. Like literally reawaken the severity that today may be the last. And how have you lived, you know, from that perspective? So that's one thing to keep it in the realm. Now, the chronic, hello, how are you society that we live in, it's so sick. And I say this with a smile on my face because it is so crazy, not the kind of cute crazy that I am, that we are, it's the like, yo, stop, this is not good. How often or anywhere we go, especially, I'm speaking about American culture, not any other culture, right?

Because if you really study the habits of American culture versus other people's cultures, This specific one is not there. Anywhere we go to the mechanic, to the grocery store, to the dealership, whatever it may be, wherever I'm constantly talking about the grocery store, because it's the place that I go to very often. Everyone's like, hello, how are you? How are you? How are you?

I'm like, yo, you, first of all, you don't care. Second of all, you don't have the time. So why are you creating a culture of pretending? Yeah, I don't even mean it. Yeah, exactly. And most people, even in an actual conversation, not just at the checkout line, they'll say, hi, how are you? And I sometimes say, do you really want to know what they're going to say?

Or I'll say, I'm not really capable of small talk. So if you want to have a real conversation, I'm up for it. And they're like, well, who the fuck is this woman? I think I need to go to a different circle at the cocktail party. But yeah, so so people were asking that question and not really wanting to know the answer. And we do this thing where we go say, good, you don't say that you you you defer from from pretending or bypassing or avoiding the honest truth of your moment. But most people just say, good. What does that do to your psyche? What does that do to your perception? Like think

about my friend Shannon Aljo, a great therapist said, think about what happens in the brain with the swiping culture of dating. You're treating people, you're discarding them. Everything is replaceable. We're not looking to repair anything. We're not looking to deepen or create depth with anyone or anything. We're just wanting to goodbye. Goodbye. Yes. No, yes, no, yes, no. And that has an effect in our psyche. That's wiring us to see it all through that perspective. Same thing ties into the hello. How are you? Good. Full pretending. You know, I just say nice to see you or stay quiet. I offer the awkwardness of silence and I let them say, hello, how are you? And I just give them a pause. And inside of my body, I'm saying, just like me, they want to be happy, just like me.

They want to be free from suffering. And it's literally, it humanizes me. It humanizes them. All of a sudden we're in that plane of like, wow, that person is just trying to do the thing that they've been habituated to doing. And yeah, or they am away from doing the thing that's like, hey, I like your hair, you know, or. That's what I wanted to ask you. Cause you offered these examples of like, how are you doing in this crazy weather? Or I really like that shirt. You know, what was your morning like? Like, you know, if you actually want to strike up a conversation and not just do the rote greeting of hi, how are you good? And keep going through the checkout line, but you actually want to meet someone somewhere and start a conversation, you got to

do more than that. Right. And so I loved those more kind of conscious questions that you could ask. I think people need that. Like, I think people really don't know how to do. I want people to get the book and study those questions and see how they land. And also I think for the listener right now, the free tip is compliment people get in the habit of complimenting people because why it immediately creates a bridge out of me, mine, and I into we like a compliment benefits you because you feel good. And then he lifts someone up. And that's the goal.

It's to just lift each other up together. That's the gig. That's what this human gig is about. It's that simple. The Dalai Lama says, helping people, the great, great Dalai Lama says, the current one I'm talking about, you know, obviously many incarnations

to make up this great saint. But he says, helping other people and being kind to other people is so selfish because it benefits you, you know? So think about that perspective. Just like name something And notice that your voice may crack, your palms may be sweaty. You may actually be dropping a sweat down your back all the way through your crack and,

but let it out. Even if it sounds like robotic, like I like your hair, you know, like just say it or like, I like it back, you know, like say it, say it, blur it out and just realize that the nature of this reality is cause and effect, right? So nothing exists independent of each other or anything. And because of that, that's karma, right? In really short statement, there's always a consequence. There's always a consequence.

And we're so often habituated to think of consequence as something bad, but there's a consequence to something sweet and kind to a stranger. It may be more peace, more abundance, more kindness to you, back to you. And we're not doing it to come back to us. It's just the way these things are wired, the way that this samsaric, as flawed as this reality is as inherently, excuse my language, fucked up as it is. There is also this botanist approach to it. Put a seed in the ground and water it and give enough sunlight. Something will rise. Something will be born from it. It's going to take years, right? If you've never done it,

think about how often it takes to grow an apple tree. It's six to 10 years. So if you have never been the, Oh, I'm so shy. I'm an introvert. All the ways that we use these terminology to hold back from connecting, let go of all of it. All stories. You're telling yourself stories to keep yourself in the comfort zone. And I'm sorry, your comfort zone is hurting you. It's keeping you lonely. This work of the spiritual path is not to create comfort, but it's to make friends with this comfort where you and I have had to learn who is our best friend right now. Grief, pain, this comfort. Like this is the greatest teacher of all. It really is. And you and I share that. I want to get into that a little bit because I know you feel that the same way. I mean,

I had already been doing some somatic work for years before Sammy died. And I've shared this really only in a few places, including on this show, but I haven't yet. I'm going to start telling it more publicly, but it's just been so sacred and I really needed to integrate it. But I had this profound metaphysical experience on the beach about a week after Sammy died where I heard a voice that asked me if I wanted to live or die. It wasn't a human voice. No one else was on the beach. It was during the pandemic.

And when I said yes, I understood what the question meant for me because I had been this you'll find I think we maybe even talked about this when we met. But when my mother died, which was my worst, most impossible, similar to how you, you know, I had a similar relationship with my mom and my mom was a light on the planet like your mom was. And she was my person and the one I called when anything amazing happened or anything horrible happened. And so that was like an impossible loss. And I didn't have time. I was filming a show for OWN. I was doing a radio.

I just didn't have time and I didn't want to be with the pain. I didn't know how to be with the pain. And I was scared shitless of pain back then. So I just distracted. I just pushed it down. I didn't deal with it. And within a year with no risk factors, genetic or otherwise, I had breast cancer in the same breast that her breast cancer was.

I had to stop my life, had to have a stectomy, year of chemotherapy. It was the best thing that ever happened to me in the end. And I almost immediately knew that what was happening, that my body was rebelling to the pain that i wouldn't let it feel and process so when that voice came i knew what it was asking me and i wouldn't kill myself but that i could easily die i could just even if it meant just no longer living which i meet so many grievers who are just walking non-living and so i said yes i want to live and then i had this profound like physical i won't get into it all because i could talk about it for an hour. But what the voice then said when I said yes was then you need to

go away for a week at least and spend that week going all the way into your pain, all the way to the bottom of it, which was the last freaking thing I wanted to do because I was already in more pain than I could ever imagine. And I'd barely scratched the surface. But when a voice tells you you're going to die, if you don't do something, at least I do it. So I did it. And it was the most profound. It's hard to even describe how I learned lifetimes in that week. And it set me on the path to transformation that you live. I mean, I've been living for a long time, but I went and still do. And for an entire year, every single day, even if I didn't want to, even if I was feeling okay, I would force myself to stop, go into my body and go all the way in wherever

the bottom was. And people think there will be no bottom if I do that. And there is. But I know you and I really feel strongly about the only way is not around over or under the pain. The only way is through. You have to feel it to heal it. And that is how you go into the portal that will transform everything. That is the greatest story. One of the greatest stories I've heard. And that is literally the greatest statement. You got to feel it to heal and you have to go to the bottom of it too. It's well, this is the, the basis of my somatics understanding is that it's like, unless we process what's happening as it's happening, it will leave an emotional residue. So our issues in our tissues, we've heard that, or we've also heard the body keeps the score and

it's all part of the vernacular of we're not doing these somatic checkpoints. We're not processing what's happening as it's happening. We do a great job at numbing and then pushing away and pretending it doesn't happen or it didn't happen. And then we have a diagnosis like this or a midlife crisis. And I also want to say, as I say this, I also want to offer another side to it, that there is genetic mistakes in this life. And, and there are plenty of, of strange, excuse my language, fucked up mistakes that happen. They're not tied to you not feeling your feelings. So I say this. And at the same time, I also want to say that maybe nine times out of 10, it's tied to unfelt feelings. It's tied to unprocessed. So I want to offer paradox constantly to get you to feel

chronic diseases that come up from not exactly from not feeling from not processing anger, from not feeling the grief. And I also want to offer something else too. It's like from doing my medical chaplaincy training at the hospital, sometimes in the ICU, a patient dies and I'm like there with the family, the patient, and then I go check in a nurse and a nurse says, oh no, I'm fine.

I'm going to go to a 432 and they need something. I'm like, this right here is the Quintus. It's such an extreme example, but it happens in our lives. The entire day we're doing this thing that the nurses do, not all nurses, but most literally saying, I'll deal with it tonight. And the way they're dealing with it tonight

is a glass of wine and Netflix. It's literally not actually feeling the feelings. The goal of somatics in my view is that we're actually have defrosted and unlearned our habituation to distract so much that we're able to feel what we feel when we feel. I can actually have open awareness of what's going on around me

simultaneously have awareness of what's going on inside of my body and not allow one to bleed into the other, which often we do. What's going on around me makes me feel this way. And when I feel this way, I see the environment through this lens. That is where we have to do the somatics separation, the mindfulness to know like your environment doesn't have to dictate how you feel and how you feel doesn't have to dictate the quality of your environment. We have to arrive it a place where we have less stories about everything and just develop the felt sense, which is very simple. Feelings have three main qualities, right?

Pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. So when you're feeling, when your mind is going haywire about this or that or whatever may be, you know, I'm bad, I suck, this person sucks, anything that's creating tension in the mind, there's a feeling in the body that's calling for your attention. If you can have this sort of as the backbone to you starting your somatic practice, it will set you free. Okay, cool. So what do I do?

Bring my awareness away from the stories into the body. Where in the body do I feel the tension? Treat it just like that, tension. Not, I don't feel the rejection, the anger, the despair, the terror, the confusion. Like just where do I feel it? Okay, cool. Oftentimes for me, when it's a strong textured emotion, it's literally in my belly. like literally right there yeah or it's in my my my chest area go there be with it be with it

and then move out of the way literally it will run its natural course everything in this in this life in this realm that we call human life planet earth has an expiration date everything does your feelings too the expiration date of a feeling uh maybe uh 90 seconds three minutes if we emphasize, if we stuff the feelings with stories, that's when we activate all these other neurochemistry that creates all this inflammation. And that's when we have like a whole day of paralysis or a couple of weeks or perhaps a decade of chronic illness if we keep doing that. So feel it to heal it. And oftentimes I want to offer this to this tiny little bit, emotional wellness or feeling well has to do with you having the capacity to feel in a way

that matches the context of reality, meaning someone is happy, can I be happy with them? Something good is happening, can I be happy about it? I see a mother and daughter laughing. I won't go into that, oh, poor me, I don't have a mom anymore. Can I be happy for them? See someone sad, can I be sad with them?

Does your emotional vocabulary match the context of life without added stories? That's when you know that you're becoming free. Oftentimes, and this may land for people, Our emotional language is totally out of context with reality. You know, a sad thing happens. We're like, OK, happy thing happens. We're like, OK, or something small happens like, you know, the of someone cuts in front

of you at the supermarket, you literally become a rage monster. These are the things that we got to tame to the great mantra in AA Alcoholics Anonymous is if it's hysterical, it's historical. It really points to this unfelt feelings. It points to this archaeological somatic practice that we have to do to feel what we haven't felt without naming the need for a story. And this is where you can open the door for, oh, but I like telling the stories. Yeah, it's nice if you validated, but if you want to heal, telling the stories over and

over again, it won't set you free. What will set you free is you being with the feelings that are wired with the stories. And the stories, while you're feeling the feelings, the stories interrupt the processing of the feelings and prolong it. So if you can just move your thinking brain and stop the stories and just like I have this practice when I move into the somatic state where I literally imagine moving all my consciousness from the left side of my brain to my right so that I'm out of my thinking brain. And I just say to my body, I'm not thinking, just do whatever the hell you want to do. And I get, I pull back my brain and let my body take over, even though obviously my brain and body are in concert and I'll start doing all kinds of crazy shit that my body wants to do. I'm like, all right, we're going with this, you know, and it does only take three to five

minutes, but it's when you start being like, and then, and then that you, that you stay really stuck. Now, the other thing that I that's so brilliant, I want to highlight this for a second. That is so brilliant. That practice. Oh, my God. Like 10 out of 10. Wow.

I'm glad you approve. Wow. But the saw method, which is your I know it's your name, but it's an acronym for your embodiment somatic practice. Yeah. One of the things that you speak about is this, which I think is so beautiful and completely true. I always say that grief loves an open door.

So if you're like, you know, if you're crying over a commercial, anything you've lost is going to be your body's going to be like, oh, let's go, you know, pull it all out. But you talk about how with a lot of the somatic techniques you use, you could have 20 different traumas in there of all different kinds. And they're all going to come through without the story, without identity. I mean, not that it isn't helpful. I'm a talk therapist who does a lot less talking at this point in my life and a lot more somatics. But this idea of talking things through and identifying all 20 of the things you need to heal from, you don't even need to identify them to heal them through somatics. So speak to that a little bit.

Oh, my God. You've done your research to have me on the show. I'm so honored that you care enough about my work to bring this up because this is such a revolutionary thing. Oh, my God. Thank you, Laura. This means so much. Okay.

So I want to name something as you're saying this and to help people, you don't have to remember your pain in order for you to heal. You don't have to remember your trauma in order for you to heal. You don't need to revisit the past in order for you to arrive at a present moment, awareness that you're more relaxed, more opened, where, where your future doesn't have a ghost of the past hovering over you constantly. Right. And I think a lot of people, when they wake up, they're like, oh, I have these 23 things

that have happened to me and they all have these very individual stories and they're all created these different kinds of feelings. And yeah, perhaps. But if you really realize that when you feel angry about a simple thing and you start to go into that mold of rage monster and you really are able to realize, oh my God, this anger doesn't match the context of reality. That's okay. No problem. Don't judge yourself for it. No problem. Come into your body, go to the place in the body where you feel the feeling, stay with it, stay with it. As the anger, as you touch that unfelt anger, that ungrieved grief, you realize that it may actually get more intense, bigger, like more textured. If you are ready to go all the way,

to use your language, to go to the bottom of it, which I love that language, it will open the door for you to feel all the ungrieved grief. It will open the door for you to feel all the unmet, unprocessed anger. And then what will happen is all the stories that you have, they're associated with anger.

All of a sudden, they're just a part, they've been moved out of the memory bank of like traumatic, bad things into the memory bank of like, meh, no problem. You know, it's just we can do this, this memory transference from the textured memory bank that keeps us looping and ruminating. And we could just move it over by feeling it, not by saying, I wish this memory was here. I wish this memory didn't haunt me. I wish this story didn't visit me every day at 2 p.m.

It's just feel the feelings associated with these stories without having to revisit the stories and watch what happens. memories no longer have power because you've literally unwired. You have severed the hard wiring of story and feeling, which is where you have choice. Talking back to stories, you're always going to lose because the mind and its creative power is insane. It takes on information so much more than you can ever process. You know what they say, you open a book and your mind has already like saw every single letter, pulled out every concept. And for the dyslexic person,

I haven't even read the first word, you know? But the brain has already processed all of it. So imagine that we're taking all this information. So you're always gonna lose the fight by talking back to the stories. And what we need to do is go to that feeling. And once you process the anger or the rejection, if you rejected one time and don't say,

oh my God, this rejection makes me feel like this because of all these other times that I felt rejected, you can open the door for stories and you're always going to lose, sorry to be so blunt and simplistic about it, but this is, it requires a reductionistic approach. Go to the body, feel the feeling in the moment. The key here is to feel it in the moment

and then miracle's gonna happen. It will pass. And one thing you can do too, if you don't have somatic awareness, which means what? You don't know how to actually go to your body with your mind's eye. You don't know how to bring your awareness to your body with your eyes closed or eyes open.

You can do one of two things, maybe put your hand there and just be like, oh, wow, here it is, here it is. And you can start naming it unpleasant, unpleasant, unpleasant, unpleasant. The simplicity of the word that doesn't tie itself to a story, unpleasant, unpleasant. Say it for a couple of minutes and notice what happens. You're going to realize a beautiful miracle. It's like, oh my God, I felt a feeling all the way through. I finally know what Laura and I have been saying.

Oh, feel it to heal it. And then in two minutes, you're like, oh, I'm not angry anymore. I'm not even angry at that story. I'm not even angry at that person. It's gone. You just go excuse yourself and go to the bathroom if you're sitting at your cubicle when it happens, right? Let me ask you this.

It's contrary to what you're saying. So I want to check this out with you. One of the techniques that I have used, especially if like I'm in the middle of filming a television show or a course. And, you know, I've got hair and makeup done and some big feelings are coming up all of a sudden. It is an inconvenient time. And so what I do is I have this container strategy where I just take a few breaths. I envision a container. For me, it's like a beautiful apothecary jar. And I ask the feelings to go in there for the time being. And I close and I say, but I promise tonight at 8 PM, I'm going to sit down with you, but I just literally cannot do

this right now. I have this whole crew waiting for me. I have this patient I'm seeing, you know, whatever. So, and I keep the appointment, you know, I definitely, you can't blow off that appointment. I keep the appointment and then I do this whole thing. Is that something that you would say absolutely no to, or you support that? I support that. And I also want to do the yes and thing. I want to offer something else too. I want to offer our capacity to find another feeling in the body. How are we doing our work? You lost your son. You've lost your mother. I've lost my mother. Like what the fuck? How are we supposed to be grieving and inspired? How are we supposed to be terrified and creative? Because we're always experiencing more than what meets

the I more than the firstly ever felt sense. So there is, yes, you may be experiencing anger or grief and you're in the middle of a set and there is like 12 people running around the set to get it all ready. And you're like, oh my God, cameras are rolling. Cool. Resource yourself. There's another area in your body that there's openness and relaxation and ease. Luis Mojica, this incredible somatics master, dear friend, speaks about this, open the door for what else is here. My sister, Amunda Simone, incredible Buddhist teacher also speaks to this often. What else is here? What else is here? And then you may realize that there is a place in the body. Maybe, okay, the anger may be in the belly. You may realize that in your chest, in your heart area is so open

and relaxed, you know, like even to the point of like my hands feel soft and open. That's enough. Like go to that place, huh? You mean to calm your nervous, like to bring you back to focus? Yeah, exactly. The most important thing when we're experiencing tension is to stay here and say, drop the stories, be with the feeling. And then if the cameras are rolling, you got to be on cool. Where else?

Like what else is here? Scan your body. Okay. I realize that there's big tension in my belly. Okay, cool. Bring your awareness a little bit higher up. Go to the heart center. Maybe over there in the chest area, there's a little openness.

or maybe your whole body's hot, but the only part of your body that's cool is your hands. Go there and then operate from that place. Orient your words and your direction and your actions from that cool, relaxed place, which may only be in your hands. That's enough. Yeah, I love that.

That's enough, you know? Try that next time I want to start bawling on set or something. Yeah, but then also I like you. I like us doing unhinged things on set. Oh, I do, I do. You know, I think we need more of that. I think it's like, oh, my God, that news anchor had a mental breakdown and lost their career. It's like we shouldn't fire people for having a mental breakdown.

We shouldn't. And this is something I want to address, too, in regards to the grief. I know we're coming up to on time. I think our American culture that gives people how many days, like three, four days after a mother dies or a son dies or whoever. It's like this is so insane. Grief makes you insane. And we don't have language for insanity. We pathologize it.

We immediately pathologize. We immediately say, okay, take these drugs, be quiet, play cool, move on. Make anyone uncomfortable. Don't, you know, get back to work, keep busy. Time heals all wounds and just move on. Literally, it couldn't be further from the truth. And, you know, time does offer some relief, but it's like with the insanity of losing a mother, a son, or someone that you deeply, deeply love, that your world is really shaped

by your relationship with them, it's really hard to keep living, you know, it's really hard. And then we don't have, I think you and I have enormous privilege to be able to take time off work, to be able to go into vacations and do this. But, you know, I heard the other day, I was in a sauna that says that like 60% of Americans don't have $600 in case of an emergency. So that's insane. And all 60% of those Americans will have someone die in their lives.

And you don't have $600 for an emergency, which means what? You don't have money to take time off work. And then everyone at work is going to pathologize you for acting crazy when someone died. And I just want to say, fuck you, because that's so fucked up. Our culture needs to do better with grief. Our culture needs to do better with the end of life, with the dying process. We must change. everyone we know will die including ourselves i hope i go before the next layer of loved ones

so i don't have to you know go through that process but anyways this me being silly i'm just saying like we have to learn how to be with the with the griever we have to learn how to be with those who are going through a really emotionally challenging time and not pathologize them right away because it makes us feel uncomfortable to be a good friend during a time of grief is can I, do I have today? Okay, cool. Today's the day I'm going to go be with that friend. I'm okay being uncomfortable with them. That's all you need is to be able to be uncomfortable. Sitting next to them while they're uncomfortable. You don't have to fix it or make it better. And that's why I'm so passionate about raising money for scholarships in particular,

because my passion is, I mean, all grievers, but especially grieving mamas, because when mama's not okay, nobody's okay in the family. And also because it's close to my own heart, but you're in so much pain, you can't function much less work. And you don't have a lot of, most people don't have a lot of savings to lean on. And so it's not like they can, they could possibly get their work to let them off, but they won't be paid. And they certainly can't pay for a healing retreat or a transformational experience that can help give them all the tools they need like this to work through the grief in a productive way. And so that's why I'm just so passionate about raising the money because on our last, you know, our big retreat we did, I'm going to

rope you in for the next one, just so you know. But on the last retreat we did, the big one at 1440, we had 66 grieving mamas and 40 of them we were able to bring on partial or full scholarships. My hope is this time that I'll be able to bring that many or more on full scholarships. So I'm working hard on that. This is God's work, Laura. This is literally the most important thing that's happened. I mean, it's, it's been awful and insane and so fucked up in so many ways. But one thing that's really that my mother's death has offered me is understanding that this is the most important thing is to help people grieve because we don't have enough people talking about it. We don't have enough tools. We don't have people that care enough to do what you're doing to be like

40 people come for free or partially paid to this iconic retreat where you're going to walk out of there and be like, OK, grief is not my enemy. Grief is my friend. OK. And it's like nobody talks about it. It's all taboo and nobody has any idea. It's like sex. It was the same thing that got me into sex. I was looking around and being like, how the hell we are all here because of sex. We all have sex. We need like what is going on that no one is talking about this or knows how to do it or knows how to navigate it. And I was just said to my husband the other day And he was cracking up. I was like, I feel about grief the way I used to feel about sex, which is a multi-layered statement.

But it's that. I'm like, what the fuck is going on that nobody knows how to do this? Listen, I know you have questions and things that you want some assistance with. And I am here to help. So that's what my Language of Love sessions are for. I can talk to you live on the line or you can email your questions and I will answer them and you can send them anonymously. It can be about a friend or a neighbor or someone you know.

But what I want you to know is that when you ask that question, you're asking not only for yourself, but all the millions of other people who have the same question because they do and are learning right along with you. So if you have a question or you want me to talk about something or answer something or help you with a struggle, you can always email me at languageoflovepod at gmail.com. That's languageoflovepod, as in podcast, at gmail.com. And so we are aligned with that. I am just so excited about your book.

I want everyone to read it. Spiritually, we, it's going to be inspiring. It's going to give you tools. And the bottom line is that, like you've said, the only way that you can really find peace is by becoming truly peaceful when you, you know, and hold that peace when in the presence of the world, when in the presence of others. Exactly. That's half the game.

Literally, you named it. Thank you for summarizing the book so well. Yeah. Community is the cure. You know, the book offers two main, there's two main underlying, you know, parts to it. It's one to reach the goal of utmost liberation, nirvana, enlightenment, samadhi, whatever you want to call it. You need to test your material. You need to do it in community. You need friends. You need the sangha. You need to be testing how free are you and it requires relationship. Even the Buddha's enlightenment was relational. When in the morning of his enlightenment, you know, the personification of evil, Mara came to visit and said, how do you know that you're free?

The Buddha said, mother nature is my witness. There isn't witness. There isn't. He put his hand on the floor on the earth and the earth shook in affirmation that he was free. And the other side of the book, the importance of all this is urging to the more practical aspect of this is

we're all going to age, get sick and die. And you should not go through that alone. The amount of people that I've seen as a medical chaplain go through this process alone is heartbreaking. Statistics show that 40% that being in a hospital in person myself and talking to the medical staff, it's not 40. We're looking at double that. 80% of the elderly population enters a hospital without social support, no friends, no family.

We have to change that narrative because we will inevitably all get sick, age and die. And we cannot do this alone. No, we can't. I'm with you there a hundred percent. That is my greatest fear. And my greatest pain is seeing that in people when they're suffering alone with no support.

Oh, it's like the worst. Yeah. So, so many things to talk about. I could talk to you for four hours and more. I'm so grateful for you, Sa. I'm so grateful for your heart and all you're teaching us. And I look forward and you're going to come to my grieving mama meetup and take us through a tasting of the saw method. So I'm really excited for that, too.

We're going to play a lot together. Thank you so much. What an honor. What a joy. I am like lit up by this. Thank you. But there's no cure for a crush All I wanna do, I wanna do is take you home with me