Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Someday, Now: Grief Doesn’t End, It Evolves with Tembi Locke

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Raising a child while carrying the weight of grief after losing your husband is no easy task. Learning to love again, knowing that loss is always a possibility, adds another layer of complexity. In this Language of Love Conversation, I sit down with the incredible Tembi Locke, actor, advocate, and New York Times bestselling author of From Scratch, which many of you may know as the hit Netflix series she co-created. Tembi’s newest project, Someday, Now, is a fully immersive audiobook that completely moved me. We talk about her journey through grief, caregiving, and parenting after the loss of her beloved husband Saro. How do you keep going when the person you planned your future with is no longer here? Tembi shares how her grief has transformed over the years, what it was like to raise her daughter while healing herself, and how she still feels her husband’s presence in everyday life, from hummingbirds outside her window to cherished memories in Sicily. We dive into: How grief evolves over time and why it never really ends The surprising ways caregiving prepares (and fails to prepare) you for loss What no one tells you about the physical exhaustion of grieving The best ways to support a child on the grief journey   The quiet ways our loved ones continue to guide us after they're gone Why so many of us are grief-illiterate and what we can do about it What it means to show up for others in grief, even when words fall short How becoming an empty nester stirred up old wounds and new revelations What it really takes to open your heart to love again after devastating loss What makes this conversation so special is how honest Tembi is. She doesn’t shy away from the messy truths about the physical toll of grief, the emotional fatigue of caregiving, and the quiet courage it takes to choose love again. Whether you're grieving, supporting someone who is, or simply wondering how to keep going when life breaks your heart this one is for you. Want more from Tembi? Explore Someday, Now and her memoir From Scratch at her website. Follow her on Instagram: @tembilocke or LinkedIn. And if you’re on your own healing journey, I’d love to invite you into my Good Grief Course, a safe space filled with tools, practices, and support to help you grow through loss. If this conversation touched you, I’d love to hear from you. Share your story or a sign you’ve received at [e-mail]. 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. In that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love.

Temi Locke is an actor, advocate, and New York Times bestselling author of From Scratch, a memoir of love, loss, caregiving, and the resilience it takes to rebuild a life from the ashes of grief. It was also actually made into a Netflix series that Temi co-created and produced. Now, in her audio book, Someday Now, Tembi is inviting us along as she recounts a deeply personal and transformative summer in Sicily in 2023, filled with nostalgia, blending family, and rediscovering hope as her daughter moves away to college. In this Language of Love conversation, we're talking about the sacred journey of grief,

the way we continue to feel the presence of our loved ones after they're gone, the kind of courage it takes to continue to parent after loss, to choose love again when loss is always possible and you've learned that difficult truth when the life you planned is no longer possible. And whether you're caregiving someone, grieving, or just simply wondering how to keep your heart open in a world that breaks it, this episode is for you. Tembi, thank you so much for joining us on the language of love. I'm so excited to talk to you. Dr. Laura, thank you. I am thrilled to be here. It's in the title of this podcast. It's language is important. Love is important. And this excavation and exploration of all the permutations of how those things come together

is a really exciting thing to talk about. And it's my lane. It's like the thing I love. Yes. And you're so good at talking about it, at writing about it, at expressing it. We're going to get into your new audio book someday now in a little bit. I have so many things that I want to talk to you about, you know, especially around this idea of love and loss, obviously, because, you know, my peeps here, they're interested in love, but we obviously talk a lot about loss. And when you I think you and I met at a grief tastic book fair. You did. We did. And we were kind of like, you know, like we just sort of like found each other. Yeah. Like, OK, I was just really I didn't even know who you were, but I was just really drawn to you. And I follow those cues now. You know, when a voice says go that way or talk to that person or someone lights up a little bit, which is what happened with you. I'm like, okay, I'm going over there. And then I think I asked someone, who is that? And they

told me, and I was such a fan of your bestselling book, From Scratch, which ended up being made into a Netflix series. It was so good. So it was so much fun to meet you. When I met you and we had that moment of connection, and I say that with great intentionality, it was like instant connection. And like you, I really have learned to follow those cues, to submit to that, to slow down and say, okay, it's rare. Yeah. Sadly, it is rare to have moments of connection in our fast-moving, fast-paced world. And I think to connect it up to loss, one of the things that loss, profound loss, the loss of my late husband, Sato, and all the years of caregiving, what it taught me, the legacy of that experience in my life today is that I don't take connection for granted. And I understand that we may not pass this way again in the same way.

So I'm going to take a beat and be here now. You know, that's so beautiful because one of the first questions I wanted to ask you, you've just at least in part answered, which is, you know, one of the beautiful things you've written and said. I don't remember which book because I've read and listened to both of them now. But you said that grief doesn't end. It transforms. And so I wanted to ask you about that transformation and what it's looked like for you over time.

I mean, you just mentioned one of the things, right, that you make connection for granted and you stop and claim it when it happens. And I think what comes to me immediately in our conversation today is that I really see the answer lies in two parts. There's the how my grief for Saru, my late husband, how that has changed over years. And then the second part, which I'll try to answer, is how grief itself has changed me. Yeah. So the first piece, which I think is what a lot of people, certainly the newly grieving and anyone who's listening to this podcast right now who has lost a beloved is always, I mean, I remember in the first years, I would say, dare I say seven years, you know, after loss, I was

always wondering, how do I carry this pain? How do I bear the pain? That's the first early question that sat with me. It was the first thing I thought of when I woke up in the morning is, how do I do another day? Like, how do I just do it? Well, how do I care? How? And over time, I learned how to do that and how to carry his specific, his absence. And what, in short, for over many years, I think what I learned is that I try to carry his presence, to let his absence be an awareness, a curiosity of where does his presence live in my life right now. And that can mean the delicious meal that I'm making tonight. It can mean the smile on our daughter's face. It might be the hummingbird outside my window. It might be a trip to some

place he loved. It might be picking up a book that he loved off the shelf and reading it. it's like I am trying to bring him as close to me as I possibly can with every tool I have and can imagine. And that is something I didn't know the first month, year, maybe even two years, but I've learned over time, is that I have to almost be like a sponge that is pulling his his energy, his love, his spirit close to me. That is its own kind of intentionality. It's its own kind of work. And if you do it enough, it starts to happen spontaneously and you don't even have to work at it. Yeah, it happens organically. Yeah, but it takes time, right? So his life force is something I call upon. I draw upon it. I draw rays of the sun. I call upon it for him,

for guidance, for remembrance, for love, for slowing down, for all the things that he would have given me were he still here. It's that, right? Yeah, beautiful. And then for how it has the grief itself, like what does it mean to grieve deeply for my grandmother, for him, for, if you will, the world that we're in now, how grief has fundamentally changed me is it makes me way more grateful. It makes me hopefully gentler and that I extend grace. That's the way I hope. And it's also made me want to talk about it, which I'm here doing with you now. It's made me want to say this is a big human experience, just like love is, and it merits some space at the table and some conversation. Yeah, which that was one of the things that really, I mean,

I had had a lot of grief in my life. I'd lost both my parents, my grandmothers, my spirit mother, all of whom I was really close to, probably within, you know, the five to 10 years before I lost Sammy. But obviously that was a much deeper and wider kind of loss. But what I had never really thought about before until I was in that place was how truly grief illiterate we are in, at least in the Western, you know, in our society, in American society, for sure, and how taboo it is to talk about, which is why it's so important. I'm so grateful for people like you being willing to talk about because Lord knows it's a human experience and there's no one that's getting out of here without having it. Absolutely. Right. But we don't talk about it. So I love that

you have shared so much of your heart with all of us in your books and your words, so much of your story from scratch is about that deep love that deep loss I'm going to ask you a little bit about the caretaking piece because I think that's a piece as well but just for right now deep love and deep loss and staying connected to him I think is such a beautiful description and so true I find that too and you shared some of the ways that you do that through doing things that he would have loved connecting to things that he would have read or tuning into things he would have said, do you tune into, because I do, just asking if you do, tune into his presence, his essence? Do you feel his guidance and his presence? The answer is 100% yes. And sometimes I do it

intentionally. And sometimes it happens upon me. And whether I seek it out or whether it happens upon me, the feeling state is the same at a literally at an embodied somatic cellular level. Everything calms down and resets. I feel like I am in the presence of all that is because having cared for him for 10 years through cancer, being at his bedside at death. I had the privilege of knowing that his spirit left his body, but his spirit is still here with me. And so when it comes, when I feel it, my gosh, it is a gift. It's a gift. And so sometimes I'm hungry for it. Like, I'm like, oh, life is feeling just too mundane, quotidian, just like ins and outs, like receipts, Trader Joe's, car, parking, you know, elevator.

It's like all of that, right? It's like life isn't, I'm like in a strip mall, like all day long. Like it's just like, that's the, that's the net experience. Every three days. Yeah. And then I'm like, okay, I need to go more to the more elevated, if you will, I'd say the more celestial, the more sort of expanded space. and connecting to him gets me there.

And one of the ways I do it, and in the book, that's what I write about, I didn't know that's what I was doing the first year I did it, was I traveled to Sicily. Yeah. Which is to his birthplace, to his hometown, literally to the table that he sat at as a child, to sit with his mother, and that was the only way I knew to be close to him.

It was so literal, right? I needed to be where he had been. I needed to walk the streets he had walked. I needed to eat the foods he had eaten from the land that, you know, had nurtured him. And I felt like that's the way I could soak up his him. Right. And the book is very much about that journey. It's both about that connecting to him, but also me clawing my way forward in life and as a mother and building a relationship with his mother-in-law, which is another sort of, you know, secondary love story in the book. And now, and I still go to Sicily for all those things.

Right. Even today that he passed away 13 years ago and I traveled to Sicily for that connection to him. And some of it is because that's where we shared so many memories. I think if you have lost someone and there is a space, an endowed space that is meaningful to you and that person, a place that you walk together, that you visited. I encourage grieving people to revisit those places as painful as it is initially. Over time, it will transform and that place can become a beautiful gift and almost like a living sanctuary to the relationship that you have with that person. Yeah. So it's going to, you know, what some people call church, right? You know? Yeah. And it's like a portal for connection. It becomes a place that you can

totally feel that connection even more deeply. And you're right. At first, sometimes it's really painful to go to the hike you used to do or the place you used to watch The View or the country where you used to spend a lot of time. And I think it's important to say because people often avoid that, you know, as an effort to avoid the pain, but it often can be a path to pain relief. I find as well. Go there, unbended knee, crying the first time. It's okay. Yes. Okay. That is normal. Take a friend with you, do it in small bits and you'll begin to build up, right? Yeah, absolutely. bring the reservoir to return again. And it gets easier and easier. I think the first time is the hardest, but it gets easier and easier. I think that's a beautiful piece of advice. And you were

saying, you know, he was sick for a long time. You were a caregiver before you were a widow. How did that role prepare you or not for grief? You said it beautifully, how it prepared me and how it did not. I mean, the ways in which caregiving, and I was at cancer for a decade with a small child and the only primary, only income earner in the house. So wrap all your mind around all of that, right? So I guess on the one hand, just in what I said, I think it taught me that I can handle a lot. So I kind of was like, okay. Also, there had been a lot of anticipatory grief for listeners who may not know that term or be familiar with it. It's kind of, I call it an early stage of grief. There are many grief experts. You can Google it and find

out more about it. But effectively, it's this sense, this felt sense that you know a grief is coming. And I knew that his cancer diagnosis, there was no cure for it. And so I anticipate, I was in this state of anticipatory grief long before his death. So I was trying on, if you will, the scope of what that could feel like, which also felt weird to do at the time. I was like, why am I thinking about him not being here when he's here? And I'd feel shame or guilty for it. But guess what? We're all normal. These things happen. If it's happening to you, if a listener, it is very normal. And so I thought that the anticipatory grief prepared me for grief. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The first thing that took my breath away quite literally

was the fatigue. Yes. That is surprising, isn't it? It is very surprising. I felt as though someone instantly, like I had been hit by a bus or a truck or something, and I was just like laid flat and literally just brushing my teeth. It felt like it took me to hold myself up at the sink to brush my teeth. No one tells you this stuff. No, I know. The physical toll is so profound. So there was this physicality to grief as it lived in my body that I thought, like, I must, literally the grief was so much, I thought, well, I must be dying now because I've never felt this before in my life. Something, I'm clearly going to go to sleep and not wake up because I'm that tired. And this is from someone who had been the primary earner with a small child and caretaker of someone terminally ill. That exhaustion was.

On top of my, yes. Yeah. But this exhaustion was even more intense. Yeah. I had the same thing and it was shocking to me, but it really is universal. And it makes sense because your body and especially your brain is trying to, even if you cognitively thought you were prepared for it or not, even if you cognitively understand that person is gone, it's like your whole body and your nervous system and your brain is trying to reconcile a whole new reality. 100%. And that gut, we now know more about the gut brain access. And so I felt like a pit in my stomach and I felt completely tired. And then the sort of secondary rung out from that was kind of like, I either had hyperfocus

or scramble brain. Yeah. Grief brain. I could either like laser focus in on something and just, you know I mean I thought like oh jeez like where'd this brain come from and then I would I couldn't figure out how to back my car out of the driveway yeah both things could be happening in the same afternoon yeah in the same hour yeah yeah so that's sort of the physical nature of the things that surprised me about grief and the way in which caregiving had not prepared me for that and then the other thing was I share this because I hope it is helpful to others I was not prepared for the active dream state. When I did find sleep, my dreams were so vivid and unlike dreams I had ever had in my life that the sleep was not often restful, the little sleep I got. So my solve for

that was I just started writing them down. One, because I couldn't sleep and I was like, I'm just going to write these things down. I don't know what they are. Maybe they're messages, maybe they're not. I don't know. And I have to say, looking back more than a decade, that was actually a kind of a salvation for me. Not, and I actually, I recently had a move and I found one of those early, the first year dream journals from my first year of grieving. And the images in there were so powerful. And I really do think we are kind of trying to communicate across the veil I think that's what our brain is doing in that. And so documenting it, some of that made its way into my book later on. Right. It's something I could draw from to write about when I was trying to describe this. But I share all of this to say for those listeners who are close to someone who is grieving, please give them grace. help them do things like get good rest stay hydrated make life simple for them you know

how when you have a toddler and you put the plugs in the outlet and you put the baby gate up so they don't fall down the stairs you need a version of like grief proofing the house person because Because you're kind of bumping into walls and like it's your home. It suddenly feels not safe in the same way it was. And I know that sounds very odd, but my I and I write about this in the book. It's a little bit in the series. You know, my stepmother moved in with me. She moved in with me because I couldn't function in the best way.

I was there for my daughter, but I couldn't be there for myself. So I could be very high functioning for her. And then there was nothing left. And did you feel similarly after Sammy passed? Like you could- Oh yeah, I was a zombie. Thank goodness it was COVID in that sense because I wasn't working

and I didn't have to leave the sofa. But I think I literally sat still without moving barely. I could barely move for the first year. Maybe after a couple of months, I would try, I could maybe do one thing, like go to the grocery store and then I would need to like sleep for four hours. So, I have never felt that level of exhaustion or brain damage.

I mean, I laugh because it is a form of brain damage. It's a kind of brain damage. Because it's something is, and you're rebuilding new synapses. Yeah, you have to create. Brain scientists, but that's my language for it. You're building neural pathways for a world that didn't exist yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a whole new world.

And I think, you know, there's all of this really cool new science about what happens to the brain on grief and the cortisol and the sleeplessness and all of those things. But it's super normal and deep, you know, and depending what I think is really beautiful and important about what you're saying. You know, I didn't lose a husband, but with Sammy, it was a gobsmacked loss. Like I didn't get a chance to have the anticipatory grief or say goodbye or anything like that. And I have often thought that besides the fact that it was my son, which adds a whole new layer to it, that that, you know, I've thought a lot about the difference between sudden death and death after a long illness, because I know that when my parents transitioned, both of them had been ill for a really long time. and because they were my parents and very my dad more than my mom my mom was a devastating loss my dad long story i mean i had a complicated relationship with him and that was probably part of it but also i had been his primary caretaker or my in my mom's case it was my dad

so when he left i missed him i was sad but i had a little sense of relief and i was kind of ready for it and i had my closure and even with my mom even though that was devastating i had felt like I had some closure and those griefs were horrible, but they were also my parents and I was older and it was a different, I mean, it was a different kind of loss than a husband or a child or not to qualify different losses. Yeah. Yeah. The way they were held inside me were different, but I really appreciate what you're saying, because what you're saying is that even though you were prepared and you had a chance to say goodbye and you had all your closure and you had been, you knew maybe that there was even a little part of you that had accepted it and felt some

relief that he even not for yourself, but for him that he wasn't in pain anymore. It still felt like a gobsmack to your system. And I think that's really important to recognize. Yes. And I thank you for sharing both of those experiences, because like you, I have thought about what it might be like to have sudden a sudden death now the way that that impact to the body and you see those kind of those who are watching with the reaction I did to kind of like it's visceral because it it's both are real they can be different but the net net of it is that you are your body your mind is your heart your spirit your psyche is doing the hard work of trying to be in a world wherein the person you held so dear and were so close to is no longer here yeah yeah it's a big

a big big shift and you mentioned uh zola before or zoella sorry i don't know i love that name your daughter and just in turn i want to talk more about her because i really related to this part of the story in Someday Now, your most recent creation. But even early on, how did you navigate? Because there's so many here who are caretakers to people who are ill or actively, you know, in a terminal state and they also have children or they're grieving someone and also have children. How did you navigate that tension between your own grief and your role or your ability to mother your daughter who was also grieving this is a wonderful question and we could talk i mean there's a whole podcast on being there's a great podcast called

the widow parent podcast right which is a people if you want to go listen to that which is specifically parenting through grief but i will say for me initially it was like my brain who that had been caregiving, all of that shifted to her. I was like, I, the mother in me prioritized her over myself. Right. And so if I had, do you know that spoon theory, you know, you heard like, you know, the whole idea of like, you only have your, your energy level has, let's say you start the day with 10 spoons, you have 10 spoons worth of energy for today. And for every activity you give your expending a spoon. Right. And so the end of the day, you have no spoons left. Yeah. Anyway, for me, if I had two spoons for the day, I was giving her those that she got all my energy.

She got the spoons, not me. And I thought I could just do it that way. I thought that's just the way my life is going to look. That's the way my grief is going to look. She will get all and I will get none. And that lasted all of about, I don't know, maybe two weeks. Tops. Because again, while I had to show up for her, I also had to learn that I needed to show up for myself too, or there was nothing to give her. Exactly. And I remember very specifically when I hit that wall. And it was a parent-child conference 10 days after her dad died, where I was supposed to go over her portfolio for like, I don't know, first or second grade with the teachers. And I was like, I will do this. I will show up for this conference. I drove my car on the freeway. Don't ask me how I

did that. I got my car in the parking lot. Don't ask me how I did that. I got out of the car. I I walked up, and as I'm walking up to the classroom, I see all the other parents there in the room, and I see through the window, and I was like, I cannot enter that room. I cannot go in that room. If I go in that room, literally, I think I might spontaneously combust, and I pivoted, and I went back to my car. I sat in my car, and I said, someone bring my daughter home. She and I are going to do a movie night.

I can't do this, so that was the first time I realized I can't show up for a parent-teacher conference. Yeah. I can't show up for her in that space right now. It's too much. And I realized, oh, I need to plan on days that are going to require extra parenting effort for me. I have to care for myself first and put guardrails around what I need. Now, it's not easy to do and not everyone has the resources of a good community of folks or a best friend or a mom or a neighbor who can like pitch in. And that's where I say, if you see the need of a grieving person, please step in and offer your help to them because they may not even be organized enough to ask. So I did things like that. And then I tried to find ways that she and I could bring our griefs to the table together and have a shared experience around them. Because we had grief counseling together. I had individual counseling. She did sand tray therapy, grief therapy. And so I knew enough to know that we were both grieving the same person, but we were grieving different relationships. She was grieving a father. I was grieving a husband. She was a child. I'm a

grownup. So they look very different. And so we did things like tonight, let's both write letters to Babo. That's what she called her father. And we would do almost parallel play like you do with a child but it would be a grief ritual you're being present with it together and we just yeah so that we both are know that this is a space and that those kinds of things helped initially beautiful and then i cry we could cry together she might be like i'm done with this and walk away because you know everybody's coming at it differently i might be like you keep going i'm gonna step into the other room and then i cry in the other room all right and i come back and be like, okay, how's it going? Then I learned to not hide the grief from her. It was okay to cry

in front of your children. I was aware of not doing it so much that it was destabilizing for her. So I knew I needed to take the big cries to a friend, to my therapist, to the guy at Trader Joe, but I couldn't give it to her. But it's okay to cry. Yeah. I love that. And so many things. And even in general, I think this is true. So what I noticed about tremendous loss is that things that are true all the time are just true on steroids. Right. After tremendous loss. So I've said to women my whole life, my whole career, you have a solid spoons, you have a certain reservoir of energy. And if you're spending that reservoir on everyone else and everything else, you're not going to have any left for yourself, which then not only depletes you energetically and romantically and in every other way, but then you have nothing to give. Right. And so multiply that by 10,000 with grief. If you're not replenishing and taking care of your own energy stores, it's so hard to care for those. In our case, my oldest was already in his late 20s and living away, not that he wasn't affected, but I didn't have to actively take care of him. Sam's younger brother was 14 months younger than him and really in the action of it. And it was hard. And I really, really, you know, that idea of crying in front of them. I mean, I'd always not hidden tears from them if I was emotional, you know, felt sad about something. But I was really losing it at the first night that Sammy died.

You can imagine. I mean, I didn't never understand keening that word keening until that day. I was rolling around on the floor. Yes. Just I couldn't funk. You know, I had broken into a million pieces and I don't even know how many hours that went on. But I think the house was almost empty at this point and it had been hours with Coroners and different people in our home and my husband came and got me And brought and said jackson is asking for you and needs you so I picked myself off the floor I was like blew my nose I went in he was like curled up in our bed in the in the blankets and pillows

And I spooned around him and he said and he was crying and he said i'm scared that I'm going to lose you too, that you're going to basically go insane. He was saying, so I don't remember exactly what he said. He was basically saying, I feel like you're going to go insane. Like, cause he had never seen me as you can imagine. And I'm sure I really, I was insane. And I'm sure I really seem that way. And he's like, I'm scared that I'm going to lose you too. And I don't know. I mean, I just made this promise and I wasn't even, I knew I could, I thought I could keep it and I did, but I was like, yeah, I am going to be insane for a while. I'm still going to take care of you. You're still going to be okay. I'm not going to be okay for a

while, but I will be. And I'm not going to permanently be this way. And then after that, as I started to get more of a grip, I definitely would leave and, or I would even say to both him and my husband, I'm going to move some emotion now. Don't worry about sounds coming from the back of the house you know go in there and every day to say it that's such a thing about I need to just release I need to yeah they just got used to it you know and then months later we were I was away with my husband and my youngest and two girlfriends who are kind of my able to hold this kind of stuff and he saw me crying on my friend's lap outside and my other friend was inside getting something. And he said to her, oh, she's crying again. And she's like, yeah. And he's like,

is she ever going to stop? And then my friend reinforced, yes, it's going to get better and better. But this is sad. He's like, am I always going to be sad? That's really what it is. Yes. Yeah. That's really what it's about. They're looking to us to understand how to navigate this. And they want to know that we are not going to come apart. And in my daughter's case, there were a lot of at seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, are you going to die too? Yes. You know, it's this idea of, am I going to have a double loss here? And are, can I count on you enough to be present? Yes. Yeah. And to be present. And I think that we are the work as a parent is to be authentic, but also still reassuring. Yes. But not hide, but also not overwhelm.

Yeah. And you're trading this. And I think when you narrate, I'm going to go in the other room. Don't mind the sounds that you hear. No, I'll be back out. It goes, OK, there's some parameters to this, as opposed to they're just watching TV and they hear wailing from the next room like, what the hell just happened? Yes. And he got really used to it. He didn't have to witness it. I mean, I came back in and he could tell I was a little lighter and it went on like that and got better and better. So I think that's a beautiful, a beautiful piece to this puzzle. Most of us have no idea how to move through loss. There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief. And I realized this when I lost my son three years ago. As a therapist who

understood grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way, but in a way that has transformed me for the better. We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course, Good Grief, Healing from Loss with Love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com, right there on the homepage, as well as free resources, letting you know how to support others who are going through loss. None of us has to do this alone.

I want to get into Someday Now, your newest audio. It's not even an audio book. It's like an audio journey. It's really beautiful. Well, so to me, the way that I was experiencing it is sort of the beginning of the story, there's almost like this. And I love this because I always say to people, grief loves an open door. Like it's going to come back up all the time. And when you grieve after tremendous loss, that grief is compounded. And I was like, so as I was listening, cause it's an audio book guys and their sound effects and you back, you know, it's really, you're kind of in the journey with her. And so I would listen in the car, but sometimes I would listen in the shower or when I was getting ready. And I can't tell you

how many times I, cause I love to cry in the shower. I would start crying in the shower relating to your story, especially in the beginning and throughout, as you're talking about the grief that was coming back on or coming up, shouldn't say coming back, coming up on top of the old grief, as you were preparing for Zoella to leave. Now she's leaving for college and the degree of grief that was coming up that I related. Like when my youngest, which was only, you know, he was, I guess, in ninth or 10th grade when Sammy passed. So it was only a few years later as he was leaving to college,

I was beside myself with grief that was so irrationally huge for the circumstances. And exactly. So first of all, thank you. Thank you. I take in everything you just said, and I think that that is really kind of the starting point for the idea of this book. I mean, there were many reasons why I wanted to write it, and I wanted to do it as an audio book and why I thought that was the way to tell this particular story, a fully immersive audio experience with all the sights, with all the sounds of Sicily that I hope you can also envision with your sights. But I was my so I am a mother to an only child and she was leaving the nest and I could not explain to my immediate sphere of people why her leaving home felt like, yes, what I hear in the world is the usual emptiness feelings of she's leaving or they're leaving or they're going.

oh I'm happy mine felt like that but then there was this other piece to it that I couldn't even name put my finger on or felt permission to talk about a quiet kind of like I kind of got to keep that to myself or people are going to think I'm you know I don't know crazy overbearing and what yeah and what and you know and I knew enough to know that my therapist told me this in the wake of sados passing that a grief a large grief can magnetize other griefs yes it's like a magnet so when you experience a grief it will pull toward it past losses right so here's how well i was leaving which is joyous by the way she is like she killed it in high school she did all the things right she's going to the school she wants to go to we're all excited it's got all the joy points

and yet I am excited for that while I'm also feeling holy moly I feel a kind of sadness and so I was missing her father I was missing his presence at all her graduation ceremonies and things. I was missing him being able to see her at this stage of life. I was concerned about what it might feel like to have her so far away. She went to school on the other side of the country. How would we navigate and bridge our connection, which had been forged so tightly because of his death? How would we navigate that? Plus, I newly remarried, so we're in a blended family. It's really hard to blend and connect. And I'm like, what happens to that? So I have all these big existential questions. And then there's this little part of me, this little part

of me that felt like, oh, I did all of this and now she's gone. I'm being left. that was a huge part of me that i knew was completely irrational but that was the thing so many women and moms and i am also going to say fathers feel this way we just haven't made space to talk about it and it's normal and you don't prioritize it over the other things but it is a small fleeting voice that can come and i'm here to say it's okay to acknowledge it as one of the any different feelings and thoughts that will come. And so this book was really what I hope it is as a part of being, yes, a beautiful listen,

a fully immersive listen. Yes, a kind of next chapter story of after from scratch, if you've read from scratch or seen the series. But really, it's kind of a conversation starter for parents around this moment in a family that is a real inflection point. And it's an invitation to, I would say, lean in more, try to forge greater connection before everything changes, because the family dynamic is changing. Yeah, it is. And I had such a hard time, which I think is another kind of piece of grief or after loss is that change can be tricky. I mean, I think change is always tricky for everybody because change can be scary, even though it's often welcome.

The change, especially as he was like in his senior year and running around and doing everything I wanted for him, desperately was so thrilled he was having the girlfriend and the friends and the running around and the hobbies and the activities and the sports. And he was driving himself all over the place and totally independent and ready to go. and I was pissed as hell that he wasn't around and I would find myself like ready to murder him be it myself because he was freaking so happy to leave oh yeah I was pissed at him and being snarky to him and he was looking at me like what the hell is wrong with you and it's so funny because I have heard this yes you need parents especially now that you know we are getting to talk about the many different stages of this goodbye, right? And did I say, and in addition to the goodbye, it's also this reawakening that could begin to happen for us as parents, right?

To our own selves. And that's also what the book is about. But yeah, there's these moments where everybody is sort of like breaking up with the family. So the family contract up until that moment has been, hey, you check in with me before you're getting ready to go out. You know, I can pretty much count on you for this it's all up for grabs in this transitional period and i had a friend and i write about this you know it's it's in the audio book of like you know the kids kind of shit the nest a little bit before they buy it well yeah they all do that right they're gonna like act out and be unruly and you're like who the hell is this person yeah then you as a parent have your reaction to them shipping the test which might be your own version of like well who the

hell are you and so it's like a quiet what do they call it quiet quitting it's like you're quiet quitting the family the family dynamic as you prepare to make a new a new oh my god i was going all the way into all right that's it he's never going to want to be with me again he's never coming home again i'm barely going to see like i got all of these stories of loss that i was going to be basically lose another kid thank you thank you thank you thank you and did you also because that the stories that we spin out because of loss oh yeah that's huge big yeah I wouldn't have had that story if I hadn't lost Sammy I wouldn't have gone right that's it I'm never gonna say and I wouldn't have felt that degree of grief over it did you also I think I know the answer but I'm

curious, did you also feel this intense worry that something would happen? Oh, yeah. I had had that worry from the first moment. That was huge. And I talk to grievers all the time about that, that that's a big part of it, especially, I mean, sometimes you worry about yourself having an illness if your loved one died of an illness. But I do find that people whose loved ones died suddenly, there's that real, real fear. And I work with grieving parents a lot among other grievers, And they in particular, I mean, they all worry about their other kids. It's a longer story, but I actually, through, you know, what I call an AFGE, another freaking growth experience, one of those horrible things that happen that break you open and take you

to the next level of healing. I had that with my eldest, maybe a year after Sammy died. he, who had always struggled off and on with depression, became severely and committed to suicide to the point where he, every conversation he would ask for my permission to go, like to let him go. And I, as you can imagine, all the layers to, even without having had my prior loss, the layers that that would be for a parent. But what I kept saying to him is, no, you do not have my permission. I'm sorry, Sammy screwed this up for you. All I can tell you is that I won't survive losing. I don't know that I could have survived it before, but now I know for sure I'm going to

have to go to like I can't stay here if you leave, if you kill your like I can't I can't. I really thought I couldn't go through it again. And it felt like having a terminal illness because I wanted to live, but I was living in fear that he would stop living and die by suicide or in any way, but die by suicide in this case. And then I wouldn't be able to stay here. And so it took living in that pain and uncertainty for almost a year before I finally, and I was in so much pain and I finally got to the point and I was trying, he's now like 26, right? It's not like I could force him into therapy and he wouldn't go. And so I finally, after like nine months of this, I think I finally had an epiphany where I was like, I can't live this way anymore.

And so I started working really hard with a variety of healers to basically, I know this sounds crazy, but get okay with him going. And I remember saying to my therapist, I think I get the assignment that I am meant to have so much faith and so much connection to the truth of that faith. That's why this is happening, to catalyze that. but why the hell does that have to happen through my kids? And her response is, that's the only way it would happen. That's the only way you would get to that place is this way for you. And I think that's true. And I did get through a variety of meetings. It's a much longer conversation. I got

to that place where I was finally able to say to him when he made that comment, I would say, it's not up to me to give you permission or not. It's your life. It's your body. I don't know how I will be okay. If you do this, all I know is that it's not up to me. And I have, you have this therapist. I can send you to this program. I can send you to, you can come home. Like there are all these options. I can't force you into it. All I can do is tell you that I love you. I'm not in charge. And I swear to you, the next day he called, he said, okay. And he hung up and I started flipping out like, holy crap, you know? And then the next day he called me and said, all right, I'm ready to go to therapy. And now here we are two years out and he's doing, he's totally

transformed. He's doing amazing. He wants to become a therapist to help kids like him. Like he's in this beautiful place because he took charge of that journey and it freed me from that. I mean, I'm not saying I'll be OK if, God forbid, something happens to them or anyone I love. But I now have gotten to a place where I know I'll survive. There's so much. Thank you. Thank you for the intimacy of that and for the sharing that clarity, because it rests in my heart in a very real way, this notion of surrendering to what we have no control over and not just the surrender but the deeper level of work is to being so aligned with our sense of spirit or faith or people have different words

for it that it is actually we are deeply okay with it not just I surrender to it but I surrender and I'm not saying I'll be fine. I'm not saying I'll be great, but I understand I don't. This is, you know, much larger than me. And as a parent, the beginning of your child leaving home is the beginning of understanding. Yeah. They are stepping into their own individuation and adulthood and big and beautiful, hopefully loving and bold and gorgeous ways. And also they're going to have all of their pain and thoughts and struggle and the brick walls they're going to walk straight into, sometimes with the eyes wide open. And you are powerless to do anything.

Powerless. Yeah. So I want to circle back to what you also said about the healers, because one of the things I don't get to talk about enough in our conversations, and I want to just, since you opened the door to that. I too have used many different modalities and people and persons and processes and rituals to try to heal and fortify and soothe and understand these deeper parts of myself. And grieving people often, or people often ask someone like me, who has written a book, who's produced their television series, who has another book, who talks openly about the how did

you do it? How did you do it? Which is a big question, right? On so many levels. But I want to use this moment to say that there has been a kind of a team of different people who floated in and out over more than a decade, who at times have filled a very specific need. The sum of all of their parts is the healing that you, that I can claim today, right? There's more to do. Yes. Right. But it is body workers to get very specific. It's things from hip puncture to osteopaths, to massages, right? To craniosacral work, right? Like just physical at the somatic level. I talked about the pain in the body, the way the body can feel tired. You need people who will tend to your the physical body that you carry around with you every day yes period in the story

nutritionists good doctors right there's that and that stuff is not cheap no and so I want to also say that and that's why but if you can find a massage school where you can get inexpensive massages because people are learning it's yeah yeah and then there's therapists and there's you know, I mean, I've talked to mediums, therapists, I've done it all. I talk about the six pillars of grief healing, but really it falls into four categories, mind, body. So body, you were talking about mind is obviously all the emotional, the psychological, mind, body, spirit, which is the more metaphysical, whatever that means, energy, healing, medium, psychic, all of that stuff, attuning to the energies and the presence that we were talking about earlier. And then tribe,

which is, you know, your support system around you and often creating a brand new one that can work with the version of you, you know, that can be with the version you are now. Because for many of us, those relationships fall away, but it's all of those. And I love those suggestions because the sad part is when you need those resources the most, you don't always have the capacity to be resourceful. So having just really understanding and exploring these different modalities, even if you go to a school or someone who's first learning or go to a group, or that's why I started the Grief Healing Collective is to make this accessible to everybody. And I give them toolkits every month of things they can do from each pillar that would support. And we do retreats

We do scholarships because healing can be expensive. When you listen to Someday Now, you'll go on a journey of what started as a college moon, right, as this trip to take Zoella back to Sicily, back to where, you know, her father's town, back to your mother-in-law's home, which is now part of your daughter's home. And that was a beautiful, beautiful moment, too. I wish we had time to get into all that with the pictures you found that your mother-in-law I had left behind. And there were so many beautiful moments. I was crying through that, too, in a beautiful way. But one of the themes is, which we were kind of touching on with relation

to our kids, but it applies to your, maybe not so, I don't know how many years now you've been with your current husband, Robert, but this idea of choosing to love despite the possibility of loss. It's true for our children. We don't have a choice but to love our kids, I think. but we are always knowing we know after loss that there is always the possibility of loss and you'll learn a lot listening to someday now about Tembi's journey with finding love and integrating love into her your world with your daughter and we could talk about all that and oh my god it's it's it was a lot it was beautifully done and so well done and then also bringing him for the first time with you to Sicily and what that meant and that integration

and him meeting your in-laws. But I'm wondering just as we close, if you can speak to this idea of choosing love despite the possibility of loss, which were your words, not mine, by the way. Yeah. No, thank you. Thank you for giving me my words back to me. It's interesting because early on in my grief, I, after Sato passed, I pretty much thought, well, I had, look, I had it. Like I had that thing. I took the moonshot and I, I got the guy. I had the marriage. I had, I had it. And maybe that's, was my, that was my, that was it for me for life. And I was like, well, life, I'm maybe I'm not supposed to be in relationship again. And I was like, oh, maybe I'll be that retired re who's just traveling the world, doing the things. And no,

if I go out on a date here and I literally had this in my brain. Yeah. And then about there came a point as I began to do more somatic work and more healing work that I realized, well, wait a minute. Tembi is still, there's parts of me that are still here. And that's when Sato's words came back to me, the words that he said to me in his final days, which was, I want you to love again. And they hit me in a new way. Like in a new, like I was really like, oh shit, wait, now I think I know why he said that. Cause he knew one day, years later, I would remember the thing he said and then I wouldn't be able to unhear it. And so that began for me to say, you know, I actually would like companionship. I do want love. I don't know if I'll find it.

And so I just stayed open and curious to it because the thing that I was learning and the thing that I can definitively say is one love does not cancel across the other. That it simply is additive and expansive to your heart. And one of the most beautiful things Robert has ever said to me, and he has said many beautiful things, is I wish I could have known Sato. And I wanted to also, I had a friend tell me, look, you choosing to love again, whether you marry or not marry or have a long-term partner or date, you're modeling for your daughter that just because a death happened doesn't mean your whole life has ended, that you can still have living that is yet to come people who will come into your life. And she gets to witness that and know that she too can have

that. Yeah. Life after loss, you know, and you modeling that permission. I mean, I think it's different when a parent passes, but there is, I think a part of them that certainly models after you not only in how to do grief, but how to do life after loss. And I think that's so beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you just for everything and you are and for your beautiful work and being a model for us. I'm grateful. I'm so grateful that we have met. I want to just thank you again for your work in the world, for everything that you do. It is life changing. And just being your presence is a gift to me. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We love each other.

Yeah. We'll have to figure out a way to do something with one of the grief retreats together. I think it'd be really interesting. Yeah, I would love to. We'll definitely talk about that. Thank you. So many blessings. I'm crazy for your love.

Roll me a prescription, but there's no cure for a crush. All I wanna do, I wanna do is take you home with me I wanna make a move, I wanna make a move But I'm too shy I can't fall asleep without your arms around me I guess I'm falling in love