National Park After Dark - Everything Left to Remember ft. Steph Jagger

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Today we welcome Steph Jagger, author of Everything Left to Remember: My Mother, Our Memories and a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains for a conversation about adventure, loss, gain, forgetting and remembering. Following her mother's Alzheimer’s diagnosis, the duo embarked on a grand adventure through three of our nation’s most beautiful national parks and her book is one of grief, celebration, surrender and acceptance.Steph can be found on Instagram HERE and through her website HERE. While she encourages supporting your local bookstore, her book can be found online HERE.For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!BetterHelp: National Park After Dark is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off.Prose: Use our link for a free in-depth hair consultation and 15% off your first order.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monday AI agents took over my work. And I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. They live inside Monday.com. So they see the full picture, my work, my team, the whole company. And I don't have to worry about the data. It's safe, which means I'm free to focus on the big stuff,

knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Girl, winter is so last season. And now Springs got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders. That perfect hang on the patio sundress.

Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear up on that envelope. It's time for a little in-person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. Hello everyone. Welcome back to National Park After Dark. We have a different episode today. I mean, I say different, but we've interviewed authors before. But today we are doing an interview of an author. We love to recommend books. So we're excited to talk about this one. Yeah. We have a very special person on today. It's kind of a different conversation as well. So we're really excited. We just got off the phone with her. The phone. Zoom. We just got off Zoom with her. We just recorded. And she's an awesome human being. And her book, we both. We both. We both. We just got off Zoom with her. We just recorded. And she's an awesome human being. And her book, we both. We both. We both. We both. We both. We both. We both. We both flew through. I think I read it in a day and a half. What about you? Yeah, I read it really. I think

it took me three or four days before it, just because it's schedule-wise or I could have sat down and read it. But this is a really fun conversation because we're going to be talking about adventure like we always do in national parks, but we're going to be talking about it more in a spiritual journey as well and how transformative being in national parks are and then relationships along the way as well. So it's a really exciting conversation in a different way that relates to our national parks. And I think that we can all relate to that we find solace in nature. And people do that in different ways. And the book that we're referring to today is everything left to remember. My Mother, Our Memories, and a Journey Through the Rocky Mountains by Steph Jagger. And it is a story

about her experience with her mother going on a trip to three different national parks after her diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's. Steph is a best-selling author, life coach, speaker, and mentor. Her latest book examines how our stories are passed down through generations and from mother nature. The journey she took with her mother following her Alzheimer's diagnosis through Yellowstone National Park, Glacier, and the Grand Teton's National Parks is one of grief, celebration, surrender, and acceptance.

Without further ado, welcome Steph to National Park After Dark. Hello, Steph. How are you? I am good. I'm a tiny bit under-caffeinated, but good. Well, I'm already way ahead of you. I'm drinking for this is my second one already. It's 9 a.m. I'm a little over-caffeinated as well. I drink, I don't drink caffeine in this morning. I drank two cups of tea with caffeine in it. And I'm like, all right, I'm up. I'm up. I'm awake. We're ready. We've got the whole spectrum of under to over. engaged. That's a good start. Awesome. Well, our listeners love a good adventure, if you know anything about our audience. So while we're primarily here to talk about your most recent memoir,

everything left to remember, we would be missing a pretty big opportunity here if we didn't speak or touch upon even briefly about the events that led you to your first book Unbound. So for those that are not familiar, Steph here decided that while skiing, Being in Whistler in 2009, you made a really abrupt and firm decision that you wanted to just quit your job and ski the world. And that journey led you to five different continents and 45 different mountains. So can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah.

I mean, that is the gist. I think when I grew up in Vancouver, Canada, skied at Whistler pretty much all my life. And, you know, I had a good life there. Like, I was in my late 20s. I had like ticked all. of the boxes that I was told I was supposed to tick and things felt good, but they didn't feel great. Like it felt like something was missing or that there was more available to me somehow. And I, I threw my box ticking, couldn't quite add it all up. And so I thought, well,

if I immersed myself in my own joy for a year. And to me, that meant to travel and to write, but just like in my journal or emails to friends, I didn't plan on writing a book. And to ski, then maybe I would discover that more. And so I did that. I made that kind of like firm and abrupt decision, as you said. And I, um, I saved and I trained as hard as I can because I'm not a professional athlete and needed some fitness under my belt and kind of quit everything and sold everything and decided to, to ski circumnavigate the globe skiing. And I ended up breaking a record for the most vertical feet skied in a year while I was doing that. And I met the person I'm now married to. and really did dramatically change my life.

I ended up moving to the states. I restarted a career and eventually heard the kind of knock on the door to write a book about it. So it really was when I look back to things. Quintessentially, it was what I would describe as my maiden voyage, like archetypally and out in the world in that way. And it did involve separating and rejecting and rebelling from what I knew so I could really find me, which is, I think, has all of the markers of that maiden voyage. I also think if anybody is familiar with storytelling and Joseph Campbell's work and the hero's journey, it really does

fit within that heroes or heroine's journey. You know, I think that was so much of what that, what that was. And even hearing you say back, like 45 mountains, I was like, did I do? Wow, okay, that was a lot of mountains. Yeah. So it was a, it was a huge undertaking on so much different levels and it did it changed by life but that part only happened in the after like it could have just been an unbelievable event and then I went back to my life but I really sat with it and integrated and digested and what do I want this to change and so that that was a a really life-changing journey for me I think that's so inspiring because you hear people talk about all the time that they want to get up and leave and find themselves and figure out their life and to go

do it in such a big way. And you said you met your partner that you're with now. It transformed your life, your career, where you live. It just shows these adventures. And when you really dive into what you want out of your life, how much can come from that. And I think that's just hearing someone else doing it, I think is really inspiring. I think for anyone listening, that's like, I've been thinking about doing this for a really long time. Absolutely. Like, I go big when I go. That is possible. Like you really can quit, change your life, do something different. And I'm also a really big believer that that you don't have to do something super dramatic

or huge, like a huge undertaking like that to change your life. You know, you could start doing every weekend, you could go to a different hiking trail and just commit yourself to living in a different, in a little bit of a different way than you are now. you could take up a completely different project that maybe doesn't involve as much, you know, finances or as much travel or as much skill in the outdoor, etc. So there's a lot of different ways of doing this. And I'm, I'm a big believer in all of them. But I don't want people to listen and think, oh, I can't take a year off of my life. So I guess this isn't available to me. And that's just not true. You can find lots of different ways to do this kind of thing. Absolutely. Oh, jinks. do it. I feel like they hang out too much.

For me, I've picked up yoga a lot recently, and that's been something that's super transformative for me. And it's something I can do straight from home or I can do with friends or I can go into class. And I feel like it is something that addresses my inner being every time I'm there. And it's so easy. And it's something I can do within my normal life schedule without making like these giant changes in my life. Absolutely. That's, These are the quintessential kind of ingredients for, you know, when I look back at that, at that year, what I really understand now is that was me understanding what it was like to be. I mean, I think it was a moving meditation. I was on my own kind of in, in motion for for that long. And it taught me a lot about

flow state and how to apply that to different areas of my life. And so you can find that kind of flow state in yoga. you can find that kind of flow state in a, you know, once a week painting class. So that that access to those kind of mental and emotional and physical states are available to us in a multitude of different activities. Yeah. And in that flow state, whether it's through meditation or any type of activity that kind of opens your soul up a little bit, you found that poll to write a book. Like you said, you didn't go into this with that plan.

It just kind of evolved. and afterwards reflecting on it, you're like, this is something that needs to be bigger. And so after you wrote that book, would you say that it kind of changed your life of like, now I'm an author? And do you think that kind of opened the door up to this next project that we're going to be speaking about? Yeah. I mean, I think every, every adventure that I say yes to, that I don't even understand, that I don't,

that I have excuses for in my head. I'm like, I don't have the money to do that. I don't know how to do that. I don't have the mountaineering skills to do that. I don't have the, you know, any of these things. But any of those calls to adventure that I end up saying yes to, those have put me further and further and further into what all call the slip stream of, I don't know whether it would be like destiny or like personal, like fulfillment of my contract,

fulfillment of meaning and purpose. And I am still in a place where I'm like, I can't even really define that for you. But it does have a felt sense that I get deeper and deeper into that every adventure that I say yes to. So when I said yes to the ski trip, I did not expect, you know, my life to look like what it looked like at the end. And then you're absolutely right. I heard kind of a knocking on the quintessential or metaphorical door to write a book about it, said yes to that, even though I was like, I don't know how to write a book.

I don't know how to, I don't have an agent. I don't know anything about the publishing industry. I don't have an MFA. I have horrible at spelling and grammar. And so, yes, that put me in the slipstream of like, okay, now you're going to write a book. Now you're going to be speaking more. Now you're going to be, you know, there's a whole bunch of things that happen. And then that, as you said, led up to the second book, which again, I did, the journey that is

behind that book, I did not think I was going to write about it in any. sort of public way. I thought I would write about it from a personal like journaling catharsis kind of way. But I, you know, I keep getting these signs of, you know, take this further, you know, go to these places with it. And that seems to lead me, you know, again, as I said, like further and further into what I'd call like maybe destiny or purpose. And I, it's a very different kind of journey than me, like, creating a vision with my own mind about what I think my life should look like. And the path that I think I should take based on these 10,000 pieces of society telling me to do that and then I create a plan to go do that. That is so far from, this is so foreign to me now.

So I think all of it adds up to being in the, this lip stream of really a life of living an adventure. Well, we have both had the pleasure of reading your most recent book and we loved it. It was, it was obviously, it was heart wrenching. I think every person. who reads this can relate whether they have lost a parent, whether they're dealing with a parent who is sick, a parent who does have Alzheimer's, or just, I think we all have this general fear of our parents aging. And you did such a beautiful way of making the reader feel like we were right there with you, with your emotions. You made it an adventure, which I thought was, I felt like when you were talking about when you were in the parks and you were talking about what you were

learning while you were there. And what you were learning not just about yourself, but also about the parks itself, about your mother. It just really felt like you were there experiencing the adventure with you. So I really enjoyed reading it. And we just wanted to ask you a little bit about how just to start out from, I guess, where this book all started was with your relationship with your parents, how you grew up and what your relationship with them were. Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in what I would call pretty traditional gender role, middle to upper class household with a lot of siblings in Vancouver, Canada. And again, it kind of goes back to like, I had it good. I was I was well loved. There was a lot of consistency and safety in my house. That put me into a place that I described now as having a lot of like nervous system privilege. And that being said, there was a lot of the emotional realm of life that was kind of swept under the rug. Like we didn't talk openly about our emotional landscape.

And as a feeling kid, as a highly sensitive kid, that always felt difficult to me. Like I'm feeling all of these things in my body and I don't understand how nobody else is talking about them or feeling them, et cetera. And so there was a little bit of a gap there. The other thing I'd say about my life growing up is that, you know, we were an athletic family, but not an outdoorsy family. And my father and I are like two peas in a pod, kind of always have been. And my mother and I were close, but not like my father and I. I am not like best friend kind of mother-daughter relationship.

Sure. And so shortly after I finished the ski trip that is featured in Unbound, my mom was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. And, you know, that kind of prompted me to think about a lot of things inside of our relationship. And like you said, like, you know, we're confronted by aging parents, by parents who maybe have different types of degenerative disease. Also confronted, I think, by complexity of the relationship. Like, a lot of us have fantastic relationships with our parents. A lot of us have complex and very tricky relationships with our parents and other family members.

And so I really felt like there needed to be two things. I wanted some time with her. I knew there would be a window where there was enough of her kind of remaining that I could really soak up an adventure with her and maybe sort through a handful of things. There's also just like a pure enjoyment. Like I knew what my mother kind of felt like, looked like the way that she was in nature is different than the way my dad is. And I thought, well, I want to spend time with her like that.

like when she's in a state of awe and wonder. And she just becomes, you know, when she's around, especially around water, I read a lot about that in the book, kind of just more peaceful. And so I, I maybe 10 or 11 months after her diagnosis, I decided to take her on a road trip through a variety of different national parks of the kind of Rocky Mountains West. And again, wasn't planning on writing about it. But as soon as that trip was over, it just, I don't know,

it just started kind of blowing on out. So I thought, oh, shoot, about a week after I came back from the trip, I was like, uh-oh. another book is coming. Yeah. What made you land on the titans and glacier and Yellowstone? Yeah. So I had just come back from a backcountry.

This is maybe 2015, 2016. I had just come back from a backcountry ski trip just outside of Yellowstone National Park. And I quite literally had arrived home, put my bags in the front of the house, went to go have a shower. and when I was in the shower, it kind of like hit like, you're supposed to go back to Yellowstone. And I was like, I was just there, you know. Like I'm literally just to put my bag down. Yeah, I put my bag down. And I, and I got to the shower and I was like, oh, like, you know, what is like kind of, okay,

tell me more, whoever is communicating to me that I'm supposed to go back. And I walked into my husband's home office and I was like, I think I'm supposed to go back to Yellowstone. And I think I'm supposed to do. And at the same time, we both said, take your mom. And I thought, oh, okay, this is, this is interesting. And so, and so that. That's exactly what we did. And so when I was planning on it, you know, I originally just thought, well, we'll fly into Bozeman and Montana and go to Yellowstone. And I thought, well, what, you know, what would we do? Where would we go? And the original plan was to do Yellowstone glacier and then go up into Canada to do BAMP and then come back down. And it just so happened that, you know, it was a huge and very long, just like this year, actually, really long snow year. Like there's still snowpack in a lot of areas. And it would have been too cold for us to go up into BAMF. And so we.

circled back down and very last minute and went into the titans, which was, which was great. So it started off with just a call, like an intuitive call to go back to Yellowstone and kind of grew from there. And I absolutely love that you decided to answer that call because you blatantly say in your book that you can count the number of times you actually went camping on one hand prior to this. Yeah. Yeah. And most people, they took care of the camping part.

Like I was not responsible for it. And, you know, this is a great example. It goes back to what you were saying earlier. Like, these adventures don't have to be these colossal things. Like, this was not my mother and I putting backpacks on and going back country camping for two weeks on our own in the wilderness. Like, I was not prepared for that. I don't know if I am prepared even now for that.

It was car camping. It was, let's put a cooler of stuff in the back. I think I know how to set up a tent and use a jet boil. Like, but it was at the edge of my kind of ham. experience comfort zone, you know, which I think always makes for a good journey. Like I goes back to flow state. Like I don't want to be so far out of my skill set that I'm scared. And I don't want to be so kind of in my comfort zone. This is boring. You want to be learning. Exactly. Having an adventure. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session.

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did you have concerns going into it? Well, I mean, I had a lot of concerns. I had concerns of everything from like, wait a second, do I need bear canisters and bear spray to like technical like concerns about where we were going and how I was going to navigate that to concerns about, I remember packing with her and she kept on putting in these like cotton. I just concerns about keeping her warm and having the right kind of technical clothing for her to keep her warm. She gets cold very easily. And I had concerns about things like her stage of progression.

Like could I leave her on a bench somewhere and go in to use the washroom and think, what if she wanders? You know, there was kind of thinking about where she was in the progression of the disease and that sort of thing. So there was a lot of those. And I think concerns for me are, okay, let's, this is like fear. Whenever I'm super scared of something, like even when I was writing my first, book and I was thinking, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, I have no idea what I'm doing. There's a lot of

concerns. I used to have a chair in my office that I would put just beside my own chair that I sit in, that would sit empty. And I would call that like, that's where fear sits. And anytime it got like really loud, I'd be like, okay, let me hear you out. Like, you're screaming. I'd like to know what you have to say. And then, you know, concerns would pour forth. And I'd be like, okay, okay. And I'd just kind of work through the one by one and say like, okay, is that realistic? And what is the backup plan? I don't want to sit and be constantly worrying and constantly analyzing, but I need to know what the fears are. Like fear is can be used as an ally. And so that's, that's typically what I did with the concerns. The other thing, I just kept on telling myself, we have a car. I have a credit card. Like,

worse comes to worse, I pull into a motel. Yeah. You always had a backup plan for the whole trip. Yeah. Absolutely. And facing fear, I think has a lot of payoffs. If you do it, you know, face it, head on and kind of just obviously address the concerns, but keep going forward. And in your book, you speak a lot about Alzheimer's disease in general and seeing it take parts of your mother away during this trip especially. But at the same time, equally as important, you talk about brief moments where you feel like she's shining through in her normal self again and you get these glimmers. And in one of those in her instances, she thanks you for taking her on the trip and how special it is

to her and how did moments like this make you feel about this decision to face the fear and pursue this trip? That's such an interesting question. I think I would, I think about it differently now that she's in late stage Alzheimer's than then, then, then. But I mean, all of that was me. I mean, here's the thing about that trip, the whole thing. It felt good. It was fun. Like, yes, there were moments of fear, but overall, we just had fun together. And a lot of people have said to me, you know, if she wasn't going to remember the trip, like, why? And then, and then you'd be left to carry the memories, which is sometimes painful to do on your own, like what kind of why go? And I was like, when we have fun, when we sit in places of awe and wonder and delight, and we see things in nature,

we see things in a museum, or we see things in the various different adventures that we go on that bring us joy. There's a couple of things that happen, the most important of which is that our bodies feel good. They feel relaxed. They feel open. They feel regulated. They feel curious. We're in a state where we can learn things. It prolongs our health, whether we've got cognitive decline or not.

Those are worth feeling. I think we often talk about adventure as in like, what's the thing you're checking off of the bucket list? Like it was worth doing because I got to the top of the 14er, you know, because I made it to 15 different national parks. Like, that's all good. But the biggest thing that I'm looking for is. I want to do this because I think it'll, I think some of it will feel good. Um, and those feelings are worth having on an everyday basis. You know, when you ask that question, you know, what is, what is the meaning of that?

Like when she had those glimmers and, and the kind of old her came through. Those are meaningful to me in the moment. Now that she's in late stage Alzheimer's, there's really none of those glimmers left. And, and it's really interesting because I think it would be easy for, for people. or for me to kind of go like, oh, there's really nothing left. But I actually feel in some ways I get to have a new or different relationship with her. Like, of course I've got to grieve the version of her that I feel I've lost or that I feel is gone. But there's still something there.

And that to me is fascinating. And am I willing to step into the emotional landscape of searching for what is left and what remains? and try and connect with that. And I think that's a whole different relationship now than I was having with like the glimmers on the trip. I love that you say that my grandmother, she had dementia. And towards the end of that, she was a very different person. She didn't have a lot of the memory. She wasn't the same person that I knew.

But at the same time, there was almost this barrier that was gone where she just said everything. There was no like sugar coating. there was no care of how other people were feeling. She was just almost like her authentic self and to know her in that way and to communicate with her. I felt like that was really special for me. So to hear you have that same experience, I can definitely relate to. You know, there's something very interesting about, I don't know if it's too lofty to say, you know, spiritually or from a soul level, like when we're inside of our human experience,

especially with family members, you know, grandmother, granddaughter, you know, father, daughter, however, whatever relationship they are, there's norms and expectations and roles. And, and we, we live our lives within those. And when those are forgotten, you know, maybe your grandmother forgot that she was your grandmother and maybe had to be this like mature, wise version of herself or her granddaughter. It's like, oh my God, I feel this with my mom. I've had lots of moments. I'm like, I just got to glimpse my mom as a 16 year old. Like, that is, that is wild and really cool in a lot of ways. But I had to be willing to kind of engage with the grieving process, move through a conscious grieving process to be able to even see that.

So that's, speaking of adventures, that's a whole other adventure. It's hard to remove yourself from what's happening to look at other aspects of what's going on at the same time. Absolutely. And speaking of that. of now transitioning kind of into the brief portion of this book, which is braided throughout the entire length of the book, I think this is going to strike a big chord with a lot of people in our audience just because grief and loss is such a human experience that we all stumble upon at some point in time. And you put a big, big emphasis on forgetting in your book, which I really related to just in a different way. And so I've had, I've had two big losses in life. I've lost my father and I lost my

fiance. So I can personally relate to a fear of forgetting, but just in a different way. I, the first thing I thought of when my fiance passed, because I had a prior experience with losing my father was, oh my God, I don't want to forget. Literally, like as soon as I knew that he was not going to recover, these are both very different from your loss because they were sudden with no warning. So as soon as my fiancee was deemed that he was not going to recover, the first thing I got was, oh my God, I don't want to forget. And he's still right in front of me physically. You know what I mean? So I feel like a lot of people who have found themselves on grief journeys, whether it's through losing someone slowly like you are describing to someone who is experienced a sudden loss, that fear of

forgetting and that loss of connection is something that we can all relate to. But you connected this sense of forgetting in your book to nature as well. So what about your experience in nature with your mother lent itself to your journey of forgetting and then remembrance and this kind of dance through both? Yeah. This is a beautiful question. I And I think something that's really important for us, especially in the landscape of loss and grief to ponder about and think about. I think, you know, as you said, there's a multitude of different types of loss that we can encounter throughout our life. If we have losses that include shock, which sounds like, you know, those sudden losses, I think there's a unique process that has to be reckoned with there to just bring our bodies, our physical self. back into a place where we can kind of breathe because those can be pretty overwhelming.

I think overall how I relate it to nature is, you know, I talk about this in the book that nature, you can see the loss on the body of nature. You can see where there's been forest fires. You can see where there's been erosion. You can see where there's been, you know, shifts in our landscape. You can see where things have become too dry or, you know, various different things that happen inside of natural landscapes. And I like to think about that idea of remembering as something that happens on and inside of the physical body as opposed to the mental body. Certainly that can happen. And it might be really nice for us to remember in our mental body, have memories of our loved ones. And I think there's solace in the fact that I just, our bodies don't forget. So even if we, you know,

think about this with my mom, for example, you know, is it important that she remembers, you know, my name and my face and that I'm recognizable to her? I mean, certainly, yes, that's the context we live in in our society. And there's a reckoning and a kind of confrontation when that happens, when, when somebody forgets who you are that is really important to you. There's a deeper question about remembrance for me that is, okay, this is happening. That happened. I can't. I can't. go back in time, I can't change things. So I could, I could hold on to that pain or I could move into a place of asking myself about deeper remembrance, which to me is, am I recognizing and allowing for the ways that loss and love, you know, shape me and change who I am and be in a lot

of gratitude for that. You know, I'm, I don't wish this disease on anybody, wish it didn't happen to my mom and my family. I do wish that I had her still in the, you know, way that she was. And that's not a reality and this journey has shaped me into a more loving, open, curious, compassionate human being. So there's, there's a, there's a given a take there. I also think, you know, one of the things that I recall kind of reading as I was diving into this book, it was an old myth. And I won't get into the myth, but they had been talking about remembrance. And they, they spelled the word remember, R.E. dash, member. And I thought, there's something that hit me about like all the ways that life kind of takes us apart.

It just kind of disassembles us, you know, especially loss. And and it really changed the way that I think about forgetting and remembering, that remembering is, it seems to me to be a process of like bringing after the explosions happen and we get taken apart. How do we consciously bring those parts of ourselves back and like restitch us into new people over and over and over again. You know, like Raggedy Andy. I don't know if you guys are too young to know like those little dolls that we had.

But anyway. No, we know. Raggedy Andy. We know. Yeah. That becomes, you know, that becomes our life. And that those, I don't know about you, but those are connection points. If we allow them to be soft enough instead of like brittle or closed or not talked about

or not shown, you know, that those can serve as deep connection points to, to ourselves and to other people in the world. So I could go on and on about loss, about initiation, about grief, about remembering and deep remembrance. But I really do think, you know, we're being called to come back into a place where we're sitting with and doing that stitching work, remembering ourselves and being able to say, oh, look, there's where there's where the scar is from this incident or this loss in my life. I think that. I think that. that's a process I'm, you know, heavily engaged in in my writing as well as the coaching work that I do, the retreats that I run. Like, that's what those are all about. I think that's so interesting because

I find myself in a very similar headspace and soul space now. But I've also had, you know, you were describing this shelled off hardened version that can happen on the other side of loss and grief. And I experienced that with my father. So it was totally, I've had a totally different response to who I became and the feelings that how I presented myself to the world, how I viewed myself, how I interact with other people. I've had both sides of the coin. And this one, while I feel is so much more painful, because it requires you to do deeper work, I think it's so much more worthwhile. And I feel like you said, even though I wish this was not happening, I wish, obviously, that I was not in a circumstance. And, you know, my family, his family isn't

this in this circumstance, I feel a little like a better person on the other side of it. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, this is loss, death is, is our master initiation in life. Life, death, life. That's it. That's, that is the quintessential human experience initiation. And these can be literal or metaphorical. And we see it reflected in nature. You know, spring, springs into life. summer comes and fruit bears and then autumn comes and the leaves fall and winter comes and winter comes and there's a dormancy. You know, spring doesn't keep springing. It doesn't just spring and spring and spring and spring. And so, you know, we see this reflected in nature and most of our response to that life, death, life cycle is to push off the death part. It's very painful. And so we we want to deny or push away or kind of resist.

that part. And we think what that's going to do is that it's going to prolong the living. It's going to prolong the spring and the summer. And what that actually does is it flips the initiation on its head and it turns into living death. It turns into brittleness. It turns into we're frozen. It turns into a contraction, et cetera. And you know what? For a certain period of time, that's okay. You know, we've got to serve. That's survival. But for a prolonged period of time, you know, for a 10, 15 year journey through a cognitive decline for your Alzheimer's experience, for the for the 10, 15 years after, you know, that initial sudden loss, you know, that's a long time to hold on to contraction. And that's going to have an impact on your living

that that turns it into that kind of living death. Like, like we just, we walk around disconnected. We walk around dismembered from ourselves and from other people. And so at some, at some time, inside of that initiation, we've got to come back to that remembering. And that's where new life is. That's where it's like, I am a whole other person on the other side of this loss. I love this kind of conversation. I've actually, it's funny because I've had this conversation recently with a few separate people about how you can go through something that is so difficult and so hard and so traumatic and devastating. And on the other side, there are good things and to be able to recognize it and for that to be okay for you to have this awful experience and have something

good that comes out of it is something that's okay and something that is you're able to recognize. Yeah, this is, you know, this is where I'm a huge fan of Cheryl Strade's writing, which I think, you know, probably your demographic. Yes. Yes. And, you know, she was one of the people that for me, when I, when I read a lot of her work, I thought this is really masterful because the reason it feels so deeply resonant to me is because she's holding multiple emotions at the same time.

She's holding pain as well as relief. She's holding grief as well as joy. There's a multitude. We tend to kind of feel as though it has to be a binary. Like we have to choose one. Like this one horrible thing happened. And so it's sad. And I guess that's all I get now.

instead of going, it's sad and I get to be sad. And I also get to talk to other family members and relive emotions and be, and have a like big laughter about it. I also get to be, you know, I feel excruciating amounts of pain with the loss of my mom. And I also feel kind of this, this relief of I, I am now completely set free from any expectations that my mother had of me in my life. Like there's a, there's a, there's a relief there. There's a bittersweet. It does, you know, I wish she was still here. And I think that's a beautiful thing to be able to do. It's a very nuanced thing. And I think, you know, there's a lot of talk in our society about binary, about binaries. And we typically only have that conversation around gender. This, that conversation needs to go way, way, way, way, way bigger than that. And put us inside of a slip stream where, we don't have to choose sides. I don't have to choose sadness or happiness. You can feel both at the same

time. I can be absolutely in between. Yeah, I think something you've said a lot in that last couple minutes was the word and this and that. And two things can be true at once. And it doesn't mean that you have to pick an emotion or a feeling or this identity. You know, you can feel two things at once. you can be two things at once. And I think that, like you said so beautifully, like that conversation needs to expand tenfold to incorporate a lot of other areas. And it's hard because, you know, as an outsider looking in, we're just so, I don't know if it's like a cultural thing or just the way we've been raised that it's like sad or happy,

you know, elated or depressed. Like it's one or the other. But until you experience something that. blends the two, it's hard to describe and people just don't understand. So I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. I think of things like for me and everyday experiences like rage and surrender. Like I, you know, I have a lot of rage. And I also have a forgiveness or a surrender. It also takes us back to the very beginning and maybe even like, you know, the purpose of why, why you all are doing this podcast is, you know, we talked a lot about what do you do with the concerns and

what do you do with the fear? It's like, you know, that's allowed to exist, but then if you add excitement, like, that makes for an adventure. So it's both. If I just look at the fear, if I just hold the one thing and be like, well, I'm scared to go, so I guess that's all there is. So I won't go. It's like, maybe broaden that out to, well, yeah, you're scared, but maybe scared is close to nervous or excited or maybe I'm scared is close to curious or, you know, that those blended states are, that is our wilderness. Our internal wilderness is where those states kind of collide and mix and blend. And I ultimately, I think that's what we're both scared of because it's messy and confusing

and nobody tells us the language of how to parse through those. And I think that's our deepest, deepest longing is to be able to live in kind of community internally with ourselves with all of those things and then be able to use those to connect with other people. You can be scared and excited and turn it into an adventure. and bring other people with us, create friendships and relationships along the way with that. And it kind of this talking about this side of it and the adventure side brings us into another question that we had because on your adventure with your mother, you both did some beautiful things.

You were horseback riding, rafting, you went to all these different national parks. The whole book, while it's intertwined with this sadness and grief, it's also intertwined with a beautiful adventure that happened throughout the entire book. And can you tell us some of your favorite adventure memories that you had along the way? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, a lot of, I think this is a really good kind of point. A lot of people here that I took a woman with Alzheimer's, like whitewater rafting and horseback riding, and they're like, wait a second. And this is something I like talking about just in regards to the awareness of the disease is that, you know, my mom has early onset Alzheimer's. She was a woman in her late 60s. She was in the early stages of the

disease. So most people when they think of Alzheimer's dementia, they're thinking about somebody who's maybe 80 or 90 years old in the late stages of the disease, who doesn't have a lot of mobility or language, et cetera. So this is a person who's really fit, who's in their late 60s and who is still, you know, relatively there, cognitively speaking. And so, yeah, we went on these adventures and I mean, there's memories that stand out for me. I don't think I'll ever forget my mom's face. when we were on that whitewater raft. This is a pretty gentle river that we were cruising down. But there's something that happens with her when she's near and on water that it just,

it feels like entirely like safety and nervous system regulation to me. And that's a very, very comforting memory to tap into. I think there's also, there's also moments. Like I have a picture of her and a memory of her, you know, kind of meeting the horse that she was going to be on for a couple of the different rides. She was very kind of like coy looking. And I don't know that there's so many images that come across. that come across my mind, I think I'll never forget the moment that we were at Old Faithful,

the geyser, you know, this is, you know, so many people go to take pictures of this geyser, and it's very consistent and kind of blows its water and steam. And thousands of people gather, they take pictures, they leave. And there was one moment that everybody was leaving. I thought, okay, I'm going to leave her on this bench here. I'm going to go in and use the washroom. And I came back outside. She was sitting in front of this now dormant geyser, nothing going on, you know?

And she was just sitting there on this bench and I approached from behind and was just watching her and she just seemed captivated. And I thought that there's a lesson, like something that looks like nothing, that looks like dormancy, boredom, something that looks pretty banal or ordinary. Like, are we really looking hard enough for the beauty that is around us, that that's inside of silence, that's inside of quietude, that's, I don't know, there was something really beautiful about that and that stands out as a moment in the book for me and on the journey for me. One of the parts of the book that stands out for me that I really loved was when you were both horseback riding in Yellowstone and your guide told you only one percent of people have seen

this part of the park. And you talk about this moment where you're like, hold on, millions of people have been here. And now me and my mom are out here as part of the one percent of people because everyone, and you talk about how people just stick to the roadways and the walkways that are given to us and you only see that part. And then you talk about your experience with your mom, horseback riding and looking around. And that was a part of the book that I really connected with and stood out for me a lot, which I thought was a very beautiful experience that you both had together. This is like reflective of the whole conversation that we've been having. So, so yeah, there's statistics that, you know, how many millions of people visit Yellowstone National Park. It's one of the most visited park, I think. in the United States. And, and there's, there's only one percent of those millions of visitors that actually kind of leave the main roadways and boardwalks and kind of get into the nature, uh, that's available, which is astounding to me. I don't know. I found that just, yeah, that, that's, that is such a metaphor for our lives of, are you willing to kind of leave that

surface level, that pretty picture that of yourself or other people and kind of ask like, hey, I see this one percent of your, I see this, you know, kind of boardwalk or surface level of your life. Like what, what else is, what else has shaped you? What else has happened in your life? Venturing off the beaten path to see more. Exactly. Like, oh, I see you presenting as, you know, when we ask each other, hey, how are you doing? We're like, okay, get good. And you're like, no, I'm not really. What else is in there? And are we willing to venture there ourselves? Are we willing to go there with other people and how much more could we see and how much how much more would we be willing to extend ourselves to protect, to save, to honor those places if we saw them,

if we experienced them. So that that was a, I was shocked by that statistic. Still am. And doing that requires you to be present and live in the present moment. And throughout your memoir, you give us the reminder of the importance of presence to pay attention, to remember before it's too late, to accept people as they are and meet them where they are on their own journeys and lessons that you were reminded of yourself through your mother's diagnosis, this entire trip, this reconnection with nature. So kind of one of our last questions was, is there a lesson that you want to leave with our audience that you kind of garnered from this entire experience? I think presence is it. I mean,

I've thought about presence well prior to my mom's diagnosis that all wellness is being right with time, which translates into is my mental body, my physical body and my emotional body in the same place at the same time. Or am I physically here, but I'm mentally thinking about my to-do list later today or I'm emotionally back at some incident that happened this weekend. Like, no, I'm present. I'm here. So I've thought about that for a long time. All wellness is being right with time. And then my mom was diagnosed.

and I think this is like a quintessential like Alzheimer's daughter, Alzheimer's granddaughter, it's in my lineage lesson, is that this is a disease that threatens for me personally, I think for many of us, you know, to take the future. Like this could happen. This is inside of my lineage. This could be a reality for me in the future. So it threatens to take that from me.

Because of the nature of the disease, it also threatens to take my past. And so I really, really kind of categorically refuse to let it take the present as well. that it really lands me smack in inside of that being the most important place to be and the most important kind of time to be with. So that's probably, that that is the lesson, is where am I now? How do I feel now? What's happening now? That's, that's, who am I with in this moment? What am I feeling in this moment? Those are, those are quintessential components of,

of living in the present for me. I think that's such an important lesson, because how you said it's so easy to be being somewhere and thinking of something else and to actively practice being present is not easy. It's difficult, but it's something that's so important. For me, sometimes I find I'll be out on a hike and I'll be thinking about issues that I have instead of looking at the nature that's around me. And then you have to, and I think everyone can relate to those experiences where we're somewhere or we're doing something and our mind is somewhere else. So to be able to actively and consciously make sure that you are being present and practice that is such an important lesson that may be difficult, but is doable and important for your life.

You know, I think, you know, in the landscape of grief, it's difficult because what's in the present can be pain, you know, and so it's like, well, I don't really want to be in that. And it's like, oh, oh, okay, that might mean that I need to be with that, you know. And that's, it's really easy for us to talk about presence from like kind of a wellness space. Like, oh, you can just do yoga or you can just do mindfulness or you be in the present moment and observe the flowers around you. And that's all part of it. But I think, I think to really get down to like the brass talks, nitty gritty of like, why don't we do this? It's like, oh, it's painful. Like I don't, if I'm in a room that I feel like I'm in with my family members, but I also feel

alone inside of that. That's a really uncomfortable feeling to feel. And so I might busy myself. I might want to, I might, you know, avoid it. Yeah, exactly. So I think, I think that's the part of being in the presence is being in the present moment, is if there's uncomfortable feelings to kind of slowly but surely kind of increase our capacities to sit with a relative amount of comfort inside of that discomfort and go like,

that's okay. That's okay. I can feel that. And handle it in that moment versus later down the line reflecting on it. and realizing that you weren't feeling with it. Sometimes it starts with the latter, right? Sometimes it's too uncomfortable and we can't do it. And that's okay.

And we go, oh, that's what that was. I was uncomfortable about being lonely in a room full of people that love me. That's that, okay, okay, I get it. There's an awareness. And then we kind of can slowly backtrack to be like, okay, let me, let me actually feel the discomfort in the room. So I think that's been such an important part of my own work with presence is realizing it isn't just about being like,

oh, I can feel the warmth of my cup of coffee and tasted in the moment. That's part of presence. But it's also tending to, you know, some of the more difficult states or emotions as well. Yeah. And I think that I speak for both of us when I say that it takes an immense amount of courage to face loss and also document it as it's happening while you're experiencing it as it's unfolding, which you have done through your book and through your talks and in your retreats and in your work.

So we just want to thank you for coming on and kind of spreading the word and that it's basically a word of acceptance. It's a permission to, you know, it's okay to feel all of these things, experience all of these things, do the work, feel loss, experience it, but also learn from it. And we both really enjoyed reading your book and kind of getting a glimpse into that part of your life. So thank you so much. Thank you.

This has been just a really beautiful conversation. and really meaningful. So thank you for for having me. Thank you for having it with us. And before we let you go, just for our audience, where would be the best place to check out your book? You can find the book anywhere books are sold. So I love supporting independent bookstores. And it's available online at large stores as well. So that's really anywhere. And then people can find me on Instagram at Steph Jagger and on my website, Stephjager.com. And And like, I am the person that answers those DMs and emails. So I love it when people reach out and want to connect and communicate. I don't have like a factory of people that answer things for me. So

it is it is me that you will get a hold of. Great. We'll link all of that into our show notes. Everyone listening can go straight to it. But yeah, thank you again so much for joining us today. This has been like you said, it's been a beautiful and enlightening conversation. And we really appreciate you being here today. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, Stephanie. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at Stories at npadpodcast.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and on Twitter at NPAD podcast. Join our outsiders-only community on Patreon or Apple subscriptions to listen ad-free, unlock monthly bonus episodes, and exclusive content.

And remember, when you support our sponsors, you are supporting our show. our exclusive discount codes and source information from today's episode, check out the show notes. For more information on our show, our book recommendations, merch updates, and more, visit our website at npadpodcast.com. And please rate, review, and subscribe from wherever you listen to podcasts. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average.

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