Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - You Are Not Alone by Cariad Lloyd with Rhik Samadder (Live from Foyles)

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

This week's book guest is You Are Not Alone by Cariad Lloyd.In an extra special live recording of the podcast from Foyles, Tottenham Court Road, Sara and Cariad are joined by journalist and writer Rhik Samadder to celebrate the paperback release of Cariad's book You Are Not Alone. In this episode they discuss mums, acting, writing with pain, selfies in graveyards and Joni Mitchell.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Trigger warning: In this episode we discuss grief and death.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is now available to buy in paperback here or on Apple Books here.Sara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.Rhik's book I Never said I Loved You is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.You can find Rhik on Instagram: @whatsamadder Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded live at Foyles, Tottenham Court Road by Ben Williams and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is You Are Not Alone by Carriad Lloyd, and this episode was recorded live at Foyles on Tottencourt Road. What's it about? Well, it's a book about death and grief, but cheerier than that sounds.

In 2016, Carriad created the Griefcast podcast, where she spoke to comedians about their experiences of life and death. After interviewing nearly 200 people, she decided to write down everything she'd learn from this raw, heartfelt and funny conversations to help remind anyone grieving that they are, in fact, not alone. What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club? Well, it's written by me.

I'm one of the original weirdos, and it gets automatic entry into the club. In this episode, we discuss Mums, acting, writing with pain, selfies in graveyards, and Johnny Mitchell. Trigger warning, in this episode, we do, of course, discuss grief and death.

Sorry, that is mandatory with me. Welcome to a very special live edition of the Weirdo's Book Club. We have two guests with us tonight. Please join me in welcoming the writer Rick Samadur, journalist and author of the Sunday Times bestseller, I never said I loved you, a memoir that has garnered rave reviews and broken hearts. Rick's writing is, I couldn't remind writing,

I thought it said functioning. I thought that's, doesn't sound very like a compliment, does it? Rick's writing is unflinching about life's traumas. But by some alchemy also manages to be exceptionally funny. Joining him is my co-host and beloved Carriad Lloyd. After losing her father to cancer as a teenager, Carriad used her experience navigating complicated grief as the inspiration for her hugely successful

and award-winning grief cast. After interviewing a wide spectrum of people at different stages of loss on her podcast, Carriad wrote, you are not alone. Part grief manual, part friend to the grieving. It has garnered hundreds of five-star reviews on Amazon and launched in paperback in February. I wanted to ask you a question, both of you.

I've done lots of questions, but the first one, because you both, there's no denying it, write about sad things. Yeah. So has there ever been a point in your life before writing, in a sad point in your life you were made to feel better by reading about someone's sad things? Does that make sense?

I've ever read a sad look and it was helpful. Well, for me, it's not so much, I used to be very into, which I feel like you might have a sad music. And I have a vivid memory of an Edinburgh festival where I had to stay in your flat for two days before my flat was ready. And I was repeatedly on a loop listening to Fiona Apple, the idler turns the wheel. And you at one point came in and said,

how can you fucking listen to this? And I was like, yeah, but that's the vibe. It's like, you feel terrible, she feels terrible, and then you're not alone. So I think I was always into like the feeling you have inside you want someone. I'm not into that like, oh, cheer up vibes. Yeah. I don't feel that much.

And so that process is being kept company in the emotions that you are feeling. Yeah, just feeling like, I don't know, it's nice to have someone be like, yeah, me too. Whereas if that kind of forced cheeriness, I find that really jarring. I'm like, but I don't feel like that. I can't join in. So when I was trying to put on the black eyed peas. tonight's going to be a good night. That's why it wasn't appropriate.

I appreciated it. I definitely appreciate it, but I would never choose to be like, oh, I'm going to put on... I do now, I've got better. I agree, yes. Sad songs are just my comfort place. Yeah, nice.

And I don't know if you can relate to this. I definitely relate to the thing of sad music when I was very young. And actually, because we're here to talk about grief, I guess, there was a weird sense. I don't know if you had this, where grief was like a sort of an alibi for the sadness I already felt.

Yes. I remember when I was young listening to a lot of us out of me. I remember Ivita, the soundtrack to Evita and another suitcase and another hall and feeling like the pain of that woman who was never at home. And she was like high flying adored but no one saw her and I felt all of that

and this tragic resonance before anything bad had happened to me. And then loads of bad things did happen to me and that was sort of a relief in a weird way because at least there was an alibi. I was very obsessed with Joni Mitchell. That was my like and that blue album. And that was before my dad died.

And I would just listen to this woman who'd like, yeah, had this, you know, Californian heart rate, but given a child away. And I'd be like, yeah, I feel you, Joni. Like in North London suburbs, I feel you. You know, she's just come back on Spotify off because of the Joe Rogan dispute. Did she take a self off for that?

Yes, to protest Joe Rogan's platforming. It's very hard to make a really big point about boycotting something and then decide, hang on. Yeah. And then you have to backtrack again. But it's very funny. All of my, I've got this sort of. male friendship

WhatsApp group and we call it the girls in a picture of sex in the city with like but it's just me Chris and Tom and the girls

and we got very excited when Blue by Jane Mitchell came back on Spotify it was a big day on the group that day lads she's back let's get sad I didn't know she'd gone

but I'm excited to know she's back that's nice she'll be delighted to hear that yeah she will be so listening to sad music but never wanting to read

you've never read books that are like your book Oh, that's a good question. So like the year of magical thinking, that's a very famous sort of. That's a famous griefy book. Grief memoir. She does her grief well.

Have you read that book? No. I was like, who's going to admit it? No, it's why it's on my list. It's on the list. It's on the list. Yeah. I had to read loads of grief books for the podcast

when I was doing the podcast. And then when I got the book deal, I found that I had to stop reading them because then obviously instantly you're like, oh, well, they've said this thing about grief and you just don't want it to come up in your writing and be like, oh, I actually.

accidentally. And also with grief, the metaphors are limited. There's like, you know what I mean? There's lots of familiar metaphors, waves and like nature as used and all that sort of stuff. So I... Did you find yourself trying to avoid like in the interest of not being cliche, trying to avoid the sort of those metaphors that do feel true and eternal and abiding? I would just put them in and be like, I know it's a cliche, but it's true. Because I think sometimes to grieve, especially when you're writing about grief, that universal language thing is really important. to kind of get someone sometimes to even want to start reading about it

because people are so afraid if you're not in the sad music club. Sometimes people are like, oh, I don't want to think about this. Or even if they're listening to sad music, you're going, hey, turn it off. Yeah, it's time to read. Yeah, it's time to read about the sadness. That's interesting. That's how I know when I'm feeling very depressed is that I can't or shouldn't listen to the sad music that I love.

If I'm okay, it's fine and I love it. But when I'm in a bad place. Yeah. That's when Black I please comes on. That's when the black IPs comes on, yeah. Yeah. And you're like that with music, aren't you? I don't like it.

You don't like it. Quick, moving on. It's too noisy. So, Rick, when you were pitching your book, did you pitch it or did you write it first and then show people? I was approached to do it after. I wrote an article about a Christmas that changed me, and I didn't want to write the article.

They said, do you want to write about a Christmas that changed you? I said, I don't. If I did, I'm very lazy. If I did, it would be this story about how I woke up on my 30th birthday in a sex hotel room in Bangkok with my mother. But I can't write that. And they said, you have to write that. So I did.

Yeah, absolutely. Everyone needs to know. And then that, I guessed, did quite well online. I got approached by different publishers. So it's quite a backwards process. And then they said, do you want to write a memoir? And I thought, again, no. But then I thought there's something, I guess, I felt the pull of that challenge.

But I didn't want to write it. It wasn't something I pitched saying, I want to get this out of me. It was stuff I wanted to keep inside me. and not share. And I tried to write a very lighthearted sort of version and it just didn't work because it wasn't the truth. It wasn't going through the middle of that pain. Yeah.

That's why I loved your book because I could feel that tension the whole way through of trying to be like, no, it's fine. And then like the sad truth is like jumping out. And I related to that. I was like, yeah, it's brilliant. One of the reviews I read of your book, Rick, which I thought was so astute,

was saying that you use jokes that there's so much humor and jokes are often used to sidestead. or be flippant and your book isn't, you are very, very honest. I was wondering because I thought, oh gosh, I wonder how it is if you're a very funny journalist and then you pitch a book and then they go, oh, actually, you know, that's too sad. But actually it sounds like they wanted your sadness. They want the sadness. Well, the thing with a lot of, I guess, confessional writing is so popular now.

And that sort of memoir form, the first person form is very popular. We want people's pain. We want that amplification for ourselves. And actually, writers often, I think, have to protect themselves a bit from that. because even though that's being asked of them, they might not be ready for that or they might not want to share everything about themselves. And you can't turn it back.

Carriad, did you feel reticence about writing about... Obviously, when you were interviewing people on the podcast, you shared personal details and your experience, but writing about it is different. It's very different. So in the book, there's like chapters, which are more like, oh, this is how grief works, or the five stages are bullshit.

And then there's these interludes between which are like memories of mind. grief and I'd written some of the interludes and I think I did that thing which I do a lot where I didn't think past giving it to a proposal so I was like oh I have to write proposal to get this book here you go here's the thing and then they were like now write it and I was like oh I don't want to go back over those things it was like you showed someone a bit of a diary and you were like you know sometimes you show a friend something and you just want them to go that's good and you go great I'm not I'll never have to speak that ever again and I found writing the

my grief journey really, really hard because I had to go back to like being 15 and I had to like really delve into like deep past memories of like, where was I? What was I wearing when I found out he was dying and all of that stuff and I found visiting that part of me really difficult because you sort of can't hide, like you can't put a joke in that memory and you can't,

whereas with the chapters which were like, oh, this is how the Victorians did grief. It was like, you can put some jokes in and you can be very recent, searching and you can feel very distance from that emotion. I loved your book. I thought it's so raw, but so beautiful and so funny and warm. It's like a hug. And there were so many brilliant points that really sort of brought me up short and made me really think. And while there's one thing we talk about, it's important to say, what was your person's name? Who were they?

But there's another point where you say, I think you say something like, who were you when they died? Yeah, there's a whole chapter on like the context of who you are when a grief happens. I think if you don't take that into context, it can be very easy to think, oh, well, why am I grieving like that? Whereas as soon as I realize, my grief began as a teenager, and that is the fundamental,

defining moment of my character in this narrative, is that, you know, a really terrible thing happened when I was 15. And I, after interviewing, like, 200 people, I realized that, you know, you could say to someone, or they'd just had a baby, or they'd just moved house, or it was the first time that they'd, realized they hadn't properly had that conversation with their parents where they saw them as adults,

and then they found out one of them was dying or they got the phone call. And I think that context to the person you are when grief meets you helps you understand what your grief is, is trying to tell you. Because the weird thing about grief is it freezes you in time, but then you have to keep moving and you keep aging and growing away from this frozen version of yourself, and you're constantly pulled back to this version that is still in shock, is still trying to register what happened to them whilst also trying to live a life.

And I found this phrase like delayed grief, which is, you know, term psychiatrists use, which is like if you have to deal with something at the time of a grief, you literally park it. So, you know, if you have to look after another parent or you have to look after children, your grief just gets parked. And I was like, oh, they're saying that, like,

we all know that. But I don't think people do know how quick your brain is to protect you, how quick it moves things. on and how, you know, I definitely think for me it was like, oh, I was 15. So I was in an environment where nobody could relate to what was happening to me. And also no one had the vocabulary to talk to me about it. But I was grieving. So I had to kind of completely split myself in two at that moment. I found it so moving that process of you trying to reconcile that, that rift and understand that girl, yeah. So what you both have in common is that, and I find this quite interesting,

neither of you set out on a life journey wanting to write books. No. Exposing yourself working through these issues in writing, but your success pushed you. You both had publishers approaching you saying, hey, now it's time to write a book. Now it's time to sort of talk more about this. But what you also have in common, interestingly,

is that you both started out your careers as actors. Oh, yeah, that's true. Which is pretending, I don't even know, pretending to be someone else. is the dictionary definition. I loved Rick's stuff about acting. I found that a little bit too close to the bone on your book. I was like, oh, God, I've been seen.

Yeah, we both did start out wanting to be actors. And so there's such a seesaw in terms of sharing. Yeah. If your instinct at the beginning was, I want to share by other people's writing, other people's words, pretending to be other people exploring humanity that way. And actually, you've been forced.

You've been forced to expose yourself as well and share yourself as well. And so do you ever feel like you want to retract again and hide away? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Because once you've published your books, they are out there forever, has there ever been a point where anything in the books you've either wished wasn't in there? Or you've had to adjust to other people that you maybe don't know having that information? Well, yeah, I just think it's interesting that that's right, that we both.

started out as actors and I I definitely spent a long time not wanting to be me I think that's where it came from a lot of like me is sad me is listening to Joni Mitchell surrounded by teenagers drinking Smirnoff Ice you don't understand what grief is um it was tough and so I wanted to hide and then what I felt was like I just couldn't hide it just kept like like embarrassingly being there I think I described in a book, it feels like wetting yourself. It's just like there's nothing you can do. You're just pissing grief everywhere. And everyone's embarrassed for you.

Sorry, that was visceral. It's true, the pain will out. Yeah, pain will out. And I think I was trying to hide. And so then I did character comedy for ages, it was completely like, not me, not me, not me. And I feel like, I don't know, I mean, there must be a part of me that wants to sit up here

and be carried talking. There must be because, and the same, like, you end up doing it. So, but this feels like the logic argument is like, don't share this with people because they won't get it or they won't understand. And I think what I, definitely what happened when I started the podcast was I just reached the point, like I couldn't contain it anymore.

I was like, I have to talk about my grief. But my trick to myself was, oh, I'm only going to talk about it to people in the club. Yeah. So I'm only going to invite people onto my podcast who are in the grieve club and then we'll talk. And then I assumed, well, the only people who listen were people who were grieving. And I didn't think there was that many of us. and I found out there's loads. I was like, oh, okay, there's quite a lot of people

that want this conversation. Giving people access to your interiority is a very fraught thing and you have to be really bounderied with it. People always, obviously, tell me their grief stories pretty instantly, but I think I, but through the process of doing the podcast

had developed a way of trying to have a boundary where you're not taking too much of other people's grief on. But I definitely, when I don't know how you feel right, but when I was writing the book, I knew I had to just put everything in, I knew it had to be the raw pain to be a good grief book, having read so many, apart from, you know, magical thinking.

So I kind of had to, like, not think how it would be reacted to, even though part of me was like, I don't want to say this or I don't want to share this, but I was like, but you know you have to, otherwise what's the point of this book? Yes, there's a piece of writing advice, which I've heard and often give, which is that there's lots of people who want to write and there's a thing that they can't get past. They're like, I want to write, but I can't share this. And often that's where the gold is. And you have to get over that somehow.

And the trick is you just say, okay, well, write it not to share just so you've written it to go through it. And then we can take it out later. And they never take it out. You know, it's exactly the same with stand-up comedy, which is if your first thought when something happens is, I hope no one ever finds out about this, you have to go and tell everyone tonight. For that exact reason, it's like, oh, there's some deep, you know, there's where humanity lives. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think you know, like, you know, we're all avid readers. You know when someone is sharing with you in a book. You know when it's really truthful. And I felt that with your one definitely, I was like, oh, I feel like Rick is talking to me. If you know what it's like to read a book that is generous enough to share really, really deep, horrible, you know, the inside of their soul.

And that's how I felt with this book was I, I really felt like I was writing it for 15 year old me. I was like, I need to have, because that book didn't exist. And there was no, you know, there was no, social media and there was no internet so I just had no idea what I was going through and I was like 15 year old me was obviously quite I'm still quite a harsh critic 50 old me was even worse so I was like it has to pass that teenage test of that girl picking it up and being like why the fuck should I read this and that's what I was like well then you have to be honest don't you have to be really

brutally honest of what grief is like if it was 15 year old you it's like you have to buy you've dropped ash on it from your cigarette while we're talking about response because you both write about personal things and you both have great mums. How did they respond to your books? Oh, yeah. I love your mum, she's incredible. I plucked up the car to go and talk to my mom and said, I'm thinking of writing this book and, you know,

it's going to be a lot of difficult material in it. There's going to be grief and conversations we need to have and a lot of pain and about my childhood, and I'm going to write about you. You're going to be quite a big character in the book. How do you feel about that? and she said, well, it's about time. Oh, is she? Yeah, she's so encouraging and supportive.

And she's really helped me through that, you know, the difficult, that sort of navigating that difficult thing of making yourself public and people's strange reactions and unpredictability. And she's been just this complete rock for me. I particularly enjoy her meals that you describe in the book. And if you follow Rick on Instagram, you'll see you've been sharing recently the meals. Well, I've been trying not too recently because people just can't be. they, A, assume I live at home with my mum, which is fine, but I don't.

And they always say, how's your mum? I'm like, well, I don't know. How's your mum? Weird question. Middle-aged man. Carmiad. Yeah, I mean, my mum is amazing, but she's quite introverted and quite shy. But obviously, behind doors, she's much more loud and loopy.

And so I think I just said, I think for me, because the podcast came first, that was quite, that was the conversation in my family of like, oh, you're going to talk about it. it. My brother said, oh, you still feel the need to go on about it, do you? Like, I was like, and I was like, yeah, I still feel like I want to talk about it. It was like, oh, okay. Because for him, it's like, it's not done, but he just feels completely differently. Like, he doesn't need to share it. So the podcast, the birth of that was definitely raised lots of those conversations. And then I said I was writing a book. Again, my brother was like, I need to read it first. And I had to remind him that it probably wouldn't be, he wouldn't be in it that much.

It wasn't mainly about him. It was about dad. And my mum, yeah, she was just, we both have Essex mothers. And so Essex working class mothers. And so we were driving somewhere after it came out. And she just, without looking at me, pat to me, went, it's very good.

And that was, I was like, whoa, that was big. That was really big. That's like, you know, she threw me a party. So yeah, she was very proud of it. And I think for her, she did say it was very difficult read because obviously it's a complete reminder of what happened to our family. But I think it was, I can imagine, she said it's very interesting because it's the perspective, I guess, that you didn't have at the time. You know, you're the mother of these two teenage children and you're grieving your husband.

So she was like, I didn't really know what you're going through and I feel like now you do. And I felt like, well, now I want you to write a book. So I can find out how you felt. It is an incredible thing to have that access to kind of. the people closest to you and to know things that they could never retell you. They're lucky, aren't they? They're lucky that we've done it. They're lucky. They should be grateful.

And so what about the use of humour? Is it inbuilt that you think, okay, lighten it up? Come on, Joanie, light up. And did you think, oh, you know, in terms of your readers, they'll want to be entertained rather than just

Joni Mitchell. I went all over the, I don't know about you, I went all over the place, and it took me a year to sort of even do the proposal to get the tone right. And so I did one, so I went all over the place, different versions, different drafts, and one version was so dark. It was just this kind of stream of consciousness about what it's like to be inside death anxiety or a panic attack.

And it was sort of really dense prose. And my agent said, yeah, it's interesting. Do you want people to read the book? I said no she's and to her credit she said you can do this it might reach a smaller group of people and I thought well yeah so she gave me the choice and I thought well actually I want to reach people and actually I want to be I'm not doing this

for therapy for me to feel to you know to feel better I actually want to do something that helps other people it's like a sort of gift there's some generosity in it and I think that informed the wanting to make it funny and light in places or just use levity. I think that's something about your book as well.

It's so, you're so conscious when you're in grief, I remember just not being able to take in, you can take in so little when you're in that dark place. You know, for a lot of people, it'll be just be Bridgeton or Jason Statham, you know, they're not going to be reading like, I remember reading grief literature and it was so dry,

made me feel miserable, even that was very true. And so actually a book like yours is so welcoming and accessible. I think that's part of it. What makes it beautiful is you can feel that, that impulse to reach out and to touch people. Yeah, and I think, again, because I'd already had the podcast and the whole purpose of the podcast,

because I felt the same, everything I encountered that was griefy, was so dry and depressing and head tilty and, you know, footprint in the sand kind of squirly front. And I was just like, oh, that's not my, I don't feel like that. And so with the podcast, my aim was always like, I want it to be that someone grieving will listen to it, And when the hour or 50 minutes is up, they'll feel 1% better.

Like they won't feel 1% worse. That was always my aim. So like they would have laughed because we would always, you know, I was interviewing comedians. And because when you're grieving, like you said, there's so little let up in the pain

that anything that that kind of laughter that comes with grief sometimes when you're like, oh God, yeah, me too. Oh right, yeah, we laughed at the funeral. We laughed at the hospital bed. We're all laughing. And that's how I, felt with the book, you know, and that's why I took a lot of quotes from the podcast and put them

in the book as well, because I really wanted it to be that there's enough grief literature out there that is like, you know, really. Yeah, and like, some people need them want that and that's great, but I feel so guilty about laughing and when they're grieving. Yeah, so guilty. And you just want to say, that's fine, that's good, that's part of life. I laughed so hard on the day of my father's funeral. And it was, and you have this weird sort of guilt about it. Actually, that's, it's not like you stop being you, or life starts being like. So many podcast listeners coming up to me going, oh, we, we were laughing as well at the bedside.

And I'd be like, why are you whispering? Because like you've heard like 100 episodes where people have said, yeah, we laughed, we laughed. And, you know, when I started the show, I assumed it was just my family that had been cracking terrible jokes. And then when you speak to you got, everybody is doing that because it's coping.

And I write in the book as well, I sort of, I have no scientific theory for this at all. But I think it's about reminding yourself you're alive. So I think that need to laugh is like you draw a lot of oxygen in when you laugh. And it's about everybody being like, we're not dead. We're not dead. They're dying, but we're not dead. And I think that's, we feel that's the guilt comes from that of like we are living.

But it's also something in your brain being like, don't, you're not going to fall into that coffin. Like that's not what is going to happen. Yeah. So I think laughter is like, it's so important in grief. And yet we feel so ashamed of it. And that, you know, after this many interviews, I was like, oh, well, we don't need to. Everyone's doing it.

One of the things that you say so clearly carry out is that grief isn't linear. And I think that's where the laughter comes in. Because laughter also doesn't mean everything's okay now. Yeah, yeah, that's true. It's not like, oh, ha ha, ha, ha, bye. Now everything's fine. Credit roll is fine.

It's part of the sort of winding around. Yeah, I think that's really important to remind people that it's not remotely linear. it goes back forwards around and in fact looks very much like the cover of Rick's book in that squiggle it's a complete fucking mess and the laughter is

I always say to people when they're talking to me about grief of like if you feel bad for laughing like don't worry you'll be crying in a minute like you don't have to like the pain will find you so if you have a brief moment where you think oh that was funny I felt for two minutes I felt all right

enjoy it because grief will come back and smack you in the face later on. Do you ever feel like a friendship with your grief? Oh, good question. I do now. I didn't for years. I hated it.

I loathed it. I was like this evil friend that had decided to follow me around. But it's interesting because hearing you talk and obviously I've known you this entire time. Yeah. But it's the community of grief that's making,

has made other people feel 1% better. But also that was the problem for you is that you didn't have enough people who understood what you were going, you didn't have that community as a teenager. Yeah, definitely. And I, and I, I feel jealous and happy that people now have so much access, which I write about in the book, like this digital community that exists for grieving now.

Because when, you know, in 1998, like, there was just nothing. You couldn't even Google, why am I sad? You couldn't Google, why am I sad? You had to just listen to Joni Mitchell and go, well, she's sad because she gave her daughter away in the 60s. Like, but I can relate to you, Joni, even though we have very different lives. and you know there was no there was nothing for anyone under 18 in terms of grief counseling people just assumed you well you just get over it and I felt I had one friend at school Hannah brilliant Hannah whose dad had died when she was eight and we would talk about

it and then there was another girl whose dad had died but she wouldn't talk about it so me and Hannah tried to like bring her into the club like hey dead dad club and she was like no no I'm not joining you to. And so we were like, oh, and that's all I had. So when people would talk about Father's Day or moaned about their parents, I just had one other person. And I just, like, I, yeah, it wasn't until I started doing the podcast and this community opened up of, and I, like I said, the emails just started pouring in like every single day

from the first episode going out of like, I felt like this. I didn't know. And I was like, oh, fuck. There's loads of us who think that we're alone. There's loads of us who think that. And we're not. That's so mad. What a mad, mad situation where we can all just go,

oh yeah, we're all going through the same thing. I think Sandus is so isolating. I mean, depression is isolating. And grief as like the part of your brain that lights up when you're grieving is the same part that lights up when you're depressed, even though grief is obviously not a mental illness. It's the same part of your brain that makes you feel no one understands. You're the only person with this pain.

There's no point in talking about. about it because no one else can reach you whereas actually they can they can I do have to say the title of your book you are not alone it's obviously lovely but at some point a weird like perspectival shift happened where I thought if that popped up on my phone there's like a text message from a number I didn't know it just said you are not alone find it so chilling well I remember telling Sarah the title she was like oh like the Michael Jackson song and I was like what because it had any it occurred to me? I was like, what Michael Jackson song? Then I was like, oh my God, that one.

Like, I was like, how did I not think that? We're the kind of friends you need around. It's like a beautiful thing and just pull it down. This is it. This is it. In writing, in writing about your own lives as you have, you mentioned like writing as therapy earlier. Did any of it make you feel better? Mine did, definitely. I feel like I put my grief in a book. And I feel like, you know, when people say write it down and that, or often, you know, often. for that is therapy. I never really understood that. And now I feel like genuinely, it's like

creating another space in your brain because the pain and all the memories are stored somewhere else. And so I don't need to hold onto them as tightly as I was. So it's externalised. Yeah, I found it really helpful. I think definitely the creative alchemy is true and it does, changes you

and that change is sort of interesting and rich and often makes you feel better in lots of ways, but also you're just always rushing forward in the milestone of life and just in countering new feelings and new losses. And I don't know, it's strange to, you can't really pin down a state. Like, now I feel I've got over something.

It's just, you're always getting richer and more seasoned, and it changes your relationship to those losses and those experiences by writing out of them and making them public, and you're dealing with that. So it's sort of hard to say in a kind of pat way. But yes, I guess. I mean, I was happy for the answer to be no. No. Because I think it's one of those things that if you're very external, you go,

that person's done that for them, I hope they feel better. But as you say, it's creativity. We don't expect Joanie Mitchell to release an album and then go. I don't think Joe's ever done that. Feeling great now.

Yeah, I definitely felt like it helped me process a lot of stuff. And I definitely felt like, because of the podcast, although I talked about my grief a lot, I was interviewing people and it gave me space to just actually look at my mess

and be like, oh, what is this? what have I been carrying around. But you're right. It doesn't, in that sentence, I don't mean I'm fine. Or I don't grieve him anymore at all. No, I just meant it felt like at the point that it was published or the grief behind me was in a bit of a tidier state.

I was like, all right. Yeah, I know where I've come from. But there's still, and there will forever in my life. As I say repeatedly in the book, like, it's a lifelong process. You never get over it. You just learn to live with it. Yes, but what you do invite in is a lot of connection. Yeah.

title and when you do something, when you write something and you publish it, you invite a lot of connection. And actually that is, that can be difficult, but also very rewarding. I think you must have had a lot of good experiences. Yeah, it's double edge, isn't it? It's very, it's very rewarding to know that it's helped in any way. But then it's also, yeah, lots of people wanting to tell their grief stories, which is wonderful, but also you reach this like point where you're like, I can't, and I stopped doing the podcast when it came out in Harbac because I was like, I can't, I just need a break from talking about it. Yeah.

And then I started one called The Weirdo's Book Club with Sarah Pascoe because I was like, I need a break from digging it up every week. That's what it felt like. Yeah, so you'd slaked your grief first. I was worried you're so hungry for grief that you're going to start killing people.

So it was a bit more mourners. Turning up at funerals, which doesn't know anyone. That's the awesome version of it, how this plays out. Other comedians would message me and be like, oh, did you hear so-and-so his dad just died? and I'd be like... Get on the blow up.

Yeah, they were like, yeah, yeah. And I'd be like, I probably have... That'd be a great get. Yeah. Who's their agent? But also, I'd like, I'd have to wait for them to, if they want to talk to me. They might not want to. Oh, they'd put it on Facebook.

But there were other people who... And this is classic comedians, by the way, in terms of how we desire attention, would have a death in the family, and their first thought would be, oh, no, I can do grief cast. People have said that to me. Yeah, people have got in contact, sort of pitching themselves, and Carrie's having to sort of say, wait for some stuff to, Yeah, why don't you wait?

No, yeah, someone said, someone was like, oh, I don't have a grief, but the moment I do, I'm going to call you. It's like, they're like, that's my first thought. And someone did say to me, I remember seeing someone, being like, oh, I'm so sorry I heard about it. They were like, no, I actually thought of you because I thought, I can come on grief cars now. I was like, I'm not actually recording anymore.

I'm so sorry. It's like the Bergheim. They're all just trying to get in and you're upright strict door policy. Yeah, very cool. It's the equivalent of, I say, did you used to, but you might still watch yourself. of cry in the mirror. So generally being sad, but also going,

I wonder how I look when I'm this sad. You used to have good stand-up about that. Do you remember? No. Oh, it was good. I liked it. Do you ever do that? Used to do it.

I did once, I was trying to get some headshots done. And I thought, I'll just do it myself, because hedge shots are very expensive when you're an actor. And I sort of went to the graveyard. And I just sat there. I guess, like an early version of a selfie, but just a camera, like a disposable camera. taking pictures of myself.

And I started to cry because I'm just thinking about death. And then I just had this entire role of pictures of me crying and had taken to be developed. It took like a week. Do you still have them? I think I do, yeah.

That's an art exhibition I would go to. It's definitely a Guardian article, isn't there? Definitely. Oh my God. On a disposable, I just want to know who walked past and what they thought. Oh, who's developing those pictures? Yeah.

What are they thinking? What jobs was I looking for as well? Yeah. So I wanted to ask about sort of future writing. So Rick, after writing your book, did you get approached again into like, okay, and now what's sad? That would be a great title for the next one. What's sad now? What's sad now?

By Rick Smadden. Or did you want to write something completely different or what is your next book going to be? I don't know. I'm definitely interested in fiction and not just taking up a layer of skin and showing the world. Yeah, I just want I want to lean into the creativity and play of language and story. And it's because it's all using yourself anyway. Yeah. But not having to have that sort of one-to-one relationship with it.

And have people assume that it's some weird, like Freudian need of mind to kind of just constantly be perceived all the time in my pain. I sort of want to do something different. So I don't know. Okay. Yeah. And Carriad, we all know that you've had a five book deal for writing children. I put it on Instagram.

So, yeah. So I was going to ask you, you've written this book to be a friend to grieving people. And now do you feel a responsibility to sort of to provide a similar thing for younger people? Yeah, I've done a picture book which is coming out next year, which is about grief, a very specific like grief for explaining death to children picture book. And then I'm writing what's called middle grade. which is like 8 to 12. And I pitched this like Regency,

Jane Austen era, like mystery, adventure. And then fucking grief turned up. Just some grief turned up in the book. So even this kid's book has some grief in it. Well, all of the people from the regency period are dead. They are dead, yeah. And she realizes that midway through the book. Yeah, I started writing his character.

And again, it was so nice to write fiction. And I, you know, sometimes I'd hear writers say, oh, just getting to sit down on my desk and play. And I'd be like, who is that? Because when you're writing memoir, I don't know how you felt. Like, I'd like drag myself to the desk. And I had to write this in the pandemic just after giving birth to my second child.

So it was like not an easy ride. And I'd have to like drag myself while octanauts is blaring, put on noise cancelling headphones and be like, so I remember him being in the hospital and be like, this is so painful. And then given the chance, the opportunity to write fiction for kids. It was like, oh, I see what people mean when it's fun.

Like, oh, it can be fun because it's not you. You're not like ripping out bits of your heart and being like, there you go, is that good enough? You're like, oh, what would be funny for this character to do? So, so, yeah, I don't, I feel, I don't feel too much responsibility. I feel like I've done my job with the grief. I feel like, it's there. If you need any of the things I know, it's all in there.

But I think it is a subject I just can't get away from. And I think whatever I write, there'll be some element of grief in it. Yeah. Wherever you go, that's where you are. Exactly, exactly. Which is a really great segue. You can't get away from it. Carriad, you're going to read us a couple of sections from it.

I just want everyone to know that Carrey didn't want to and said she hadn't chosen anything. But I thought it was really important because if you haven't read Carriad's book or if you think, oh, I'm sure lots of you here are at different stages of having lost somebody, you might think, I don't actually want to read it or I don't want to be sad. And it's a really helpful book because it, I think, sits next to you in how messy your process is. It doesn't pretend to understand you. There are no platitudes. It's fighting against those platitudes and anyone who told you that time was going to help

or, you know, that by a certain number of years you're going to be coping better. And I think these two readings are really good examples of that. So one of them is right from the beginning. Yeah, I try to avoid it reading out by not bringing a copy of my book. this is Ricks and by making Sarah choose it. Anyway, so this is one of the sort of interludes that are between the chapters that are jollier. And I only say that because people always think it's a route, like, they're like, oh, depressing. So I'm like, some of it's funny, but the interludes are not funny.

Okay, so this is called Things I Don't Do Because You Died. Go hand gliding. Mum makes me promise. Go to bed on an argument. Leave without saying goodbye to everyone in case they die or I die. take drugs get too drunk buy father's day cards take middle-aged men very seriously cope well when middle-aged men ignore me appreciate being told what to do by middle-aged men ring you up and ask how something works have my grandma corrected feel embarrassed by how unembarrassed you were of yourself argue with you know you trust that everything will be fine some of it's cheerier some of it's cheerier some of it's cheerer If Joni Mitchell said that after a song You know what she did said?

We're not to sit without feelings. Oh, sorry. She's got a massive rant about Vincent Van Gogh. Have you heard that run? It's on the Woodstock. She's like, no one will ask Vincent Van Gogh. Keep painting the sunflowers, but you keep asking me to sing this song.

I was like, all right, Joni, just come on. This is from the beginning of the book and it kind of explains. That's such a bad analogy because everyone goes to galleries and goes, oh, it's the sunflowers. Let's look at that. again. I know. Look, she's a great singer.

Has Van Gog got any new stuff? That we can have a look at. We've seen the sunflowers already. And if Van Gogh came round to your house, and I'm only going to show you the sunflowers, you wouldn't be like, oh, come on. Yeah. Yeah. You'd be happy.

Yeah, well. So this, I don't know. Okay. Sarah, I'm going to read this. This is at the beginning, and I think it's, this is the perfect page for anyone listening or in the room thinking, you know, what's it about?

Well, I'll tell you, this is a book. about death. This is a book about grief. This is a book about the mess. This is a book about the complexities. This is a book about how you don't get over it. This is a book about the pain. This is a book about how you don't get over it. This is a book about the weirdness of it all. This is a book about when you were bored at the hospital. This is a book about when you howled and wept and sobbed so loudly it sounded like a goose honking which made you laugh out loud and it stopped your tears. This is a book about how you don't get over it. This is a book about how it can affect you, even if you haven't seen them for years.

This is a book about how we don't talk about it. This is a book about how you don't get over it. This is a book about how you worried what to wear to the funeral. This is a book about how you know they waited for you to get there. This is a book about how you just left the room for a second and they went. This is a book about how you don't get over it. This is a book about how there's no right way to do it. do this. This is a book about letting go of the shame of doing this wrong. This is a book about

death. This is a book about grief. This is a book to say again and again, you are not alone. You are not alone. I couldn't hold it. I nearly said that. I nearly said that and I thought, no, Sarah will tell me off for letting us sit with her feelings. So I'm not going to sing you are not alone. I'm proud of myself. Thank you for doing that joke. But thank you. It's, but I'm also crying. I'm trying to evade my own feeling. This is the wonderful thing about very funny people writing very vulnerably is incredibly moving. And of course you don't want to read any of it out

because you wrote it down so that you didn't have to be there. Yes, yes. When you told people about it. So thank you so much, all of you for coming. We'd give a big round of applause to Carrie Ed Lloyd and Rick Salad. Thank you. And Sarah, thank you for listening to the Weirdo's Book Club. Rick's book, I never said I love you, is available to buy now.

Mine of a Weirdo and Carriad's book, you are not alone. As you may have guessed, I'm out and paperback. and available to get in all good bookshops. You can find out all about our upcoming books. We're going to be discussing on our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. And remember, you're not alone.