Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Navigating Grief: No Matter What You Are Mourning with Kris Carr

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Kris Carr, wellness activist and author of the book "I'm Not a Mourning Person" explores the forms of grief beyond losing a person, the importance of acknowledging emotions, and strategies for navigating grief. Kris shares her personal experiences, emphasizing the need to care for all our emotions and the role of curiosity in healing. This is a great episode for those of you who need help prioritizing joy and cherishing relationships - even in difficult times. To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://www.drmindypelz.com/ep207. You can get 30% off your subscription when you go to HVMN.com/PELZ KRIS CARR is a multiple New York Times best-selling author, wellness activist, and cancer thriver. She's been called a "force of nature" by O magazine and was named a "new role model" by The New York Times. Kris is also a member of Oprah's SuperSoul 100, a group of the most influential thought leaders today. Kris has helped millions of people take charge of their health and live like they mean it through her award-winning blog, books, online courses, and membership communities. You can learn more about Kris and her work at kriscarr.com Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

on this episode of the Resetter podcast, I am bringing you Chris Carr. Okay, I hope you know this woman, and if you don't, you're going to want to know her. So she's a New York Times bestselling author. She calls herself a wellness activist. Love that. That might become my new title. And she's a cancer thriver. And she's been called A Force of Nature by Oprah Magazine.

She's been on Oprah several times. She's written several books. You might know her from crazy sexy cancers, crazy sexy kitchen. She has so many awesome books teaching the world how they should be eating, especially when it comes to a cancer diagnosis. But on this interview, we are going to talk about her new book that took a completely different turn from her cancer books and her wellness books. And it's called I'm not a morning person.

And this book is so powerful for any of you that have experienced grief or are learning how to navigate grief. And what you're going to hear in this discussion is that grief isn't just a loss of a person in your life. Grief can be a loss of an identity. Grief can be a loss of a job. I can tell you as a new empty nesting mom, there's grief in being an empty nester. There's so many places we experience grief, but we don't have a strategy for it. And what you're going to hear in this discussion is a strategy and a way of approaching grief that I've never heard, a way of understanding the depth of sadness that we feel that comes with grief and tools we can use to navigate those turbulent waters. So I adore this woman and this book needs to get into the hands of every person that is dealing with the depth of the grief emotion because it's such a fresh perspective.

So you can find, by the way, her book anywhere that books are sold, we will leave a link in the notes and you will find it's just such an incredible read and it hits right into your soul. and most of all will give you some real clear steps that you can take to handle the emotions of grief. So Chris Carr, amazing episode, so excited to share it with you out. Hey, Dr. Mindy here and welcome to Season 4 of the Resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy. Cool. Okay. Well, we're going to jump right in and let me just start by welcoming you to my podcast. Yay. Mindy. Thank you. I've been so excited for this. I love you, my new friend, my favorite new friend on the planet, my sister that I didn't even know I had. I was so grateful I do.

Agreed. I'm like, you're my new favorite friend, too. And I always laugh because I'm like, yeah, when you find a new favorite friend, you need to let her know that she's the new favorite friend. So I'm glad the feeling's mutual. Absolutely. So for starters, I love the title of your book. I have to start there. And where did that come from? Let's just start from who came up with that brilliant title? So it's called I'm Not a Morning Person, and I came up with it after a lot of of pain. And you know, as a fellow author, that, you know, titling your book can be really challenging. And so with this book deal, in my contract, it's called The Unicorn Project. Oh. Okay. Because I did not know what to call it. And I was like, I will not give it a title.

It needs to, you know, have form and function. It's going to tell me what it wants to be. And thankfully, you know, my publishers were okay with that. But then a lot of, a lot of trial. and there are a lot of really bad titles later. Oh, yeah. I was watching a stand-up, and I'm afraid to say I don't remember who I was watching, but it was just I was laughing, and there was a sense of relief and joy, and the person was even talking about grief. And that's when the idea came to me because sometimes, I mean, for myself, first and foremost,

I think a lot of people listening can understand this. I didn't want to be a morning person, grief and loss and all the messy emotions that come with it. Those are the things that I really tried to avoid. And even though I've been in the wellness industry for 20 years now, there was still a part of my well-being and my healing and my mental health that I was actually shoving aside. And that's why this title clicked for me. Yeah. I got it. The minute you shared it with me in the spring, I was like, that's brilliant.

And as somebody who also thinks deeply about her titles, I was like, I get it. Because I'm not a morning person. I am actually a morning person, M-O-R-N-I-M-N-I-M-G. I'm not a morning person. Like, I don't do grief well. And yesterday when I picked up your book, I was like to prepare for today, I was like, okay, let me grab a few nuggets. And the next thing I know two hours later, I'm like on the couch and I can't put the book down.

And I don't even, I don't, I have an experience. grief from the perspective you have, like the loss of a parent. But I, in the recent years, I've experienced loss of identity and a massive change in my life. And it's really sent me into places of emotional healing. I did not, I wasn't planning on going. And in that process, I have discovered what you just said, which is when we're teaching wellness to the the world, we can be so focused on what we eat or how we exercise or in my case, like how you're fasting. But there's like this elephant in the room of emotional trauma that is so hard to deal with.

And grief is a part of that. So can you start off with like what grief means to you and how handling grief in the, I'm going to say the most mature way possible, in the healthiest way possible? is so important for our overall health. Yeah, wonderful. And I love the way you framed all that. So grief is love. That's what it is.

It's another aspect of love. And the more we grieve, the more we've loved. And we can't have one without the other. But we are domesticated in a grief phobic, messy emotions-averse society. And so it's like emotional physics, right? whatever we push down and we hide and we numb with all of the different ways that we do that, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, alcoholism, all the things that we humans do to avoid our pain.

The more we do that, again, coming back to the idea of emotional physics, what doesn't come out one way, will come out another way. Oh, that's so well said. Right? And emotions are energy. That's what they are. They're also information. And so I became fascinated by this particular emotion because my therapist says something great,

and it's in the book. She says when the grief train pulls into the station, it brings all the cars. I love that. I saw that in the book. I loved that. I was like, oh, yeah, that's true. You're like, shit, this is a lot, right? And it's not just, you know, the current grief you may be experiencing.

And let's talk about what that could look like. it could be, as you said, the loss of an identity, the loss of your former sense of self, the loss of a loved one could be the loss of a job, it could be a miscarriage, it could be, you know, you found out that your partner is cheating and you're just distraught. You know, losses happen. They come in all shapes and sizes each and every day, and none of us can avoid them, right? I mean, we can't protect ourselves from them. We can try, but we know what happens when we do.

It's really not good for our emotional health. And then, of course, our physical health because they're so interconnected. And for me, I knew that I had to do this work because back in 2016, it was all coming together for me. There was a time where I could no longer run. So I was approaching my 20-year anniversary of living with stage four cancer. Yeah. Right? So I've had a lot of experience with grief, losing former sense of self, healthy person.

but on paper, right? And not really understanding the emotional impact of that, but then also we're going through a global pandemic. My father is dying. My business is struggling. And it was this zeitgeist where I said, okay, I can't run anymore. I have to stop and face this and find a way through it. And that's when the journey to writing this book and doing this work began. Yeah. So here's what I find so interesting about grief. I love this idea that it's love, and you have this quote in the book, it's love that has nowhere to go. And I love that idea because I'm like the type of person that when I love something or somebody, I'm like, yes, let's just put a bunch of energy there, whether it's a work project or my new favorite friend or writing a book. I put all my energy into that. And when those

situations change, there's nowhere for that energy to go. And there's just such a deep feeling of of shallow, of emptiness. And I don't do well with sadness. I don't do well with emptiness. And every time I've gone into these dips where I know I'm grieving the loss of some love energy that I was putting out there, I hate it. I hate it. So how can we like grief? Is there a way to like that sadness that you feel where you just can't get out of bed and you don't know what to do? Can I like it? I mean, if you can figure out how to like it, I want you to tell me the secret, right? So it's kind of like, you know, not everybody likes their vegetables, but it's probably a good idea to have them, you know? And so the thing about this is, is that if we think about emotions as information, for example, For example, we can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole. Yeah.

We cannot do that, right? We don't have to like them. They do not have to be the popular girl. They absolutely do not. But it's sort of like saying, like if we think about our organs and I say to you, well, Mindy, here's the thing. Like I really like my lungs. They're cute, you know?

Lungs aren't cute, but okay. They're slimy. Okay, so they're, they're just slimy cute. I don't know. There's something about my lungs. They're just so cool. No, I love that you pick that organ. But if I say to you, but Mindy, I really think my liver is declassae.

Like, my liver is sleazy. My liver is just not my cup of tea. You would be like, what are you talking about? You can't amputate, you know, certain organs because you just don't like them. You know, they're there. for a reason. And so when we think about our emotions that way, I think it's sort of, it helps us get curious. And I know you and I are so similar this way. Curiosity to me is the fuel of creativity. It's the fuel of innovation. It's the fuel of healing. Without curiosity, you can't have any of those

things. And so if you get curious about your emotions and you think of them as information, then you You can be like, well, actually, let me learn a little bit about that. And for me, when I was diagnosed with stage before cancer, I have it in my lungs and my liver. I was like, maybe I'll get curious about these organs so I can do what? Figure out how they work, so I can do what? Figure out how I can care for them. Oh, I love that. And that's what it's about.

So how do you care for deep grief? A lot of different ways. And, you know, everybody is unique. Everybody's got their own path. So I'm going to share some things that I talk about in the book and some of the things that have helped me. Yeah. First and foremost is just the awareness of what we're talking about that you can't amputate any of your emotions and expect to be whole. You don't have to like this emotion.

You don't have to be like, yay. Let's just go out and have beers, grief, you know? You can't have a beer with grief? How about a glass of wine? You can definitely have a nice pino, you know, whatever your thing is. But you don't have, my point is that you don't have to be very excited about this. But the point is, is that you are willing to, you're willing to start on a journey with getting to know this emotion and getting to allow this emotion. Because as much as emotions are information, emotions are also energy.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is so up your out. when energy gets stagnant and it has no place to go, what happens is we start to become less vibrant. So well said. Right. Yeah. And it could also be that we start to develop illnesses and, you know, or blockages in our life and our well-being and our abundance and our relationships. And so if we take the idea that emotions are information and then we expand it to energy, then we know that the first thing for us to do is, one, have that awareness. The second thing for us to do is figure out ways to release that

energy. Okay. And is that done always through your mind or do you do it through the body? Because you had a couple of recommendations in the book that I thought were unique. Absolutely. So we can always solve the problems of the mind with the mind. Yes. Yes. Right. How many times have you, Mindy, or anybody else else out there listening, you're going to be banging your head and trying to figure out the solution and you're like, ah, I'm stuck. And that's very common. And so, of course, we need support. I think it's so vital if you're going through a big transition in life. You know, basically I talk about these graces, like those moments where you feel like you're in a rupture. Life has changed in an instant. The rug is pulled out from under you.

You feel like you're picking up the pieces. It's great to get support. For me, that's in the form of therapy, right? I do need somebody to talk to and somebody to process with. But going back to the idea that we can't always solve the problems of the mind with the mind, movement in our body creates movement in our life, right? We literally, sometimes we just need to change the channel. And I'm not saying go out and be a marathon runner, but if that's your thing, great. What I'm saying is that sometimes the healthiest thing to do is to find a way to come back to the present moment, that present moment awareness. Because with grief and loss, oftentimes we're stuck in fear and anxiety. There's other emotions there. Yes, especially those. And there's more to come. Believe me,

it's going to get, it's going to get messier before it gets more magnificent. It's magnificent. That's what I heard. It gets magnificent. It can. It absolutely can. But if we're stuck in fear and we're stuck in anxiety, then you knows what happens in the body, all the cortisol, the stress hormones, right? We know what that feels like. And if you think about fear and anxiety, it's oftentimes aruminating about what could happen or what should have happened or what didn't happen. And when we're stuck in those thought loops, it's hard to even be in our bodies, right?

We're in out-of-body experiences telling ourselves stories. So for me, that might mean breathwork. For me, that might mean meditation. For me, that might mean taking a walk, changing the channel, changing my physical state so that I can reset my emotional state. Oh, I love that. And on that, do we have a level of the body keeps the score, which is one of my favorite books? Because I do believe that our, you know, if you take Bruce Lipton's work where our body has absorbed all of these. emotions and now it's holding on to that and it affects our cellular performance. I think we never go to the body to heal an emotional wound. We never think about the body as holding on to emotions. We only think of like maybe our heart or our mind, but we don't think of the cells of our body.

So my experience with things like breathwork and EMDR, which you put in the book, are about accessing these memories of the body. But when you access them, you don't know what you're getting. All the memories might come up, which is another theory you had in your book, which is once, and you just said it about your therapist, is like once you tap into that grief and you come at it from this body and mind level, you're going to get all the, all the griefs. And then how do you handle that? Well, so we don't frighten everybody. Yeah, right. Thank you. Well said, well said.

This could happen, right? More things can come up. And I think they're up because these emotions are so proud of you. These emotions are so psyched that you're willing to work with them. They're so psyched that you're willing to drop some of the walls and the barriers and the blockages that have kept you small or kept you hurting. Right? And so I have this, I'm very visual. So I imagine like, you know, that all of the little boo-boos and aches and pains or some of them are like, oh my gosh, you guys, come on.

She's ready to feel. Let's go. Oh, my gosh. I love it. Is that what's happening? Because that's how it feels for sure. That is sometimes what's happening. And if we just continue to anchor ourselves in flow in the peace and the freedom.

the simplicity, the ease that we want to feel, then we know that there are these barnacles and these disturbances in the force and this residue that if you tap into it, wouldn't it feel so amazing? Each and every one of us listening, we probably, yes, I'm saying this, can think about a few things that come to mind? Wouldn't it be so amazing if you started to feel those knots unravel? Yeah.

Started to feel the freedom that is waiting for you? Yes, it is. But how do you unravel them? That is the one. So when I look at the way emotions play out for me, I feel like excitement and happiness tends to be like, have like a trajectory. Like it builds, builds, builds. And then oh my gosh, maybe there's an amazing event that happens and you're all happy. And then there's the downside of like the dopamine drop. And I feel like sadness kind of does the same thing. It sort of comes in. and it has its trajectory and then it goes away. But grief, it doesn't feel that way to me. Grief feels like it grabs you when you're not looking and it kind of like pulls you out of nowhere and it doesn't seem to have a rhyme or a reason to it. And a friend of mine calls it a grief bubble. She's like a grief bubble will bubble up to the surface. This is how she explained it after she lost her father. And so when that grief bubbles up to the surface, what can we do in that moment? Because it has this sort of sneak attack. That's the way I look at it. How do you, what do you do in that moment?

Because maybe, like, I love the story how you said about crying in the shower and you didn't get that opportunity and you were in the supermarket about to lose it. Like, what do we do when the grief bubble pops up, is there something in the moment outside of curiosity that we can do to help ourselves through that? Yeah, absolutely. So this is going to come back to what you need as an individual. But for me, the first thing that I will do is take a deep breath and acknowledge that this is the feeling that I'm feeling. So name it, literally call it out. Right? Because as soon as I can name it, then I'm like, oh, okay, I've got some tools here. Yeah. And what I want to, want to encourage us not to do is try to find a solution or a fix for it.

Because that goes against what we need. Right. And so once we're aware that this is what we're feeling, we tap into our breath, really the next step is allowing that energy to move. Okay. Right. And so for me, when I was in the middle of CVS and all of a sudden the big grief bubble comes and I know I need that energy to move, I'm literally the,

like, get out of my way. I'm running through the CBS to just get to my car, right? To get to a safe space where I can literally cry. Yeah. Just cry and just weep. And, you know, in a lot of grief, literature, and I talk about this in the book, too, is there's a metaphor of waves. Yeah. And they come, this emotion comes in waves, right? And so when it, the, the, I do. I do. You know, the, I do. You is not to try to hold that wave back because as strong as you are, you're not stronger than the ocean. Yes. Really? I'm not. Listen, it took me a long time to just make peace with that bullshit. I was like, excuse me. Wait, I, like my mom taught me you're a woman. You can do anything you want to do,

including take on the ocean. Take on the ocean and exhaust yourself and burn out your adrenals. Yeah. No, I. I'm with you. I'm absolutely with you. So going back to those moments, you know, what are the things that you can do to start to allow yourself to move this energy? Yes. And when you give yourself that opportunity to actually move it, it's amazing that you start to feel a little bit better. Yeah. Follow that feeling. So it could be like physical movement. It could be like for those of you who haven't read her book, which I highly recommend, she talks about how she found out that her father was dying. she was in CBS. That was before he died, right? You had just found that out.

And then all of a sudden the grief came and you were at the checkout line and you had to get the car as quickly as you can. And I will tell you, I've had moments of grief like that where I've just been messy all over some random person that is probably like, what is your problem today? And it makes me realize that we are not comfortable with people, especially strangers being messy and emotional around us. We don't create a container for sadness very well in our culture like you stated. Is there a way when you're grieving that we can express to people,

especially the people closest to us, what we're going through so that we can either get support or be they can move away and leave us alone? Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So I have a chapter in the book called Awkward Times, Awkward People. Yeah. And here's the thing. Each and every one of us have been this person, and each and every one of us have probably had these things said to us.

And what I want us to do is forgive ourselves and each other. Yeah. Because, as I said at the top, we are domesticated and aggriephobic, messy, emotions of our society, so we don't have these tools. And so when we don't have tools and we're really afraid to screw it up, we can do awkward shit. Yes, yes. Very true. So, you know, with that in mind, you know, I talk about some of the things to be mindful about.

The first is centering ourselves. So somebody's sharing what's going on with them. They're just, they're going through a really tough time. you feel uncomfortable and maybe you can relate. And so you want to bond with that person, make them feel like they're not alone. And so you sort of send to yourself and sort of take, go, hijack the conversation. You make it all about some loss that you had, right?

When the other person could feel that that actually doesn't bring us closer together, that makes me feel more lonely and like you don't care about me that very much. And so that's a common thing. And another common thing to do is, yeah, look, I do it too. I'm like, oh, I got you, girl, you're not alone. Let me tell you about what happened to me. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's your way of connecting.

I actually, on that topic for a second, I have a friend who's a therapist, and she says that we will even, to connect with another human, will even change the tone of our voice to match the tone of the person that we're connecting with. And so I think it's human nature when somebody tells us something sad. We want to say, oh, I got it. Let me tell you something sad. back. But grief, we're back at this really, I'm going to call it a strange emotion because it is like you said, this awkward emotion. I can tell you in times when I've gone through grief,

I don't want to hear your grief. I don't want to hear about what you went through. I want you to acknowledge the intensity of the sadness I'm feeling right now. That's just how I would want somebody to approach me. But I feel like as humans, we just want to be like, I know, I know I've been there. And what I'm hearing from you is that might not be helpful for some people. Yeah. So well said, their good intentions gone wrong. We're coming from such a good place. But the other person in your example is so astute, they don't have the mental bandwidth for that. Oftentimes people who are going through grief, especially if, let's say, it comes in the form of being a caregiver and having a big set back with your child that you're taking care of, right?

So you are in decision fatigue. You're already filleted, right? And so the idea of taking on somebody else's grief in that moment is just too much to bear. Or let's say, for example, you're going through something really tough. You've just lost somebody. We'll just keep coming back to this example. How many times have you had the experience where maybe you or somebody else you've ghosted? You just disappear.

Yes. That's the best thing. I think that's the best thing to do. Is that not helpful? That's not what you're supposed to do? It's not so helpful, but I have done it myself because I didn't know what to say and I didn't want to get it wrong. Or I didn't want the person to be reminded of their sadness.

So I didn't want to even bring it up. And the opposite, all of the opposite is true. when it comes to that one. Like you said it so beautifully, what people truly need, I can give many more examples and, you know, they're all in the book, but what people truly need is for you to show up. They don't need you to fix it because you can't.

You can't fix it, but you can show up. You can say, I don't know what to say, but I love you. I am here for you. And not just let me know what you need, but actually proactively offering assistance, you know, like, hey, I'm going to the grocery store. This is obviously if you live in close proximity, send me a list.

I want to pick stuff up for you. So I look at this as you've got the person who's grieving and you've got the support system around the grieving person. And I feel like when I put myself in the shoes of the support system and you say just show up, I guess my question, yeah, going to this market would be good, but what else does showing up look like? Because is it just sitting with them as they're crying? Is it sending them, you know, my thing would be to go to humor and try to send them something funny and like try to lighten their day. But I don't know, but I think a lot of us feel like we don't want to be disrespectful to the person that's grieving. So when you say show up, I'd

love to unpack that a little bit, like, what is showing up look like? Is it just a text saying, I love you? I'm here. I'm supporting you. It can be all those things I'm thinking. Absolutely. And your relationship will dictate that, right? So if you're, you know, if you and I are best friends, then you and I have access to, you know, deeper layers of each other's heart. And I more so know the things that you may need in that moment. It could be, let's say I'm giving you space. And now it's been a little too long. And now I'm a little worried about you. Yeah.

Right. So I'm going to, I'm going to, my best friend did this with me. I'm going to text you and be like, hey, we don't need to talk, but I need you to just send me an emoji. Just send me something. Let me know that you're okay. I'm worried about you. Yeah. That's perfect.

And she's just like, grab me out of my hole. And it could also be that I need to brainstorm. So sometimes, look, if you're just, you know, if you're just, you just, you just, you know, If you're me, this is what you'll do. And maybe you do this too. But I'm the person that's going to come in with all the advice in the world. That's why I wrote the damn book. Yeah.

You know, you should do this and you should do that. Let me turn you on to this doctor. Let me turn you on to that modality. And let me help you with this. And so sometimes our people may not want to be coached. They may not want any of that information. And so what I say is, Do you want to brainstorm or do you want me to just listen?

Oh, give them the option. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you want to brainstorm, I'm your girl. Yeah. Yeah. I got to figure out how to listen more and more. And I think that is the human path.

Yeah. Yeah. And what I want to do is, again, I go back to like, let me make you laugh. Let me find a way to pull you out. And then you won't be in that sadness anymore. But what I've learned about grief for my own self, is that it's really important. And like you're saying, it's so important to sit there. So, and feel it. And I love this idea about being curious about it, which takes me to the person who's grieving.

I think if we address grief from this idea that society doesn't know what to do with it, and we have lots of different forms of grief, we have like the loss of a loved one, we have the loss of an identity, we have, you know, a lot of a loss, how can we express to somebody, hey, I am just in grief today. And maybe we just say it like that. But how do we express like, you know, I'm not myself today. I need you just to honor that I am not myself. Because I don't feel like our society is, it understands that. You just did it. Can you imagine more of us did exactly what you just did? You know, it's just that I'm not myself. I'm not myself today. How are you? I actually am not feeling like myself today. I'm going through a tough time. Thank you so much for asking. I might not even want to talk about it, but you know what else I really don't want to do? I don't want to have to make you feel comfortable. Ah, yes, that's it. Oh, that's it. So true. And then that's what those of us that are helpers want to do, right? It's like, this is so me. I will say, I'm not myself to my people, closest to me. And then they're all, especially my husband, he's like, well, what's wrong? Let me try

to fix it for you. And then I'm like, well, shoot, I now have made you uncomfortable. So let me go fix you. And the next thing, you know, I'm out of the grief moment back into the fixer helper moment. Yeah. And we all do that. And here's the thing. I want to make sure we touch on the, you know, I don't want anyone to feel like they have to wallow in this emotion. So I'm saying this to you because, you know, I'm 52 and I forget everything that I want to say sometimes. And so you're going to help me with my hormones. Yeah, we're going to fix that problem. You're going to help me with that. But my, where I wanted to go was this idea of fixing, you as a fixer, as a helper, as a caregiver, as somebody who always wants to be in a state of helping people feel good,

I think many of us relate to that. The best thing that you can do for yourself and I think other people, at least this is what I'm exploring, is to be yourself and to be honest. Because I feel like in that honesty, you know, again, this isn't dumping, this isn't projecting, this isn't, you know, endlessly venting and bringing the energy down and the oxygen out of the room. But through our honesty, what do we create? We create connection.

And if we know, based on all of the research that we're reading right now, we're living in an epidemic of loneliness. Yeah, we are. Yeah. And that's for all the reasons that we are reading about. Certainly technology helps to create that. But I think one of the biggest reasons why we're living in an epidemic of loneliness is because we're lying more often than being truthful.

Oh, I think you're right. Right? And so when somebody says, how are you? I will always say fine. It's my knee jerk. Yes. Me too. Yes. Now, I did this in a staff meeting the other day. We were talking about, we were writing, you know, book campaigns, you're writing lots of emails and you're telling lots of stories,

and I was writing about pet loss because I think it's one topic that's often overlooked, and the loss of a pet is profound. Profound. Right? And yet a lot of people feel shame around it. They feel like, oh my gosh, I shouldn't be grieving this much. No, that's not true. We just lived in messed up society that would say your pet isn't as important, not true, right? Right. So we're writing about this and we're writing about one of my recent losses with my sweet dog and I started to cry. Oh.

And in the middle of this team meeting and I just said, sorry, guys, I'm feeling really emotional and a bit sad right now. And instead of saying, you know, or trying to fix the energy, I just said, thank you for holding the space for me. That's a great line. That is a great line. Yeah. And then they all probably,

they probably loved you even more. And they're probably like, can I work for you for the rest of my life? That's what I'm thinking, because there is something about when we show up authentically and authentically sad or messy or whatever we want to call it, that people, it gives them permission that they can do.

the same. And I think that the way you said that was not like you were trying to pull the oxygen out of the room. You were trying to just say, this is where I am. Thank you for being in the space with me. I think that's incredibly an incredibly mature way to do it. And how did they respond? I'm just curious. Were they? They were great. I mean, they're used to that. This is what we do. You know what I mean? So everybody just took a beat and and I just sat with my emotion and probably no more than like 30 seconds, honestly. And then I said, okay. And then they said, we so appreciate you and thank you so much for allowing that. And then we went back to marketing copy. Yeah, right. And then you were off running and you're a workaholic. Workaholic challenge. Addiction. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

So do you feel like there are two paths you can take with grief? You can kind of brush yourself off and power forward and not feel it. And then there's the path where you actually really honor it and feel it. Do you feel like if you feel it? And this is the way my brain is thinking. And I know it may not people listening. You might even think like that's not the goal. But if I feel it, will I get through it?

quicker? It's beautiful. That's a great question. I love how ambitious you are. I'm like, because if I know I'm going to get through it faster, then I'll sit my ass down. And I will feel it. I will cry it.

I will deal with it if I know it's going to end. Otherwise, I'm going to do option B where I ignore it and I turn away. Well, so let's just talk about something that's probably not very excited. to hear, but if we go back to the idea that we can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole, then there are going to be losses in our life where we may actually not totally heal from that loss. And there's a beautiful saying by Carl Jung, and he talks about how we orbit through certain themes in our life. And with each orbit, we pass a new level of meaning, understanding, growth, wisdom.

And from where I stand, that mechanism of orbiting is the mechanism of our healing. I love that. Right? And so you can kick the can down the road as long as you want. But I think the invitation is to evolve and to evolve our consciousness. And if we block that energy or if we try to rush that energy because, we want to get to some finish line, it's not going to work, right? And so we often think that if we allow that feeling, it's going to take us under. And it actually may for a minute, but each time we

allow it, we feel more and more relief, more and more peace, more and more understanding, just like that orbiting, you know? Yeah. And so we can put it off if we want to, but the very notion of putting it off is the idea that blocking my energy is somehow good for my well-being. Yeah, right, right. And so, you know, I've always believed this because, as you know, I live with stage four cancer and I have 24 tumors in my body that have been there for 20 years. It's crazy. And back in the early chapters of my wellness journey, I was so,

determined to cure myself, Mindy. Mm-hmm. Because I've said, well, if Western medicine can't do it, then I will. Yeah, yeah. And the fight. The fight. I'm like, don't tell me I have to live with this for the rest of my life. I'll show you, you know.

And I have to say that energy is so catalyzing. It's so powerful. I probably wouldn't be as healthy as I am today. I wouldn't have built the community that I've built today. if I wasn't wildly inspired to take back my health and take back my power. Yep. This is my, this is one of the reasons you and I are such kindred spirits, you know, is because a certain paradigm gets set by our culture and we say, actually, there's a different way,

and we're going to find it and follow it. Oh, my God, I got chills. Right? Yeah. And so, but after a while, Mindy, even though I'm not. I was feeling better and my doctors were like, listen, you're doing great. I mean, it's just kind of hang it out. It's stable.

Whatever you do and keep doing it. Good on you. But I had this idea in my mind that if I wasn't cured, it wasn't good enough. And so I put a ton of pressure on myself, which creates what, more inflammation, more sense of like all of the emotions of I'm not good enough. I'm failing. If I can't get rid of this, then my life is on whole. Yeah. Well, I might live my entire life with stage four cancer, and it might be long and prosperous

and into my 90s. I certainly don't want to waste that time. Yeah. And so for me, what I came to was this understanding that has been my guiding light on my wellness journey, which is health isn't the absence of disease. It's the presence of vitality. Oh, I love that. I love that. And it's vitality being stronger than disease. Like it's like if you look at like a ratio, it's more vitality than disease. Yeah, you're feeling good in your body. You've got energy. You're feeling, you know, your mental well-being is cared for. And on a whole, you're feeling, you're feeling pretty good. It doesn't mean you're not going to have down days. It doesn't mean you're not going to have rage. It doesn't mean you're not going to have all of the colors of the rainbow that make up you.

But more often than not, you can say, you know what, I feel very vibrant. Yeah. So the goal then is to live with grief, just like you're living with 24 tumors. The goal is to make friends with this sadness that you're feeling this love that has nowhere to go. That's what I'm seeing is the trajectory when some big situation hits you that forces grief. Can you tell where I'm going with this? Force of grief. Let me say it all different. That that. allows grief to come into your life, that it's time to make friends with it because it may be there for a while. It may be. And so I think friendship is a beautiful goal. And again, you don't have to, you don't have to like that you have to do this. But if our goal is to have more peace and flow and freedom, then we can say, sure, you're welcome at my table too. Yeah, yeah. I, I, that, I, I think that is such a good reframe because as somebody who's always trying to go for a goal or hit a destination, what I just learned in what you were just saying is that there is no

destination with grief. And that probably would relieve a lot of resistance. You know, if you go back to what I find with emotions of sadness and grief, you know, if I go back to Esther Hicks, you know, teachings of you just got to let go of resistance, that's all the goal of life is, is just let go of whatever you're resisting is happening in the moment. And I think with grief, too many of us resist the feeling. And that that creates more suffering. So if we resist the goal being the end goal being happiness or we resist ignoring it, just let go of resistance and see where you go. Would that be a good way to look at it? I think that's a beautiful way to look at it. And, you know, I'll just share something that has shifted for me since my father's passing.

And that was such a very big monumental moment. And it's one of the through line stories in the book. And my dad is my chosen dad. So I didn't know my biological father until much later in life. And so my dad, Ken, who adopted me, is my dad who passed. And we had a very, very close relationship. And one of the reasons why the grief train pulls into the station and brings all the cars is so appropriate is because through that relationship with my dad, there was a lot of old trauma and feelings of abandonment and lack of worth that I was able to heal through the love of my chosen dad and through the relationship that we built. And so when I knew he was dying and then when he died, and as he was approaching,

approaching death. It was amazing how that old trauma came up and it was a little girl who was basically saying, don't leave me. Wow. As if he was going to walk out the door, as if it wasn't a natural process that we will all go through at some point. And so you get these opportunities to heal deeper parts of yourself. And that I think is really why we're here in the first place. We're here to love. We're here to be in connection and we're here to give ourselves permission to love parts of ourselves that we actually maybe don't love or we're afraid of. That is so well said. One of the things that I've been currently researching is hormonally and neurochemically what happens to us as we go through menopause like after 40. And I call it the neurochemical armor. It's like as estrogen goes down

and progesterone goes down. So does dopamine and serotonin and acetycholine. And you're like neurochemically naked. And it's in that moment that all the traumas come up. And if you look at, I mean, this is sort of a different take on this, but when you look at some of the struggles that women go through at the end of their 40s and their 50s, and irritability and anger is actually one of the number one's emotional symptom of

menopause. What I've come to discover is it's actually these unhealed traumas, that we've, the busyness of life locked with this beautiful neurochemical armor that we had distracted us from these traumas. But the armor's gone. The kids might be gone. The identities change. The parents are aging. And all of a sudden, they all come flooding up.

And so what I've decided is that when people trigger me to look at it as, oh, that's interesting, there's a trauma I need to heal. And what I'm hearing is you're saying the same thing with grief, that it can be a door open to a long life of traumas, unhealed traumas, that you now get the opportunity to heal. Yes, I 100% believe that. And, you know, there's a chapter in the book called Becoming Unbecoming. And it's all about the wisdom of anger, specifically. And I'm in complete agreement with you on your take there. And I talk about the anger iceberg. And, you know, the tip of the iceberg seems big. You know, it's protruding from the ocean. But underneath, the iceberg is so much bigger. And anger is often thought of as a signaling emotion, right? It's signaling,

ouch, this hurts. This isn't right. There's injustice here. It's also signaling that there's something much deeper lurking under the surface like that iceberg. And I used to shame myself a lot around anger. You know, shame is another one of those emotions that will kind of come to the party when you're going through a tough time. I'd shame myself around that. That's why it's called becoming, unbecoming, because my grandmother used to say, oh, anger, that's a very unbecoming emotion.

Oh, isn't that interesting? I think actually a lot of people struggle with anger. I actually, when anger shows up for me, I actually like it in some little sense because it's clarity. I know where to put this feeling I have inside of me. If anger is showing up, there's usually something there. I have clarity on what it is and what I need to do with it. And in discussing anger with a lot of people in my life, a lot of people have had anger directed at them in really horrible ways. And so they are not okay with anger.

Is there a healthy way we can process the emotion of anger when it shows up? Absolutely. There's a lot of healthy ways that we can process anger. I want to come back to the first thing that we talked about, which is that awareness and also naming what it is, oh, this is what I'm feeling, right? And then we get curious and we can say, what's underneath it? Now, here's the thing. Anger was always my go-to. And in this process, I realized that anger was, you know, such a protector, such a fighter for me. Yeah. And anger, it was part of why I started my business and started the revolution that I, you know, created, which was like, don't tell me. You know what I mean? Like, this is, we patients were going to get together. I'm going to figure out another way. And so there's a lot of.

good that can come from this emotion. Like you said, it's, it's, it shouldn't be vilified. But it's when it gets out of, out of proportion, or when it starts to dominate our life, or when it starts to change our relationships. It's, it's that opportunity to say, okay, I have to learn how to care for this emotion. Mm. Hmm. In a responsible way. In a responsible way. In a way that I'm channeling that energy in a way that I am processing it, whether it's be through therapy, whether it be through, you know, doing my best to take a beat and take a minute before I completely explode. That's not always possible.

I had a big meltdown, you know, a couple of weeks ago that I was completely embarrassed by. It's not always possible. I reread my chapter. You know. You went to your own book when you had a meltdown. Oh, right. Oh, damn. Yeah, I didn't do that either. What did I say again? Oh, my God. That totally sounds like something I would. Let me give myself some advice. I love it. I love that.

But I want to go back to the thing that I said that I forgot when you're going to help me with my hormones. See, I know if I say it out loud, there's a good chance I'll remember it. So that's my little trick. I love it. The thing about this process is I want to, I want to, I want to. leave us on a high note because it's really brave to do this work. And I'm so grateful for you to bring this to your wonderful community because when you and I were talking on Sunday just catching up, I was sharing how the first part of my career was about helping people understand and address what they're eating. And this part of my career that I'm so inspired by and committed to is

is helping people address what's eating them. Yeah, I think that's so well said. You know, and that's, that's, that's, that's holistic well-being. And this can be really scary to think about allowing yourself to be on this journey. And but I want to say that it's one of the most healing things that you can do for yourself and others. And in the process, because it can feel like, oh, my God, this is going to be all consuming. I just have to sit here and cry, name my feelings.

and feel my feelings, get curious about them. Screw this. A big thing that has helped me is to prioritize and sometimes fight for my joy. Oh, yeah. So if you've been sitting there too long, it's time to find a joyful moment. Is that what you mean by fight for your joy? It's like, we've talked about how important it is to sit in the grief, but what I also hear is there is a moment to fight for the joy so that you don't hang there too long. Absolutely. Because, you know, it's energy. We need to move it.

And so you talked about humor. I have a lot of humor in the book. Why? Because I'm going to take you to a point. And then we got to laugh. Yes. We have to change the energy. And so I bring that rhythm into the book.

We need to be around our friends who are funny that make us laugh, who, you know, we need to go outside and look at the guys, texted you a picture of all the fall foliage. Yep. you know, in my yard. We need to go outside and let the sun hit our face and look at those colors. And we need to find these moments that remind us that we're still here and life is still worth living. And damn it, while we have a chance to live it, we're going to. Oh, that was so well. So that was a mic drop. You know, one last question, big question that I have for you. And this is kind of a personal question,

but I also think a lot of people listening are going through this. If you could go back and look at the trajectory of your dad getting the diagnosis, and then it was a week after his diagnosis that he died, correct? No, he was, we were together four and a half years. Oh, so you knew for four and a half years that he had pancreatic cancer. Yeah, that was the let's get busy, you know, If there's anybody who's going to put together a patient navigation plan, it's me, I'm going to control it, I'm going to fix it, all the things that I'm talking about. I went into overdrive. Yes, okay, which is probably why the loss was even deeper, I can imagine. So here's my question. I have 87-year-old dad. I have an 84-year-old mom. They're vibrant, both mentally and physically, but I'm also acutely aware that time is limited with them.

And I remind myself constantly to just keep in good relationship with them. And so that I feel emotionally, energetically clean and peaceful when they go. Is there any way, and I'm hoping that that will allow me to feel more at ease when they do go? So it's kind of like grief prevention. What do you think of my grief prevention plan? And is there things that you might have done differently in the loss of your dad that could have eased the grief? And you can totally see where my brain is going and how much I don't like pain in that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah, you know what? This is so beautiful. And the truth is that I think most of us get caught in the fear of the pain. The fear of the pain is actually worse than the pain. Yeah. Right. So that's just something to chew on, you know, is this really the pain or is it the fear of the pain? And I find that fear of pain creates way more pain, you know. I had such an incredible four and a half years with my father. And one of the intentions that I set was to show up with love and to let love lead the way because I wanted as little regrets as possible. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I did that. I have not done that with other relationships that ended either through, you know, the completion of a relationship or a death. I did not end it that way with my biological father that ended actually really dramatically. And so, but with this particular relationship, it was the commitment that I made, the intention that I set.

there's a lot of peace that came from that. It's not grief prevention because losing him knocked the wind out of my soul. And caused you to write a book. Cause me write a book about it and all of the wonderful experiences and difficult experiences that is life. But I feel so good about those four and a half years together.

So we can say both and. Yeah. Yeah. So there is a grave prevention plan. You know what, Mindy there? Yes. And I think it's, I think the plan is for every relationship we have, is that when you walk away from that relationship to ask yourself if you're showing up how you want to show up in it. Because we don't know whether it's an aging parent or, you know, there's so much. people who leave way too young this planet. And we just don't know when that moment's going to be. And I think if we always look at every important relationship as am I continuing to show up the way I want to show up,

then there is a little bit of a grief prevention plan in that. Yeah, there is a, there's definitely an easing. And to just add to that, a lot of people don't have relationships with the ones that they're losing. There are people who are estranged. There are people who, you know, don't have that opportunity to have a close relationship with their older parents. And so we can still do this work, though. And if you're out there listening and you have one of those relationships, know that all of this,

you can still have as little regrets as possible. You can still show up in the ways those ways are tending to your heart, tending to your emotions, feeling into what forgiveness looks like for you, even if that person will never be in your life again. How are we moving this energy? I love that. What advice would you give somebody who's either got a parent or a loved one that just died or is dealing with a chronic disease that has a prognosis of imminent death soon?

What advice would you give somebody going deep in that fresh grieving process? Well, those are two separate examples, but let's talk about, they both lead to the same pain. Yes. Let's talk about, you know, that your loved one is going to pass. I explored that a lot in the book, and one of the things that I did, which I felt was really hard, but also very helpful and very healing, was to have a conversation about dying with. the person who is dying. I've done that. That's really helpful. Yeah.

And not everybody wants to have that conversation, so you have to, you know, you have to approach it in a tender way, but my dad wanted to have that conversation. And I was so scared to have it because I, again, didn't want to get it wrong. And I was also afraid I would completely fall apart and that that would make him feel bad. And so I approached it by talking about talking about it, you know, like a little pre-show warm-up kind of thing and saying, do you want to have a conversation about this? If you do, I'm completely on board. And I just want you to know that I may cry. I might not say the right things. And he said I'd love to have that conversation because it's very lonely. Oh, that's so powerful. We would never, we wouldn't think, like I wouldn't think to bring that up because it would be like hurt their feelings, but they're thinking it through. Very much deeply thinking it through. Now, not every loved one wants to have that conversation, but my dad did.

You know, I remember talking to a mutual friend of ours and in her family, even aging parents and, you know, parent wanting to talk about who's going to get what. And the kids saying, no, no, no, no, that's so negative. No, let's change the subject. But to those parents, it's on their mind. It's troubling them. They want to get all of these things in order so that they can be like, okay, now my kids know what's happening. And we got that behind us, right?

Right. And so just, again, perspective shifting, because we may not always understand what the other person is going through. And then the last thing I'll say about, you know, as you're going, walking your person through the final chapter or their physical form is there's a little. is there's amazing resources, places like hospice and resources that can help you navigate this time because the physical body changes in such big and profound ways. And I feel very blessed that, you know, hospice came to our home. My dad wanted to die at home. We made that possible. He was

surrounded by his dogs and me and my mom. And it was a very beautiful transition. But that wouldn't have been impossible without those incredible doctors and nurses and all the things that they helped us to do and understand. And what I found at the end of that time, Mindy, was we prepare so much for the birth of a baby and there's celebrations and we get the stuff, right? There's like, babies need stuff. Yeah. And it's glorious and it's exhausting and it's a whole new world that you're, especially if you're a new parent, that you're not, you don't know how to traverse, but the same is true when somebody leaves the planet. And yet, death is institutionalized. Death is hidden. And death is something we don't talk about. So we're going through this.

Our person is literally going through the, you know, the death canal, and we have no idea how to care for them. Right. And we don't want to talk. talk about it. It's like the one thing we don't, we don't talk about, and God forbid, we would talk to them about it. Like, that is really profound. And what, just so we don't leave the person out who just lost somebody and they're in that like time warp of the person's not there, that I find that moment's the hardest when like the first couple weeks they're gone and their energy is gone. Is there any special tool for that moment? Oh, that is such a painful moment. And I think that the biggest tool is to just be very tender with yourself. And I'm just going to give very broad brushstrokes, a broad brush stroke advice here, because there's a lot I can say about those moments.

Slow things down for yourself. Yeah. out. Really slow things down because you are in a different dimension and everybody is moving on as if life is normal and it's not normal. Nobody should be on the highway. Everybody should be grieving. Like nobody should be at the grocery store. The whole life should stop. That's how I felt. I'm like, wait a minute. People are walking their dogs. This is a national crisis. What's happening? Yeah. I could see that. I needed to slow everything down. I needed to take work off my plate. I needed to disappoint people by backing out of commitments.

I needed to do all those things. So beautiful. Well, thank you for bringing not only a whole new perspective to a process, we're all going to experience an emotion we're all going to experience, but your humor, I have to say, I love your humor. And even in the book, you know, now that I know you when I read the book, I was like, oh, that's such a good. And then I'm like seeing it as your friend. I'm seeing it as an author. And then like you did throw those humor lines in there. Just when, you know, the emotion was getting too much, you like threw it in there. And it was so beautiful. So thank you for taking on the daunting task of this. Okay, Chris. So where do people find your book? Everywhere books are sold, you can find I'm not a morning person. Okay. And what about if they want to

dive in and stalk you and find a bunch of other information. They want to hang out. Yep, yep, chriscar.com. That's a good place. There's a lot of goodies there. Awesome. Thank you. I have one.

My last question I ask every person on my podcast and I can't wait to hear what you're going to say. This is taking our friendship to a whole new level. I should have asked this to you the first day we were out, the first night we were out to dinner. What's your superpower that you bring? bring to the world. Oh, my superpower. I think my superpower is humor, actually. I was going to say, yeah. I think so. I like to look at really difficult things in ways that help people get closer to them and

maybe not avoid them. And as you so beautifully said, befriend them, whether it's a terrifying illness, the loss of a loved one. So for some people could be just like, the change, the daunting change of how their self-care, their diet and their lifestyle, and how can we approach it in a way that's fun and has levity and has a whole lot of compassion. And so I would say that's it. Yeah. So I have to tell you a funny story. When I was in UK, the team there at Hayhouse, somehow your name came up and they're like,

oh, have you ever heard her from stage? she's hysterical. And so I actually, I've never heard you from stage, but I'm going to dream up you and I doing some kind of comedy act on stage. Done. Look out. Look out. Yeah.

Like, I think we could, I think we'd be really good. Like, I think you and I should, we're going to propose this to read because you and I together on stage, you know, might be more of like a comedy hour than an inspiration hour. So. I'm so on board. I'm so on board. Let's go. Excellent.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Chris. I just adore you. Thank you for being my friend, my new favorite friend. And thank you for bringing such depth of thought in everything you do. That is what I see in you is that you are not staying on the surface, whether it's teaching people how to live with cancer or teaching people how to live with grief. Like the way your brain works and the depth you go to is helpful for all of us.

So thank you for that. Thank you, Mindy. I love you. And I feel the exact same way about you. I'm so glad that you're in my life and I appreciate you. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode.

I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.