The Squeeze - Zak and Olivia June Williams: The Cycle Of Grief

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

TW: SuicideIn this week's episode, Tay sits down with Zak and Olivia June Williams, the couple behind mental wellness brand Pym, in a special episode closing out Suicide Awareness Month! Zak bravely opens up about losing his father Robin Williams to suicide and his journey through grief, PTSD, substance use, and recovery. He reflects on the unique experience of grieving a loved one so publicly, sharing that while the world lost Robin Williams, he lost his dad, and how that affected his ability to grieve privately and has shaped the way he parents his own children. Olivia also bravely shares her own grief journey after losing her sister to suicide, opens up about living with ADHD since her teens, and how discovering amino acid supplementation helped regulate her mood, which ultimately inspired the two of them to spend two years working with food scientists to create Pym together. Olivia shares how she has shown up for Zak through his grief without trying to solve it, and the two get candid about their individual therapy and healing journeys, how they know when the other needs support, and what communication looks like in their relationship. They also get into what it looks like to build something together when both people come into a relationship carrying their own histories of grief, loss, and mental health challenges without expecting the other person to heal you.Be sure to follow Zak https://www.instagram.com/zakpym/ and Olivia https://www.instagram.com/heyoliviajune/!Check out Pym here:https://instagram.com/youcanpym/https://youcanpym.com/If you or a loved one is struggling, call or text 988. https://988lifeline.org/To email us your questions or share your story, you can reach out to [e-mail] sure to rate, review, and follow the podcast so you don't miss an episode! Plus, follow us on all of our socials:The SqueezeInstagram: https://instagram.com/thesqueeze/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@thesqueezepodcastTay LautnerInstagram: https://instagram.com/taylautner/TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@mrstaylautnerAmazon Storefront https://urlgeni.us/amazon/FDXj7 To learn more from The Lemons Foundation, follow https://instagram.com/lemonsbytay/ and visit https://lemonsbytay.comEpisode Sponsors:Shop Honest on Amazon, Walmart and Target.NOBL gives you real travel peace of mind — security, design, and convenience all in one. Head to NOBLTravel.com for 46% off your entire order! #NOBL #adUse code SQUEEZE at oakessentials.com to get 15% off your first purchase! #OakEssentials #adNew styles from lululemon's fall collection are here! Popular colors go fast, so be on the look out for those drops. And if something doesn't work for you, free returns, always. That's lululemon.com.Larineco is offering our listeners up to 50% off at buylarine.com/squeeze.Go to ButcherBox.com/squeeze to get $20 off your first box, plus your choice of free ribeye, new york strip, or filet mignon in every box for a year — with free shipping always.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. He was my father, but he was also my best friend. Hello! We've got it on the wrong speed. Your first test is a father? A diaper. You're ready. Group hug.

Oh! People around this country are reacting tonight to the terrible news of the death of Robin Williams. He had been battling severe depression of late. This is a tragic and sudden loss. So much sadness for a man who brought... so much laughter. The days, weeks, months prior to him dying by suicide, I was really feeling for him because he was having a frustrating time and was seeking support and was just trying to figure out what it was that would be most helpful to kind of help him experience some relief. That was hard

for me because I don't think he was far off from finding something that would have felt like it was more helpful for him. The main thing for me is just I loved him so much. And And, you know, I couldn't have told him enough. And for someone who was such a loving human being and just giving his heart to the world, I had hopes that he would have found some peace. For me, there's some unresolved considerations relating to that. He lived loving humanity and created such a mission for himself around helping people laugh and learn. Lemon drops, we have two very special.

on The Swee's this week, please welcome Zach and Olivia June Williams. They have a couple behind the mental wellness brand PIM, but Zach is also widely known for being Robin Williams' son. I'm honored that I got to sit and talk with them because September is Suicide Awareness Month. And to round out September, I thought it would be really special to be able to sit down with them and hear about Zach's experience, losing his father to suicide and his journey through grief, PTSD, substance abuse, and recovery. Olivia is no stranger to the topic either. She also opened up about losing a loved one to suicide at a young age.

They both are so honest and vulnerable in this interview, and I'm so thankful that they felt safe enough to really open up and share about what their experiences have been like. Sack shares about what it was like grieving a loved one so publicly and how that affected his ability to grieve privately and also how it's shaped how he parents his own children. We also dive into this topic of what it looks like to build something together when both people come into a relationship carrying their own histories of grief, loss, and mental health challenges without expecting the other person to heal you. I couldn't have picked a better episode to finish out September and I'm so excited for you, Lemon Drops to hear it.

Well, Zach and Olivia, welcome to the squeeze. Thank you so much for having us. I'm excited because I've been, I feel like this has been in the works for a while and we both have been a little preoccupied, just growing humans. Just growing. Just the everyday.

Just the everyday. But I'm excited to kind of just chat through life and everything. You both have lived through some big experiences. And I'm excited for our lemon drops, those are our listeners, to hear you guys' story. But we start each episode, off with this jar. It's a game called Citrus Got Real. Maybe you would like to pull a little question out of there so that we don't need the pregnant

belly to move. You want to pull a little piece of paper out of there and you can read it too. Our lemon drops. All right. So just read it out? Yep. Fantastic. What's one purchase under $50 that genuinely improved your life? Oh. Well, that's a great segue. And to what I was wanting to talk about, unless you guys have something else that you want to say.

I mean, something that doesn't. We do get our products for free. But they are under $50. And that magnesium is really, it's life change. I mean, like when you can get a good night's sleep, like a truly high quality sleep. Yeah. It's life changing. Yeah.

I love it. What's something else that's not? Yeah. That, what would yours be? For me, actually, it was either I have an issue in buying things under $50 or there's just a lot. It is a big, like, you know what it is? I'll tell you. It's just a product that was life-changing for me.

Yeah. Hop water. Oh, uh-huh. Yeah. I drink a lot of hop water right now, the peach or the. I haven't tried it. Yeah, I love it. The peach or the.

orange flavor. It's got adaptogens in it. Okay. And it's very hoppy. And I don't drink and never really drank beer. Yeah. And it's not like I like drinking non-alcoholic beer or anything. Yeah.

But there is a perfect storm of like this hops flavor. Yeah. And it's carbonated and there's a little bit of fruity flavor. And it, they just make my day. I'll drink when I'm like, This is amazing. I love that. Yeah.

I'm like a drink girl, like at like two, three. Like I need some form of like a soda, a tea, a flavored water or something. So that's good to now. I'll add that to the list. Yeah. So that was life. It was life changing when I tried it the first time and I still drink a lot of hop water. That's so good.

Yeah. I feel like mine would be my migraine cap. I have like a like, you know, those little caps you put on your head. It's been a lifesaver for me during pregnancy, but also. just like even when I don't have a headache I'll like either put it on my head when I'm feeling hot or sometimes I'm just like feeling flustered it's kind of like resets my nervous system but also because I just feel not like in my body the whole time like I feel my body just feels weird during pregnancy it's a nice little like reset and it makes me makes me feel better it sounds

really nice it's like a nice pack it's like it's literally like this little cap that like goes around your head. And you're supposed to pull it over your eyes, but I always just like put it on like this so I can still like, I'll put it on when I'm like working or whatever. But it just is like this little like jelly thing you keep in the freezer. And you put it on. Sounds great. It's probably like 25, 30 bucks for Amazon. Wow. Yeah. That's one of my best purchases so far. I love that. Okay, well, let's let's talk about your company because we're on all the topic of products. That's honestly like I planted that question. But you pulled that question. I didn't. didn't plant it. I didn't plan it. You know, it just felt right. Yeah. Felt aligned. Um,

you're helping Pym. I would love for you guys to share with our Loma Drops because that's honestly how I knew of you two originally. I think I was sent product in PR and I loved it. And then we just somehow got connected. Yeah, we ended up meeting through like mental health. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm a huge fan of your products. But where did the idea come from? Yeah, so I'll start with, you know, a bit of my story. Yeah. So, you know, my father was the entertainer, Robin Williams. And after he died by suicide, I was having a really tough time.

I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, generalizing anxiety disorder and depression, was doing unhealthy things, like self-medicating, using alcohol and so forth. That's why I no longer drink. Yeah. It just wasn't working for me. But through that process, I realized something had to give. And I discovered healing through two pathways.

One was healing through service, giving time to causes, starting with financial education. I started teaching in San Quentin Prison, which led to me discovering mental health advocacy over time because I love working with young people and found that that to be an incredibly healing journey for me. And then the second was through my meeting Olivia and we started dating and she noticed I was having a really challenging time, especially in waves. Yeah. And through that depression, anxiety, and the like, she turned me on to nutrition for mental

well-being, which I didn't realize was a thing. And I'll pass it off to her. I mean, and for me, I started on my journey. I had a big loss. I lost my sister to suicide when I was 10. And it started like a lifetime of a mental health journey for myself, both reconciled. both reconciling and making sense of what happened to her and kind of the many stages of survivors of family members who've lost, like people who've lost loved ones to suicide victims,

trying to understand, like, did this person leave me or like what was wrong with, like, how could they not live for me? Because I'm so, I should, shouldn't you be here for me? And I was just a kid. And so making sense of, you know, what actually happened to her. she was a psychology major, a child psychology major, and she experienced her own trauma as a child. And it put me on this journey of being in therapy and prescribed lots of different medications for just bandaid over bandaid over bandaid, you know, including things that came up.

There were like the obvious ones like depression and anxiety and ADHD. And then the other ones that were like autoimmune conditions. basically my whole body was like in a full stress attack response for years and years. And after many years of kind of being like overmedicated, under supervised, under, you know, I just didn't have like the support system because everyone in my family was also going through their own journey with this. Yeah. And so I ended up deciding to quit all my meds when I was in college and learn about like

how to heal myself. I really wanted to learn how to heal. And I didn't do it well. Like I should have had doctor supervision. I should have had like all of these different stages for weaning off medication. But one day I was just like, I'm done. I have to figure this out. And it was a tough summer that summer for me.

But I slowly started a piece together based on research of like what's happening in our brains? What's happening in our body? I wanted to know information about myself instead of just everyone saying like, this is wrong with you and this is wrong with you. And I wanted to become empowered and an advocate for. my own health. And so as I learned more and more, and I went through this journey, like over so many years. And finally, a little bit before I met Zach, I had found myself back in the doctor's office. And I was having terrible panic attacks as like a woman entrepreneur. I had a team. I had a lot

of pressure on me. I had a lot of, I had raised a bunch of venture capital at all this press. And I was feeling like I was going through a divorce. I was going through so many things. things and I was feeling so paralyzed. And a doctor, a really great doctor said, you know, of course, I can prescribe use annex. Like anyone's office you could run into right now could write you a prescription for this. But he's like, let's first start with a meditation. And so we sat there and we did a great meditation.

Oh, wow. That's like one of the most proven ones actually for helping people gain resilience, which is like this visualization of being a tree. and then he gave me some printouts from a book called The Mood Cure by Julia Ross. And it was about amino acids in our bodies and how they end up manifesting in different symptoms. And he's like, I want you to try taking some GABA. I think this could really help you. And I was like, okay, I'm like willing to do whatever.

And I had already gone through a path of like using amino acids in my 20s and then cycling back out. and, you know, we've learned and we forget things. Yeah. And so immediately, within 20 minutes, I felt relief. And I didn't end up going back to get a prescription. Instead, I ended up really becoming an advocate for GABA-based, you know, anxiety support products. And it was just so hard to find.

It was impossible to find them. I had to, like, subscribe to him and MLM to order them. And so Zach and I, had both end up having such like I gave it to Zach I was dealing it out to everyone who was stressed I was like I found this thing this miracle thing under $50 that changed my life but also I don't know how to tell you to buy it and I don't know where to get it more myself and so I wanted to make it more accessible and so Zach and I teamed up and we were both thinking about ways that we can give back in mental health and ways that we can also scratch our own itch as entrepreneurs And so we kicked off building PIM when we moved to L.A. in 2018. And that was a big step for us. And we wanted more people to have access to learn about their bodies, how their bodies work, and know that there are natural ways to support yourself.

But it also had to taste good. And it also had to be convenient. And it also had to be something you carry in your bag or in your pocket. And it also had to be available in like grocery stores and places that you go. Yeah. So it needed to have all of these accessibility things and also be delightful. Yeah.

Yeah. So through finding the right formulations and launching a few years after we started building the product, personally, I was able to sort out my anxiety in a couple days for good. Yeah. And it still crops up occasionally, but was able to create a solution. And my depression was able to sort out in a couple weeks. Wow.

And since then, you know, nutrition has been the foundation on top of other things. like meditation and proper exercise and community connection and, you know, being supported by loved one. How cool of that doctor to just be like, I got so lucky that day. That's crazy. I've never heard of that. I didn't even know that. I just made a random appointment on like through one medical and it was just like whoever

was available as soon as possible because I was unwell. I'm going to leave a link to Pimp for people to go check it out. Did I see you guys are in sprouts? We are in sprouts. nationally. Oh my gosh. That's exciting. What did that happen?

Or has that been a thing? It's been about a year. Two years. Sweet. Yeah. I love that. We love them. We do all sorts of stuff for sprouts.

I love sprouts. Sprouts is so great. Yeah. I feel like they make really good little snack packs. They do. And, you know, it's really easy to get. Just like I always, the catchphrase I have for my kids is we want to eat food from farms, not factories. Yeah.

And so it's. it's really it makes it easy to do that yeah no i love it awesome well i'm excited for our lemon drops to try it because i i love them and i am a genuine fan of the product um okay i want to get into talking a bit about suicide this is obviously something you guys both mentioned and that is a shared experience of mine as are lemon drops now a big reason um i do a lot of of this mental health work is because I lost one of my best guy friends to suicide. And it's really shaped a lot of this, you know, why I do a lot of this. But Zach, I want to talk with you specifically about this because I didn't, which I'm sure you're the same. I didn't have to walk through

loss and grief in the public eye. I got to do that before any of this was the thing. But I want to know how was that experience for you, because I've talked with some people before about, you know, dealing with loss and death of a family member who is a public figure and is in the public eye. And how was it, did it have an effect of people, you know, mourning Robin Williams, when to you, like, that man was just your father? Like, how was that on you?

Yeah, that's a great question. For me, it led to an accelerated process and experiencing the grief because I wanted to be able to show up. up for others who who seemed like they were having a really tough time. I was having a tough time as well, but my whole thing was, you know, tough it out. Yeah. Because that's who you are. That's who you're capable of being. And the challenge with that is I had trouble experiencing a private grieving process versus, you know, sharing the experience with the public and kind of having that all. meld into itself. And so it became hard to really go through the steps of experiencing grief.

Yeah. And so in hindsight, I feel like I should have taken more time. Yeah. It certainly would have helped me through my experience with trauma and depression and anxiety because in turn, I kind of kept it suppressed until you really, reach a certain point and then it just boils over and you experience dysregulation and you know so so there was at i think on a personal level he was my father but he was also by best friend right and and so being with him in the days weeks months prior to him dying by suicide i i was really feeling for him

because he was having a frustrating time and was seeking support and was just trying to figure out what it was that would be most helpful to kind of help him experience some relief. And that was hard for me because I don't think he was far off from finding, you know, what, I don't want to call it equilibrium, but, but something that would have felt like it was more helpful for him. Yeah. In terms of, you know, open-ended considerations, like did we have unfinished conversations? Yeah. You know, unresolved issues, things like that.

The main thing for me is just I love them so much. and, you know, I couldn't have told them enough. Yeah. And for someone who was such a loving human being and just giving his heart to the world and feeling so anxious, you know, especially in the last few months, I just, I had hopes that,

he would have found, you know, some peace. Yeah. And so I think for me, there's some unresolved considerations relating to that, you know, and something that I personally have to dealt with. Hey, and also looking to myself and my children is, hey, how can we find peace and seek to, you know, resolve these unresolved feelings that, you know, is part of a lifelong journey. Right? This doesn't, you know, nothing ever, you know, goes to completion. Yeah.

You know, relative to our life journeys. Everything is kind of a work in progress. Yeah. So, yeah, I would say the main thing for me is he lived loving humanity and created such a mission for himself around helping people laugh and learn. He was so oriented around service. The best way I've been able to, you know, honor him and support carrying on his mission is to help myself. And one of the best ways I can do that is through service and trying to support outcomes across, you know, wherever I can.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Absolutely. I have really learned to, in my grief journey, I've learned to kind of like spin the narrative in my head because I'm sure, as both of you have dealt with, and I'm sure people listening to this who have had someone in their life close to them, die by suicide. It's the question of like why or how or what could I have done differently. those types of questions creep in and still creep in for me 10 years later. But I have really learned to kind of like reframe it as like the loss of one like saves 10 or like 10 fold however you want to like whatever number it is. I change the number in my head. But I always

like to think the loss of my friend Jared now put me on this mission. now sitting here talking with you guys, spreading awareness of this and talking about it and having these open conversations and really saving more lives. And I really think that publicly the loss of your dad, I think, really hit home for a lot of people. And I mean, I remember for me and I was, I was, you know, younger at the time and never really known celebrities or like known entertainment. But I obviously knew who your dad was and just the light that he had. And I think it really, it really opened a lot of people's eyes to like, wait, I think we're viewing this differently or we need to be viewing this differently. What exactly is mental health and understanding that people that

can have this deep love for people in humanity can still carry pain and having that. Those two things can exist. Yeah. Sometimes they go hand in hand too. Yeah, absolutely. And for me personally, you know, there was the premise that he was on his own personal healing journey. Yeah. You know, he received a diagnosis that was very disruptive for him personally because it was hard

because while he was experiencing this neurodegenerative disease diagnosis, he was also seeking to, you know, heal and experience his. his path of learning and recovery around, you know, his personal experience, life experience. And so, you know, the thing for me is each one of us has a certain set of cards dealt to them. And the thing I found is throughout all of that, you know, my father was always, always, always grateful, always appreciative, always grounded. and showing up for other people and being the most loving version a person can be. And even when he was suffering through his pain, he was still that person. And for me, you know, I definitely don't want to, I definitely don't want us to deprioritize ourselves.

Yeah. But being able to be compassionate and filled with gratitude. is something that I can learn from my father. Yeah. Or as an experience I can learn from my father, right? And so that's something that I constantly need to remind myself. You have the privilege as showing up for other people. You have the privilege of taking care of yourself.

Not everyone has that opportunity. And in doing so, you can find yourself grounded in compassion and gratitude. And Olivia would be the first to tell you, that's not always the case for me. It's just something I'm trying to always orient around. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, and a huge part of this is like mental health diagnoses are not our identities. And just the same as like suicide attempts or suicidal ideation or being, I said earlier, a victim to suicide because our brain is an organ.

and our brain's organ and like our thoughts are there to keep us alive. That's why, you know, hypervigilance of anxiety is like basically like ultra survival mode. And then on the other side, it's when your brain is sending messages that say like abort mission, die, death is the answer. That means that you have an unhealthy organ. And we would never tell someone that has like high cholesterol just to like tough it out and think happy thoughts, you actually need to seek medical attention. And so it's really important that we think about mental health in that regard, that it is something serious. And when we do lose

someone to suicide, it's more akin to a heart attack than it is to someone making a choice to leave you. And so, you know, just having that that compassion that it wasn't a choice. Like that person didn't have the ability to make that choice. were doing the only thing that they could think of and the only thing that their brain was telling them to do. And unfortunately, that was a failing organ. Yeah. That's, you preach it to the choir with that one. That's for sure. This episode is sponsored by Honest. And honestly, this one feels really personal to me right now because as someone who is expecting, I've been doing so much research on baby products lately, the amount of label reading, ingredient checking,

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I want to know if, because I've talked with some people about this and there's definitely, it's such a tricky situation, as you mentioned, trying to balance your grief and how you kind of pushed it down and were really just giving two people. Was there ever a point where, and I think I know the answer to this question, was there ever a point where you almost didn't want to share? like either your experiences or I'm sure, you know, trying to filter what your family wanted to share was hard. But also this feeling of like, I'm trying to think of how to properly explain it of, yes, you all know this human, but like this, like, I feel like it's something, a experience so personal that you had to share with people. Do you think that that that, did you ever experience those things of wanting to be selfish with that? Yeah. Well, I mean, in part, that experience of wanting to be selfish and in that healing process.

Yeah. Was something that I conflated with grieving privately. Right? And so I just put it, put it by the wayside. Yeah. And that's challenging. right and so this is why why i think when talking about taking care of ourselves and being selfish and self-centered is is a challenging thing because um there's elements that are

required in order to really take care of ourselves having spoken to so many different communities of frontline responders of of people in the medical community and so forth, I hear time and time and time again, I've burnt out because I've showed up for others to the best of my ability every day. And so, you know, the big insight for me through this experience in terms of sharing my story

and they're like, is like, I have to take care of myself in order to share my story. Yeah. I have to. And I didn't over the first couple of years. And I personally experienced anguish and suffering as a result. Right. And the reason I'm, you know, aside from, you know, hearing about your story and also experience as a nurse and so forth,

the thing for me is this seems to be an orientation that some people have around being, caring individuals. And I get so worked up around trying to show up or trying to share my experience with individuals who are oriented around caring and in some situations, you know, some codependent environments because I have an orientation around being codependent. And I'm not saying they necessarily go hand-in-hand. I'm just... And the thing that I find occurring through numerous anecdotes and numerous people sharing their experiences with me is they burn out because they care too much. You know, and that's the paradox there.

Yeah. And my hope is for those, whether they're care providers or family members or just people who are grateful and have this enormous capacity to love, I hope they can find an opportunity to love themselves too because otherwise it can be heartbreaking to see the exhaustion that can result from that. Does that make sense? Yeah. No, for sure. I always say that we need to like the reverse of treat others how you would want to be treated. We need to treat ourselves how we would treat like our best friend. If my best friend came to me and she was like, I'm feeling so burnt out. I'm feeling tired.

like I'm just having a day. I'd be like, sit back. Let's, you know, we can run on the couch. We can go for a walk. We can go do what, like I would treat her a lot differently than I would if I were having those thoughts to myself. I would be like, take, come on. You got to get through it.

You're fine. Like you can push through it. It's fine. We really need to start loving and caring for ourselves that way too. Absolutely. And, you know, it might be, I find this especially in speaking amongst, you know, communities of men. Yeah.

Is there, there's this idea of what, what it means to be male, what it means to be tough, what it means to have grit. In my mind, what it means to have grit is to be able to recover from adverse experience, from trauma, and so forth. Not just to have, have this edifice, this foundation that you build up that's absolutely impervious, that's able to take anything until what ends up happening in those situations is, you see people, whether they're, you know, care providers or their, you know, service oriented or so forth, they take it, they take it, they take it, they take it, they take it. Yeah.

And then they experience catastrophe. And the thing is, if you don't have the ability to recover from said catastrophe, that's when things get really serious. Yeah. Right? And so the idea is, let's find the opportunity to build resilience in ourselves. but let's also find the opportunity to recover from those adverse experiences, meaning to show, meaning to show up for itself. Yeah.

Be oriented around, hey, these are the things I need to build back up when I'm experiencing an adverse event, when I'm dysregulated and so forth. So, you know, there's some complexities, you know, unique, just like women's issues are, you know, can be unique. for men too, there's a unique set of issues that I think we need to talk about and address further. Yeah, I completely agree. I want to know how has the loss of your dad affected how you parent? Trying to work out what quality time means with my kids is a question that I consistently need to ask myself,

what does quality time mean? because just being in the presence of my father and just hanging out for me was a quality experience. And I feel like for my kids being actively engaged is something that I'm not always thinking about. And just being in the same room or being next to them and doing something else is not the way. in which I engage and even, you know, build memories or experiences with my son and daughter. You know, my son set up like a course last week and we had little slingshots with little gooey alien guys that you would pull back and you'd shoot. And, you know, we just shot down the magnetiles with these little rubber alien guys for like an hour. Yeah.

And afterwards, he tells me, Dad, are you having the most fun ever? And, you know, I say to him, yeah, I am because he's feeling the excitement there. And it's just that simple. Yeah. You know, you just find an opportunity to be silly and just being actively engaged, not just present, is something that I constantly need to evaluate and look at. Yeah. Yeah.

That's so good. I'm curious between the two of you, because you both met kind of with this grief, how, how has it been approaching? You know being there for your partner through their grief, but you know being helping them but not trying to resolve the problem. I met Zach after he had already lost his father. So I didn't I didn't know him through that immediate. It was about one or two years after he had passed. Yeah. But I think I think both. of us are really like doers, fixers, problem solver type people. And one of the hardest things to do is when you see someone you love suffering is allowing them to have that time. Like have that

journey and ask how you can be supportive, offer things like, hey, want to go for a walk or like, hey, I got you a glass of water and here's some food. It's, it's caretaking. But, in a way where, you know, I think we both really acknowledge that no one can do the work for you. Yeah. And I think that keeping that mentality between the two of us of like, hey, I love you. I want to be there for you. And like maybe a relationship, a good relationship is holding up a mirror to your partner oftentimes when like they don't want to look at themselves.

And it is having those tough conversations and those tough moments of being like, hey, noticing some habits here. I don't think this is working for you. Yeah. And Zach will do it for me and I'll do it for him. And it's not always, we can't always receive the information. Yeah. But then a lot of times we'll think about it. We'll have a talk about it and be like, oh yeah, like, I thank you so much for bringing that up. And I hear something I want to try or have, I'm going to, I'm going to shift this. And I think that's one of the great things that we have in our relationship is that we're constantly pushing each other to grow and willing to grow ourselves. Yeah.

Yeah. That's my favorite part about marriage. I feel like, specifically, which I feel like, I feel like, I feel like a good marriage. Yeah. I was going to say, specifically. Yeah. Specifically being, you know, married to my husband. Like, we, and granted it definitely, you know, took some time of both of us navigating

our own mental health, but being able to hold that mirror up to. to your partner and them to you and know that it is such like a judgment-free check-in, I think is one of my favorite things. I always say like whenever we have like a disagreement or we work through something or we're able to, you know, tackle a new thing in our mental health. Like that's my favorite form of intimacy. Like I feel so much closer to Taylor than anything else when we work through these, you know, life challenges together.

And it's really cool to have a partner that wants the best for you. Yeah. And like wants you to thrive genuinely. I love the term judgment free. I think it's an important ethos to maintain. Yeah. There is a consideration I have around being judgment free and having taste in how to manage. Yeah.

The relationship ever to say. So here's the thing is like, I love orienting around judge and free activity. I also want to be tasteful in how we go about things. I'm also tasteless in all sorts of things I do. But a recent thing I realized for me was a big unlock for us. Yeah. And that it can, in a relationship, one can show up and check the boxes. And that leads to what I call it like a serviceable interaction.

Yeah. Right. And that, hey, you're doing these things. You're taking out the trash. You're, you know, cleaning the dishes. You're doing whatever is needed to get done. Yeah. And I think we found ourselves in a specific cycle.

which, look, we were checking all the boxes. And really what we needed to do or what I needed to do was saying, hey, you can do these things. But what does 20% more look like? You know? Yeah. What is that extra thing that you can do? Yeah. What's it to you? Like, actually, in the long run, you can enjoy it. Even if you don't enjoy it, it's the fact that it supports your partner is important. Yeah. And so I started taking it. I started taking it. that 20% mindset. And I think it's been helpful. I think so. Approved. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. No, but it's, it's very easy, you know, especially in having kids and running a business together and, you know, and having a marriage and a household. Yeah. It's,

there's a lot of boxes to check and that doesn't always include fun. Yeah. And it's really easy to let the fun go, like really easy to deprioritize joy. And I feel like I've been on a mission of more joy. We need more joy. We have to have fun together. We can't just always be working, whether that's like working for our children or working together or like just working on, you know, staying alive as an adult in the world today. It's just a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Got to have fun. And that's part of mental health. It's like joy. We have to have fun and joy and lightness in levity and comedy and like that's a lesson from from your dad yes yeah I mean there's that and and then just you know the the other through line there is just try to be tasteful in doing all of it

yeah yeah I love it don't be tacky don't be tacky if you want to be Zach's if you want to be Zach's wife I guess the thing the thing is like if you're going to be tacky be super tacky okay yeah No, no. Yeah. Fully send it. Yeah. Yeah.

But tacky ironically. Yeah. You know. So, so, you know, that's it. But that's, that's the beauty of life is you can, you can experience these kind of incredibly tasteful things. Yep. And these incredibly tacky things. Yeah.

And then if you can experience those over the course of your day, you've got the full spectrum of what. You're set. Of what the human experience can offer. You do have yet and yang. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little Reddit trashy and a little highbrow journalism.

Yeah, that's it's important. But it's also important to, you know, to do that when it comes to your mental health. Yeah. Right. Like for me, I love, I love, I love binaral, isochronic, theta state meditation. Right. So, you know, specific frequency, you know, what's it? It's five megahertz, five hertz, not megahertz.

It's a track you play. Yeah, it's a track I play. It's five hertz. And it's just, it sounds like a humming. Yeah. And I listen to it. And it just washes away the stress. That's good.

Right. I think it's five hertz. I hope it's five hertz and not five, it can't be five megahertz. Whatever. It's one of those. Look it up. Yeah. Look it up.

Okay. So it's really helpful for me personally. Yeah. And then on the other end of things, I love like bad horror movies. Yeah. You know? And and I love combining that with eating, you know, hot dogs. Yeah.

You know, or like just something where it's just like you're experiencing that other side of the spectrum. Yeah. Both are important. Yeah. But you can't do it. You can't watch bad at horror movies and eat hot dogs and expect to be perfectly sane. Yeah. You still have to have a salad and some meditation.

Yeah. Drink some water. See the sun. Yeah. Both have to exist. There's a certain point where you start to notice that not all meats are the same. Like you make the same recipe you've made hundreds of times. And it just tastes different depending on what you've used.

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I want to talk about therapy and healing and what self-care looks like for you both. I know you both mentioned that, you know, you've been in therapy. Has there been, or I guess, I guess how long have you both been in therapy for? I mean, in and out probably for most of our lives. Yeah. Yeah. I have the therapist I work with now I've been with her I think for five years I have four or five years and the thing is if if someone isn't constantly upgrading their game you start

you learn their tricks if you're a smart person you're like know all their tricks and you already have come up with an answer to outsmart them in your head about why whatever it is that you're dealing with yeah so I think having like a really good therapist who's also constantly growing and expanding like their process and how they work with you. It's really good. I've had great therapists. I've had not so great therapists that gave me not good advice. They shouldn't be giving you a lot of advice. Yeah. But you've, how about you? You've in and out. Oh yeah. I mean, for me, it's been over four decades. But, but, you know, that was in part just mandated as a child of divorce very early on in my life. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I've experienced every different flavor of

therapy and psychiatry. And where I landed at, most recently was dialectical behavioral therapy, which I quite liked because it was framework based. Yeah. And I thrive off frameworks. Yeah. It gives you structure as otherwise you trick your therapist into letting you talk about politics for an hour and paying them extorbitant amounts of money for just to use the thing. That's the thing. My husband is also guilty of just chatting about sports with our therapist.

And I'm like, when you talk about, he's like, oh, we got into the Dodgers or we got into whatever it is. Like, that is a bad therapist. You've got to keep the rails on. Well, also, you know, I go in and out of therapy. And right now at this point in time, I'm not doing therapy. Yeah. And I'm in a good place. When I'm in a bad place and then saying, hey, I need to do therapy as all.

also not optimal. Yeah. Really, for me, it's, it's when I'm going through kind of a, a situation where I'm looking to reorient my way of thinking about things. Yeah. Whether it's on a relational basis, you know, trying to figure out, hey, how can I upgrade yeah. You know, my relationships in life, whether it's marriage or with my family or so forth,

or, hey, I'm experiencing all these different things. I'm feeling extraordinarily overwhelmed. Then I need, you know, a path to get to that next phase. Yeah. And for me now, you know, there's very busy a lot going on. But, you know, the next wave of therapy, I would imagine, involves being a parent of three and trying to figure out, hey, what's this next emerging set of frameworks and, you know, and support that will be helpful for me.

But it generally goes in spurts. Yeah. No, I love that. It's been a part of both your lives for so long because I think I always say I started therapy five years ago, I think. And I definitely goes in waves and I'll have, you know, little check-ins with my therapist here every once in a while when every few months of things are going good and I don't need help recently. I've needed a lot of help because of all of this going on.

So I've been heavily relying on therapy. But it's such a good reminder that, you know, it is, it is always there. And I really believe that, you know, anyone that is listening to this, that may not be going through a crisis. I feel like there's still having that toolbox set, which I feel like you both kind of have had that toolbox set for a while because you've been in therapy for so long. Trying therapy and having that toolbox of like, okay, this is what I do when something comes up. Like you both know, this is coming up.

Like I'm going to, you know, I'm going to need to talk to my therapist about this. Having that mindset, I think is so important, like going throughout life because my saying is life's going to life. She's lifeing and she's just, she's always going to, she's always going to be there and be handing us things. There's going to be a new. I mean, that's our journey. in life is to be challenged and to learn and grow from it. And I think a therapist plays a really

big role in that as well as like a really great partner and friends and family. I see mine every two weeks at this point because inevitably something is going to come up in those two weeks. And, you know, and a great, a great thing that she does also bring to the table as most of her clients are women. And she'll be like, just want to let you know. Everyone says these things about their husbands. So it's not like there's not something wrong inherently with a person. Yeah. It's more of like how we're thinking about things and how can you set up ways to think about it and and have these relationships because men and women are very different. And when you're in a relationship and you're cohabitating and you're raising kids and like we're going to think differently and we're going to

have different needs that need to be met different ways. And that's when people say it's a lot of work and it's hard, it's because it is. And so if you, and if it's not, you're probably sweeping a lot of things under the rug and avoiding them. And that's going to come back to to bite you because you're going to end up with really debilitating mental health things going on. Yeah. Not from very much from my own experience.

Yeah. That's so true. How do you know when the other needs encouragement, space? How have you? you, what does communication look like for the two of you? How have you learned to navigate that? Because Taylor and I have very different communication styles, but we have learned how the other communicates, which has been great. But how do you decipher between that in your relationship? You can answer that however you want. I think we're both really, I, we're both really direct.

Okay. And so, and a lot of times I'll say, like, it's hard for me to be around you because I'm really taking on your feelings of disappointment and I want to fix it and it's making me feel upset that I can't. And so just trying to like narrating our inner dialogue, I think is the best thing to kind of express like what's happening and telling the other person like I don't want to be helped right now. I don't want a solution. I just want you to tell me that's terrible. Yeah. And I think that's like a very common dynamic in a relationship. And it's hard to not want to solve things for the person you love. Yeah, as someone who orients towards being codependent, what that comes down to and how that can

manifest itself is wanting to fix and find solutions for issues when sometimes we just want to vent and air whatever it is. And so, you know, I'm a lot less codependent than I was. but really what that comes down to is loving support without necessarily being like, hey, you know, here's here's me solving your problem and I'm resentful because of that. Yeah. Because, you know, either they should have been solved this way or, you know, I'm doing this because I'm more benevolent than you or something in those situations.

And when you start going into that tit for tat, that quid pro quo consideration, it can get really toxic real fast. Yeah. Instead of just being like, hey, I'm showing up every day is the day that we're going to experience. And let's stop keeping a ledger around stuff. Yeah. And with kids, that can really start adding up. Yeah. If you're saying, oh, you know, you're doing this.

And then people wait different things, different actions and different ways because of, you know, whether it's our love languages are configured differently, meaning, you know, we score differently. Yeah. And all that. And so suddenly you've got this thing that's wildly out of balance just because we've all prioritized and weighted things differently. Yeah. So the key thing is, is do you have an opportunity to wipe that slate clean? Yeah. Right? And reconfigure, orient, understand what matters to us, show up in the way that matters in an important you know, I'd say judgment-free way. Yeah.

A tasteful judgment-free way. But really look at it as saying, hey, you know, these are my humans. Yeah. You know, I am their human. Yeah. And let's figure out how to have the most productive, connected time possible without, you know, keeping tabs on this, that, and whatever. Last question I have for you both. When two people enter a relationship with their own history of grief, loss, mental health challenges, how do you build something together without expecting the other person to heal you? And also acknowledging that even though you are a couple, because this took Taylor and I both some time to learn, even though you are. even though you are together, you still are both going through your own individual mental

health journeys. I mean, I think we both fortunately had like the wisdom of a first marriage that didn't work out, which puts you through a really, which is like boot camp for a relationship in a huge way. And I think there's ways that we do show up for each other and do help each other heal. And Zach and I really bond. I still remember like one of the first conversations like that we really had when just meeting each other and becoming friends was really just. And I didn't know anything about Zach.

And it was like this slow kind of reveal about his family history and and his, who his father was. And we were sitting there and talking about the grief of losing a loved one. We were like on a conference on a boat. Like they were watching the sunset over the Bermuda. a triangle. And I just remember, like, we had such similar experiences and remembering that, you know, even though Zach did have this very public grieving experience and it was experienced like much later in his life in a completely different relationship, so much of the experience of grief and mental health and figuring out who you are in the context of the loss and how do

you make sense of like the world ahead of you and wanting to just show up into the world because that's who you are and kind of pretend like it didn't happen because just all these things we felt so similarly, even though like when I lost my sister to suicide, it was a 10-year-old girl and Zach was like a 30-year-old man and a completely different scenario and how similar all those feelings are for people who've experienced loss. And I think that was really beautiful to see and connect with and knowing that we were both on this self-discovery journey and like that we weren't really looking at anyone else to solve it. Like we actually wanted to solve it. We wanted to put in the work and we wanted to learn who we were and become better people.

And I really admired that about Zach and like immediately. And it's something I still admire in him today is that like he's always trying to be a better person. always taking feedback, always, you know, learning from things that don't work out. Yeah. I would add one thing to when we met. We were playing mini golf. We did play mini golf. Watching the sunset over the Bermuda triangle on a boat. Yeah. It was, it was a scenario. Like, it was just like a, you can't make it up. Yeah. It's so funny. And neither of us were even looking for anything. I was like, like,

really in my mind, I was trying to figure out so many things with my marriage. And I was like, I need more male friends. And my sister's best friend introduced us. And it was just like this kind of opportunity to get to know someone. And it turned out we were neighbors. We lived around the corner from each other in San Francisco. And so we kept in touch. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, And that's our relationship is predicated around being friends first. Yeah. And growth. And growth.

Friends and growth in our, you know, our experience first. The thing for me that's important relative to our, you know, healing journeys is not getting too intertwined around that. You know, if Olivia needs me to be involved with her business around, you know, her mental. well-being, your therapeutic experience, whatever it may be, then of course I'll show up. Yeah. But, you know, it's essential for us to establish our own foundations and our sense of identity around it, not to be intertwined around it. I think it leads to also a path of, you know, curiosity and discovery about one another.

We're constantly learning about each other, which I think is important. It also keeps things exciting and enables us to learn from one another versus every day being attached to the hip, requiring us to experience whatever it may be together as a unit versus a family unit. that can experience and see the world differently and share meaningfully and learn meaningfully from one another. And kids, like kids are just trigger the shit out of you and you realize all these things that you had that you hadn't even thought about all the time as your kids are growing from like babies into toddlers into little kids.

And you're just constantly having these revelation of like, oh my God, this need wasn't matter. like, I can't, my daughter's doing this thing to me or my son is doing this thing. And like, it's, I can't handle it. And just knowing that we can trust, we can trust each other to be like, I cannot do this. And like, I need you to step in and kind of take over because it's, I'm not in a good place right now to handle it. Yeah. And being able to see each other and take over and be like, all right, you go take five.

I'm hopping in. Yeah. Because it is craziness. And like, there's all this stuff is going to come up. I would say one thing, which is a plug for the products we've built together. It's really awesome that we've been able to create a company with a product set that helps us through our personal mental well-being journey. Yeah. Like, a lot of times I'll just be like, you need a mood shoe.

I'm like, you need a mood shoe and we'll just be like there. Yeah. With the mood shoe. Be like, let's do it. Let's bedtime is crazy right now. These kids are not settling down. Yeah. We are going to need to take some breaths and take our mood shoes.

That's so funny. We give them to our kids sometimes. In little halves. It has or like the magnesium. Like we share that with them. And it really like we work with such great teams of medical advisors that we feel really confident about it. And we know that it will how it works for us and in our family.

The mood magnesium specifically was like, an inflection point in our relationship because it enabled us to get better sleep and also have this ritual that we could say to one another, hey, do you want to do the museum? And then we drank our magnesium together. It's like the nightcap. Yeah. And it's like we made this and it's helping so many people.

And look at us. And, you know, that was exciting. That's so sweet. I love that. Well, I'm going to leave a link down below for people to check it out. But thank you both so much for coming. chatting and sharing your story. I'm happy that I got to sit down with you and really hear your story because I've known bits and pieces of it through mutuals, but this was so fun. Thank you for having.

Yeah, super fun. Thanks for having us. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.