We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Abby: How to Move On after Grief

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

341. Abby: How to Move On after Grief  In part two of Abby’s sharing about the loss of her eldest brother, Peter – she opens up more about the revelations that her journey with grief has taught her about life. To hear the first part of our conversation on grief, check out Episode 340. How Abby Survived Her Biggest Loss Discover:  -Why Abby now looks at grief like a friend; -The beautiful story of how Peter saved Abby’s life and how that hits her now; and -What was truly underneath Abby’s outsized fear of death this whole time. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we are hearing more from our beloved Abby Wambach about when her brother died. Go back to the last episode and please listen. We're discussing what has been one of the hardest and most brutal experiences of Abby's life, losing her beloved brother Peter last year, at the end of last year. And at the end of the last episode, she talked about how the grief, one way to look at it, opened up a portal that allowed her to really grieve a lot of other things in her life, allowed her to learn some things about the way she wants to move forward in life. And she has told us she'll talk to us about those things that she learned and is learning during this past year.

Because the grief doesn't, as far as I've seen, it hasn't gone anywhere. It might be changing, but it's just there, right? The grief is still there. This happened in the end of December, 2023. What do you want to tell us about what you've been learning? Well, interestingly, I've done as much research as I can trying to figure out grief logically. It's like all my books about embodiment. I will learn embodiment through these eight books.

Intellectually. Please see this PowerPoint presentation regarding embodiment. Or my 12 books I have on minimalism on this shelf over here. Yeah. The only way I can explain grief is that it's just like a friend who's with me all the time and sometimes it's sad and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's happy in some ways. Sometimes I can be in grief around thinking about my brother. You know, like my parents used to vacation down

in Florida for the winters. They were like snowbirds. And when I was mid teens, they got this condo and it was right on the water. And it was like such a joy to go down there because we were coming from Rochester, New York, which was like freezing and always cold and always snowy. And so every time we would go down there,

it was just like, we all would be so happy. And I would spend almost all the time that I had in the water, boogie boarding, swimming, body surfing in the water. And back then we didn't, sunscreen wasn't a thing. So just like burn and then peel the whole thing, you know? Thanks mom and dad, thanks. I know, but even, do you guys remember like doing baby oil?

Oh God. Oh God, yes. We would sit on our roof with aluminum foil under our faces and baby oil all over our faces and baby oil all over our faces and bodies. And then when we were done with that, we would go to our job at the local tanning salon, which didn't even pay us. We can discuss any number of shameful things, but that is a bridge too far.

No, we're leaving it. We worked in a tanning salon. By the way, we didn't work in a tanning salon. We didn't get any money. What we got is free sessions at the tanning salon. Why was anyone letting us live this way? Go ahead. They weren't. They weren't. We didn't remember when my parents found out one time and they came to the tanning salon and physically removed us. No, I don't remember that at all. That's because it was just me. Oh. That's why I physically removed. Are you serious? Yeah.

Anyway, go ahead, Abby. So you're in the water in Florida. Yeah, so I'm in the water. I'm in the water, body surfing, and my brother Peter, unbeknownst to me, is just like happens to be looking out on the balcony to the water, and he sees me struggling. Well, I get caught in a riptide, and I am, I literally cannot swim back to the water and he sees me struggling. Well, I get caught in a riptide and I am,

I literally cannot swim back to the shore because I'm 14 or 15 and nobody's taught me the rules on riptides that you have to swim parallel to the shore, not perpendicular, not back to the shore. You have to swim away from where the riptide is because then you can get back. That's a good metaphor. Carrie Anne. Anyways, all of a sudden I'm feeling like away from where the riptide is, because then you can get back. That's a good metaphor. Carry on.

Anyways, all of a sudden, I'm feeling like I can't do this. So I start screaming, and like a second later, Peter is right there, and he swims me back to safety, and I'm throwing up on the sand. And he just like offhand just like you okay?

And I was like I don't know and he's like what the hell were you doing out there as like a parent would do in the moment blame you for this horrible circumstance we put ourselves in. Defense mechanism right? You had to have done something to cause this because my grief is too strong so I'm protecting myself from this terror that you could die by deciding you've done something wrong. Yeah. Go ahead. And when somebody saves your life and then they die, it's like I have been riddled with so much guilt

for some reason around not being able to afford him the same life grace. And you know, like in my intensive therapy, I went through a lot of like the trying to figure out why I needed to know what happened. It was so important to me and I was shielding the need to understand it with, well, his heart health relates to my heart health. We are related. That had nothing to do with it. I have been under the firm belief,

and we are all under the firm belief that if you are a good person, then good things will happen to you. And so this was against a basic tenet of belief that I have been operating under my whole life. This went straight against it. And I couldn't wrap my mind around it. I couldn't understand how this thing,

how this person who was such a good guy, like he was such a good guy that his kids no longer played hockey in Rochester because they all are gone doing their own things now. And he still was going to the local hockey league, DJing between periods at the hockey rink. He was such a community. It made me feel so hearing from all of the different communities in Rochester that he was entrenched in and served in and showed up in. It made me understand

that that is the most beautiful thing in the world. Just being an irreplaceable part of a real community that you can see and touch and feel. I mean people put their, tell them about the stickers. Yeah. So this specific hockey league, they ended up putting PW, my brother's initials on the back of their helmets in remembrance of him, which is so sweet.

But none of this made sense to me. Peter was a good guy. He was a good person. Like he didn't let people bully. He was like good guy. He was a good person. Like he didn't let people bully. He was like that guy. How can this guy be the one that dies early? And so in my intensive therapy, I understood that the system

that I was operating under was faulty. That I was placing such importance on being good as if there is such a thing and as if that would even matter anyway. You mean on you? Yes, my life. So you're like trying to meet the standards of the rubric you're living under.

Like me, Abby is good. Me, Abby is safe. That's right. If I am good, if I am kind, if I am generous, then good things will happen to me. Or at least not really, really bad things. Right. At least I won't. Yeah, exactly. But this was like, wait a second. This has had to make me rethink the whole operating system. Think through what is good and what is bad and why, cause it's all a perspective.

What I think is good, someone else might think is bad. I don't know. But it's like this big illusion that we all live under that capitalism, patriarchy, religion, politics, I mean, politics probably not so much anymore. But like having to reorient or to reestablish like an operating system for myself, like that felt like such a tall order.

And this desire I love a good challenge. I like to figure shit out PS so did my brother and I really understand deeply now that it has been causing me so much suffering Trying to understand Because we will never know why or how he died. Even though we have his death certificate, we will never know what caused his real cause of death. We will never understand why it happened. Can I ask a quick question?

Yeah. When you say it was causing you so much suffering to try to understand this thing you would never understand, meaning literally what happened to my brother. Yeah, just going in circles. Like how did he die? Just going in circles on it. How did he die?

Why did he die? Because then I would start putting judgment on him. Well, was he healthy enough? And did he take his medicines? Did he go to the doctor enough? Like all this bullshit that insinuates that had he done all that stuff he would still be alive. Right. And then the same level, like the suffering that comes in trying to figure out literally what happened in the micro of those moments and weeks and months is the same suffering that trying to make sense of why did it happen in like a spiritual worldview perspective.

It's as if if you can figure out the first thing, you can figure out the second thing, but the truth is you'll never fucking figure out either of those things. That's right. That's exactly right. And that's what was so hard for me to even start putting my head around. Like, okay, I've been sold a bill of goods around this good, bad thing.

Okay, I understand that now. Okay, moving to the next phase of like, can I accept not knowing? Is that possible? And the real truth, if you wanna get to the real truthiest truth, every truth, is that we will never know why or how somebody dies or where they go. Do you think that not knowing and really embracing not knowing is the only loving way forward. Because when I think back on that time or myself, when we don't embrace not knowing, then we insist on knowing. And what knowing does is it makes us accuse and accuse and accuse

and accuse because it doesn't stop with you didn't maybe take care of your health. Then it goes to like, well, this goddamn town is unhealthy. And if he didn't live here, oh wait, but what if my parents weren't like that? What if their parents weren't like that? The judgment, when you have to know, you can't know. So you take back your power by judging, judging, judging, blaming, blaming, blaming.

And so it just, until you said that, never struck me that not knowing, surrendering to not knowing is love. That is absolutely right. The extension of it, because we'll get to like, where did he go in a second? But all of my grief throughout all of my life, I think has been perpetuated by the disease of needing to understand it.

And so all of the heartbreaks, why would they not want me? And then ruminating and looping on that. Peter dying. How did this happen? And the more therapy and the more honest, the more really, because the therapy I've been doing is about real honesty and truth and trying to get to the root of it all and the root of it all. And I know that this is going to sound so fucking crazy is that we won't ever for sure know anything. And the only thing to do is to be like, interesting.

That's really, really interesting. Because it is. I turned a corner when I started to look at it as this experience that he has had. This experience that he has walked through that I have not yet. I will. And I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but I have had this outsized fear of death and it's because I have been trying to understand it and there is no way I will ever understand it until I have experienced it and what an interesting thing to suffer with your whole life without letting go and surrendering to the not knowing.

And so that has been my work and the weirdest thing, and I don't know if you can tell, but it has transformed the way that I think about everything. I am more curious. I am less judgmental. I am like, I get shit done, like I can handle tasks. But when talking about this kind of stuff, I have loosened my grip on needing to know, and I have surrendered to the fact that I will likely,

I will probably never know. And I don't know what I know, good and bad. Everything has been, the veil has been dropped in a way where I think that I hit this roadblock that I kind of kept hitting throughout my life. And I was like, yeah, no, that doesn't make make sense I really just want to know I just really got to figure out I'll figure it out one day and I think that the art of grief of where I am and the fear that I've had with death the art of this is like the

letting go of the need to know and the surrendering to what actually is. And what actually is, is that this is the human being's experience. And the human being's experience is to be born and who knows what happens in the middle and then to die. And who knows what happens after that., and then to die. And then who knows what happens after that. And then, like, that's the other thing that I've been riddled with.

Like, where did he go? What the pod squad needs to know is how hard earned every single thing she just said is. This is not something she read. This is, for months, Abby would sit down at dinner and say, look me in the eye and say, I need you to tell me again, where do you think he went? With like a full on seriousness, like, where is he? And God help me, I just thought I was supposed to try

to answer you every night. I don't know, what were those conversations even like? Isn't it interesting to try to go back to that time when you were so in it? We've had many experiences like this over our marriage, but it felt like getting this rubric out of you was an exorcism. Yeah, that's right. That's kind of how it felt. Like, where is he? Like I needed certainty. I needed data. You're a little mad. You're a little mad. Yeah. Like why can't you tell me? You know a lot of shit. You with all your Bible thumping and your whatever.

A lot of who you are when it comes down to it. Exactly. When we really need you, you got nothing. Yeah. I had stuff. It was just all bullshit. Just wasn't passing the sniff test. No. Not for Abby. ["Dreams of a New World"] Hi, Pod Squad. I want to tell you about another podcast that you're going to love if you're not already listening

to it. I recently was a guest on 10% Happier with Dan Harris. If you haven't listened, it's the episode from July 8th, go find it. We talked about grief, addiction, love, just like really got into the depths of it. And I really appreciated Dan for wanting to take me there and being able to take me there. The 10% Happier podcast has one guiding philosophy.

Happiness is a skill, so why not learn it? 10% Happier is has one guiding philosophy. Happiness is a skill, so why not learn it? 10% Happier is hosted by Dan Harris, a journalist who had a panic attack on live national television. That event sparked the toughest and most rewarding assignment of his career. How can we do life better? He's still investigating that question

and he'd love you to come along for the ride. Every Monday and Wednesday, Dan asks world-class guests for practical approaches to everything from anxiety to boundaries, from time management to psychedelics. His guests have included Brene Brown, Lindsay C. Gibson, Nedra Glover-Tawab, Pema Shadrone, RuPaul, and Dua Lipa. And of course, me. Oh, and Glennon was a guest on the podcast too. So check it out. We love you, Dan.

You can think of listening to 10% Happier as a workout for your mind. Find 10% Happier wherever you listen to podcasts. ["Happier Than a Podcast"] It's interesting. wherever you listen to podcasts. It's interesting, I've talked to my brothers and sisters and my parents and everybody's doing grief in their way and there's no judgment here. Like I think that everybody's relationship with Peter was different than the one I had with him

and their experience with his loss is gonna be different than my experience with his loss will be. And it's impossible to go through this experience without centering yourself because when you are dealing with somebody who's passed away, it's just instinct. You're like, oh my gosh, like that's gonna happen to me. Where will I go? What will my family do? How will they respond? And one thing I've learned in this experience is that before this experience,

I thought, oh, I'm gonna have like a pretty nailed down like will and what I want for my services and whatever. And I now would alter that to, I do think the services for me, this is no judgment on other people, but for me, the services and stuff that happens after I die are for the living, and whatever makes them feel like they can say goodbye to me in their way,

that is what I want for that experience. And you mean the kids? Yeah, you and the kids. And I don't mean to put you under more work. I'm happy to plan it if you want, but. Just make like, at least make a playlist, okay? Because that's like really hard for Gwennett. But like, I'll be dead.

I'll be in a different place wherever that might be. If it's in nowhere land, then I'm in nowhere land. If it's in heaven, then I'm there. If it's spiritual energy and I return back to the well in which we came, then that's where I go. And we will never know where that is. The living will never know. It's like the little game we're playing down here with ourselves. Like, oh, I'm going to figure this out. You know, like religion didn't do it for me. So I was like, okay, I'm going to do atheism. And then it was like, oh, just be like, uber spiritual. And all of that is pointing to some idealism of knowing. And I have found for me that that created more suffering, this

belief that I would figure it out. I have never heard anyone talk about it this way, Abby, and it's so fascinating to me because as you're talking, I'm thinking of all of these things. The way you're describing needing to know, to me it's like one of the reasons we need to know is completely about self-preservation. Because it's the same way it's like when your marriage falls apart, everyone wants to know exactly what happened because really they want to know, okay, look, my relationship is different than that. So my marriage isn't going to fall apart. Like when you need to know what happened, you're like, tell me something that I can use to assure myself that I am also not

going to die when I don't deserve to die. That's exactly right. So if you have on one side that self protection, self preservation, which as you're describing, if you have that your whole life, every day of your life, the suffering we go through trying to protect ourselves in the little bitty ways and the big huge ways is so sad. And the opposite of self-protection is surrender. You're surrendering to exactly that, that you're never going to fucking know. And you're surrendering to the idea that there is no way to protect yourself.

That you are just as likely for anything to happen to you as anybody else, and none of it makes any sense. And it's like those ideas of God are on either side of that too. It's like one side of God is like, follow these rules. We can know, we can know, we can judge. And the other side of God, like indigenous cultures, the word for God is mystery. What you're surrendering to is mystery. And your only belief is in mystery.

Yes. And then I think you think you learn, or beingness is any lesson to me. It's like what you learned is the thing you thought was the burden. The fact of death. The thing you thought was a burden is not the burden. The burden is trying to figure out the thing, trying to figure out your grief, figure out God, figure out life and death, figure out why good things happen to bad people and vice versa is, I think of the Prometheus, like

the boulder on your back that you will spend your entire life carrying and will never ever. It's not the figuring out, finally figuring it out, solving life, solving death, solving grief that lets you put the rock down. It's the admitting that you will never figure it out and you don't have to. It's putting down the biggest burden of your life that you don't have to figure it out and since you don't have to figure it out, you don't have to blame anybody for it, including yourself. Yeah. I think one of the things,

I just wanna say this, cause I think it's important. Everything is the most important and nothing is important at the exact same time. I know that sounds so fucking bonkers, but it's true to me. Even though I believe in every cell of my being, that I don't know, I have no control over how and when I will die.

I'm still gonna treat my body healthy. I'm gonna try to eat as well as I can. What I'm saying here is eat as well as I can. What I'm saying here is that I have no control. And so what I have been doing over the course of my life is I have been suffering with the idea that I could control the longevity of my life. It's the suffering from the idea. It's not the actual doing of it.

It's the intention behind. It's like two people could be doing the exact same things. And like one, if one's doing it with certain intention, they're suffering while they do it. If the other one isn't, then they're not. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, I have a complicated genetics history. We have heart disease in our family and thyroid stuff and diabetes stuff. And so I've been very proactive slash, what is the word?

Neurotic. Yeah. What's it called when you think you're sick all the time? Hypochondria. Yeah, slash I do like, I'm very in tune and in touch with my body probably to a fault but what that does is causes me a lot of suffering thinking about oh my gosh have I gotten all the tests done? Am I alive? Am I going to be able to survive all this? So both of these things

can be true at the same time. I'm just trying to relieve some of the neuroses around the way that I think about how much control I actually have here. And the same goes with grief. You know, I think so many of us struggle inside of grief because we want it to be over with. And what I have learned, like I said earlier, or the previous episode is that grief has become a friend

to me in that I am developing a real true relationship with it because it's the access point to all of the most intense feelings that I feel. The most intense sadness, the most intense anger. Yes, I can experience those without being in active grief, but this is like a little treasure trove of intensity that is super interesting. Yeah, it's hard. Yes. Don't want to be there forever, but developing a relationship with those emotions and the experience of it is, I think, one of the greatest gifts of this time for me. One, because I never

had a relationship with grief before. And two, it's like trying to reorganize the way we think about grief. It's like grief, oh, rather than, oh, this is interesting. You're like a little professor that you've come to teach me some shit. And Glennon, you've talked about this, like when pain comes to your door and comes knocking, you let pain in and ask it to sit down and teach you everything that you need to know. That's how I feel right now about this. And I actually, I've developed a relationship, a close relationship with this friend of mine grief, so much so that I don't want it to leave. I wonder if this is a common thing for folks who go through grief because it's my direct line to Peter. I can get, you know, in my therapy, I've laid some breadcrumbs back towards certain emotions because as you get away from grief, you can forget. It's

easy to move on. It's easy to forget. And so I have laid some breadcrumbs back to even the stuff that brought me to my knees. Because it's this full body, Peter's here experience. And that there is like a little weird comfort in that, that, oh, he isn't forgotten. Because now all of us, I don't care what you believe, but all of us in order to keep Peter's spirit alive, that now lives in our memories. And to me memory isn't just about, oh I remembered this thing. It's like what kind of energy did that create throughout my whole body? And how can I reverberate or send, you know, emit Peter energy out into the world so that he's still with us in some way, shape or form, whether it's like the blinking lights or I'm

like, I cry, I still cry sometimes. I mean, I've been crying this morning. I'm looking at a picture of him. I keep a picture of him on my bedside table and he's on my phone. And the other day I thought, gosh, I wonder, it feels kind of masochistic in a way to like always be confronting it, this grief thing.

And maybe it is on some level, but I also think it's like this little muscle that I'm learning to work. That it's like, oh, there's that intensity. There's the anger. There's the sadness. I mean, watching his kids play sports and graduate from college and all the stuff that's happened, that would have happened in his life had he had been alive. Every single time I'm just like a wreck. I'm like so sad. Sad for his family, sad for him. You know, talk to my mom and she's still going through it pretty intensely and

it's just been, it's been such an extraordinarily, I don't even want to say difficult, but that's like the only English word I can think of. It's been strenuous. It's been taxing. It's been in moments all consuming. It's been confusing. It's been infuriating and tragic and shocking. There are definitely days that I'm fucking tired of it. I just want to have a day that I don't experience any of this stuff. And I think it will get easier. I think that my relationship with this specific grief will get easier, especially as I keep dealing with all the cars to that train of grief that I've carried throughout my life.

Can you describe the train one more time? I think it's the coolest thing I've ever heard and it was in the last episode. So describe how you thought about the first. Yeah, well, it was actually said to me by my therapist, grief can also feel like a train where, you know, the first car shows up and it could either be your first real experience with grief

or the most recent one you choose. And then it's just carrying all of these other trains, all these other cars on the train of your grief of the different moments in your life where you experienced grief. Some you might've dealt with for me, I really hadn't journeyed down this train. This train did not have all of the windows and doors were shut and now I feel like

I've gone through, I've walked through all of the aisles of every grief that I have experienced in my life and some of the windows on those cars are open. Getting some air to them. Some of the cars on that grief train, those windows are still shut. And yet, yet, right? Yeah, yeah, they're still shut. I will work my way there. Slow and steady, slow and steady. And I don't know, like, I'm pissed at Peter for leaving, you know. I understand that he probably didn't have much to do with it, but I'm just like still a little bit mad at him. Yeah. Thank you for saying that.

I think that people don't admit that often of like anger to the departed. And I think it's very, very normal. Yeah. I'm just like, gosh, man, we miss you. I know his kids miss him. And what an interesting thing to be mad at somebody who's dead. Well, it's like, you know, we all want to leave the party. You can't just go.

Like we, the rest of us are here suffering. Like it feels a little bit like that. Like, oh, it's such a beautiful thing just to focus on the missing though. Like the missing is what's left. It's like, remember that beautiful moment when Stephen Colbert used to ask everybody like, what happens after we die? And everybody would spin these convoluted messages based on their own spirituality or their own. Are you going to talk about Keanu Reeves? Yes. Yes, thank you. Keanu Reeves just looked at him and he took a moment

and then he said, I think that when we die, the people who loved us will miss us very much. Yeah. It's beautiful. I think about it all the time, but it's like, that's the only thing we know. And that is enough. Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. I think about it all the time, but it's like, that's the only thing we know. And that is enough.

Yeah. Yeah. And who's to say that isn't like the knowing? We'll never know. We'll never know. Like, or if we know that, is that not the answer? Is there not something like deeply beautiful and spiritual about that? Yeah. That like we will go and the people that love us will

miss us very much. Yeah it's beautiful and it's true and that's honestly it's interesting because some of my grief and heartbreak that I've had throughout my life I would compartmentalize some of it. And I would have like certain times of my life where, or just like in a day, where if I was feeling longing for somebody, that I would spend some time that day and I would long for them. Like I would consciously think about them and think stories about them or when I was laying in bed or I'd fantasize about whatever, you know, thing could happen to bring us back together. It kept me company in a way.

experiencing that the missing or the longing, it wasn't a direct one-to-one replacement, but it was something. And I find myself doing that with Peter. You know, we always do my family of origin. They always go to this special place every summer. It's my favorite place in the world up in Canada and the Thousand Islands. And I'm going to go this year because Peter was like the one that would like weed and mow the lawn and set the place up and make sure it was like, as everybody remembered it, nostalgic wise. And then he would spend the entire fucking day driving kids on boats, whether it was like just a boat ride or, you know, wakeboarding or water skiing or getting on a jet ski. He just like was the guy who did it all. And so I think that his presence is going to be

pretty palpable being missed this year. And so I think a lot of us are going to try to get up there and you know not take his place but try to fill in the void. And the missing thing, yeah, like, it sucks to miss somebody. And it's also kind of where he lives now for me. He like lives in this place, this alternate reality of my heart and my soul and my brain of fantasy land. I mean, I dream about him.

Remember the first time I dreamt about him. I woke up and told Glennon, like, I saw my brother in my dream, and that felt so good because, like, my consciousness is like, OK, we can do this now. You know, I Don't know if I'll ever get used to this missing thing Or I think what also happens in grief is that people get tired of it Which I totally understand and there's absolutely no judgment coming from me here I get it I

Really want to Int to intentionally go towards allowing more space and room in my life for grief to show up whenever it needs to. Because like I said, it feels like this access to my brother and to the heartbreaks of my life. And I like to think that I will be able to sustain a life with grief, not just joy and happiness. It's like, oh no, like the pie is the pie.

It's almost like this one slice had like a question mark on it and it was I never was able to label it and I feel like now I'm able to like see the full pie chart of my life, of myself, of my consciousness, of my parts. Your humanity. Yeah I'm able to like write in with big bold letters grief, grief lives here, grief lives here and I want it to live here. I'm not afraid of it, it will not kill me, at least I don't think. It's a mystery.

It's a mystery. Maybe it will. And it's not linear, it's like a circle that keeps kind of changing and morphing. And the thing that I am most proud of myself at this point in this process is truly believing that there is so much that we don't know. And there is so much out of all of our control. And that a beautiful life is so important and also not important at all. Everything is everything.

And also everything is nothing. Does that make any sense? I'm telling you, it's like living with Yoda now. It's like... amazing what this work has done in you. I'm just amazed. I mean, I've been listening to you talk about this for five months but hearing you say it all in this one capsule I

just admire you so much and I think you're absolutely brilliant. Thank you and also I don't mean to speak on behalf of grief. No you're speaking on behalf of your grief. I love how you describe it as a friend and when you you're talking about it, it makes me feel like this little friend. You know how you have a friend who like always wants to talk deep and like always wants to like stay close to the bone and you love that friend, but sometimes you just want them to shut up and you want to talk to your friend who like wants to talk about Zac Efron and so on. The grief is that friend, right?

The grief is like this podcast. Sometimes you just want something lighter, but it does help. Because I heard you talk recently about how I feel like language with you, you have come up against frustration with language not being sufficient to explain what's going on in you or you're so carefully choosing your words because you're trying to convey something that is beyond words. And it feels to me like you're bumping up against this word grief and the hugely negative connotation of it because when you're saying grief is my touchstone to Peter, grief is my touchstone to my past griefs, what I really hear you saying is this thing, grief is my touchstone to myself, to this self that I didn't know that I was brave enough to explore, to this

fullness of life experience. And so it's like this broken thing, but that really is not negative, really, all in itself, right? It's the ache. It's the ache that is both love and pain, that is both beauty and ugliness, that is you cannot have one without the other. That's right. That's exactly right.

And I think that that's probably the greatest teaching of this experience is that I've learned that I'm not afraid of what happens after death because I'll be dead. I am so afraid of losing life because I love living. And I've learned that that's interesting, especially because the only sure thing about living is dying. And so I have to accept both if I want one of them. I can't not accept death because death is life. Death is a part of life.

Death might be the actual point. I don't know. I don't know. I once had this vision of myself and you know that all I'm trying to do is figure things out. I can just figure it out in my head. I know I've been watching it since my revelations and I'm just thinking lots of things. And I had this vision of myself as a little girl and I was walking through a forest that was like another realm and had a little notebook,

as I always do. And I was trying to figure something out and out of frustration I just yelled to this guy, I don't know. And what happened, as you know, babe, was this explosion of joy from the universe. Fireworks went out, flowers exploded, the realm celebrated. And I was like, what the fuck just happened? So then I waited a few minutes and I said it again.

I don't know, explosion of joy. And it was like the universe was like, oh, she gets it finally. The truthiest truth you can say and the most beautiful gift you can give yourself and your people in the universe is just to celebrate the I don't know forever. It's like magic words.

They are, and I have avoided them my whole life. And I feel like I've been saying I don't know. Yes, you have. So much. Yeah. Yeah. It's putting down a burden that you never had to carry. Yeah. But I thought that I needed to know things. For my worthiness, for respect. For safety. For safety. All this stuff. And it's just not true. Grief is the portal into the I don't know, which allows you to breathe a little bit. Maybe.

Maybe. We don't know. Pod Squad, we do know that we love you and we will see you back here next time. Thanks for listening, y'all. Really appreciate it. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things, first, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things?

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Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Alison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.