We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Why Grief – like Love – is Forever with Marisa Renee Lee

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

1. Practical tips for guiding friends and family through your grief–and the permission slips to give yourself. 2. Why there is no such thing as grief etiquette–and how it’s less about what you say and more about what you do. 3. What it finally took for Marisa to surrender to the fact that she was not in control of her love or her grief.  4. How to integrate love and grief in order to find joy again after loss–and how, 12 years after her mother’s death, Marisa includes her mom in her son’s life. 5. The life-changing perspective shift that Marisa gained from a conversation with Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina Fulton. About Marisa: Marisa Renee Lee is a called upon grief advocate, entrepreneur, and author of the upcoming book “Grief is Love.” Deemed “the friend we all wish we had in times of need,” by Elaine Welteroth, Marisa is able to utilize research-based advice and wisdom to help others navigate the complicated and challenging emotions we face when experiencing loss, offering unique insights for women and Black communities. She is no stranger to grief herself. In 2008, after a lengthy battle, she lost her mother to cancer. Shortly after, she lost her fertility, a pregnancy, and most recently, a cousin to the COVID-19 pandemic. These losses transformed her life and led her to question what healing truly requires outside the limited roadmap often handed to us by societal expectations. In the end, Marisa found that if we can own and honor what we've lost, we can have a beautiful and joyful life amid grief. In addition to her work in the grief space, Lee is a former appointee in the Obama White House and CEO of Beacon Advisors, a mission-driven consulting firm primarily focused on racial equity. She is a rabble-rouser of social healing: former managing director of My Brother's Keeper Alliance; co-founder of the digital platform Supportal; and founder of The Pink Agenda, a national organization dedicated to raising money for breast cancer care, research, and awareness. Lee also regularly contributes to Glamour, Vogue, MSNBC, and CNN and serves as an expert for Ritual's wellbeing app. She is a Harvard graduate and an avid home cook. Marisa lives in the Washington DC area with her husband Matt, their newborn son Bennett, and their dog, Sadie. TW: @MarisaReneeLee IG: @marisareneelee 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

Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are whenever we need it, download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier, or pay subscription starting at 12.99 per month. We've stopped asking directions, some places they've never been. Hello, LoveBugs! Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Really grateful that you came back to

visit us for the next hour. We recently did an episode with our dear friend, Dr. Brunei Brown, and she talked to us about the power of normalization. She was telling us a story about helping an aging sick parent. And she was talking to us about how she talked about that process to her own children. And she said that one night she sat them down and she said, it's wonderful, it's beautiful, I wouldn't have it any other way. And sometimes I find myself just wishing it would be over. I find myself just wishing it would be over.

And she talked about telling her children that truth of that feeling that she had everyone's not with her mother and called it normalization. And I thought, God, what a beautiful thing to do for someone else. Just tell them the whole truth about what an experience is like for you. So that in the future, when they have that experience and they have those feelings, no matter how dark or weird or unacceptable they are, they will know they are acceptable. So they won't have shame added to an already extremely difficult experience. Normalization is the more I think about it, I just think it might be the most powerful tool we can use to help each other

navigate the human experience. And that's what we're trying to do here. So today we're going to do that with grief. Podsquatters have been asking for an episode about grief for a very long time. I get it. I want to know how to grieve right. I want to know how to crush grieving. Okay. Tell myself there's a way. There's a way to be so ready for it that we can just beat it completely. But I knew we were ready to finally do this episode when I read Marissa Renee Lee's book. Grief is love. So Marissa really normalizes grief for the world. She doesn't present it prescriptively or make any promises. She just paints it as a beautiful picture. And really, she teaches us that we can't prepare for it because to prepare us to control and love can't be controlled.

So neither can grief because as she tells us and teaches us through her work, grief is love. They're just different words to say the same thing. So even if we can't prepare for it, we can be together in it. That's what we're going to do today. Welcome Marissa. Yay. Thank we're going to do today. Welcome, Marissa. Yay, thank you so much for having me. I am really excited for this conversation. I know we're going to hit on a bunch of messy, complicated, hard things, and I just think it's so important.

So thank you both for making space for this conversation. Absolutely. And I'm going to introduce you formally to the Pod Squad. Marissa Renee Lee is a grief advocate, entrepreneur, and author of grief is love. The loss of her mother and after years of dealing with infertility, loss of a much-one in pregnancy transformed her life. Her grief led her to question what healing requires outside of the limited roadmap offered by our society. Marissa's book utilizes research-based

approaches to navigate the complicated and challenging emotions we face when experience sing loss, offering unique insights for women and black communities. She's a former appointee of the Obama White House, the Harvard graduate, and Abbot Home Cook, and lives in the DC area with her husband, Matt, their newborn son, Bennett, and their dogs, Amy. Marissa, when your beloved mother, Lisa, got sick with MS. Your 13, your young life was turned around instantly because your mother was such a beautiful caretaker. And suddenly you were in a caretaking role.

And then at 22, when you should have been celebrating your senior week at Harvard, your mother was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. So can you take us back to that moment when you were in that doctor's office and you heard the words and what happened inside of you? It is one of those life-changing moments that you just never forget and I knew that reading about that moment was gonna be one of the really hard parts of the book for my father. What happened is we knew that my mom was really sick. She had a mess but there was something going on that senior year in college. She was constantly in and out of the hospital, job on campus and she called me

and a doctor, an orthopedic doctor, who was a family friend, had found some lesions on her spine. And in that moment, I thought, oh, that's got to be something very serious and really bad. And so I made plans to leave school a few days before graduation and head home to New York to be with my mom and dad as they found out what was wrong. And we found ourselves in a small oncologist office in Fishkill, New York. And I remember standing there, you know, furiously taking notes by hand because this was 2005. And the doctor put his hand on her left breast. And then he took like some sort of doctor's ruler type thing and he measured it.

And then he took her hand and said, can you feel that? And she said, yes. And I knew in that moment when she said yes, that meant that whatever was found in her bones was also in her breast, which to me said, stage four cancer of some kind. And that was the diagnosis. It was stage four breast cancer, a death

sentence. And I felt my life completely change. And I just, any sense of stability that I had about, you know, life in my future, especially given my days away from graduating, trying to figure out what's next for me, what might my career look like, where am I headed? And now my mom is dying. And I know you know a thing or two about control. I shut down. Friends were calling and checking up on me, wanting to know what's going on with mom, how is she doing, how are you doing? I completely ignored everyone,

and I drove myself that night to Barnes and Noble and decided I was going to immerse myself in the research and the literature. If my mom was gonna die from cancer, it was gonna be as good as it could be for her. I was gonna know every statistic, I was gonna understand every data point, I was going to understand every data point, I was going to know everything about the latest treatments

and the best diet and everything to do because I wanted her to be as supported as possible. In that moment, I did not think about support for myself. I couldn't deal with feelings. I could only take action. That was my solution, the research, and then I put all of my research notes and next steps in a color-coded binder.

And that was how I coped. You said that when that happened, you gave yourself permission to not to fall apart, but to soldier on. When we talk about grief, that is sort of the cultural idea that we're going to soldier on through it. Is that more of a said the more I read your work, I thought, is it the actual opposite of that imagery? Because what it feels like your work says to us is in that moment what we have to do is surrender

to whatever grief has for us. But instead, we have the soldier metaphor and soldiers don't surrender. I mean, you're right. I lead the book with this chapter on permission because the thing that I didn't give myself permission to do was permission to grieve, permission to be a mess, even just for a couple of hours or a couple of days. I didn't allow myself that space. I only allowed myself to worry about my mom to be focused on what I could do to help my mom. You know, even I remember telling her that she didn't have to come to graduation. Like that was, that was where I was. I couldn't face my own feelings because I believed that they would overwhelm me. And I now know from the research and years of being in and out of therapy that when we

actually do surrender to our feelings, when we name them either internally to ourselves, write them out, share them with a friend, like that is actually when they become easier to deal with. And so I encourage other people to do that, but like I couldn't do it. I didn't feel comfortable enough, I didn't feel safe enough, and I was a kid who was really worried about her mom. Yeah. There's no way to crush grief. There's no way to do it right. If so, your binder would have done it. Okay. Oh yeah.

But you do identify some gifts that we can give ourselves as we enter into grief. They're almost like superpowers to claim or just like the first one you just identified as permission. You say healing starts when we give ourselves permission to grieve. You describe it as a whole pass. If you had gotten, could do it over again and you had gotten, do it over again. And you had gotten this information from your mom, about your mom. You would have given yourself a huge hall pass. Talk to us, why do we need that hall pass

when we enter into grief? And what is the hall pass permission to do? The permission piece, I think, is very important because so often when we have emotions that are more challenging, that is how I'm framing them as challenging, but we tend to frame them as negative. We don't give ourselves permission to just to feel them, to be with them, to express them. And we need to let ourselves do that. And in this case, obviously, I'm very focused on grief, but a part of grief is often, obviously, feelings of sadness,

anger, frustration, disappointment, et cetera. And the thing that makes all of those things harder to deal with is when we don't give ourselves permission to express or experience them. When we try to instead ignore or suppress our feelings, that's actually what keeps us stuck and often leads to other challenges. And that's part of why, frankly, I think right now, we need a plan as a country to give people permission to grieve. Given where we are after the last two and a half years

of this global pandemic, the other thing that I felt was really important to me that I wasn't able to fully access was a sense of safety. I think that grief requires a degree of vulnerability. You can give yourself permission to grieve, but then you need spaces and places and people where you feel comfortable expressing that grief. And I think it's really hard to feel

comfortable being emotionally vulnerable if you don't feel safe. So I think safety is a really important part of the equation and one that we don't often pay enough attention to. I think you also need to give yourself permission to ask for help. Whether it is help that you pay for in the form of therapy or counseling or support group that you join, whether virtual or in person, that you join, whether virtual or in person, or just family and friends who you can reach out to when you're having a hard time, people who you can say, like, look, for me, it's February. My friends call it fuck you February.

My mom died on the 28th and her birthday is on the 18th. So like the lead up is weird and I just feel like crabby and a bit off. And then the 10 days in between are an unpredictable mess. I might be fine. I might be anxious. I might be angry. I might start crying for no apparent reason at all other than I miss my mom who's been dead for 14 years. And so, you know, having a group of people who are ready to send the supportive text or send a bunch of cupcakes or whatever it is just makes dealing with the grief so much easier. And then you have to, you have to get comfortable

with the concept of grace, which is something that I hadn't thought of a lot, but when I sat down to write this book and really think about what has enabled me to live with this loss, grace is a big part of the equation. As far as I can tell grief is forever, I don't know that there will ever be a day where I stop thinking about or missing or longing for my mom. And so because grief is forever and because grief is also highly unpredictable, I have to be prepared to regularly extend grace to myself and also to extend it to other people who deserve it when they don't show up the way that I expect them to. Those tools that you just gave,

the first one you said, an actual permission slip. I think that that is such a tangible thing that people can take into their lives. You discuss how you wrote an email to all the people that were reaching out to you. They're trying to support you. But it isn't exactly what you needed in that moment, and you wrote to everyone and said,

listen, I'm not writing any of you back, but I still want you to write to me. I still want you to reach out and invite me to things, but I need you to expect that I'm not gonna write you back right now. I'm not gonna be able to reciprocate, but I feel you. And I think that's so important when I was going through my divorce.

I remember right after my friends were trying to support me. And they, so they planned this girl's trip of us. And it was the night before. They were already on the way to the trip. And I said, I'm not going to that. Like I can't do it Like I can't do it. I can't do it. And it ended up being even more suffering

on top of the grief, because they were so upset. But we were all young. We didn't know. But I think just giving yourself that permission slip and preemptively telling people who don't understand this is what you can expect of me. What do you need permission to do? What does it look like to manifest grief in the world?

So I think you need permission, first and foremost, frankly, to be kind of a shit friend. Yes. Grief is so intense and painful. And like I said before, unpredictable. Like the biggest thing for me when I sent that email, I needed them to know that my inability to be the person that they had come to expect me to be was just a part of my life

at that time. And I needed them to be okay with it so that I wasn't both like trying to manage all of these emotions that I wasn't even half the time giving myself permission to feel while also managing my job, while also helping my father care for my dying mother, while also trying to maintain these expectations for normal friendship. There were times when I needed that break and that escape from the heaviness and the intensity of my life back then. But there were also times when I would make plans to meet someone for drinks or dinner or whatever. Right before I would melt down and realize I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't actually take a shower and get dressed and go meet someone and have a conversation. actually take a shower and get dressed and like go meet someone and have a conversation. So like permission to just to let go of the expectations that you have for yourself. And for me it was about

friendship, but it can also be about work. It can be about how you show up as a parent, because when grief arrives, it takes over. And you are not in charge. And I think permission to just let grief lead sometimes is a big, big, big part of the healing process. I know from my experience, not giving myself permission in those early years, that it can be really damaging, it made my anxiety a lot worse for sure, lack of in those early years, that it can be really damaging. It made my anxiety a lot worse for sure, lack of ability to sleep,

feeling that intense physical anxiety, knowing that with each night that passed, I was a day closer to my mom dying. It was not healthy at all. So you just have to permission for your personality and your expectations and your standards to disappear. Let it all go. And let grief guide you, surrender to this other energy.

And when people are looking at the griever, because you're talking about the griever, it's important for the person who is looking at the griever to understand deeply that there is a takeover and there is no such thing as grief etiquette. That person is not gonna be following a set of grieving etiquette. Absolutely. Now, and if you are the supporter, what do I do? How do I show up? How do I support

someone? And I'm currently supporting someone who's dealing with grief. And it's hard. It is not this thing that is just limited to the time around when someone dies. We have this image of grief that is so closely connected to the time of death. You think about all the TV shows and movies where everyone's in black at the funeral and then we're moving on to the next scene like five minutes later and that's what we've come to understand grief as and that is wrong. Grief is the repeated experience of learning to live in the midst of a significant loss. You are doing that learning before the death, after the death, weeks, months, years, decades later. I struggled with Mother's Day this year. It was my first Mother's Day as a mom, which is awesome, but I also don't have my mom to share in this experience that made it really hard.

I lost it before a book event, the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend, and my husband really didn't know what to do, so just made me take a long hot shower and was like, you were gonna be a little bit late for the event, but like it's gonna be okay. And he just supported me through it by just being kind and gentle and not being like, you have to get your shit together basically. And so I think if you are someone who's trying to support someone, be prepared to show up

over and over and over again. The fact that my friends have named February, and then it's a thing that we are all in on and that they are a part of even all these years later. That is how you show people that you really love them, continuing to show up. And if you are someone who doesn't know what to say, someone just lost someone, or perhaps is dealing with the lead up to losing someone they love,

I am telling you it is less about what what you say and more about what you do and just how you treat them because there's nothing that you're going to say that is going to be the perfect thing. Nothing will give them enough comfort, but showing up in a way that is authentic to them and or to your relationship with them is what matters. When we lost our pregnancy, one of my really good friends, she and I, we love cheese.

Like cheese has been a big part of our relationship and she sent a box of gourmet cheese and like stuff to go with it from Murray's cheese shop in the West Village. And when I got that package, I felt so seen because it wasn't about this horrible loss that I hadn't even still processed. It was about Marissa.

Show up in a way that reminds people like who they are in their core. That's a good tip. She stepped outside of grief etiquette. Like grief etiquette says send the flowers. And the da da da da da da da. No, she stepped outside of flowers. And like thought about you.

I'm Jonathan Menevar. I'm a podcast producer and someone who likes fancy things. But I grew up working class. My parents were immigrants with factory jobs. And because of that, I think about class a lot. And I want to talk about it. That's what we're doing on my new podcast, Classy. And what did you all eat?

You know, trailer food. I was like, girl, we're not doing that anymore. You'll hear from people who told me awkward, embarrassing, and strangely intimate things about what class means to them. She said, you know, for the house cleaner, I hide the tag on the $6 bread. For the house cleaner, I hide the tag on the $6 bread. And I just thought, don't you think she knows that you're wealthy? You're hiding the tags from yourself. Classy. A new podcast from Pineapple Street Studios.

Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. What is an example of thinking of something you expected? A way you thought grief was supposed to go compared to what it was. I did all of my grief research. I was reading Elizabeth Kubler-Rosses on death and dying months before my mom died. I sat with my mom and put together a spreadsheet of all of her blessed wishes, what she wanted for a funeral, and what she wanted to do with some of her things. I did all of the stuff I could to prepare, and I really thought that that was going to be my saving grace. My dad was the one who was praying for some kind of a miracle until the day that she died. Whereas

I was the one that was like, mom's gonna die, we need to make a plan, we need to be honest about this and just like, do what we have to do to make it as easy on her and as easy on us as possible, all practical no feelings. And so I thought that meant that when she did die, I was gonna be better off. It wasn't gonna be as hard for me because I did the work. And then it happened and I was lost.

You mentioned this a little bit in your conversation with Liz Gilbert. I didn't realize that when my mom died, I became a different person. Like, whether I wanted to or not, I was no longer Marissa who she was on February 28th at 5.36 p.m. Like, when the clock turned and she was pronounced dead, I became Marissa who no longer has her mom in this world.

That's just a different person. That for me was like the first biggest shock. And then I was shocked to struggle so much with work. Like I've always been like a very career oriented. Let's get it done, type person. And I went back to work two weeks after we buried my mom. Every morning, I could get up, get myself ready, put on the makeup, get on a subway. And then when I would go to

walk up the steps at the subway station and go to walk the two blocks to my office, I was there having a panic attack, like debilitating heart racing. Am I going to be able to not start crying? Like I feel like I can barely breathe. And I could make it to the building and I would hide in the basement and have this panic attack every morning for months after my mom died. And I only know that it went on for months because the same girl who sent the cheese when we lost her pregnancy was my colleague at the time at the bank and she would come down every morning. She would grab a Xanax from my desk and bring me a latte and a cookie. That's how I

started my day for months and acted like it was the most normal thing in the world. And it is normal in the sense that grief can show up certainly as anxiety, depression, and lots of other manifestations. It was a shock to me because I really thought I was gonna be okay. But what I know now is that you have to redefine what okay is after loss. And I think that so much of your work

gives that permission to redefine okay, what you referenced before about the permission, even the permission goes both ways. I mean, you in your work give permission for other people to not know what to do, to not know what to say, you like to just show up with whatever love they have and that that's going to be enough. Like your friends who came over the night you lost the pregnancy.

They didn't have any magic words. They just watched TV with you and that's what you needed. And permission to know that grief is forever and it's going to show up even in your joy. And even in sometimes your most joyful moments, grief will be right there, even in sometimes your most joyful moments, grief will be right there, dovetailed with your joy. One story that you told just absolutely wrecked me and made me understand. And that was napkin gate. Can you please, can you tell the story of napkin gate?

Because I'm so poignant and it's hilarious. When you lose someone you love, you can't help but think about the obvious things that they are going to miss, right? Like, they're not going to be there for the graduation, for big job, the wedding, the baby, what you fail to consider is all of the other things that are associated with those things where like you will miss your person so much more. And so in my case, I started planning my wedding and I love parties. I love hosting. If you want to have a party, if you need a recipe, if you're trying

to figure out how to thoughtfully gather people, like I am your girl, and I am that person because of my mom. I have all these vivid memories of being in my parents like tiny house in upstate New York, like in the kitchen, trying out recipes with her for Christmas or making one of those, one of those fourth of July cakes with the whipped cream and the berries and the shape of the American flat. I love that stuff. And that's just a huge part of who I am. And so with the wedding, it was like, okay, like every single detail is going to be impeccable and perfect and just like scream, love,

and happiness, enjoy, and be super authentic to the two of us. And my husband on the other hand, and be super authentic to the two of us. And my husband, on the other hand, had three requests. He wanted a roast pig at some point. He wanted vintage China plates for the tables. And he said he didn't want any Kanye West music. Just to give you context on the extent that he was like cared about those details. He was a man for his time.

Yeah, he really was. He really was. I got like really into personalized perfect invitations with a vintage map of the Hudson Valley. Then I got into finding all of these beautiful rentals and the perfect venue that was also a non-profit. We were giving back to the community at the scene. Creshing, letting, planning, crushing, crushing. Then I was so proud of myself. I'd bring him these things and he's like, okay, but like clearly didn't give a shit.

And then finally, I realized that we could purchase the napkins for like the wedding instead of renting them. And it would both save us money and it would be less wasteful. I don't know what I thought we were gonna do with a $150 of these napkins. But I did the same thing Marissa, I know. I'm still I don't know what I thought we were gonna do with a 150 of these tokens, but I did the same thing Marissa, I know. I'm still using it.

I was like, still using it. Okay, see, so like somebody would use it. Okay, so I was very proud of myself and I presented this to Matt, this whole plan, so excited. And he was like, okay. And he's a lack of enthusiasm. Oh my God, it pissed me. I just like walked away.

I was so mad. I remember going up to the guest room in our house at the time and just see them. And then I ended up crying because I realized it wasn't him that I was mad at. Like yes, I wanted him to be more enthusiastic about all of these awesome things I was doing for our wedding, but he's not that guy.

Because the person who would have that enthusiasm, who would be like that in the weeds in every single detail with me, was dead. Yes. And she was the person who like taught me to care about those details, those details are how we show people that we love them by like putting thought and attention and care into the little things. And it broke my heart. You said no one else was going to care half as much as my mother would care about the little details surrounding our wedding. Of course, I felt her absence most acutely in

the detail she had raised me to care about. She taught me that that is where love lives in the little things that make the big things extra special. That was such a beautiful portrait because it seems that like the little things is also where our love lives for people. That our people being part of the little things is what makes the big things extra special. The grief is maybe most acutely in those little things because because that's where love lives and so of course your mom is going to be the only one to care about the napkins and of course in that moment you feel her biggest loss because plenty of people are excited about your wedding. But only one person was going to be excited about your napkins.

Yes. I remember mom saying that when her mom died, she realized she might get a call for me telling a story about the kids, about my kids. And she realized that's where the chain ends now. Because I can't call my mom and tell her the story about your kids. She just would feel herself reaching for the phone

and then, oh yeah. Yeah, oh yeah, I did that all the time. My mom, I was expected whenever I was traveling to check in and let her know that I made it somewhere safely. And the number of times on work trips and friend trips after she died where I would pick up my phone and be like, oh, right, you can't do that anymore.

I don't think unfortunately, we fully grasp all that we've lost when we lose someone we love until they're gone. At the end of the day, these are the people that make up the details of our lives. Is there any such thing after your first deep grief? Is there pure joy anymore? The example you just gave of your first mother's day. After the journey, you have gone through to become a mother. Your first mother's day, the highest high the most joyful joy. But the most joyful joys are now pierced because of loss. It's

this idea we have of beautiful, like now the most beautiful things also make you think of the most brutal loss. everything will be both now. Yeah, I think about when you work in the White House, you get to do a departure, family photo with the president, or at least in the Obama White House, bringing my fiancee and I brought my cousin and her husband and my son and my father. And hearing my father talk to President Obama and have that moment, especially obviously as a black family, and hearing him fumble a little bit. And I knew in that moment

walking in to the oval that he wasn't fumbling his words because he was nervous about meeting Barack Obama. Like I knew he was fumbling his words because he missed my mom. And it's a place where obviously she would have loved to be as well. The love that we share with people is something that leaves a permanent imprint on our brains. And so it's not about getting over it. It's about learning to live with it. And that's technically called the continuing bonds theory, which argues that the best way for us to live with loss is to find a way to continue our relationship with the deceased. I definitely talk to my mom sometimes. I make an intentional effort to include her in our family and to share her with Matt and now with Bennett, kicked off Pub Week for Reef Is Love by giving Bennett his first pancakes. Pancakes were my mom's thing.

Sunday mornings before church, she would make us pancakes pretty religiously, even when she was sick. We wanted to find our own way to include her in this special week. There was a lot of joy there, and that's thinking about grief. It doesn't always show up as sadness and whaling and depression. Sometimes it's just love and peace and inclusion. I want my husband and my son to know my mother.

My husband and my son will know my mother, actually. Yes. I want my husband and my son to know my mother. My husband and my son will know my mother actually. Yes, I love that. I had a question about the continuing bonds theory of attachment that you talk about in the book because I was amazed to read that the creator of the hospice movement, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, she taught us all the five stages of grief. What we learned from you is that those five stages describe not a person who is grieving a loss, but uniquely a person who is in the process of facing the end of their own life. So those where we expect to get through our five stages, which obviously are nonlinear, to the place of acceptance does not apply to people who are grieving.

And so you talk about a different way through this theory of attachment that love, like grief, neither are to be conquered or controlled. They're just something to be integrated into our lives. Can you tell us about that light bulb moment with you and Trayvon Martin's mother Where you kind of saw that clearly for the first time Yeah, so on the five stages when you hear stages like you think about it like AA you have one step and you complete it

And then the next step or you know the milestones and developmental stages that I'm seeing my son go through like very Lear as linear and I just press the stick, leveling up, leveling up. And then at the end, you're all good and you're healed and you're happy and the end that wasn't the basis of her research. Like her research really was for people who are dying themselves. And I just think it's so important for us to let go of that framework because it's caused a lot of people, myself included a lot of pain to your point, Amanda, the critical turning point was not just believing

for myself that I wasn't gonna get over it, because I knew deeply after the pregnancy loss that this whole getting over it thing was bullshit. It was, gosh, almost exactly two years ago that I was in conversation with Trayvon Martin's mother, and it was in the wake of George Floyd's murder. I did a series of conversations on black grief and healing and joy, this woman, reliving her own tragedy and her own pain, doing what she can to highlight the injustices that happened to black people in this country, and also taking a step further in doing what she can to support the families who were suffering that summer. George Floyd's family,

Brianna Taylor's family. And I was just, I mean, truly blown away and in awe of her, given all that she's lost. I was asking her about like why she is showing up for the rest of us. I couldn't understand why. And she said, I feel like it is the right thing to do to help these people with their grief, because I know it. I've been there. And I know that not only do I still love my son, but I know my son still loves me. And when she used to the present tense, like it was one of those life changing things for me because that's why you don't get over it and that's why you don't run because not only do you still love them. I can still continue to access in the present tense. My mom's love.

Why do I also feel so much pain associated with grief? And that's when I came upon the idea that love is both feeling and action. Like the people you love, you feel love for them, but you also do things to act on that love, to care for them. And they do those things in return. And when we lose the people, we love, we lose their ability to act on that love that they have for us. And that is where the pain comes in.

Like the pain of grief is the pain of unrequited, unconditional love. And that is what those of us who've experienced loss, like that pain is something that you just have to learn to live with. That, the correlation between grief as unrequited love, loving someone who is not there to love you back, it was such a beautiful parallel you made to being a black woman in America

and having unrequited love for a country that does not love you back. And I think that brings us to a very interesting part of your work, which is that in America as a black woman, practically speaking is truly grieving a privilege. Like, who gets to grieve in this country? You said vulnerability requires a sense of safety that is not equally distributed in our society. Some people are too busy, too female, too poor, too black for vulnerability. If day to day living feels like a battle grieving seems like a luxury. And in fact, when your mom died, you had to go continue going to work versus 11 years

later when you had the security and had built your career and really could tap out of life for a hot minute to truly grieve. Who gets to grieve and what if you feel like you can't let things fall apart? Yeah, when we lost our pregnancy in 2019, I shared and I got a lot of compliments around vulnerability. And it made me feel really uncomfortable and I got a lot of compliments around vulnerability. And it made me feel really uncomfortable. And I couldn't figure out why. And it took the process of writing this book to figure out that I don't want to be complemented for being vulnerable, because I think when it comes to the type of vulnerability

that I was displaying, the comfort in sharing our story, being able to take some time off from work and really process the loss. Like, I recognize that as a privilege. Healing shouldn't be a privilege, but we know in this country that continues to worship capitalism and white supremacy, that healing is a privilege,

physical and emotional healing for that matter. And so I think for people who are trying to figure out how to deal with grief and don't have the practical, safety or security or access to the things that can help with grief, like good mental health care, good physical health care, access to childcare, paid time off from work. I think it is really important to try and find a way to create your own, even if it's just a small, safe space, to let yourself grieve and to let yourself fall apart. Maybe it's conversations that you have with only one person in your life.

Maybe it's a trusted faith leader. Maybe it's when you do have a brief, even if it's only 15-minute break from work, like, you hide somewhere and let yourself cry. I don't have a perfect solution because there needs to be big holistic policy change. Unacknowledged grief doesn't go away. It generally manifests as other things from addiction to forms of abuse, serious mental health consequences. Like it's not something that we can afford practically to ignore. Millions of Americans have been forced to figure out grief for the very first time

as a result of COVID-19. And we know from the data that a majority of those people are the people who are most disconnected from the resources that healing requires. One of the ways that grief manifested for you that I thought was incredibly generous for you to share and normalize is anger and rage. And you were generous enough to even share that that even shows up as rage to the beloved who died.

And we recently had on the podcast psychoanalyst, Dr. Galete Atlas. She talked about how the death of a parent is always experienced as an abandonment, even if they didn't want to go. And you were speaking about the anger that you felt towards your mom for leaving. And to your surviving dad who couldn't replace her. And we know that your sister was not able to help because of what she is going through in her mental health challenges. The anger towards your beloved as a reasonable response to grief is going to release so many people from shame.

Can you talk about that? I am generally known, I would say, as like a happy, positive, pleasant, like fun to be around in person. I don't think honestly there's anyone in my personal life or a professional life for that matter who would describe me as angry or like as an angry person. I didn't even think about anger or like being mad at my mom like ever. And then I was in this therapy session

that included some like hypnotherapy type stuff. I felt this like heaviness, like kind of like exhaustion, but I knew I was tired. Couldn't figure it out. Couldn't put my finger on it. And I'm in this therapy session. And she's like, we're gonna keep going. We're gonna keep going. What does it really feel like? And I was like, it's heavy, but it's also like like hot. I was like, oh, like maybe I'm angry. But it's like, this is possible. Like, that's a little strange. Yeah, emotion. I was like, that's weird.

And as we continued the conversation, and when deeper, I realized I was fucking pissed. Like, I wasn't just a little bit angry. I was overwhelmed with rage that I hadn't, I don't even want to say that I hadn't acknowledged because I't even wanna say that I hadn't acknowledged because I truly, I didn't think it was there. It wasn't something that I was trying to hide from. It wasn't even on my radar.

I realized I was mad at my mom for dying and for leaving me with my dad and my sister, both of whom, especially right after her death, I felt some responsibility to help care for and like didn't have the capacity to do it. I was mad that she wasn't there when we lost our pregnancy. I was mad that we lost our pregnancy. My mom died. Is that not enough?

Like, should I not be entitled after years of IVF and trying to find black donor eggs and getting injected with all sorts of stuff? Like, don't I deserve my baby? And I was mad that my mom wasn't there to comfort us when we lost the pregnancy. And then I was mad that she wasn't there to help us as we try to navigate life in a global pandemic where my husband's working on the front lines and we're trying to prepare for an adoption. Like, I was so, so mad.

And then I was guilt-written. Like, how could I be mad at my perfect mom? Like this woman who loved so deeply. How could I be mad at her? I'm a terrible person. And when I realized I was angry and had a separate conversation with the person who helped with the research

for the book and learned that anger to your point, Amanda, is a very, very normal response for bereaved children. I was like, okay, like I have to unpack this, I have to figure it out. And I realized that the people who we love the most are also the people who we are most often called to forgive and who we most often need to forgive us. And so I thought if love doesn't end with death, why should forgiveness?

And when I think about my mom and the person that she was, she wouldn't want me carrying around anything that was making my life harder. And so I decided that forgiveness, like love, doesn't end with death. And so I wrote her a letter and detailed all the reasons why I was mad, just really being upset that like she wasn't here with me to help me, to to guide me to support me

through these various life challenges. And I asked for her forgiveness for being angry. And I wrote in the letter that I knew that she forgave me and like would never be mad at me and wouldn't want me to feel guilty anymore. That's beautiful. And I let it go. That's beautiful. You talk a lot about one of the permissions being asking for help and you you talked about that beautifully with friends, but one of the things I loved is you teach us about grief partners that you had a grief partner and Matt in your husband about your mother's death and that he was a particular kind of grief partner. So we can have a grief partner who is like our steady rock because we are grieving. But that person, that sort of grief partner is not the kind of partner that is actually

experiencing this early the grief we are. So they can be your, your support. But then Matt transformed into a different sort of grief partner for you after your pregnancy loss because that was as much of a loss for sort of grape partner for you after your pregnancy loss because that was as much of a loss for him as it was for you. You were in the grief together. So now he's a grief partner, be, right? Less of a rock and more of a raging river as you were of loss. Can you talk to us about the difference in grief partners and how hard

that was to have a grief partner who is grieving just as much as you are because that's so many of our listeners are going to have loss it is being experienced, but they've lost their person and they're suffering that loss with their other person. Yeah. And then they're disconnected from their person because you're grieving at different levels and different ways and so now. Yeah, like you wanted to go to, or there was a party and Matt wanted to go like needed, it was in the wake of the loss of the pregnancy and Matt was feeling like a need for connection

with other human beings, a distraction, whatever. You were like like absolutely not. So how do you not judge each other's needs? How do you make it through that with a partner? Greve support, even if you're not grieving like a loss together, having someone in your life, your life partner spouse, best friend, figure out how to be a grief partner to you, like that in and of itself is hard. And I think because we had that as like a big part of the foundation of our relationship, Matt figuring out how to navigate

February, Matt trying to figure out how to help me bring joy back into Christmas after my mom died, figure out like how to best communicate with each other and like how he can best support me and like what I need in terms of support like all of that I think lead the foundation for us to be able to grieve the same thing together and separately relatively well. We both took the loss like very hard. This was our last chance, then it didn't work out. I was so confident and I am the girl who always has the backup plan, but I didn't have a plan because I was so sure after all of this time and money and effort

and suffering that this was our shot. And then our shot didn't materialize. The day we got the call from our doctor that, yes, I had been briefly pregnant, but no longer was, Matt immediately fell apart. Like he gave himself permission to be a mess. I left him crying on the stairs at our house. And I put on my shoes and I drove to Walgreens because I was confident that the doctor had just messed up my blood test results with someone else's. Waiting in line at Walgreens,

it was like the longest time to check out with these freaking pregnancy tests. I remember thinking I really feel sad for this other woman. And I hoped that she had, I hoped that she had backup embryos because we did not. And got in the car, I drove home. And when it was negative, I was in shock. It was such a mess. And I knew early on just from knowing him and supporting him through his own challenges,

like we were going to need very different things. At that point, I was comfortable enough with grief to know that boundaries are a very important part of the equation. And I tried as much as possible to be intentional about mine and to like encourage Matt to be intentional about his and we both had our own therapist. I wasn't really doing a ton of the grieving because I was I was trying to fix it. Whereas Matt like let himself grieve and moved through the worst of it and the hardest parts of it before I did. Months later, it's Christmas time and he's like, okay, like we need to start getting organized and I was like, get organized for what we're talking about. He's like, well,

we're gonna adopt, right? And I was still thinking maybe there was a chance we're in the car driving up to New York for the holidays. And I said, I think you are getting frustrated with me. I said, it feels like you are not able to have as much empathy for me as I need, because you don't understand why I'm still so sad. And thankfully I married someone who is reflective and he said, you know what, you're right, I don't get it. I feel like we just need to like get going here. And I was like, yeah, I get that, but I'm still struggling. I believe that that is the right path for us, but until I've had more time to process and just like room to be sad and also to get my health back on track physically, I can't

do that yet. I'm not ready. Like, I need more time to just be sad. And having that conversation then gave us both permission to do what we needed and to be in different places and to be okay with that. And so we committed, let's check in regularly, but without checking in every day. We needed to put boundaries around holding the grief together at the same time, because we weren't in the same place. And we were able to do it. It was really hard.

Marissa, when you said, I was too busy trying to fix it to grieve. I think with people who are trying to support people who are grieving, so often they either a, try to fix it, try to make it better for you, or b, think there's no fucking way I can do anything to fix this so I'm going to retreat because I can't touch that. I can't talk about it. It's too much. You talk about some things that people did for you that felt like really showing up. You talk about how people who put in their phones, your mother's death day, your mother's birthday, people who bring her up in conversations with you, who

remember when good things are happening to you, to ask how much you miss your mom right now. And that felt like love to you. How do people who are trying to support someone grieving know what that individual person needs? Because for me me when you say boundaries around grief, I have someone who's grieving very deeply right now. I don't know in what moments they want to just be normal and just not talk about that thing or whether I'm ignoring it too much when I should be bringing it to them. Yeah, so one thing I will say that comes up a lot in my conversations with fellow gravers is people are often afraid that by mentioning the person, you're going to make it harder or make it more sad. But when you are in it, like, you're never not thinking about them.

They're never far from your brain, whether you're preparing to lose someone you love or someone you love has passed away. There has never been a time when someone else and I'm 14 and a half years in. When someone else has brought up my mom that it hasn't felt good. It's something that is just like so meaningful after you've lost someone because you often feel like the world has forgotten them. I don't get to hear my mom's name very much. And even though it's not, I never called her Lisa. Obviously, she's my mom.

But I heard her name over and over and over again for the first 25 years of my life. And then she dies and you don't really hear it anymore. And so I don't think it's ever a bad thing. If you're really unsure, though, one thing that I learned, if you're unsure, text, because people can do what they want with a text message. They can respond however they need to. Maybe you will send that text, and it's on a day when they really needed to be reminded

of something about their person that you mentioned, or they really needed to be checked in on. Or maybe they're having a great day and something joyful and wonderful has happened. And they weren't necessarily thinking about their person, but you mentioning it, may they remember, oh yeah, this person would love to be here too. And like, that feels nice sometimes. Grief isn't just the, I'm a puddle on the floor crying mess. Like, yes, I've done that many times. I'm a big proponent of crying in the shower in particular.

Like, you can cry and be a mess and get yourself cleaned up all at the same time. So efficient. Yeah. But yeah, it's so efficient. And like, water is like very much for me, like where I find my mom. So it's like efficient, it's comforting.

And you can just really just be a mess. Yes, that does happen. But sometimes grief is being with my childhood best friend, who was really close to my mom, who's now my son's godmother, and knowing that she's also being mindful of keeping my mom alive for this child, like and being grateful for that. It's not just one thing, whatever it is for you, like that's okay.

There's nothing wrong with you. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. You just said send a text. We can do that. Everybody send a text. I happen to love the texts that also say no need to respond. Yes, I am a big text with a disclaimer.

Yes, no need to respond. And also not, in the category of knots, I feel like universally we can accept the idea that we're not going to text people who are grieving and say, Let me know how I can help. Let me know what I can do for you. That's what we're never ever gonna do again We're just gonna do a thing. Maybe that thing goes in the trash. Maybe that thing. It doesn't matter But we're not going to ask anything and I Is a grieving person more work? Yes, yes. Like don't do that. I'm doing. We're also not going to shame anyone who's grieving. I have some experiences where people that I love

during a divorce told me that they were upset that I did not disseminate the information to them quicker and in a different order of and that's just a really amazing thing to do. Do not do that. No, no shame, no judgment. I definitely, I mean, I know that shame is something that held me back. And I will never forget what it felt like to have someone say to me,

you told your mom that you were gonna be okay and like you're still not okay. She would be worried about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will never, I will never forget that. Do not make someone feel worse than they're already feeling about themselves. And let's end with this. You said this that I thought was so beautiful. You said, when I find myself longing for my mother, when all I want is to put my head in her lap and have her rub my back and tell me everything will be okay. I have to ask myself, what is it that I'm truly longing for?

Is it comfort, consolation, a loving touch? I let the answer guide me towards what I can provide for myself, and I give permission to access it. That feels real and true and doable. You said, I need to rebuild the pillar of love that she provided. Can you, as an extra thing, Grief is love and it's a longing, a constant longing for a thing. That can never be filled the same way, But what I hear you saying in this work is that it can be filled maybe a different way. When I feel that way, I really, I just,

I close my eyes, I take a deep breath, I think about, okay, like, what do you really need? After a conversation like this, like, I would love to be able to pick up the phone and call my mom. But I know I can't do that, but I can go downstairs and talk to my best friend. Anytime I'm sick, I want my mom. And I know I know I can't have her.

So it's, do you need to cancel some of your calls this afternoon and take a nap? Because I know the things that she would tell me to do. Take care of yourself. What are you doing? Slow down. That was a big one with her. Like, slow down. This week, I had a chance to spend a half a day at a silent retreat, which six weeks

into a book tour. It was something that I very much needed. I sat there thinking about what's next. Because for me, I have had these three things in my head for such a long time, like business, book, and baby. Like I knew I would start my own business. I knew that I would write a book about grief, and I knew that I was meant to be a mom. And now, for the first time in my life, I have all of those things.

And because of how my brain is wired, I can't help but think of what's next. And instead, what I heard coming back was rest. I needed that time in silence to be with myself and to also think about my mom and what she would be telling me. She wouldn't be telling me to figure out what is my next big project. She's telling me to go take a nap or sit in front of the TV for a while or just hang out with my husband and my son and just be.

And so I think being really intentional about what we are longing for and how our people cared for us. It helps us live with the loss because it ultimately gives us the tools that we need to really care for ourselves. So good, Marissa! It's the proof of your theory. It's the proof of that love is continuous because It's the proof of that love is continuous because she is still speaking to you and telling you exactly what you need. As sure as if you would have picked up the telephone. Oh yeah. So interesting and beautiful.

Marissa, thank you so much. The rest of you. We can do hard things like surrender, I guess, to love and to grief, which Marissa has proven to us are the exact same damn thing. We'll see you next time when we can do hard things. I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlyle. And I continue to believe that I'm the one for me, and because I'm mine, I want the Cause we're adventurous and heartbreak So now a final destination We'll stop asking directions

Some places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home Through the joy and pain that our lives bring We can do a heartache I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new star I'm not the problem sometimes things fall apart And I continue to believe the best people are free I'm a little afraid And it took some time

But I'm finally fine Cause we're adventurers in heartbreak So man, a final destination With that, we stopped asking directions So places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain that our lives bring. We can do a heart

pain. This world finishes in a heartbreak somewhere, we might get lost but we're only in that stop-dasking directions Some places may have never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home and through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do hard things Yeah, we can do hard things Yeah, we can do a hard thing.

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