Speaker 1: I started to question all the narrative I'd been telling myself,
Speaker 1: Like what else have I been moving through the world?
Speaker 1: What stories do I usually tell when people ask me
Speaker 1: about my life? And how true are they? And I
Speaker 1: got the chance to ask my mom a lot of
Speaker 1: questions about what I understood to be true about myself,
Speaker 1: about her, about my dad, about my family, and some
Speaker 1: things just absolutely were not true.
Speaker 2: This is It's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Megan Divine. This week on the show, The
Speaker 2: Incredible Magical, Rachel Cargle on the time travel portal that
Speaker 2: grief opens up in your life and the opportunity for healing, growth,
Speaker 2: and curiosity alongside whatever pain you're in. Settle In, friends,
Speaker 2: Rachel Cargle coming up right after this first break before
Speaker 2: we get started, one quick note. While we cover a
Speaker 2: lot of emotional relational territory in each and every episode,
Speaker 2: this show is not a substitute for skilled support with
Speaker 2: a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related
Speaker 2: to your work. Hey, friends, I get to talk with
Speaker 2: the most amazing people because of this show. It is
Speaker 2: a lot of work to bring these conversations to you.
Speaker 2: But every time I sit down in front of the
Speaker 2: microphone and get a chance to connect with someone whose work,
Speaker 2: whose being I have loved and admired from afar, It's
Speaker 2: just so special. Rachel Cargle is a writer, entrepreneur, and
Speaker 2: philanthropic innovator. Her new memoir, A Renaissance of Our Own
Speaker 2: is a reimagining of womanhood, solidarity, and self and explores
Speaker 2: one of my very favorite topics, how we are in
Speaker 2: relationship with ourselves and with each other. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: she founded the Loveland Foundation, a nonprofit offering free therapy
Speaker 2: to Black women and girls. Rachel is also the founder
Speaker 2: of Elizabeth's Bookshop and Writing Center, a literacy space designed
Speaker 2: to amplify, celebrate, and honor the work of writers who
Speaker 2: are often excluded from traditional, cultural, social, and academic canons. Honestly,
Speaker 2: Rachel has created so many things and opened so many
Speaker 2: important and powerful conversations it would take me most of
Speaker 2: the show to list them all. I want to get
Speaker 2: right into this conversation, but some of the top themes
Speaker 2: in our conversation this week, Rachel and I get into
Speaker 2: this really nuanced discussion of childhood grief and how it
Speaker 2: intersects with any new loss in your life. I hear
Speaker 2: this sort of stuff a lot, right, like when your
Speaker 2: parent dies, or a friend dies, somebody close to you dies,
Speaker 2: and people say, oh, you're only having a hard time
Speaker 2: now because you have all of this unhealed grief and
Speaker 2: trauma in your past, right, And it's always said with
Speaker 2: that sort of smarmy, snarky, condescending tone. Right, it's such
Speaker 2: toxic shaming trash. Rachel and I really get into the
Speaker 2: difference between judgment and curiosity here and how, yes, older
Speaker 2: grief really can come back around, but it's not wrong
Speaker 2: that that happens. It's not a sign that you didn't
Speaker 2: work hard enough to process your life. We get into
Speaker 2: what Rachel calls her childhood's survival optimism and how that
Speaker 2: relates to a really sort of surface unnuanced idea of resilience.
Speaker 2: We talk about her father's death when she was a
Speaker 2: child and her mom's recent death and why Rachel says
Speaker 2: she feels grateful for the chance to understand herself in
Speaker 2: this new time of her life and that it's terrifying
Speaker 2: at the very same time. We get into a lot
Speaker 2: of both, and in this conversation, I bet this episode
Speaker 2: is going to give you a whole lot of aha moments.
Speaker 2: I want to hear about them, I really do, so
Speaker 2: be sure to comment on social media posts with clips
Speaker 2: of the episode and leave a review of the show
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews are a great way
Speaker 2: to tell me how the season's guests are affecting you,
Speaker 2: and it encourages others to listen. So this is like
Speaker 2: a win win for everybody. All Right, on with the
Speaker 2: show with this week's guest, Rachel Cargle. Rachel, I am
Speaker 2: so excited to have you here with me today, so
Speaker 2: thank you for making the time.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to be chatting with you as well.
Speaker 2: So I've known your work for a while, and one
Speaker 2: of the things that has drawn me in recently is
Speaker 2: you speaking about your mom's illness, the last few weeks
Speaker 2: of her life and her death. So if it's okay
Speaker 2: with you, there are so many places we could start
Speaker 2: our conversation, but I'd love to start with your mom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mom. She passed away on November fourth of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and it has surprisingly been such a
Speaker 1: big heart of my work. You know, obviously it shows
Speaker 1: up in the day to day, in our bodies, in
Speaker 1: the way that we can pay attention or not what
Speaker 1: we pay attention to grief and death. Particularly in my experience,
Speaker 1: the death of a parent just completely gives you a
Speaker 1: new lens, a new calibration in the world. So since
Speaker 1: that time, it has been just an unfolding of a
Speaker 1: new version of myself, that is a woman in the
Speaker 1: world without her mother. And it's been such a particular
Speaker 1: experience so far.
Speaker 2: You wrote the way she raised me was an ongoing
Speaker 2: invitation to see what I was capable of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very true, and I feel so grateful for
Speaker 1: that because I see all the ways it shows up
Speaker 1: for me now. I've been talking a lot about the
Speaker 1: gifts of grieving, and there's the obvious devastation and excruciating
Speaker 1: experience of moving through life after loss, but I've also
Speaker 1: seen so many gifts of it, including seeing all the
Speaker 1: ways that my mother is in me without her being here,
Speaker 1: Because then I'd be like, oh, you know, it's something
Speaker 1: she just said recently, or something she just reminded me of,
Speaker 1: Or I noticed that I rest my hands the way
Speaker 1: my mom rested her hands. I noticed that I make
Speaker 1: the same noise my mom used to make when she
Speaker 1: would yawn. When I yawn, sometimes I look in the
Speaker 1: mirror and I see her face in my face, and
Speaker 1: it is really cool, particularly the quote you mentioned about
Speaker 1: how she really always pushed me to see what I
Speaker 1: was capable of. And I'm seeing now the ways that
Speaker 1: I do that every day, and that was planted by her.
Speaker 2: So many good structural, foundational self things, it sounds like,
Speaker 2: really came through your relationship with your mom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, my mom had a disability, so she
Speaker 1: never worked, not that disability means not working, but with
Speaker 1: her particular disability as well as her raising me and
Speaker 1: many other children who weren't necessarily my siblings, but people
Speaker 1: she just cared for or she ended up adopting, she
Speaker 1: stayed home. And that meant I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time with my mom. And I'm realizing as I talked
Speaker 1: to more and more friends that wasn't their experience. I
Speaker 1: don't remember ever having a babysitter. I don't. I can't
Speaker 1: name or have reference to any one time of being
Speaker 1: babysat by someone, aside from like spending time with my
Speaker 1: grandma or my older sisters keeping me for something for
Speaker 1: my mom to go out for a run. So I
Speaker 1: really spent a lot of time with my mother, for
Speaker 1: better and for worse, And some of the for better
Speaker 1: is that we had a lot of time for her
Speaker 1: to seed into me the things that she found to
Speaker 1: be important, and I really value now getting to see
Speaker 1: the fruits of that within me, as well as the
Speaker 1: things that she seated in me that don't resonate with me,
Speaker 1: and me being able to say, oh, that was mom, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can let that go. That isn't that's not mine
Speaker 1: to carry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to see the me and the not me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's something particular. That's a particular gift that
Speaker 1: comes with losing someone, because grief is also an identity
Speaker 1: crisis of who am I when I'm not in direct
Speaker 1: relationship with that person here and now in the same
Speaker 1: way I've always been. And I think there's some beautiful
Speaker 1: realizations about who we are to ourselves as well as
Speaker 1: the celebration of who we were to the person that
Speaker 1: we lost. And I think that that has been a
Speaker 1: really wonderful unfolding as well to witness how.
Speaker 2: Was grief model for you growing up?
Speaker 1: It wasn't. It wasn't at all, And I'm really struggling
Speaker 1: with it now. I lost my father when I was eleven.
Speaker 1: I was closer to my dad than I was to
Speaker 1: my mom at that time. And it also is an
Speaker 1: adulthood where you recognize how much you romanticize things, and
Speaker 1: so I think I romanticized my dad a lot, because
Speaker 1: of course I was with my mom all the time,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Oh, my dad's so much more fun.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure he got to be the fun one
Speaker 1: because he wasn't doing all the day to day things
Speaker 1: with me. But I'll say that after he passed, I
Speaker 1: just didn't have time to grieve. I remember he was
Speaker 1: sick for a long time before he passed away too.
Speaker 1: It wasn't sudden or anything. And when he passed he
Speaker 1: was at a hospital and they called the house to
Speaker 1: say that he had passed away. And I answered the
Speaker 1: phone and they just told me. They didn't ask for
Speaker 1: my mom or anything. They were just like, hi, this
Speaker 1: is the hospital calling to say that Larry Brooks has died.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay. I was eleven years old.
Speaker 1: My mom was upstairs sleeping in the bed. As I said,
Speaker 1: my mom had polio, so she couldn't run downstairs and
Speaker 1: pick up the phone. I was going to be the
Speaker 1: one who was going to pick up the phone regardless.
Speaker 1: But just thinking of that now as an adult, how
Speaker 1: hard that must have been me. And I remember still
Speaker 1: going to soccer camp the next day and thinking I
Speaker 1: want to go, and my mom taking me and letting
Speaker 1: me go, and how life just went on after that.
Speaker 1: Really I didn't have time or space to grieve. There
Speaker 1: were so many other fires that my mom had to
Speaker 1: be putting out. I was always the most functional of
Speaker 1: anyone else in our home, and so I was either
Speaker 1: being a involuntary co parent to a lot of the
Speaker 1: kids she was raising, or I just wasn't getting the
Speaker 1: support that I needed because I was the most functioning,
Speaker 1: so I was the least to be concerned about, and
Speaker 1: so I really didn't have the guidance that was necessary
Speaker 1: as a child to acknowledge feelings, feel the feelings, and
Speaker 1: ultimately grieve. And so right now at thirty four, with
Speaker 1: my mother passing, I'm invested in this also being a
Speaker 1: space to be in relationship with the feelings that never
Speaker 1: got to have a voice or a space during my
Speaker 1: father's passing as well. So that lack of that lack
Speaker 1: of model of grieving, I am now redefining or I
Speaker 1: should say, defining what grief will look like for me
Speaker 1: in my life and in my body and in my
Speaker 1: world and in my work. And I feel very, very
Speaker 1: very grateful to have the time and space and intention
Speaker 1: to that, because I know so many of us who
Speaker 1: are grieving don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah. As I was sort of reading through your collected
Speaker 2: works and articles and listening to you speak getting ready
Speaker 2: for our time here together, you said something about that
Speaker 2: you're only now starting to look at the pain points
Speaker 2: of your childhood. And this is true, right, like new
Speaker 2: fresh loss intersects with older losses, and I like, as
Speaker 2: a therapist, I mean think sometimes the language can be
Speaker 2: really shaming and punitive. We're like, oh, that's coming up
Speaker 2: because you didn't deal with it, instead of Wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: Like all of these channels of love and relatedness, they
Speaker 2: go back and forth in us, like curiosity instead of
Speaker 2: condemnation for the things that we had to survive and
Speaker 2: the models that we saw. But I love what you
Speaker 2: said about this, this childhood loss and childhood grief coming
Speaker 2: back and intersecting. You said, the consciousness of this in
Speaker 2: the midst of grief has thrust me into an unexpected
Speaker 2: era of reckoning and healing. I'm honored and grateful for
Speaker 2: the chance to understand myself and it's terrifying all at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 1: You know, we have so many moments like this in
Speaker 1: our world. Imagine how we must have felt learning how
Speaker 1: to walk.
Speaker 2: Imagine terrifying and exciting to school for.
Speaker 1: The first time. You know, we don't always remember those feelings,
Speaker 1: but it's things that we've had to come up against.
Speaker 1: And when we're younger, the exciting part of it gets
Speaker 1: more attention, Like you're going to school for the first time,
Speaker 1: you're walking, and it's celebrated. But as you get older
Speaker 1: and there's less celebration of firsts or the less we
Speaker 1: often give us ourselves less room to grow or develop,
Speaker 1: to be new, to learn something new. It becomes this judgment,
Speaker 1: like you said, this lack of curiosity, this condemnation for
Speaker 1: how come you didn't know? How come you haven't figured
Speaker 1: it out? And so I really started having a consciousness
Speaker 1: about how my childhood might have played into things, maybe
Speaker 1: about a year before my mom passed, so I was
Speaker 1: able to ask her a few questions that gave me,
Speaker 1: you know, gave me some tools to continue to build
Speaker 1: my pathway towards my healing, which I'm certainly still in
Speaker 1: the beginning phases and in the midst of now. But
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about a quote that says, you know,
Speaker 1: death isn't an end of life, It's a part of life.
Speaker 1: And so this cycle, this moving towards another part of
Speaker 1: life and it not just being this end date also
Speaker 1: is making me think about obviously the visual of it
Speaker 1: seeing my mother actually away, but also the journey towards healing,
Speaker 1: and how much I would have loved for my mom
Speaker 1: to continue healing up until the very moment. It's worth
Speaker 1: it up until the very moment for you to have clarity,
Speaker 1: for you to have consideration. And I'm grateful for being
Speaker 1: ushered into this journey. I'm grateful for what my mom
Speaker 1: was able to add. I'm grateful for going through her
Speaker 1: stuff and finding small things that you know, just this
Speaker 1: morning I was going through I'm back in Ohio in
Speaker 1: my hometown. This is my first time back since my
Speaker 1: mom passed, and this is my first time going through
Speaker 1: a lot of the documents, and I found a college
Speaker 1: transcript from my mom when she was in college. And
Speaker 1: what I found was and my mom didn't graduate She
Speaker 1: only did one semester and her grade in early child development,
Speaker 1: which is what she was studying. But it was like
Speaker 1: an early child development course, and it's what my mom loved.
Speaker 1: Like my mom loved kids. If you were under the
Speaker 1: age of seven, you were her favorite person, regardless of
Speaker 1: who you are, where you were. And even in the
Speaker 1: week of her passing, she kept going in and out
Speaker 1: of consciousness, and whenever she'd come out, she'd say, where's
Speaker 1: that room with all the kids? Like, I really think
Speaker 1: her heaven is just a room full of kids, because
Speaker 1: she kept mentioning that, and I think she was kind
Speaker 1: of going in and out of it or like previewing it,
Speaker 1: and so I really think that that was her thing.
Speaker 1: But anyways, on her transcript, she got an F in
Speaker 1: early childhood Development. And what I love about that is
Speaker 1: that my mom still stayed true to the thing that
Speaker 1: she loved even if the authority that be didn't give
Speaker 1: her a good grade in it, and it also or
Speaker 1: she didn't do the work to get a good grade
Speaker 1: in it. But also how hard she pushed me about
Speaker 1: grades and things and how I want to be like,
Speaker 1: we have some things to talk about. You actually got
Speaker 1: an F. You and you like, were fine and you
Speaker 1: moved on. And so these this healing comes from knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's a framework that I use in my anti racism work. Knowledge, empathy,
Speaker 1: and action equals all. That's what I use that formula
Speaker 1: a lot. But also this knowledge of who my mom
Speaker 1: might have been at this younger time is pouring into
Speaker 1: my empathy towards her, because lately it's been a lot
Speaker 1: of anger, a lot of the grief anger, a lot
Speaker 1: of just anger from things that I'm learning that happened
Speaker 1: or didn't happen for me in my childhood. And it
Speaker 1: offers me this level of intimacy that is a material
Speaker 1: of my healing, and it's necessary and I could only
Speaker 1: touch that once she passed away. These are things that
Speaker 1: she would that my mom's privacy wouldn't have allowed her
Speaker 1: to necessarily share with me. But that as I know this,
Speaker 1: I understand my mother more, which allows me to understand
Speaker 1: myself more, which allows me to heal. And so that's
Speaker 1: again one of the some of the goodness of grief
Speaker 1: is that you have access to this person in a
Speaker 1: way that you might not have ever had before, and
Speaker 1: it gives you I feel closer than ever to my mother,
Speaker 1: I really do.
Speaker 2: There's that thread of both and yep that I've been
Speaker 2: watching unfold as you been talking about this and listening
Speaker 2: to you now talk about this, that like all of
Speaker 2: these things get to be true at the same time.
Speaker 1: Hmm, yeah, they have to be.
Speaker 2: They have to they have to be because they are
Speaker 2: right like this, this is enough for like discussion, like exactly,
Speaker 2: there's this allowing that this is actually the way that
Speaker 2: things are, that both and is the state of existence.
Speaker 1: It's a place for us to be kind to ourselves.
Speaker 1: It's an opportunity for us to be gentle with ourselves.
Speaker 1: And when we condemn ourselves to say, but it's this,
Speaker 1: we can say, and what else is it? And where
Speaker 1: else is their goodness? And where else is their relief?
Speaker 1: And where else is their possibility? It's it's really a
Speaker 1: practice of kindness to ourselves when we give enough nuance
Speaker 1: and breath to a conversation to be both and and
Speaker 1: that also allows us to lean into one or another
Speaker 1: whenever we want, knowing that there's the ebb and flow
Speaker 1: that you'll go to the other side at some point.
Speaker 1: So when I feel, you know, whatever shame I feel
Speaker 1: about the relief, I feel because I no longer have
Speaker 1: this sick mother to have to worry about and have
Speaker 1: a loop of concern in my head at all times.
Speaker 1: I can like actually rest with that relief because I
Speaker 1: know that probably in about two point five days, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be on the floor crying about the fact
Speaker 1: that she's not here. So yes, it gives a bit
Speaker 1: of kindness to ourselves to be able to move through
Speaker 1: what grief is when we acknowledge and lean into the both.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I feel like so many people their first
Speaker 2: experience of allowing the both andness of life comes through
Speaker 2: an experience of loss. I feel like your kindness to
Speaker 2: self and your choosing of yourself predates your mom's loss. Though,
Speaker 2: Is that? Does that feel accurate?
Speaker 1: I think so. It's so funny. I'm happy that I'm
Speaker 1: here during this conversation with you because it gives so
Speaker 1: many touch points for my childhood and for my grief
Speaker 1: in particular. And I was just going through a journal
Speaker 1: from college from two thousand and seven of mine, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, what was I thinking about? I
Speaker 1: kept a note of how I was feeling when I'd
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning, and I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 1: feel so sad today, Oh, I feel really good today,
Speaker 1: And so there seemed to be intention there around not
Speaker 1: just acknowledging the feeling, but recalibrating me towards something that
Speaker 1: might put me at a more comfortable, content easeful space.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have had that language then, but I have
Speaker 1: it now, and I think that I did as a
Speaker 1: mode of survival, as a mode of survival, being hyper
Speaker 1: self aware in order to know what I need to
Speaker 1: meet my needs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you once describe your younger self as having survival optimism.
Speaker 1: I absolutely did. I grew up in what I now
Speaker 1: am seeing as a fairly tumultuous place. I had gone
Speaker 1: through my teenage years, in my early adulthood, certainly with
Speaker 1: a narrative in my head that woven survival optimism. Of
Speaker 1: it was fine, I was fine, Things were good, Things
Speaker 1: weren't that bad. I did this, and that my mother
Speaker 1: was able to do this, my father was able to
Speaker 1: do that. And while many of the things that I
Speaker 1: was mentioning were true, there was a lot of it
Speaker 1: that I had discarded in order to, as we said,
Speaker 1: survive all the negatives. There was a survival survival optimism
Speaker 1: to say, things aren't that bad. I have what I need,
Speaker 1: I can keep going. And part of healing for me,
Speaker 1: I found is sitting down with those narratives. Particularly I
Speaker 1: had one around grief and it's and I used to
Speaker 1: say all the time that, you know, my dad really
Speaker 1: was obsessed with me in all the best ways that
Speaker 1: dads can be obsessed with third children, and he was
Speaker 1: so loving and so considerate, and so I just thought
Speaker 1: I was the most interesting, beautiful thing because my father
Speaker 1: made me feel that way. And so when he passed
Speaker 1: when I was eleven, all of these years later, I
Speaker 1: was still saying the narrative like, oh, yeah, my dad passed,
Speaker 1: but I was fine because he loved me so well,
Speaker 1: and you know, I didn't have to grieve that much
Speaker 1: because it was all so good before he passed. And
Speaker 1: that was a narrative I like not only said, but
Speaker 1: believed myself. And then someone said to me, Rachel, that
Speaker 1: can't be true. It can't be true that he was
Speaker 1: both the most important person in your world and you
Speaker 1: weren't affected when he passed like that, that's impossible for
Speaker 1: it to be true. And I thought about it. I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, that does sound rational.
Speaker 2: So it was like, oh, oh, let me be curious about.
Speaker 1: That about that so I my mom was alive at
Speaker 1: the time, so I reached out to my mom and
Speaker 1: I was like, Mom, what was I like in the
Speaker 1: weeks after Dad passed? And she said, Rachel, I had
Speaker 1: to take you to the hospital so many times because
Speaker 1: you kept complaining about stomach pain and no one knew
Speaker 1: what it was. And I was like what. One I
Speaker 1: could not believe I didn't remember that. Two, I can't
Speaker 1: believe me and my mother had never talked about it before.
Speaker 1: And three I was floored because as an adult, I
Speaker 1: know that my stomach is the number one place where
Speaker 1: I have a reaction to something. When I'm falling in love,
Speaker 1: when I'm scared of something, when I'm anxious about something,
Speaker 1: it all shows up in my stomach. And I work
Speaker 1: with my stomach now to process those emotions. It's something
Speaker 1: I learned as an adult. But thinking about how that
Speaker 1: eleven year old me was working with my body in
Speaker 1: the same way, my stomach was the thing where all
Speaker 1: of that grief was being held, and my mom didn't
Speaker 1: think of it either. You know, my mom didn't have
Speaker 1: enough understanding around grief, around the body, around somatics, understand, oh,
Speaker 1: this might be something related to the grief, instead of
Speaker 1: rushing me to the hospital every you know, every other week.
Speaker 1: And so these narratives that I had of survival optimism
Speaker 1: that made me believe that I've done hard things, I
Speaker 1: can continue to do hard things, and that I will
Speaker 1: just get through it. While it did indeed help me
Speaker 1: get through things, there comes a time where you have
Speaker 1: to address them because these narratives just begin to peel away.
Speaker 1: It's like this old paint. It's like, wait, there's something
Speaker 1: behind there that's not true. And so with that, I
Speaker 1: started to question all the narrative I'd been telling myself,
Speaker 1: like what else, what else have I been moving through
Speaker 1: the world? What stories do I usually tell when people
Speaker 1: ask me about my life? And how true are they?
Speaker 1: And I got the chance to ask my mom a
Speaker 1: lot of questions about what I understood to be true
Speaker 1: about myself, about her, about my dad, about my family,
Speaker 1: and some things just absolutely were not true. Some things
Speaker 1: just absolutely were not true. But I had created a narrative.
Speaker 1: And so while I'm grateful for how that tool served
Speaker 1: me as a child, because it really did get me
Speaker 1: through some really difficult truths about myself, that might have
Speaker 1: drowned me in whatever depression or emotion would have negatively
Speaker 1: impacted me. It's something that I feel grateful to have
Speaker 1: the chance to unravel. Now.
Speaker 2: There's so much in there, right, because that how you
Speaker 2: describe that survival optimism and the stories you needed to
Speaker 2: tell in order to survive what you needed to survive.
Speaker 2: Like that's the cultural narrative, right, like resilience and optimism
Speaker 2: and you got this and you're strong and you can
Speaker 2: survive this, like all of that singular trash right, sort
Speaker 2: of singular trash as set apart or set in opposition
Speaker 2: to the both and right singular trash versus it's the both,
Speaker 2: and like, we do what we need to do to survive,
Speaker 2: and that doesn't make it necessarily a good thing. It
Speaker 2: makes us something that we read the room and we
Speaker 2: knew what we needed and we did what we needed
Speaker 2: to do to survive. And it's just like there's so
Speaker 2: many interesting intersections there, I guess is where I'm going.
Speaker 2: One that you look back now and you see that
Speaker 2: as something you had to do to survive, but it's
Speaker 2: something to heal from now, that story and how much
Speaker 2: that survival optimism matches with what we tell people they're
Speaker 2: supposed to do in the face of adversity, which is
Speaker 2: look on the bright side, suck it up, be strong,
Speaker 2: be powerful, draw on your own strengths. It's one of
Speaker 2: many things I love about you.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the both and is a hard thing to nail.
Speaker 2: I think when we're talking about any kind of difficulty, right,
Speaker 2: that we can lean into our strengths and celebrate our
Speaker 2: strengths and at the same time be on the floor
Speaker 2: crying so much we vomit. Right, Like, these things are
Speaker 2: all true, and we get to invite that totality of self.
Speaker 1: Interested in knowing our whole selves are right about who
Speaker 1: our whole selves might be. I'm I'm intrigued by that
Speaker 1: person might be who gets to process these things, who
Speaker 1: gets to know the truth about myself, even the hard truths.
Speaker 1: And the thing about being adults, now, you know a
Speaker 1: lot of that survivals in childhood where we have no
Speaker 1: control over our environment, where we have no control over
Speaker 1: our ability to get through something. But as adults, we
Speaker 1: have this opportunity to be in relationship with our younger
Speaker 1: self to say, you're now, let's talk about this. You
Speaker 1: know you have tools to get through this, let's talk
Speaker 1: about this, let's feel this. And I've noticed that as
Speaker 1: I do more healing of my psyche, my emotions, my body,
Speaker 1: which are all inner related. You know, when I'm caring
Speaker 1: for my body, I see that my psyche is better.
Speaker 1: When I care for my psyche, I see that I can,
Speaker 1: you know, care for my body better. And one thing
Speaker 1: I've really been enjoying is that I have become more
Speaker 1: and more able to touch base with things that gave
Speaker 1: me joy as a child because I've dusted off a
Speaker 1: bit of my childhood and I can see some of it,
Speaker 1: I can access some of it. And I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not a therapist at all, but what I've learned from
Speaker 1: my own personal journey is that as I really look
Speaker 1: at my childhood and have to dust some things off,
Speaker 1: you're also cleaning off the spaces where good things are.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not just going to this box of
Speaker 1: bones and figuring out all the hard, terrible things that
Speaker 1: happen in your childhood. You're also remembering that childhood rhyme
Speaker 1: that you used to say. And you're also you know,
Speaker 1: finding I don't know stories you used to write. And
Speaker 1: I have a really I've been feeling very grateful for
Speaker 1: how I'm able to tend to my inner child. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that it makes me think of
Speaker 1: is my mom was a poor, black, disabled woman who
Speaker 1: had many children to care for, and so I certainly
Speaker 1: didn't get the type of care that would have been
Speaker 1: as full as if she had more resources. And so
Speaker 1: what that means is that, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: activities that I did, I couldn't do all the activities
Speaker 1: that I wanted, or we couldn't afford some things, or
Speaker 1: my mom just did what she thought was best without
Speaker 1: taking much consideration in what I wanted per se. So
Speaker 1: I really wanted to dance when I was younger, like
Speaker 1: do dance classes, and I really wanted to play a
Speaker 1: stringed instrument, and they just weren't options. So now I
Speaker 1: have been going to tell practice and I found adult
Speaker 1: ballet classes and things that used to be anger points
Speaker 1: for me, like, oh, I'm so mad that I didn't
Speaker 1: I had this type of childhood. I'm so enraged that
Speaker 1: my mother didn't have the emotional capacity to do X
Speaker 1: Y Z. Now with this type of knowledge and empathy,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, that's coming into me, I can say,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm gonna let that anger go because
Speaker 1: I can see that she really did her best. And
Speaker 1: now I'm an adult and I can provide myself with
Speaker 1: some of those things. How can I do that? And
Speaker 1: it feels like I'm in relationship with my mom for
Speaker 1: that too. I played soccer a lot when I was younger,
Speaker 1: and my mom she she came to watch me, Like
Speaker 1: I said, she had polio so she couldn't run, so
Speaker 1: her watching me run was something for her. She loved
Speaker 1: to watch me run up and down the field. She
Speaker 1: would say that often, and since she had crutches on
Speaker 1: rainy days or early mornings when it was dewey, she
Speaker 1: couldn't get to the field. And my mom position petitioned
Speaker 1: for the city to build a sidewalk from the parking
Speaker 1: lot to the soccer field so that she could watch
Speaker 1: me play. And they did. And I recently ran into
Speaker 1: an old friend who's like, Oh, I'm coaching a women's
Speaker 1: extracurricular soccer team in the city. You should join. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, I would love to join. And that has
Speaker 1: now become something between me and my mom, Like I
Speaker 1: feel like my mom is on the sidelines with her
Speaker 1: sign the way that she used to the way that
Speaker 1: she couldn't always. And it's nice to carry myself and
Speaker 1: be in relationship with my mother in a way that
Speaker 1: just couldn't have happened when she was here.
Speaker 2: There's such continuity in the way that you talk about
Speaker 2: all of this. I also remember reading that you said
Speaker 2: when you were when you were a kid, sort of
Speaker 2: writing was your power, right, your ability to tell stories
Speaker 2: and to be a writer was your power. And I
Speaker 2: feel like there's there's so much weaving through what we're
Speaker 2: talking about around storytelling and narrative and voice and the
Speaker 2: stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell each other,
Speaker 2: and how much authority right, authority, all their ship right, sovereignty, sovereignty, authority,
Speaker 2: author who gets to write the story of your life?
Speaker 2: And which voice is speaking at any time? Like it's
Speaker 2: just like, as as a fellow writer, I just I
Speaker 2: think that's such fascinating and beautiful territory when you allow
Speaker 2: the entire story to show up and then it's terrifying,
Speaker 2: it's terrifying and it's terrible and honestly, like, what else
Speaker 2: is there? Right? Because if you're not telling your own story,
Speaker 2: whose story are you telling?
Speaker 1: Yes? While you were speaking earlier about the way that
Speaker 1: society insists that we just move past it, get through it.
Speaker 1: While you were saying that, I was I was thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, like, to who's end and does that benefit?
Speaker 1: It benefits capitalism because we're getting back to work, And
Speaker 1: benefits patriarchy because we're getting back to taking care of
Speaker 1: our homes and our children. It benefits, you know, just
Speaker 1: every standard that is meant to benefit other entities besides
Speaker 1: ourselves and certainly besides our own healing. And so I
Speaker 1: think it's really wonderful to take a pause and when
Speaker 1: we're moving through a hard thing, to ask ourselves to
Speaker 1: what ends does this? Who does this benefit? How does
Speaker 1: it benefit them? And what of myself do I have
Speaker 1: to quiet in order to meet that need or in
Speaker 1: order to meet that expectation. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: a friend. A thing my friend Dana Sue Cow used
Speaker 1: to always say, is who's benefiting from the insecurities you have?
Speaker 1: You know a lot of things like oh, I'm so
Speaker 1: insecure that by that I have hair on my legs.
Speaker 1: And so now there's some razor company making millions of
Speaker 1: dollars off of something that really isn't a concern.
Speaker 2: Or Yeah, these manufactured insecurities.
Speaker 1: Factured insecurity, and I think I'm seeing that play into
Speaker 1: my grief of who benefits from the way that I
Speaker 1: show up in this space, the way that I engage
Speaker 1: with this feeling, and what role has this feeling had
Speaker 1: in other spaces, in indigenous spaces, spaces from places on
Speaker 1: the continent of Africa where I know my ancestors come from.
Speaker 1: What does the ancestral connection with this particular experience that
Speaker 1: I could be in relationship with. Yeah, like you say,
Speaker 1: being curious and asking questions that invite us to know
Speaker 1: ourselves better.
Speaker 2: Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Rachel Kargle,
Speaker 2: I want to talk with you about that both and
Speaker 2: we've been getting into. Grief can cause such like emotional whiplash. Right,
Speaker 2: you feel relieved, and then you feel guilty for being relieved,
Speaker 2: and then you're not sure how you feel. It's really
Speaker 2: tough stuff to navigate. If you've got questions about how
Speaker 2: that both and works in your own grief, come talk
Speaker 2: to me about it. Once a month, I hold a
Speaker 2: live video Q and A for patrons. Visit patreon dot com.
Speaker 2: Backslash Megan Divine to get your questions answered once a
Speaker 2: month every month. Link is in the show Notes Friends.
Speaker 2: All right, back to my conversation with Rachel Cargle. There's
Speaker 2: so much picking to be done at the institutionalized structure
Speaker 2: around emotional reality, which is a big mouthful, but like
Speaker 2: who benefits from us pushing through grief faster, pushing through
Speaker 2: discomfort faster? Like why I spent so much of the
Speaker 2: you know, the first ten years of my career doing
Speaker 2: this grief work, talking about individual grief, and like, you
Speaker 2: don't care about the bigger stuff when your kid dies
Speaker 2: or your sister gets sick. And I remember when my
Speaker 2: partner first died. I mean I had been doing social
Speaker 2: action stuff and working in sexual violence and questioning some
Speaker 2: of these things, and then Matt drowned, and I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't give a fuck. I don't care about the
Speaker 2: systems right now. And it took years before I cared
Speaker 2: about that, or or before I cared enough to come
Speaker 2: back to my suspicious, questioning nature of the underlying systems
Speaker 2: around everything. And it is true that I think sometimes
Speaker 2: in really fresh grief, the structures that impact you in
Speaker 2: your grieving or in your healing aren't super relevant it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean we aren't being impacted by them though, Like
Speaker 2: this push to get better faster and to be strong
Speaker 2: and to be resilient. I love flipping that around the
Speaker 2: way that you just did to say, like, who benefits
Speaker 2: from me getting quote unquote better faster? Who is served?
Speaker 2: Who gets their needs met? If I repress mine?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that exactly. I really like what you said about
Speaker 1: how long it took you to get back to that.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I have been leaning into
Speaker 1: is that I am grieving. So I'm going to use
Speaker 1: it as a platform to be as thoughtful as I
Speaker 1: need to in this moment because death, loss, change causes
Speaker 1: us to question reality again, and we don't get that
Speaker 1: often because usually we're in the you know, in the
Speaker 1: run of it. We got to go to work, pay
Speaker 1: our bills, take care of our kids, move through. We're
Speaker 1: on this life escalator that really isn't much space to
Speaker 1: get off, and grief is a stop. Grief is a
Speaker 1: large halt to that. And so it's an opportunity in
Speaker 1: that it's a moment where we really do get to
Speaker 1: ask questions and take a pause to things that we
Speaker 1: usually don't get to to do. So and it's certainly
Speaker 1: been that for me, around work, around relationships, around friendships,
Speaker 1: around space. What I understand is home. You know, all
Speaker 1: of these things. And I really find that as one
Speaker 1: of the gifts of grief as well, that it put
Speaker 1: a halt to this trajectory that I might have forever
Speaker 1: been on if there wasn't this jolting to say, wait,
Speaker 1: what really matters? How do I really want to spend
Speaker 1: my time? How do I want to die? How do
Speaker 1: I want to be surrounded or not surrounded in hard
Speaker 1: times like these? And I have been making shifts based
Speaker 1: on what that pause required me to consider, required me
Speaker 1: to question. And I hope that all of us who
Speaker 1: are grieving can alchemize some of those feelings we have
Speaker 1: to turn into some answers to questions we've either been
Speaker 1: asking ourselves quietly in the back of our mind, never
Speaker 1: got to ask ourselves, or are recognizing, like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is something I really need to consider before I hop
Speaker 1: back on this escalator.
Speaker 2: There's a line that I read of yours who I
Speaker 2: am right now can be home for me. It's actually
Speaker 2: a much longer passage. And of course I'll link to
Speaker 2: the Instagram post where you talk about that. But that's
Speaker 2: what I'm reminded of as you speak about this, like
Speaker 2: it's not that you needed air quotes here for everybody,
Speaker 2: Like it's not that you needed your mom's death to
Speaker 2: wake you up to other things that you wanted or
Speaker 2: needed for your own pacing or your own concepts of home.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, your mom's death has shifted
Speaker 2: your focus and shifted things. So it's not like I
Speaker 2: think again we get gain like it gets sort of
Speaker 2: flattened in the outside world around. Oh see, you needed it.
Speaker 2: You needed it as a wake up call to know
Speaker 2: what was important, which is like, oh, but I really
Speaker 2: appreciate how you speak about it as this, Like here
Speaker 2: is this thing, this event that happened, and I can
Speaker 2: bring my skills of curiosity and reflection and self inquiry
Speaker 2: from a place of kindness into even this, especially this,
Speaker 2: especially this, and find out who I am now as
Speaker 2: a person whose mom is no longer physically present in
Speaker 2: this way, how does home change? What does home look like?
Speaker 2: For me? Like? These are such fantastic questions. There are
Speaker 2: such fun quest questions, and I'm so thankful to you
Speaker 2: for asking them and asking them publicly and encouraging other
Speaker 2: people to ask them because we just don't. We don't
Speaker 2: have enough spaces where we are encouraged to have that
Speaker 2: both and and to ask ourselves those questions, especially kindly. Right,
Speaker 2: I think it's like easy to like flip into interrogation. Look,
Speaker 2: murder was a little budget Like, No, everything you do
Speaker 2: is just steeped in so much kindness.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate that. I think that might rebuttal
Speaker 1: to what you said about what people might say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you need this thing. It reminds me of what we
Speaker 1: do about the pandemic, and people say like, oh, because
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, I was able to do this, which
Speaker 1: I understand. It's hard, especially with people who lost someone
Speaker 1: during the pandemic. Of course, there's no desire to hear
Speaker 1: any good that could have Yeah no good, Yeah, no good.
Speaker 1: And I get it, and I honor that. I honor
Speaker 1: that feeling. And when we have a loss, we are
Speaker 1: a different person. So there have to be new answers,
Speaker 1: there have to be new questions, there have to be
Speaker 1: new some things. And throughout our lives, mostly other people
Speaker 1: have decided that, and sometimes it's the person who passed
Speaker 1: who decided. In my case, my mother who decided so
Speaker 1: much about what I understand about myself. You know, when
Speaker 1: my mom first got her diagnosis, I remember wailing and wailing,
Speaker 1: laying in the lap of a woman, the woman I
Speaker 1: was dating at the time, and saying, how will I
Speaker 1: ever read if the person who taught me how to
Speaker 1: read is dying? How will I ever walk if the
Speaker 1: person who taught me how to walk is dying? It
Speaker 1: felt like her leaving took away everything I understood about
Speaker 1: myself and the world, and in her passing this pause
Speaker 1: to say who am I to me is profound and
Speaker 1: terrifying as well, both profound and terrifying to say, who
Speaker 1: am I? With everything she gave me and with everything
Speaker 1: she couldn't, Who am I with everything I know about
Speaker 1: myself now and everything she reminds me about myself? And
Speaker 1: there is this newness emerging that requires questions, and I
Speaker 1: hope that we don't shy away from those questions because
Speaker 1: they offer us some calibration towards where we're going next.
Speaker 1: And So, while you didn't need a loss to make
Speaker 1: you think you're a new person, and that makes you
Speaker 1: think not necessarily the loss itself, but the fact that
Speaker 1: you are different, because that person is no longer physically
Speaker 1: there with you. It's a call to make new considerations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that you just used to the word call,
Speaker 2: because I was going to go with call and response, right,
Speaker 2: like that sort of external structure of this linear healing model, right,
Speaker 2: the future self, the highest self, the healed self, like
Speaker 2: that destination point.
Speaker 1: And I am so happy that you brought this up
Speaker 1: because I've been evangelizing this so much, this idea of
Speaker 1: your chosen self, that it's not this higher, better self.
Speaker 1: You weren't previously a lower, worse self. It's just the
Speaker 1: you that you continue to choose. And so every day
Speaker 1: that can be either reinforced, it can be changed, it
Speaker 1: can be shape shifted a little bit, it can be
Speaker 1: edited a bit. Because you're getting new information every day,
Speaker 1: You're having new understandings about yourself every day, so that
Speaker 1: should and will continue to change. But the only self
Speaker 1: that needs to be that energy needs to be put
Speaker 1: towards is your chosen self, who you choose to be.
Speaker 1: And maybe in your grief, your chosen self is someone
Speaker 1: who's a little more reserved and spending a little bit
Speaker 1: more time to yourself, and maybe it's someone who's all
Speaker 1: of a sudden becoming a bit more community centered since
Speaker 1: you have had a loss. Whatever it is across the
Speaker 1: spectrum of possibilities, the fact that you chose it is
Speaker 1: what makes it the best self.
Speaker 2: Sovereignty, authority over your own life, being the author of
Speaker 2: your own life, and choosing.
Speaker 1: And I say your best self is your highest service.
Speaker 1: When you step into your best self, you are now
Speaker 1: primed to be kinder, to be gentler, to have more capacity,
Speaker 1: to be more honest, to be more grounded, and so
Speaker 1: trying to be all of those things in little pockets
Speaker 1: to people please will never be as effective as just
Speaker 1: settling with yourself, considering what your values are, moving with
Speaker 1: your intentions, and you will certainly show up better for
Speaker 1: the world when you have really settled with your chosen self.
Speaker 2: And that's so counter to the messaging that we get
Speaker 2: right of like, serve others, serve others, serve others, And
Speaker 2: you really do need to choose yourself in order to
Speaker 2: be of the most service to the world and creating
Speaker 2: the world that can also serve you. Right, both and
Speaker 2: both and all over the place. I want to make
Speaker 2: sure we have a little bit of time to talk
Speaker 2: about your new book and I think the both and
Speaker 2: is actually a really great transition here, because writing writing
Speaker 2: a book is a really long process. So I'm guessing
Speaker 2: that the creation, the writing, the editing, all of the
Speaker 2: before launch stuff with a book like that came during
Speaker 2: your mom's illness. I don't know how it intersected with
Speaker 2: her death, but how has this grief experienced, this loss
Speaker 2: experience And I'm saying that rather than only the death
Speaker 2: of your mom, because so much has fed into that
Speaker 2: and mixed with that, how has that both ended with
Speaker 2: the birth of your new book.
Speaker 1: I signed this book deal in twenty eighteen. It's been
Speaker 1: a lot time of me working on this book, and
Speaker 1: it was in the midst of the book that I
Speaker 1: had that first moment of I want to call it consciousness,
Speaker 1: but I don't really like that word because it seems
Speaker 1: so inaccessible or something. But my first moment of deeper
Speaker 1: consideration about who I'd been, who I was, and who
Speaker 1: I want to choose to be. And so in the
Speaker 1: original manuscript where a lot of those survival optimism narratives
Speaker 1: that I had written, so I had to go back
Speaker 1: and change them, and I also engaged with the topics
Speaker 1: a bit different. So the book is arranged in various
Speaker 1: chapters that speak to different ways of reimagining. The book
Speaker 1: is a memoir and a manifesto talking about reimagining, and
Speaker 1: it's reimagining love, reimagining education, reimagining feminism, and looking at
Speaker 1: all of the ways that I approached these aspects of
Speaker 1: life a little different with my own values and intentions,
Speaker 1: and every single one of those were so informed by
Speaker 1: what my mom either told me about myself or told
Speaker 1: me was right in the world based on her own
Speaker 1: religion of Christianity, and so there was a lot of
Speaker 1: having to comb through the narrative and see what I
Speaker 1: had come up with myself out of survival and what
Speaker 1: was actually true. Another thing that was particularly related to
Speaker 1: my mother and the book is that in coming to
Speaker 1: a lot of these conclusions and understandings about myself, there
Speaker 1: were some things in the book that I knew my
Speaker 1: mom might feel shame about. Particularly, I have two older
Speaker 1: sisters who both still since when I was in high
Speaker 1: school to this day, have been their whole lives have
Speaker 1: been ravished by addiction, and my mom always was very
Speaker 1: disheartened by the distance I had to take from my
Speaker 1: sisters in order to be okay, and so I think
Speaker 1: I also had a lot of anxiety about how she
Speaker 1: might feel about reading what I felt about my sisters,
Speaker 1: her children, her children. And a few weeks before my
Speaker 1: mother passed, I sat by her bed in the hospice
Speaker 1: center she was in and I read her a little
Speaker 1: chunk of the book that was clear enough for me
Speaker 1: that was like, there wouldn't be too much tension in
Speaker 1: what I read to her. And the one thing I
Speaker 1: will say is I read it to my mom, and
Speaker 1: my mom says, wow, that was so much better than
Speaker 1: I thought it would be, Like, Okay, thanks, Mom, I'm
Speaker 1: actually a writer and I do.
Speaker 2: So one.
Speaker 1: It was that funny aspect of her really still not
Speaker 1: having any clue what I do in the world or
Speaker 1: how I do my work, but also the fact that
Speaker 1: she passed just a few weeks after it and just
Speaker 1: a few months before the book's published date. They talk
Speaker 1: a lot about authors who usually can't get the book
Speaker 1: out until the person who they're really addressing in the
Speaker 1: book has passed because there's all of these anxieties about
Speaker 1: if they read it, how they'll feel. So I think
Speaker 1: that definitely came into play. That was a truth for me.
Speaker 1: For sure, because I don't know if I could move
Speaker 1: with the confidence that I do with the book if
Speaker 1: I knew that my mom would have to read it
Speaker 1: but also deal with however other people feel about it
Speaker 1: is written in the book. So I'm grateful that I
Speaker 1: don't have to have that experience that was giving me
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety. But I also wish that she
Speaker 1: could be here for the excitement of the book coming out.
Speaker 1: There's that both and as well. But I will say
Speaker 1: going back to that first story about her still not
Speaker 1: really knowing about the work that I do, the fact
Speaker 1: that I have the desire and the capacity to write
Speaker 1: about grief in the way that I do, to share
Speaker 1: it with my readers, to be in conversation with my readers.
Speaker 1: This is the first time it feels like my mom
Speaker 1: is in my work, knows she's she is my work
Speaker 1: right now for the first time in a way that
Speaker 1: she never was. She's in it how me and her
Speaker 1: engage in my dreams, in my body, in the seemingly
Speaker 1: supernatural things that go on in my world that seem
Speaker 1: in relation to her. This is the first time that
Speaker 1: I feel like my mom is deeply engaged with my
Speaker 1: work and I love that.
Speaker 2: That's really cool. I hadn't thought about that. I really
Speaker 2: dig that, you know, as somebody who will probably not
Speaker 2: publish a lot of things until after my parents die
Speaker 2: for those those same reasons. I love that though, that
Speaker 2: there is a way now that you can be seen,
Speaker 2: you know. I think sometimes we think that like death
Speaker 2: ends a relationship, and what you're describing is like new
Speaker 2: rooms in that relationship open up all the time.
Speaker 1: All the time, and it's to shape shifts. And that's
Speaker 1: also why grieving has to be done, because that's where
Speaker 1: the relationship continues. If you skip that, you're missing out
Speaker 1: on opportunities to continue to build that relationship. You know.
Speaker 1: I had like a deep breakdown moment the other day
Speaker 1: because I was thinking about so many things about my
Speaker 1: mom that came up and could only have come up
Speaker 1: during her passing. And one thing that I was just
Speaker 1: like crying and crying and crying about is that my
Speaker 1: mother didn't really like to travel. She didn't travel much.
Speaker 1: The only stamp in her but she got her passport
Speaker 1: a year before she passed, and that's because I invited
Speaker 1: her to come visit me in Jamaica. And she has
Speaker 1: one stamp in that passport, which was her visiting me
Speaker 1: in Jamaica, and my mom had never been out of
Speaker 1: the country before. So I remember during her dying, I
Speaker 1: was so stressed because I'm like, this woman doesn't even
Speaker 1: like to leave the city. She must be terrified to die.
Speaker 1: Like it's rib like, just think, just think about how
Speaker 1: excruciatingly scary that must have been for her to sit
Speaker 1: on that bed and be like, I have no clue
Speaker 1: where I'm going. Yeah, that's in the sentence. I have
Speaker 1: no clue where I'm going outside of her beliefs and
Speaker 1: where she hoped she was going, but we just don't know.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I had this deep wailing cry
Speaker 1: of sadness for her, and then I had this moment
Speaker 1: of like, oh my gosh, I'm so proud of her.
Speaker 1: She did the one thing we are all terrified to do,
Speaker 1: we are all terrified to die, and my mom did
Speaker 1: this badass thing of like doing it. I know my
Speaker 1: mother and well enough to know that she literally had
Speaker 1: a moment to be like, you know what, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna go, like I gotta let this. Like she had
Speaker 1: been fighting it so hard over her last few weeks
Speaker 1: to the point where I was like, Mom, just go.
Speaker 1: You are hating every moment of this. We are hating
Speaker 1: every moment of this. We're so proud of everything that
Speaker 1: you've done. Just go. Like many people, she passed the
Speaker 1: one night I decided to stay the night at home
Speaker 1: instead of stay the night on the floor of the
Speaker 1: hospice like I had been doing. And I remember I
Speaker 1: was here at my house that evening with a lover
Speaker 1: of mine and I remember holding on to her torso
Speaker 1: we were like kind of sitting on the couch and
Speaker 1: I was like kind of hugging her, and I remember
Speaker 1: just feeling so dizzy. I felt like I was in
Speaker 1: some sort of wild vortex. And I'm like, it could
Speaker 1: have been anything. It could have been the exhaustion, it
Speaker 1: could have been the grief. But I think my mom
Speaker 1: was dying in that moment like that if we look
Speaker 1: at the timeline that was about the time, and I
Speaker 1: just feel like she was. There was some part of
Speaker 1: her that was still like sticky to me, kind of
Speaker 1: sticky on me, that was keeping me. Like I feel
Speaker 1: like I went into this like the spin of it
Speaker 1: with her, and just the depths of both of the feelings,
Speaker 1: the depth of grief that she was terrified of it,
Speaker 1: and the depth of pride that I have for her
Speaker 1: to do that, and her having died, and you know,
Speaker 1: now she doesn't have a body that she can't walk with.
Speaker 1: I hope my mom is doing cart wheel and running
Speaker 1: and doing all of these things that she never got
Speaker 1: to do. And I'm so happy for her, Like I'm
Speaker 1: so happy for her that she's not dealing with the
Speaker 1: things that she was dealing with here, and you know,
Speaker 1: the things about the living that constrain us. You know,
Speaker 1: how she might have felt about having a queer daughter,
Speaker 1: how she might have related to me based on whatever
Speaker 1: are the rules of the world she didn't want to
Speaker 1: break or she didn't want me to break. Those no
Speaker 1: longer apply. So that means that I can have a
Speaker 1: particular joy in my relationships. I can have a particular
Speaker 1: conversation with her that if I had it with her before,
Speaker 1: she would have felt so much shame about what her
Speaker 1: sister might have felt or what her mother might have felt.
Speaker 1: And I feel like this is such a beautiful, excruciating
Speaker 1: shape of us that I don't take for granted and
Speaker 1: that I actively participate in because it is something different
Speaker 1: and it's something new, and it's something that I'm grateful for,
Speaker 1: the shapeshift of a relationship from her being here physically
Speaker 1: to not.
Speaker 2: You get to have a totality of relatedness. Right. As
Speaker 2: devastating as this is, there is the end of that
Speaker 2: sounds so like such a blessing, like such a liberation. Right,
Speaker 2: And to come back to your book like that's a renaissance, right,
Speaker 2: that is a relationship renaissance, yes, for me and thriving exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yes, the title of the book is a renaissance of
Speaker 1: our own memoir and manifesto on reimagining. And if the
Speaker 1: book hadn't been on the deadline that it was, I
Speaker 1: think I would have had a chapter called Reimagining Grief
Speaker 1: because there is such a difference in how I have
Speaker 1: been able to approach it that seems to not follow
Speaker 1: the guidelines of society of science. Even that invites me
Speaker 1: to have a different reallylationship to my grief and my mother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that through line right of curiosity for self,
Speaker 2: the chosen self, authoring your own life, inquiring with kindness
Speaker 2: but also with like, with your own narratives. Like all
Speaker 2: of this is that arc of coming closer and closer
Speaker 2: to that chosen self by being curious about the stories
Speaker 2: of ourselves and others, and ourselves in relationship with others,
Speaker 2: and that that is what's possible. Right in the promotion
Speaker 2: for your book, you have written, I stand as living
Speaker 2: proof that a life reimagined is possible, proof that with
Speaker 2: a willingness to do the work, to make peace with
Speaker 2: the unknown, and to believe that we are worth the effort,
Speaker 2: there is a renaissance that awaits. Yeah, I think this.
Speaker 2: This feels like such a hopeful a hopeful place in
Speaker 2: this both and like devastation and renaissance and choosing yourself.
Speaker 2: So I think I think it's set s. It's up
Speaker 2: pretty well for my asked question for us here together,
Speaker 2: which is knowing what you know and living what you've
Speaker 2: lived in all of the stories of your life. What
Speaker 2: does hope look like for you right now?
Speaker 1: For me, hope is really rooted in the same things
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, hope that I have and will
Speaker 1: continue to have the opportunity to cultivate tools to be
Speaker 1: well with myself and with the rest of the world
Speaker 1: that I live in the land, my community, my oppressors,
Speaker 1: my joys, space place. I think as we lean into
Speaker 1: our healing. We all have what me and my peers,
Speaker 1: we've been sitting around eating pasta together talking about what
Speaker 1: our squishy thing is. When we talk about what we
Speaker 1: build about building up walls. Those walls are to protect
Speaker 1: some squishy thing, and that squishy thing usually was created
Speaker 1: in childhood. And for me, my squishy thing is autonomy.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a lot of it as a child,
Speaker 1: and so now that is the that's my squishy thing
Speaker 1: that I'm constantly trying to protect. And in both I
Speaker 1: think I'll say psychology because I feel like I've heard
Speaker 1: it a lot in more scientific academic text, but also
Speaker 1: in mainstream conversation. It's always like, break your walls down,
Speaker 1: break your walls down, figure out how to not have walls.
Speaker 1: And I am now feeling more hopeful than ever for
Speaker 1: my own goodness and wellness and for my ability to
Speaker 1: show up in the world, because I no longer feel
Speaker 1: like I have to break those walls down. I just
Speaker 1: have to know them. I have to honor them, and
Speaker 1: I have to maintain them because they were there to
Speaker 1: protect something and I want to still protect that thing.
Speaker 1: But I can do it by this self study, this
Speaker 1: self understanding, this intention of being my chosen self, and
Speaker 1: so I feel very hopeful by this being broken, the
Speaker 1: brokenness that came from and continues to exist because of
Speaker 1: losing my mother. There's only up to go. It's one
Speaker 1: of those like I feel. I feel like right now
Speaker 1: I'm in the worst part of my life. I keep
Speaker 1: telling my friends, if this isn't the worst, I swear
Speaker 1: I've missed, this better be the worst, or I'm going
Speaker 1: to be livid. And so, you know, for all the
Speaker 1: days I wake up in the morning crying, for all
Speaker 1: the times I fallen to the floor in the kitchen
Speaker 1: in the middle of cooking a meal because a memory
Speaker 1: came up, and all of the times that I've pushed
Speaker 1: people away because I just didn't know how to grieve
Speaker 1: in community, and all the times that I have, you know,
Speaker 1: just been undone in the way that life happens. I
Speaker 1: am tending to my squishy part, and that's the only
Speaker 1: thing I can control. Nothing else. Really. I can't control
Speaker 1: what the governments do. I can't control what racism, capitalism,
Speaker 1: all of these things, how these ways are showing up.
Speaker 1: I can't control how my neighbor, my lover, my family
Speaker 1: remember what they do, or how they feel. But I
Speaker 1: feel very hopeful about the work that I'm doing on
Speaker 1: supporting and leaning into myself, and there's there's some hope there.
Speaker 2: There are so many ways that I want to go
Speaker 2: with that, but I also want to respect your time,
Speaker 2: So I'm not going to dive into all of those things,
Speaker 2: but I so much look forward to listening to you
Speaker 2: explore those things and share them with the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, I will be doing I learned that I also
Speaker 1: do these things out loud. It feels true for me
Speaker 1: and natural for me to do that. And that's another
Speaker 1: thing with healing. You just you accept what's true for you,
Speaker 1: and you no longer get stressed about how other people
Speaker 1: feel about them. You just can answer like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my truth. I've really looked into it and I
Speaker 1: know it's true for me. So I'm just going to
Speaker 1: keep going this way. And so I think that might
Speaker 1: be a little bit of hope too, that when you
Speaker 1: know yourself, when you continue to look into yourself, you
Speaker 1: can have a truth that you can kind of stand
Speaker 1: more firmly with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love all these things. Okay, it has been
Speaker 2: such a joy and such an honor to talk with you.
Speaker 2: Now we're going to link to your website, the Loveland Foundation,
Speaker 2: which we didn't get to talk about today, but we'll
Speaker 2: be in the show notes, and obviously to your new
Speaker 2: book and your bookstore and all of the things. But
Speaker 2: is there anything else you want people to know about
Speaker 2: where to find you or what's coming up.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just working on a lot of opportunities to gather.
Speaker 1: So I hope people continue to follow and look for
Speaker 1: ways that we can get together virtually and in person
Speaker 1: around grief, around generational conversations, around knowing ourselves. I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to being and more conversation with people virtually and
Speaker 1: sharing space in the same room.
Speaker 2: Excellent. I cannot wait to see what happens next. All right, everybody,
Speaker 2: stay tuned. We will be back with your questions to
Speaker 2: carry with you right after this break. I leave you
Speaker 2: with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. Now,
Speaker 2: Rachel said something, Okay, she said a lot of things,
Speaker 2: but something that really stuck with me about how we
Speaker 2: revisit our past, Like usually it's this excavation of awfulness, right,
Speaker 2: like searching for the places that you didn't get enough
Speaker 2: or things were terrible. Rachel said, I look at my childhood,
Speaker 2: and I have to dust some things off. When you
Speaker 2: do that, you're not just going to the box of
Speaker 2: bones and figuring out all the hard, terrible things that
Speaker 2: happened in your childhood. You're also clearing off the spaces
Speaker 2: where good things are. I love that. It's part of
Speaker 2: that curiosity we talked about so much together, coming to
Speaker 2: your own personal story with like not with this like
Speaker 2: rabid bloodhound approach of rooting out the ways that things
Speaker 2: shaped you in a negative way, but with a gentleness,
Speaker 2: an openness, and a kindness and a curiosity about how
Speaker 2: the story of your life has shaped you. It's such
Speaker 2: a gentler way of being with yourself, right. I love it.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be a bloodhound excavating terrible things.
Speaker 2: You can be a curious, gentle explorer of your own life.
Speaker 2: How about you? What stuck with you from this conversation.
Speaker 2: Everybody's going to take something different from the show, but
Speaker 2: I do hope you found something to hold on too.
Speaker 2: If you want to tell me how today's show felt
Speaker 2: for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered,
Speaker 2: let me know. Tag at Refuge and Grief on all
Speaker 2: the social platforms so I can hear how this episode
Speaker 2: affected you, and remember to leave a review too.
Speaker 1: Please.
Speaker 2: This season's guests are incredible and reviews are a great
Speaker 2: way to let me know how this season feels to you.
Speaker 2: Follow the show at its Okay pod on TikTok and
Speaker 2: Refuge and Grief Everywhere else. To see video clips from
Speaker 2: the show, use the hashtag It's Okay pod on all
Speaker 2: all the platforms, so not only can I find you,
Speaker 2: but others can too. Conversations are important. None of us
Speaker 2: are entirely okay right now, and it's time we start
Speaker 2: talking about that together. Yeah, it's okay that you're not okay.
Speaker 2: You're in good company. That's it for this week. Remember
Speaker 2: to subscribe to the show and share it with the
Speaker 2: people you love. Coming up next week, everybody the original
Speaker 2: climate activist author Bill mckibbon. Follow the show on your
Speaker 2: favorite platforms so you do not miss an episode. Want
Speaker 2: more on these topics, Look, grief is everywhere. As my
Speaker 2: dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief that
Speaker 2: we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about all
Speaker 2: that without accidentally grief, gaslighting somebody or gaslighting yourself, that
Speaker 2: is an important skill for everyone. It helped to have
Speaker 2: those conversations with trainings, professional resources, and my best selling book,
Speaker 2: It's Okay that You're Not Okay. At Megandivine dot Co.
Speaker 2: It's Okay that You're Not Okay. The podcast is written
Speaker 2: and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown,
Speaker 2: co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support
Speaker 2: from Micah, Post production and editing by Houston Tilley. Show
Speaker 2: notes and research support from our fabulous intern Hannah Goldman.
Speaker 2: Music provided by Wave Crush and background noise this time
Speaker 2: provided by The Big Crows tap dancing on the metal,
Speaker 2: awning outside my window. Hi Crows,