Speaker 1: You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: The stand up was just another extension of that of Hey, Grief,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go on stage tonight and tell jokes for
Speaker 1: seven minutes in the world that you trapped me, and
Speaker 1: I'm still gonna go up and do it like out
Speaker 1: of sheer defiance. I'm Hillary Clinton and this is You
Speaker 1: and Me Both, where I get into some of today's
Speaker 1: biggest questions with people I admire. On today's episode, we're
Speaker 1: talking about finding a path forward after a terrible loss,
Speaker 1: moving from grief to action. You know, when I think
Speaker 1: about the times I've gone through grieving, losing my parents
Speaker 1: and in particular, last year was really hard on me.
Speaker 1: I lost one of my very close friends, my best
Speaker 1: friend from literally sixth grade, and my younger brother. It
Speaker 1: happened in the space of, you know, less than six months.
Speaker 1: It was painful missing them and wishing I could talk
Speaker 1: to them practically every day, and I often find myself
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how do other people confront feelings
Speaker 1: of sadness and anger, disbelief, outrage, How do we all
Speaker 1: summon the strength to keep going. So I'm talking to
Speaker 1: two people who have really endured very tough losses. Later,
Speaker 1: I'll be talking with Sabrina Fulton. She's the mother of
Speaker 1: Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed on his way
Speaker 1: home from a store in twelve. You know, Sabrina has
Speaker 1: become a powerful advocate for parents and communities harmed by violence.
Speaker 1: She's someone that I've been inspired by over the years.
Speaker 1: But first, I will be talking with actor and comedian
Speaker 1: Patent Oswald. Now you may have seen him on t
Speaker 1: V on one of his stand up Netflix specials, or
Speaker 1: on The King of Queens, one of the great titles
Speaker 1: for a TV program, Or if you're a grandmother like me,
Speaker 1: you might have heard him as the voice of the
Speaker 1: rat Remy in the movie Rata Tui. He's known for
Speaker 1: being funny, but he's also been outspoken about the grief
Speaker 1: he's experienced in Patton's wife, Michelle, died suddenly in her sleep.
Speaker 1: She was forty six years old. Her death was attributed
Speaker 1: to an undiagnosed heart condition and complications from medications she
Speaker 1: was taking. Her sudden death left Patent and their daughter, Alice,
Speaker 1: who was then eight years old, totally overcome by loss
Speaker 1: and grief. Now, he since has returned to comedy even
Speaker 1: remarried and is raising an incredible kid that I got
Speaker 1: to say hello to before we started, and that was
Speaker 1: great talking with Alice. But he did something else. He
Speaker 1: took the project that Michelle had dedicated decades of her
Speaker 1: life too and brought it to fruition. Because you see,
Speaker 1: Michelle was writing the book on the Golden State Killer
Speaker 1: based on months and months of research. Patton worked with
Speaker 1: two collaborators to finish this book called I'll Be Gone
Speaker 1: in the Dark. It went on to become a New
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller, and then he helped produce the HBO
Speaker 1: documentary series by the same title. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to Patton about how he got over and through
Speaker 1: one of the most terrible losses you can experience, and
Speaker 1: where he is now. Well, I have to say, Patton,
Speaker 1: I am thrilled to meet you through this podcast and
Speaker 1: have a chance to talk with you. And I think
Speaker 1: I should start by congratulating you because in May, in
Speaker 1: the middle of COVID, you released a new stand up
Speaker 1: special on Netflix called I Love Everything, and it got
Speaker 1: absolute ray reviews add me to the list, um, and
Speaker 1: so I'm just so excited to have this chance to
Speaker 1: talk to you. About really the ups and the downs
Speaker 1: of life and different ways we move from grief to action. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you've been very public about your grief. When your
Speaker 1: wife Michelle passed away back in it was very sudden,
Speaker 1: left you alone a single father, and I have so
Speaker 1: appreciated how honest, raw vulnerable you've been talking about that experience. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that keyed off of me when
Speaker 1: it first happened, when Michelle first passed, and I was
Speaker 1: so shell shocked and kind of shredded, you know, really
Speaker 1: I was. I was all nerve and viscera. That's how
Speaker 1: I felt. I turned to people in the past that
Speaker 1: had also been very, very upfront about chronicling their grief,
Speaker 1: especially as a book called A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis,
Speaker 1: where his his wife had just died, probably one of
Speaker 1: the best writers of the twentieth century. And this wasn't
Speaker 1: a book that was written months or years, and like
Speaker 1: he was writing it immediately as he was feeling it.
Speaker 1: And it is one of the greatest depictions of grief
Speaker 1: I've ever seen, and I it's the slimmest book he's
Speaker 1: ever written. And it took me so long to read it.
Speaker 1: Because you just need to take a break from it.
Speaker 1: It's one of the heaviest things I've ever read, but
Speaker 1: I came away from it feeling so much. You know
Speaker 1: that feel you get after you've had a really, really
Speaker 1: deep cry, and then afterwards you're like, oh, I actually
Speaker 1: sort of have some strength right now. I can maybe
Speaker 1: like I needed to wrench that stuff out of me.
Speaker 1: And so once the book ended, it was almost like,
Speaker 1: I need to talk about this in a way to
Speaker 1: like I need to recreate that cry constantly, because one
Speaker 1: of the scariest moments in grief is you think that
Speaker 1: you'll have a specific reaction to stimulize. So thinking about
Speaker 1: her being gone, and there will be moments when I
Speaker 1: wouldn't cry, But then later on I'm driving along and
Speaker 1: I would see a cloud and I would explode into tears.
Speaker 1: And what I realized was my body was defending me, going, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we can't deal with the immediate stimuli,
Speaker 1: it'll be too much. Let's let this come out against
Speaker 1: a random thing so that it's not so he can
Speaker 1: actually kind of deal with it. And I remember talking
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who had, you know, survived
Speaker 1: widowers or people that had survived grief friends of mine
Speaker 1: that had also gone to the same thing, like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna go through that for a while where you
Speaker 1: will start the stuff you think is gonna make you cry,
Speaker 1: you will have no reaction to, and you'll judge yourself
Speaker 1: very harshly, and then later on a day, later, a
Speaker 1: week later, you'll explode over nothing. And it was that
Speaker 1: was really scary, you know, And the losses that I've experienced,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: when after my father died, or my mother died, or
Speaker 1: my best friend died, something will trigger a memory that
Speaker 1: is not even conscious, it's so deeply buried, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, my eyes are welling up and I
Speaker 1: have to if I'm in public, you know, I have
Speaker 1: to sort of sniff a lot. Which, Yeah, it's so
Speaker 1: interesting because you were back on the stage doing comedy
Speaker 1: within six months. And was that a way for you
Speaker 1: to process what you were going through? And I mean,
Speaker 1: how was it part of your healing process? I wish
Speaker 1: I could say something as noble and intelligent as oh,
Speaker 1: and I decided to attack it was when the first
Speaker 1: time I went on stage was in August, and I
Speaker 1: basically it has had nothing to do with healing or
Speaker 1: regaining myself. It was I don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1: And it also was because for a couple of months
Speaker 1: after she passed, I was like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm alive, Like maybe I'm the one who died. And
Speaker 1: I genuinely wasn't sure whether I was alive or not.
Speaker 1: There were those days where I would walk around and go, wait,
Speaker 1: is this did Michelle die? Maybe I'm the one who
Speaker 1: And I had some really scary, like mental health moments
Speaker 1: when I didn't know if I so it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to bring and I and I remember I
Speaker 1: flashed back to when I told Alice, the principal in
Speaker 1: her school, said she whatever she tells you she needs,
Speaker 1: you have to you have to let her lead for
Speaker 1: a while. And one of the first things she said
Speaker 1: was because I told her on a Friday, and she goes,
Speaker 1: I want to go to school on Monday, like it
Speaker 1: was the first because I want something that feels like normalcy.
Speaker 1: And then I realized, oh, I'm doing the same thing
Speaker 1: that my daughter did. On a weeknight, I would go
Speaker 1: out and do sets because that's what normal life looked like,
Speaker 1: So that's what I started doing, right, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: a distraction so much. No, it was a way through,
Speaker 1: how can I make the world feel like the living
Speaker 1: world when I wasn't questioning whether I was a either
Speaker 1: or not, And I had to start actively switching the
Speaker 1: world back to the way that it was doing stand up.
Speaker 1: I remember there were a couple of mornings when I
Speaker 1: just couldn't wake up and Alice just didn't go to
Speaker 1: school because I wouldn't wake up till noon, and I'd go,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, or I would I would forget to
Speaker 1: like suddenly, oh, you have no clean clothes because I
Speaker 1: haven't done any laundry, because I don't know what I'm
Speaker 1: you know. So then I had to start really actively going,
Speaker 1: I'm getting up every morning. I'm gonna make her breakfast.
Speaker 1: She's gonna be right, Like I did that in defiance
Speaker 1: of this grief world I was stuck in. So I
Speaker 1: did that for a few months, and then the stand
Speaker 1: up was just another extension of that of Hey, grief,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go on stage tonight and tell jokes for
Speaker 1: seven minutes in the world that you trapped me, and
Speaker 1: I'm still gonna go up and do it like out
Speaker 1: of sheer defiance. I love that word defiance, because you
Speaker 1: were you were defying the tragic reality that you were
Speaker 1: now inhabiting, and you were determined that you were going
Speaker 1: to do everything you could at least to reshape it,
Speaker 1: both for you and Alice. You also did something else
Speaker 1: that really mattered, because you know, your late wife was
Speaker 1: an extraordinary investigator and researcher, and what she did was
Speaker 1: to try to, through her writing, her online interactions, you know,
Speaker 1: to try to build a community of people who were
Speaker 1: going to help solve crimes, which you know, I find fascinating.
Speaker 1: And she was in the middle when Michelle died of
Speaker 1: a year's long research project to track down the rapist
Speaker 1: and murderer eventually known as the Golden State Killer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that was a thing that she had written about
Speaker 1: on her blog True Crime Diary, which led to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles magazine wanting her to write an article about it,
Speaker 1: and the article blew up online and that led to
Speaker 1: HarperCollins saying, well, this is a book because it's such
Speaker 1: a massive, decades long unsolved case. The Golden State Killer
Speaker 1: started off as a burglar and ray pist in the
Speaker 1: Sacramento area in the early seventies mid seventies, he went
Speaker 1: under the names the Vicelia Ransacker. Then he became the
Speaker 1: East Area Rapist or ear E A r. Then he
Speaker 1: bumped up to murder. Then he vanished, but then reappeared
Speaker 1: down in Irvine and and Goalita and like it was
Speaker 1: just this statewide kind of spree. It was the worst
Speaker 1: uncaught killer in California history. And he had faded from
Speaker 1: memory and it turned out he was an ex police
Speaker 1: policeman who was kicked off the force partially for shoplifting,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, a hammer and dog repellent, spray
Speaker 1: and rope. So that's getting on the edge of like
Speaker 1: dark comedy at that point where it's like how much
Speaker 1: more obvious could this guts? But also people keep forgetting
Speaker 1: there was an era coming up where you know, that's
Speaker 1: what guys did, man, you used to that's of course
Speaker 1: you buys a hammer, and some wrote that's what guys do,
Speaker 1: so it didn't seem weird or suspicious. So she really
Speaker 1: delves into part of what kept him going for so
Speaker 1: long was the tone and uh feeling of the era
Speaker 1: and how it felt about women and how it felt
Speaker 1: about rape victims and stuff like that. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's a whole piece. It's it's it's as much a
Speaker 1: mood piece as it is an investigative piece. It's it's
Speaker 1: just both in its extraordinary. We're taking a quick break.
Speaker 1: Stay with us. You decided to finish the book she
Speaker 1: was working on, and you know, give us a little
Speaker 1: bit of understanding as to how you summon the energy
Speaker 1: and commitment to take on what is a huge undertaking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that was me. You know again, the first there
Speaker 1: was not an immediate I'm gonna see her book through.
Speaker 1: It was just months of you know, junk food and
Speaker 1: crying and rewatching the princess bride um and just doing
Speaker 1: like the most embarrassing stuff you wish as yeah as
Speaker 1: you wish you exactly um. And then came down to
Speaker 1: it wasn't even that. I just I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to finish book, like I am going to beg
Speaker 1: people who knew her who I also know, Billy Jensen
Speaker 1: who's a journalist, Paul Haynes, who was her researcher and
Speaker 1: data minor, and this guy Paul Holes who was a
Speaker 1: homicide investigator, Like please please help me assemble I can't
Speaker 1: write at her level. I can't fill in where she
Speaker 1: left off sensitives, but we can. We can organize this
Speaker 1: so that it has a narrative to it, and please, please,
Speaker 1: let's get this out there. And they all stepped up
Speaker 1: a lot of times when you're grieving. That's another part
Speaker 1: of grieving that people that I think gets misrepresented a lot,
Speaker 1: the stoic lone Widower, the you know, lone wolf and
Speaker 1: Cub Samurai with his you know baby in the cart
Speaker 1: in front of him and walking through the rain. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that. No, You're gonna have to ask
Speaker 1: for a lot of help and be kind of clumsy
Speaker 1: and embarrassed to do it. But I still did it
Speaker 1: because I wanted that book finished, especially because one of
Speaker 1: the things that Michelle embraced early on. Most crimes are
Speaker 1: solved not through card chases and shootouts. It's a cop
Speaker 1: sitting there sifting through data. I remember there was a
Speaker 1: day she got somehow there was a digital archive of
Speaker 1: every year book in Sacramento from the time that he
Speaker 1: would have been young, and so a couple of witnesses
Speaker 1: described as being athletic. So she went through every track team.
Speaker 1: I mean it was just like it took weeks to
Speaker 1: go through and cross reference and it led to nothing.
Speaker 1: But it was the doing that, and and again it
Speaker 1: was every couple days and every couple of weeks, it
Speaker 1: was just the how do I, how do I get
Speaker 1: up tomorrow and do this again? This is going nowhere.
Speaker 1: It's you gotta hammer it every day. It's so brutal
Speaker 1: and and I think that's why a lot of the
Speaker 1: cops that she talked to trusted her very early on,
Speaker 1: because they saw, oh, no, she's doing the grunt work.
Speaker 1: She's not trying to do the really cool how Hollywood
Speaker 1: c s I sherlock, Oh this cigarette ash. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: I just went through like five phone books from five
Speaker 1: different years. You know that kind of thing, which is
Speaker 1: how you that's how you solve crimes. But you finished
Speaker 1: the book I'll Be Gone in the Dark. You had
Speaker 1: the investigators and the retired police and everybody helping you.
Speaker 1: Then you turned it into an HBO documentary. What did
Speaker 1: it feel like, you know, not only finishing the book,
Speaker 1: but then turning it into a documentary, getting it over
Speaker 1: the finished line, so to speak, without Michelle being right
Speaker 1: there by your side. You know, again, the cliche word
Speaker 1: would be bitter sweet, especially because the director that I
Speaker 1: got to work with, this woman, Liz Garvis, who did
Speaker 1: the Nina Simone documentary and the Angola Prison documentary. The
Speaker 1: way that she was able to tell the story and
Speaker 1: focus on the aspects of the story that Michelle would
Speaker 1: have wanted focused on, which is the victims, which is
Speaker 1: the survivors, and plays and these women that Michelle was
Speaker 1: always like, I hate serial killer narratives that make the
Speaker 1: serial killer out to be this dark anti hero. We're
Speaker 1: in reality, these guys they're they're just worms, you know,
Speaker 1: They're they're just worms. So the fact that that's what
Speaker 1: she also focused on, it would have been so good
Speaker 1: to have Michelle there to consult and see that process
Speaker 1: what she focused on her book also than being expanded,
Speaker 1: and also I know that Michelle would have wanted to
Speaker 1: have talked to the survivors. You know, if Michelle had
Speaker 1: been alive and he had been caught the way he was,
Speaker 1: I would be home taking care of Alice while she
Speaker 1: was staying in a hotel in Shackman and going to
Speaker 1: every court day, and just nothing felt better than when
Speaker 1: I met the women that had survived it. And they
Speaker 1: were all like, we go to every one of his
Speaker 1: arraignments and we look right at him and he can't
Speaker 1: raise his head, he can't look at us. And the
Speaker 1: smiles on their faces seeing this guy just reduced to
Speaker 1: what he was. It was just yes, yeah, well, and
Speaker 1: you know, the book was obviously a man us of
Speaker 1: best seller. And then on August twenty one, just you know,
Speaker 1: this year, this guy, this really terrible guy, horrible human being,
Speaker 1: was convicted of murdering I think thirteen people and raping
Speaker 1: over fifty in California in the seventies and eighties. And then,
Speaker 1: as I understand it from the plea hearing, he admitted
Speaker 1: to things that he hadn't even been charged with. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the you know, one of the scenes that
Speaker 1: I found both powerful and hopeful in the documentary was
Speaker 1: in the last episode when many of the rape survivors
Speaker 1: came together. They were, in their words, a survivor family.
Speaker 1: And you know, once said, even though it was decades
Speaker 1: after the attack, she suffered that she was on the
Speaker 1: road to becoming herself again. That must have been a
Speaker 1: really emotional experience for you Pat too, to meet these women,
Speaker 1: the survivor family members you know what did that mean
Speaker 1: to you. I met them at a book event up
Speaker 1: in Sacramento, and I kept it together when I met
Speaker 1: them because out of it just felt it would have felt,
Speaker 1: really I thought petty and disrespectful if I had come
Speaker 1: apart after what they had gone through. And I just
Speaker 1: listened to them. I just listen to them talk about
Speaker 1: all that, you know, their lives. And but then when
Speaker 1: I got I remember very specifically, when I got back
Speaker 1: to my hotel room, I well, I burst into tears
Speaker 1: in the car, and then I had to get myself
Speaker 1: together because I don't want to walk through the lobby
Speaker 1: like bawling, looking nuts. But then I got myself together,
Speaker 1: went back in my room, and when I closed it
Speaker 1: or I started crying again because it's just so you
Speaker 1: feel the decades of their lives just unspooling on you
Speaker 1: like that, and and the fact that they are walking
Speaker 1: around in the sunshine and going to see friends. There
Speaker 1: is a gorgeous defiance in now, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go live my life and yeah, and I know
Speaker 1: what you took from me, and I'm still going to
Speaker 1: go live my life like you're just an insect. Because
Speaker 1: of course, the ones who survived, and of course the
Speaker 1: family members of those who did not from his murders.
Speaker 1: They had to go through their own grieving process and
Speaker 1: they had to make decisions as you did every single day,
Speaker 1: as am I going to be defined by destroyed and
Speaker 1: damaged by what this man did to me or did
Speaker 1: to my you know, loved one? Or is there a
Speaker 1: way that I can be defiant? And I really like
Speaker 1: your concept there. You know, sometimes you have to be
Speaker 1: defiant in the face of what life throws at you.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm also really happy to have had a
Speaker 1: chance before we started talking to see your new wife
Speaker 1: and your beautiful daughter, Alice. So you have rebuilt a life, Pat,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's not that you've you've turned
Speaker 1: a page that's a ridiculous, uh you know description, but
Speaker 1: you've you've stayed in the river, so to speak, and
Speaker 1: it continues to flow and you've got new love and
Speaker 1: new life. Talk a little bit about that, because I
Speaker 1: want those who are listening who are going through grief
Speaker 1: for whatever happened to them, are feeling maybe down and depressed,
Speaker 1: maybe they're worried about the world, whatever it is. You know,
Speaker 1: there is this potential out there isn't there. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really interesting way that you describe the river. You
Speaker 1: got back, you stayed in the river. The river flows
Speaker 1: whether you go with it or not. It is going
Speaker 1: to flow whether you're in it or not. You know
Speaker 1: that more than anyone. You that the kind of like
Speaker 1: that that river is going to keep going. So I
Speaker 1: either decide to get in and see where it goes next,
Speaker 1: or I sit and just glare at it from the shore.
Speaker 1: You know, you you have to go with it. And
Speaker 1: I was, you know, it was February. It was almost
Speaker 1: a year after Michelle had passed away, and I was just,
Speaker 1: you know, slowly rebuilding things and getting on stage. And
Speaker 1: Meredith and I had a lot of friends in common,
Speaker 1: but we had ever met. And one of our friends
Speaker 1: in common is this actress named Martha Plimpton who likes
Speaker 1: to have these big dinner parties where she invites different
Speaker 1: people together. So she invited a bunch of people. I
Speaker 1: was on the list, so is Meredith. And at the
Speaker 1: last minute I couldn't go to the dinner because I
Speaker 1: was traveling. And then the next day Meredith sent me
Speaker 1: a message going, dude, you missed the best lasagna last night,
Speaker 1: just like and I went a story of my life.
Speaker 1: And then we just started talking on Facebook. We never
Speaker 1: spoke on the phone. We would just right to each other.
Speaker 1: And it got to the point where I was just
Speaker 1: talking to her because I missed having someone to talk
Speaker 1: to in the dark at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: You just sit there and go, oh man, what is
Speaker 1: going on? And we were talking about the election and
Speaker 1: what was what the There was nothing romantic about it. It
Speaker 1: It was just like I've met this incredibly agile, multifaceted
Speaker 1: mind like Michelle's that I can just talk to at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. And we would go all right,
Speaker 1: same time tomorrow, yeah, And then every night at nine
Speaker 1: o'clock and like, all right, Alice is asleep, what did
Speaker 1: you do today? Well? I had this audition and that
Speaker 1: went on for three months, just writing, and then we
Speaker 1: over that time we fell in love just writing to
Speaker 1: each other, and then we it was but it was
Speaker 1: so like Victoria, like like like one of those epistolary romances.
Speaker 1: It's just the letters back and forth. And then finally
Speaker 1: on May we were like, okay we should meet I
Speaker 1: go where should we go? And and she just said
Speaker 1: really fun. She goes let's pick like a restaurant with
Speaker 1: like a beach or something nearby. So in case this
Speaker 1: doesn't go well, we can, like one of us can
Speaker 1: go for a walk where we can. We'll give each
Speaker 1: other a boat hold. We were so worried that it
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna work. And then um we we met at
Speaker 1: the restaurant at shutters and we just locked eyes and
Speaker 1: it was like, oh my god, I just you know,
Speaker 1: and then that and then U I propose. In November
Speaker 1: four we were married. It was you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: sucker for a happy but I mean, as far as
Speaker 1: telling the people out there, you know, you have to
Speaker 1: be very let yourself get over your grief first, but
Speaker 1: don't write off the possibility of love if you're not
Speaker 1: completely done with your grief, like I wasn't completely done,
Speaker 1: And Meredith was was more open than I was about
Speaker 1: because I know you still have stuff to go through
Speaker 1: and if you want to wait or postpone, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to rush you into anything. But it
Speaker 1: was that attitude of hers made me go, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I should be with her. This is amazing. That so great.
Speaker 1: And also you get to a certain age, like, look,
Speaker 1: if we've been in our twenties, absolutely gone, we should
Speaker 1: move in together. And I don't know. I'm still but
Speaker 1: once you're in your late forties, you're like, I know
Speaker 1: who I am. I know when I've met someone who's
Speaker 1: not insane, this person is awesome. Why would I let
Speaker 1: this person? You know? So that's that's kind of where
Speaker 1: we were. So that's a pretty low bar. I've met
Speaker 1: someone who's not insane. Well, living in living in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: that's actually arrest like finding a unicorn that's not insane.
Speaker 1: I guess I gotta marry her. It's amazing. She's saying,
Speaker 1: sign her roup. Oh my gosh, oh pat Now as
Speaker 1: while I have so enjoyed talking to you. Patton's newest
Speaker 1: comedy special, I Love Everything, is out on Netflix and
Speaker 1: the HBO documentary series I'll Be Gone in the Dark
Speaker 1: is based on the best selling book by Michelle McNamara.
Speaker 1: Sabrina Fulton is probably best known as Trayvon's mom. Trayvon
Speaker 1: Martin was seventeen years old when he was killed while
Speaker 1: walking home from a convenience story in the middle of
Speaker 1: the day through a neighborhood in Sanford, Florida. Back in
Speaker 1: Trayvon had been on his way home after buying skittles
Speaker 1: and a bottle of juice. The man, a self styled vigilante,
Speaker 1: who shot him, thought Trayvon looked suspicious. Think about it,
Speaker 1: a young black man in a hoodie, minding his own
Speaker 1: business coming home from a store, being targeted, profiled, and
Speaker 1: killed by a neighborhood vigilante makes me just sick and
Speaker 1: angry every time I think about it. I got to
Speaker 1: know Sabrina starting in her grace, her strength, her character
Speaker 1: was so impressive to me. Together with Trayvon's dad, Tracy Martin,
Speaker 1: Sabrina created the Trayvon Martin Foundation, which has been trying
Speaker 1: to work with families who have lost kids to violence,
Speaker 1: sometimes police violence, sometimes random shootings like what happened to Trayvon,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately so many others. This past spring, after working
Speaker 1: for twenty five years for her county as a public servant,
Speaker 1: Sabrina decided to run for office, and when we spoke,
Speaker 1: she was in the middle of her campaign for a
Speaker 1: seat on the Miami Dade County Commission. I was so
Speaker 1: proud of her because she had campaigned with me and
Speaker 1: for me in and she really was a natural. It
Speaker 1: is always a privilege and delight to talk with Sabrina Fulton. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to talk with you about something
Speaker 1: that I think will help a lot of people, namely
Speaker 1: how you keep going. You know, I have been so
Speaker 1: grateful to know you, to be your friend, to see
Speaker 1: you in action over the past several years, and I
Speaker 1: do marvel at you. You exemplify the kind of grace
Speaker 1: that can only come from faith and the kind of
Speaker 1: resilience that so many people need but don't know how
Speaker 1: to call up and so welcome. Let me start by
Speaker 1: asking you how you see you know, the last several years,
Speaker 1: ever since twelve when Trayvon was murdered, the process that
Speaker 1: you have had to live over these years to be
Speaker 1: who you are, so incredibly determined and strong and still
Speaker 1: trying to make a difference to help people. But one
Speaker 1: of the things I learned early on is it just
Speaker 1: felt like it was so much pressure on me. I
Speaker 1: was in a space that I had never been in,
Speaker 1: and it just felt like everything was just like coming
Speaker 1: down on me. Like every time there was a shooting
Speaker 1: or killing or something, people would reach out to me
Speaker 1: and I didn't know how to handle it. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm still going through my grief, how do I handle
Speaker 1: helping someone else? But that was the key, the key
Speaker 1: to my own healing was the fact that I was
Speaker 1: able to help somebody else. And so I learned that
Speaker 1: early on. I reached out to other mothers all over
Speaker 1: the United States, and and that was the key for
Speaker 1: helping me. A lot of times we think that, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'm in this square by myself. Let me just deal
Speaker 1: with this by myself and my own way and my
Speaker 1: own thing, do my own things. But that's so not it.
Speaker 1: It's it's about helping others. And the more I reached
Speaker 1: out and helped up the us, the more it took
Speaker 1: the pressure off of me and what I was going through.
Speaker 1: And so I certainly can tell you that I've I've
Speaker 1: been through a lot. I've been through a lot, but
Speaker 1: I just thank God that he continued to carry me
Speaker 1: and to move forward, because you know, quite frankly, if
Speaker 1: I would have just stayed home and did nothing and
Speaker 1: just been depressed, people would have understood. But I wasn't
Speaker 1: used to being on that street. I wasn't used to
Speaker 1: being sad, and just you know, feeling myself being helpless
Speaker 1: and hopeless. I can tell you that I live of
Speaker 1: my life in an upbeat and happy time, you know.
Speaker 1: And then I found myself looking at here and I
Speaker 1: could do nothing but cry, just look in just tears,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I didn't want to be there. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be sad and depressed all the time.
Speaker 1: And so you do have to make a decision that
Speaker 1: that's something that that you want to you want to
Speaker 1: come back from. I wanted to be happy again. I
Speaker 1: wanted to smile, and I wanted to be around people again,
Speaker 1: when in my mind I felt that I would never
Speaker 1: get there. I saw you with other mothers, the mothers
Speaker 1: of the movement, who had lost children to gun violence,
Speaker 1: as you lost your son uh to police actions, as
Speaker 1: others lost their children, and I saw how you often
Speaker 1: would be the person who would immediately pick up on
Speaker 1: a difficult emotional moment for somebody else, and you would
Speaker 1: walk over there and stand and be not only in
Speaker 1: witness but in support. Were there some specific people who
Speaker 1: helped you along the way to begin to make that decision,
Speaker 1: because you're right, it is a decision, but boy, it's
Speaker 1: a hard decision. It's such a painful decision to turn
Speaker 1: the most devastating grief and anger about what happened into
Speaker 1: a choice to try to live your life again, to
Speaker 1: try to help other people. I tell people that I
Speaker 1: came from a long line of strong women. I grew
Speaker 1: up with my great grandmother and my grandmother and my mother.
Speaker 1: My brother got in a car accident some years ago,
Speaker 1: and he's a quadriplegic, and I watched how my mom
Speaker 1: was with my brother, and I couldn't understand where did
Speaker 1: she get that strength from? You know, we would go
Speaker 1: to the hospital, and then when he got a little better,
Speaker 1: we would go to rehab, and I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my God, Like, if something happened to one of my kids,
Speaker 1: like I would probably just be a basket case, and
Speaker 1: I just I just would watch her and how strong
Speaker 1: she was and how how she would encourage him. That
Speaker 1: that's where a lot of it came from. A lot
Speaker 1: of it came on. I also had pastors that were
Speaker 1: around me that supported me, that pray for me. I
Speaker 1: can certainly say that the negative people I kind of
Speaker 1: got away from um and until this day, I kind
Speaker 1: of stay away from the negativity. That's why I talk
Speaker 1: all the time about positive energy and positive people. When
Speaker 1: They're surrounding yourself with positive influences because that's the only
Speaker 1: way you're gonna move forward. Anybody could tell you, know,
Speaker 1: you can't do it. You don't have enough money, you're
Speaker 1: not smart enough, you you don't have enough education, you
Speaker 1: don't anybody can say that, But it takes a real
Speaker 1: person with character to say, yes, you can, you can
Speaker 1: do it. I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna inspire you,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna encourage you. You also had another son, you know.
Speaker 1: Javarus was the older brother. He was nineteen when Trayvon
Speaker 1: was murdered. How did you help him? How did you
Speaker 1: keep it together so that you could continue to be
Speaker 1: the mother that he needed, just like your own mom
Speaker 1: when your brother had his accident, had to take care
Speaker 1: of him, but also had to continue to take care
Speaker 1: of you. Uh. For Javaris, I always knew he was watching,
Speaker 1: so I would be very mindful. I was always his
Speaker 1: role model. I was always trey Vonn's role model as well.
Speaker 1: But I knew that he was watching, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to show him an example of how to act during
Speaker 1: adverse actions. When bad things happen to good people, how
Speaker 1: do you handle those things? How do you justify those things?
Speaker 1: How do you come back from those things? And so
Speaker 1: one of the things that I tell him now, just
Speaker 1: like I tell you know, I speak at a lot
Speaker 1: of colleges and universities, and one of the things that
Speaker 1: I tell the young people is stay focused. A lot
Speaker 1: of times we get distracted by somebody else's agenda. We
Speaker 1: have to stay focused on our agenda. I told him
Speaker 1: to make sure that he meditates and that he praised.
Speaker 1: I told him to make sure that when he feels
Speaker 1: his rainy days coming, how to handle those rainy days,
Speaker 1: how to embrace those rainy days, how to allow himself
Speaker 1: to have a bad day and then know that the
Speaker 1: sun will come out again. A lot of times we
Speaker 1: just go through our bad days and we don't understand
Speaker 1: that the sun will certainly come out again. Recognize your
Speaker 1: bad days because you're gonna have them. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: them your whole life. I still have my bad days,
Speaker 1: there's no getting around them. But I learned how to
Speaker 1: maneuver through those bad days because in the back of
Speaker 1: my mind, I know that the sun will shine again. Amen. Amen,
Speaker 1: We'll be back right after this quick break. You know,
Speaker 1: when you formed along with Trayvon's father, Tracy, and your son,
Speaker 1: the Trayvon Martin Foundation. You had a vision for how
Speaker 1: this foundation could make a difference in the struggle against
Speaker 1: gun violence and trying to prevent gun violence, but also
Speaker 1: trying to provide a place an opportunity for people who
Speaker 1: had such terrible losses to come together, like through the
Speaker 1: Circle of Mothers that I was honored to participate in.
Speaker 1: Can you tell our listeners about the foundation, what it
Speaker 1: does and how you hope it will continue to play
Speaker 1: a role in dealing with these injustices and problems we face. Well,
Speaker 1: we have things in place to ensure that even after
Speaker 1: my life is done and the next generation moves on,
Speaker 1: that we have something in place to make sure that
Speaker 1: um families understand about what happened with Trayvon and so
Speaker 1: many other Trayvon Martins who are killed senselessly and nobody
Speaker 1: is being held accountable. And so we have things. Once
Speaker 1: a year on February, we celebrate Trayvon's birthday and not
Speaker 1: his death. And so every year we do a peace
Speaker 1: walk because we believe trayvonn had a right to walk
Speaker 1: in peace without being followed. Chase pursued profile and murder.
Speaker 1: We also have a sit down dinner which is a fundraiser,
Speaker 1: and they sing Happy Birthday to Trayvonne. And every year
Speaker 1: I say, I'm not gonna cry, and every year a
Speaker 1: little tear forms in my eye, but I guess that's
Speaker 1: my mom's side of me um. And we do a
Speaker 1: back to school event where we give away five hundred
Speaker 1: book bags and school supplies. Tracy does a Circle of
Speaker 1: Fathers where he's bringing men together to strengthen the family
Speaker 1: circle with the men and make sure that they're better fathers,
Speaker 1: better husband's brother sons, better brothers. Those Circle of Mothers
Speaker 1: is about healing empowerment, and we bring moms in from
Speaker 1: all over the United States and and hopes that they
Speaker 1: can heal during a weekend together to let them know
Speaker 1: that they're not alone and for them to go through
Speaker 1: the process of just knowing you have someone in your corner,
Speaker 1: you have someone on your side, because of course you know,
Speaker 1: as women, we heal a little differently from me and
Speaker 1: and you always believe when you see another woman, if
Speaker 1: she can do what I can. We also have a
Speaker 1: youth event where we talk about we bring about kids
Speaker 1: together and we talk about empowering our young people like
Speaker 1: we talk about issues with law enforcement. We talk about
Speaker 1: social media and how you present yourself on social media.
Speaker 1: We talk about setting goals and themselves. We talk about
Speaker 1: gun violence, We talk about all of the subjects that
Speaker 1: they don't really talk about in schools. I let them
Speaker 1: beat up on me a little bit, because um I
Speaker 1: come on as a parent and I let them ask
Speaker 1: me questions about why their mom or their dad did whatever,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's really interesting to listen to what
Speaker 1: they have to say, and I give them my point
Speaker 1: of view of why I think that they should not
Speaker 1: go to parties with their friends if they're with a
Speaker 1: bad group of friends. And so that's usually a busy
Speaker 1: schedule for me um on it is, but I would
Speaker 1: encourage your listeners to go to um Trayvon Martin Foundation
Speaker 1: dot org. You know, they're able to see some of
Speaker 1: the things that we do in the community and on
Speaker 1: a national level as well. It's so fascinating to me
Speaker 1: because the lothers of the movement. Two of you decided
Speaker 1: to run for office. Lucy Macbeth, whose son Jordan's was murdered,
Speaker 1: ran for Congress, and you decided to run in South
Speaker 1: Florida where you grew up. Talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: that decision, because you know that's really putting yourself out there.
Speaker 1: How did that come about? Well, I'm gonna certainly say
Speaker 1: I have two thousand and sixteen when I became a
Speaker 1: surrogate for someone named Ms. Clinton. Of course it helped
Speaker 1: inspire not only Lucy but myself. I mean, it gave
Speaker 1: us like a bird's eye view of what to expect.
Speaker 1: But there are a few things that you did not
Speaker 1: tell us because you made it look so easy and
Speaker 1: it was not. You did not tell me the struggle
Speaker 1: with being a woman. That is a struggle that we
Speaker 1: need to be aware of, and I wasn't. The other
Speaker 1: thing is the schedule, the calendar. Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: knew you were busy, but I didn't know you were
Speaker 1: that busy, you know, so I can feel every barely
Speaker 1: help time to sleep. Oh I apologize, my friend. I apologize,
Speaker 1: but I can I can certainly tell you that I
Speaker 1: was inspired by you know, you running for office. And
Speaker 1: I was inspired by Val Dimmons and and Frederica Wilson
Speaker 1: and Maxine Waters, Karen Brown, Shilla Jackson Lee, like they
Speaker 1: are so passionate about things that it I feel the
Speaker 1: same way. I feel I can't complain about something unless
Speaker 1: I give myself a chance to make improvements in that area. Well,
Speaker 1: you are a woman after my own heart, my dear,
Speaker 1: and uh I so I so connect with what you said.
Speaker 1: But I want to just ask before we wrap up,
Speaker 1: how are you taking care of yourself? Because you know,
Speaker 1: you've always been so determined and so intense about helping
Speaker 1: other people, even before you ran for office in your
Speaker 1: professional life working for the county, following the tragic murder
Speaker 1: of your son, helping others, creating the foundation. How are
Speaker 1: you taking care of Sabrina. Well, I was doing a
Speaker 1: pretty good job into this pandemic came. So I'm not
Speaker 1: only dealing with the COVID virus. Is hurricane season for us,
Speaker 1: we have some West Nile virus. Is just a lot
Speaker 1: and stuff going on in addition to you know, the uh,
Speaker 1: racial inequality that's happening here in the United States, and
Speaker 1: so I'm doing a lot of um speaking on those
Speaker 1: issues as well. But for the most part, I take
Speaker 1: time out every now and then when I can, and
Speaker 1: I kind of just be with my family. We have
Speaker 1: we try to have a Sunday dinner or we try
Speaker 1: to watch a movie together, and that that's my downturn.
Speaker 1: That's the time where I can actually relax and let
Speaker 1: my hair down. Well, you make people proud every single day, Sabrina,
Speaker 1: and whatever the future holds for you, You're gonna keep helping,
Speaker 1: You're gonna keep reaching out, You're gonna keep making a
Speaker 1: difference in so many lives around you. You've made a
Speaker 1: difference in my life. I am so admiring and really
Speaker 1: inspired by your example. As we end, how do you
Speaker 1: want people to think about Trayvon because you said something
Speaker 1: that touched me so much that you celebrate his birthday.
Speaker 1: Leave us with some thoughts about how you want us
Speaker 1: to remember Kim, or a particular memory that you think
Speaker 1: about that helps to ground you. Well, I can tell
Speaker 1: you I'm gonna leave on a happy note. How about that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave on the fact that Trayvonn was a
Speaker 1: mama's boy. Trayvon love, love, love his family, And it
Speaker 1: didn't matter where I saw him. I could be at
Speaker 1: a park, I could be uh, coming down the street
Speaker 1: in my car. He's on the sidewalk jumping up and down,
Speaker 1: like you know. He was very affectionate, and so wherever
Speaker 1: he saw me, he had to come and give me
Speaker 1: a tight hug and give me a kiss. And I
Speaker 1: missed that, but I remember it, and so um I
Speaker 1: think about that on my rainy days that I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: I think about the tight squeezes he used to give
Speaker 1: me in the in the kisses and the fact that
Speaker 1: he used to call me cupcake. Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: love that. Oh wow, thank you for sharing that that.
Speaker 1: Really I will. I will keep that in my heart
Speaker 1: and think about it. Thank you so much for everything
Speaker 1: that you're doing and continue to inspire us, continue to
Speaker 1: show us that even when when things are not going
Speaker 1: right and things are not going your way, you just
Speaker 1: keep it moving. And so I see that in you,
Speaker 1: and that's where I get it from. We're gonna keep
Speaker 1: doing it together. Thank you, my friend. Now, Sabrina lost
Speaker 1: her race for county commissioner, but you know what, she
Speaker 1: only lost by three hundred and thirty one votes, less
Speaker 1: than one percent. It was her first time running for office,
Speaker 1: but I sure hope it won't be the last. For
Speaker 1: more information on the incredible work that she and Trayvon's
Speaker 1: dad are doing in memory of their Son, visit Trayvon
Speaker 1: Martin Foundation dot org now and in other tough times.
Speaker 1: I hope we can all take inspiration from Sabrina and
Speaker 1: Patton to turn our grief into action. One action you
Speaker 1: can take is vote, Please vote, Make a plan, figure
Speaker 1: out when, where, how you'll get there, and then call
Speaker 1: up three friends or family members or neighbors and tell
Speaker 1: them to do the same. It is much better than
Speaker 1: just yelling at the TV. You and Me Both is
Speaker 1: brought to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by
Speaker 1: Julie Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from Kuma Aberdeen,
Speaker 1: Nikki E Tour, Oscar Flores, Rihanna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Lauren Peterson,
Speaker 1: Rob Russo, and Lona Valmorro. Our engineer is Zap McNeice.
Speaker 1: Original music is by Forest Gray and a big thanks
Speaker 1: to Riverside FM. Just imagine we needed a recording platform
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Speaker 1: Me Both, spread the word, don't keep it to yourself.
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Speaker 1: Come back next week when we're talking about the promise
Speaker 1: and the limits of the American Dream with economist Rod Chetty,
Speaker 1: long time immigration reform advocate Lorella pray Lee, and the
Speaker 1: one and only Tan France from the Netflix series Queer. I.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be an American system pretty much my
Speaker 1: whole life, and so the moment that it happened, I
Speaker 1: was so overcome with emotion. The all I could do
Speaker 1: was donuts because that was the most American thing I
Speaker 1: could think of. I went to the donuts shop down
Speaker 1: the street and eight donuts, and that was my version
Speaker 1: of being a true American. Don't miss it, Ye