Speaker 1: What am I naming my grief today? Who is she?
Speaker 1: We're gonna call her Sally today. She really wants to
Speaker 1: watch reruns of Designing Women and then maybe put on
Speaker 1: some old gospel records after that. And I think Sally
Speaker 1: would like have some hagandash butter pecan ice cream with
Speaker 1: me because my mother used to love that. And Sally
Speaker 1: has a big laugh.
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, Somebody
Speaker 2: a lot of you DMed and emailed me about Sam Sanders,
Speaker 2: co host of the podcast five Check and host of
Speaker 2: Into It. Today, Sam and I are talking about grief
Speaker 2: and love and church and the importance of friends. So
Speaker 2: many good and important things settle in everybody. All of
Speaker 2: that is coming up right after this first break. Before
Speaker 2: we get started too quick notes one, this episode is
Speaker 2: an encore performance. I'm on break working on a giant
Speaker 2: new project, so we're releasing a mix of our favorite
Speaker 2: episodes from the first three seasons of the show. Some
Speaker 2: of these conversations you might have missed in their original seasons,
Speaker 2: and some shows just truly deserve multiple listens so that
Speaker 2: you capture all of the goodness. Second note, while we
Speaker 2: cover a lot of emotional relational territory in our time
Speaker 2: here together, this show is not a substitute for skilled
Speaker 2: support with a licensemantal health provider, or for professional supervision
Speaker 2: related to your work. Take what you learn here, take
Speaker 2: your thoughts and your reflections out into your world.
Speaker 1: And talk about it.
Speaker 2: Hey, friends, So, Sam Sanders has been in the podcast
Speaker 2: and the radio world for a long time. He was
Speaker 2: the creator and host of National Public Radios podcast It's
Speaker 2: Been a Minute, so you.
Speaker 3: Might have heard him there.
Speaker 2: You might know him from his twelve years as a
Speaker 2: reporter for MPR, where he covered electoral pololitics and was
Speaker 2: one of the original co hosts of the NPR Politics podcast.
Speaker 2: He's won awards as the best radio and podcast host
Speaker 2: from both the Ambies and the Los Angeles Press Club.
Speaker 2: You probably know his voice, even if you might not
Speaker 2: know his name. As I mentioned in the teaser, so
Speaker 2: many of you sent me the Vibe Check episode in
Speaker 2: which co host Sam Sanders, Zach Stafford, and Say Jones
Speaker 2: discussed grief. Now, if you haven't heard that conversation, look
Speaker 2: for vibe Check wherever you get your podcasts. So you
Speaker 2: can hear it, but you definitely don't need to have
Speaker 2: heard that conversation with Sam and his co host already
Speaker 2: in order to get into the episode today. This conversation
Speaker 2: with Sam Sanders has everything you could possibly want in
Speaker 2: a conversation about grief and love and taking care of
Speaker 2: your people while also taking care of yourself.
Speaker 3: We've got the.
Speaker 2: Good parts and the not so good parts of church,
Speaker 2: so we're covering both community building and spiritual bypassing. We've
Speaker 2: got expressions of grief that include ice cream and designing
Speaker 2: women marathons. We have got the sheer goodness of men
Speaker 2: supporting other men in their emotional and relational well being,
Speaker 2: which is super important. And we've got ongoing relationships with
Speaker 2: people who died years ago because we know that those relationships.
Speaker 3: Never actually die. There's a lot here.
Speaker 2: You're going to hear Sam say towards the end of
Speaker 2: the show that he felt fortified by our time together,
Speaker 2: and I hope you do too. That's the beauty of
Speaker 2: these conversations, everybody.
Speaker 3: They feed us.
Speaker 2: These conversations feed us if we let them, if we
Speaker 2: make room for them. Now, just as so many people
Speaker 2: sent me the original Vibejeck episode where Sam and his
Speaker 2: friends discuss grief. I hope you will share this episode
Speaker 2: with your friends and with strangers.
Speaker 3: On the internet.
Speaker 2: It is a great way to open up conversations that
Speaker 2: feed you and make the whole world better at the
Speaker 2: same time. Now, speaking of spreading the word and making
Speaker 2: the world better, you all have been responding to my
Speaker 2: pleas for reviews of the show, so thank you for that.
Speaker 2: There have been several new ones lately. I love reading them.
Speaker 2: Your reviews get people to listen to the show, and
Speaker 2: if you leave a review for a specific guest, specific
Speaker 2: episode of the show, I tend to pass those along
Speaker 2: to my guests. So Alira, thank you for your review
Speaker 2: of my conversation with Gina Rossero. I passed your message
Speaker 2: along to Gena so that she could hear what she
Speaker 2: means to you. So from both of us, thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you to everybody who has left a review. If
Speaker 2: you haven't left a review yet, please do so about
Speaker 2: the show in general or a specific episode that moved you. All.
Speaker 2: Right on with today's show with the kind, funny, wise
Speaker 2: and delightful Sam Sanders. I'm so glad to have you
Speaker 2: here with me today, and I have to say that
Speaker 2: everybody on the team was so excited that we were
Speaker 2: going to get to chat today.
Speaker 3: So you know you have some fans, Yeah, some residence here.
Speaker 1: Honored to be here and thank you for doing this work.
Speaker 1: I think that I've been talking about on my shows
Speaker 1: the last few weeks is how we and Americans especially
Speaker 1: just don't talk about grief enough, and so for people
Speaker 1: that do that intentionally, I'm grateful. So thanks for what
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, it's neat to see how comfortable might not
Speaker 2: be the right word, but how much more comfortable or
Speaker 2: how much more frequently people are talking about grief. I
Speaker 2: feel like when I started this work ten years ago,
Speaker 2: no one was really talking about it. So there has
Speaker 2: been a change, it's not quite enough of a change.
Speaker 2: But before we jump into all that, I mean, the
Speaker 2: obvious place for us to start here is with talking
Speaker 2: about grief and talking about your recent episode on vibe
Speaker 2: Check discussing your mom's death. Yeah, I would love to
Speaker 2: start with would you introduce your mom to us?
Speaker 1: Yeah. My mother's name is Regina Sanders. She was the
Speaker 1: second youngest of six raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She was
Speaker 1: an elementary school teacher and a middle school vice principal
Speaker 1: and a Pentecostal church organist and a mother of two,
Speaker 1: and she was in Wilvermine. I think the most energetically
Speaker 1: charismatic person I've ever known in my life, I said
Speaker 1: in Vibe Check. The thing about my mother was that
Speaker 1: every room she entered, she won them all over. And
Speaker 1: when it wasn't even a competition, or when there weren't
Speaker 1: even stakes, you always wanted to find a way to
Speaker 1: be on her side, because her side just seemed more fun.
Speaker 1: She was a woman who taught me and my brother
Speaker 1: and so many other people that you can be successful,
Speaker 1: and you can be professional, and you can get a
Speaker 1: lot of shit done, but you can like always find
Speaker 1: time for laughter and joy and like whimsy. My mother
Speaker 1: was like beautifully whimsical. She just she loved the weird joke,
Speaker 1: she loved the crash joke, she loved laughing where you
Speaker 1: shouldn't laugh, and till the very end, she was cracking
Speaker 1: us all up. So that's her. She passed away June
Speaker 1: twenty first, so a little over a month ago, and
Speaker 1: we missed her dearly.
Speaker 2: Such a big presence now, something that you didn't mention
Speaker 2: in your description of who she was, and what she did.
Speaker 2: She worked as a mortician when you were a kid,
Speaker 2: right or adjacent to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, This is also what has made dealing with
Speaker 1: grief over her passing a multifaceted exercise because my family,
Speaker 1: more than most other families, dealt with death a lot.
Speaker 1: So my parents met after my mother had finished college
Speaker 1: in South Texas and was teaching grade school, and she
Speaker 1: met my father and they had a quick courtship. And
Speaker 1: they'll never admit it, but I think they were pregnant
Speaker 1: with my brother when she was walking down the aisle.
Speaker 1: Fine with it, But my father had had a multifaceted career.
Speaker 1: He was trained as a farmer, and he had like
Speaker 1: a master's degree in agriculture from Prairie View and a university,
Speaker 1: and for many years he worked for the state. They
Speaker 1: have what's called an extension service where a state like
Speaker 1: Texas basically has farmers on the payroll to help other
Speaker 1: farmers farm well. And so he was like a master
Speaker 1: farmer who like taught farmers how to farm good shit.
Speaker 1: So he did that, But when he left that, he
Speaker 1: began managing like senior centers and he did some other shit.
Speaker 1: But when he and my mother got married, he was like,
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to have a funeral home. This is
Speaker 1: a very reliable business in black communities because you'll notice
Speaker 1: Black people only bury their loved ones at black funeral homes.
Speaker 1: It's even more secret than like Sunday Morning church in America,
Speaker 1: the funeral business when it's it's black, right, So he
Speaker 1: was like, I want to do that, And then my
Speaker 1: mother was like, you know, I kind of always wanted
Speaker 1: to have a daycare. So they decided when we were
Speaker 1: young that they were going to have both a funeral
Speaker 1: home and a daycare, and they did. And I worked
Speaker 1: one summer in the daycare with the infants, actually two summers,
Speaker 1: and my brother did more of the funeral homework, but
Speaker 1: he would work the funerals like as an usher drive
Speaker 1: in the car, and I did that for a little
Speaker 1: bit too. But all through our childhood we were around death.
Speaker 1: My parents had to work the funerals. My mother was
Speaker 1: trained to embalm bodies. We were just like as kids
Speaker 1: hang out at the funeral home all the time, which
Speaker 1: meant that like we could run around the funeral home
Speaker 1: and like play hide and go seek amongst the caskets,
Speaker 1: and every now and then I would like, dare my
Speaker 1: brother touch the body? Go touch the dead body. We
Speaker 1: could just like get that close. So it was never
Speaker 1: weird to me to be around a dead body, and
Speaker 1: it was never weird for me to think about death,
Speaker 1: which I realized in adulthood was a special kind of privilege.
Speaker 1: This kind of privilege, there's a lot less queasiness about
Speaker 1: this shit with me.
Speaker 3: How was grief talked about in your household?
Speaker 1: Grief was not talked about, Grief was performed.
Speaker 3: Tell me about that.
Speaker 1: A black funeral is an exercise in performance art. And
Speaker 1: I say that with love and with kindness. But it's
Speaker 1: a fucking show. Have you you've been. You've been to
Speaker 1: at least one. Yes, it's a show.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: It's a show. It's a concert. They go on for hours.
Speaker 1: It's not just one emotion, it's all of them. So
Speaker 1: my first experience with grief, just as a kid growing
Speaker 1: up in a black church and as a kid with
Speaker 1: two black parents who owned a black funeral home, was
Speaker 1: understanding from a very early age that grief emotionally was multifaceted.
Speaker 1: There's multifaceted. You go into a black funeral, there's moments
Speaker 1: of sadness, there's moments of humor, there's moments of joy,
Speaker 1: there's moments of reflection. But it's not just sad. Right,
Speaker 1: you are the kid of parents who own a funeral home.
Speaker 1: You see all sides of the death industry. Right. I
Speaker 1: used to know how much caskets actually cost. Turns out
Speaker 1: you're all getting scammed. You're all getting scammed, like truly
Speaker 1: buy your casket at costco, like save the money. But
Speaker 1: I just always.
Speaker 2: Explore burials, explore burials.
Speaker 3: Okay, well we'll put a little plug in there for that,
Speaker 3: but yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, but I always just had a I guess,
Speaker 1: more well rounded experience or understanding of what grief was
Speaker 1: and what death was because I saw it through those ways,
Speaker 1: which which was is prismatic is not the word, but
Speaker 1: there was layers to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's interesting that when I ask you about grief,
Speaker 2: we go to the funeral and the performance, the performance
Speaker 2: aspect of that, you know, Like I hear from so
Speaker 2: many people who either grew up or are still deeply
Speaker 2: involved in church communities, and for them they feel like,
Speaker 2: wait a second, like we had this out pouring of
Speaker 2: love and celebration and wailing and mourning during the funeral,
Speaker 2: and then a week later everybody was over it, and
Speaker 2: I'm still like, my dad just died.
Speaker 1: I'm in that right now. Can I tell you what
Speaker 1: I've been telling clothes Lease, Yes, we have the funeral.
Speaker 1: It is a beautiful service. The church that we attended
Speaker 1: most of our lives, they really showed up for us
Speaker 1: and honored my mother with joy and humor and life,
Speaker 1: and it was wonderful. The grave site was literally one
Speaker 1: hundred and five degrees because it was a Texas heat
Speaker 1: wave that week, but like we did it, it was
Speaker 1: it was a damn good funeral. And I've been doing
Speaker 1: a bunch of funerals, so I appreciate my entire church
Speaker 1: family for doing that for us. But a week or
Speaker 1: two later, I started telling my friends. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what I wish. I kind of wish she
Speaker 1: had also been cremated so I would have an excuse
Speaker 1: to make a trip to toss her ashes somewhere. I
Speaker 1: wanted something else to mark the death that was smaller
Speaker 1: and quieter and more personal, and I've been seeking those
Speaker 1: moments in the weeks since her passing. So just this
Speaker 1: past weekend, I just quietly without taking anybody with me,
Speaker 1: not even my dog. Snuck off the San Diego and
Speaker 1: just walked along the beach for hours for the whole weekend,
Speaker 1: and it felt like it was getting me to that
Speaker 1: place that I want to be in. But I still
Speaker 1: have this weird desire to go somewhere, either alone or
Speaker 1: with just a few people, to honor her in the
Speaker 1: way that you would go somewhere to spread a parents'
Speaker 1: ashes and not weird like she's in the ground. I
Speaker 1: know she's in the ground, but I still want that
Speaker 1: to That's not.
Speaker 3: Weird at all.
Speaker 2: Nothing you do to honor, explore and maintain a connection
Speaker 2: with someone you love is weird.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that I'm working with right now too,
Speaker 1: because even though no one's telling you there's a script
Speaker 1: on how to grieve, you're kind of always like, well,
Speaker 1: am I doing it right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Am I doing it right? You know? Before I talked
Speaker 1: about my mother's death on vibe Check, a podcast I
Speaker 1: host with two of my favorite people in the world,
Speaker 1: it was like, well, am I allowed to do this?
Speaker 1: Is it okay? What are the rules? And then you
Speaker 1: think long and hard about it. It's like, there are
Speaker 1: no rules around grief and you shouldn't have any rules
Speaker 1: around grief. You got to just live it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you raise that point, like, what are
Speaker 1: the rules? The rules are you're sad. The rules are
Speaker 1: you're sad and you got to work. But the rules
Speaker 1: are also like sometimes you're not just sad, you're cracking
Speaker 1: up over a memory of that awful joke she told
Speaker 1: in the most unopportune moment, or sometimes you are. You know,
Speaker 1: there's just a range. So yes, like not accepting that
Speaker 1: there's no rule book and just saying this feels right today.
Speaker 1: I think there is a work. That's the word.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the challenge here is that we've been
Speaker 2: sold a rule book.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, right, we've been sold a.
Speaker 2: Rule book with the you know, the five stages of
Speaker 2: grief and then with prolonged grief disorder and then like
Speaker 2: you know, you have six weeks to have your feelings
Speaker 2: and then you should be back to normal. In this
Speaker 2: whole idea that grief ends at the funeral instead of
Speaker 2: it begins at the funeral, like there is a set
Speaker 2: of rules that we've inherited, like the fact that we're like, shit,
Speaker 2: am I allowed to talk about this? Says there is
Speaker 2: there's a line we feel like we're not supposed to
Speaker 2: cross and so much of the work and so like,
Speaker 2: so many people sent me your episode on Vibe Tech
Speaker 2: exploring grief, talking about grief, saying we have to talk
Speaker 2: about this stuff.
Speaker 3: They were like, it's happening. This is so exciting that
Speaker 3: people are.
Speaker 2: Talking about it. And it really is like there there
Speaker 2: is no cage, right, We've been sold a cage, but
Speaker 2: there is no cage. And what's normal in grief is
Speaker 2: to feel how you feel and express how you express
Speaker 2: and not know how to do this right because you've
Speaker 2: never had to live without your mom before. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: anything that you do is like that is new, Yeah,
Speaker 2: is new and acceptable and like the only rule book
Speaker 2: is I mean to be poetic about it here.
Speaker 3: The only rule book is your own heart. That is
Speaker 3: the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny thinking about rules a thing I was
Speaker 1: thinking about doing last week, and I was like, this
Speaker 1: might not be good for me. I was thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about the things that my mother loved, and I
Speaker 1: could always remember movies that she loved because we watched
Speaker 1: a bunch of movies together, and I remember she loved
Speaker 1: Still Magnolias and whenever it came on, like TBS in
Speaker 1: my youth, we would just watch it to Magnolia's is on.
Speaker 1: We're watching it, and for a second I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: that movie's actually about grief. Julia Roberts's character dies in
Speaker 1: that movie is very painful. Maybe watching that would like
Speaker 1: help me. And then I was like, no, Sam, maybe
Speaker 1: it won't. Maybe this Hollywood version of death and grief
Speaker 1: is the opposite of what you need, because as watching
Speaker 1: this going to make you think that you need to
Speaker 1: perform your grief in a still Magnolias kind of way.
Speaker 1: So I haven't watched it yet, I might, I think
Speaker 1: if I do, all watch it with the critical lens,
Speaker 1: not a lens the wish to inform myself. But yet
Speaker 1: there are rule books everywhere.
Speaker 2: There really really are, and I like, this is all
Speaker 2: an experiment, right, Like you don't know. You think it
Speaker 2: might be a great idea or maybe a caution to
Speaker 2: watch Steal Magnolias. So you turn on Steel Magnolias and
Speaker 2: you check in with yourself and you're like, how's this
Speaker 2: feeling to me? This is actually not feeling good, So
Speaker 2: I'm gonna turn this off. This actually feels different than
Speaker 2: I expected. Let me explore this right, Like it's all an.
Speaker 1: Experiment, Yeah, and relative exactly.
Speaker 2: On one day, Steel Magnolia's might be the best thing ever,
Speaker 2: and you might want to be like, let's throw a
Speaker 2: Steel Magnolia's party because that sounds fascinating.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I haven't.
Speaker 2: Done this before, but there really is so much like
Speaker 2: I think, Like, I think one of the reasons that
Speaker 2: we try to put so many rules around grief is
Speaker 2: we don't like the chaos. We don't like not knowing,
Speaker 2: we don't like not knowing the answer. And it's like
Speaker 2: we're supposed to keep this whole buttoned up thing around
Speaker 2: all the parts of being human, and it's just it's weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, the thing that we know the least about
Speaker 1: is what happens to us after we die. Some people
Speaker 1: think they know. Some people make up stories to feel
Speaker 1: good about it. We don't fucking know. Yeah, So, of course,
Speaker 1: in the absence of knowledge of what happens to your
Speaker 1: loved one of yourself after this death, of course, it's
Speaker 1: like human nature to want to put rules and norms
Speaker 1: around it, to give this thing some semblance of order.
Speaker 1: So I get it. But yeah, I think, like, can
Speaker 1: we live our grief with the same amount of openness
Speaker 1: that death itself is. Yeah, death is an extreme openness
Speaker 1: because you actually don't fucking know. I don't know where
Speaker 1: my mother is. I don't know if she's looking at me.
Speaker 1: I don't know if she's like, why the fuck are
Speaker 1: you talking about me? I don't know. But I can
Speaker 1: still love her and her memory in the I don't
Speaker 1: know of it all. And so it's like, how can
Speaker 1: I take that same okay with the I don't know that? No,
Speaker 1: take that same feeling and apply it to how I'm
Speaker 1: living out my grief.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love that you brought up the afterlife and
Speaker 2: our ideas about that. I think one of the things
Speaker 2: that happens for so many people, no matter what the
Speaker 2: spiritual practice is or what the religious tradition is, a
Speaker 2: lot of people feel like they get this shaming from
Speaker 2: their community, like, don't be sad.
Speaker 3: Your mother's with Jesus. Don't be sad.
Speaker 1: It's all she's at places I don't know. Are you
Speaker 1: fucking sure? Are you are? What's the zip code? You
Speaker 1: tell me? Where is she?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 2: It really is this? Do you know that term spiritual bypassing?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Tell me so spiritual bypassing, right, where we use.
Speaker 2: Religious ideas, spiritual ideas to bypass the human condition. And
Speaker 2: that's what's happening when you're saying something like you know
Speaker 2: your your mother wouldn't wouldn't want you.
Speaker 3: To be sad.
Speaker 2: She's in her better place, she's gone to Jesus. Like
Speaker 2: whether or not all of that stuff is true for
Speaker 2: the person like not relevant in this moment because right
Speaker 2: now I am missing her here, right, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter that there is something after this if
Speaker 2: we're using that as a way to invalidate the person
Speaker 2: who's right in front of us and the way that
Speaker 2: they're feeling and the way that we might care for them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So for a lot of people in religious communities, they're like,
Speaker 2: I can't I can't lean on my church community the
Speaker 2: way that I used to, because all they want to
Speaker 2: do is see me happy that my loved one is
Speaker 2: reunited with the life force, and I don't feel that.
Speaker 2: And I can be more than one thing. I can
Speaker 2: be really happy that my person's body and spirit has
Speaker 2: rejoined the oneness and really fucking want them still here. Right,
Speaker 2: Both of the like you contain multitudes, like you can
Speaker 2: have all of these feelings at once, and they're all valid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this is the thing. And I will say
Speaker 1: I was a church kid. I love my church experience.
Speaker 1: I've left the church, but I still think I believe
Speaker 1: in God. But yeah, I think sometimes our faith traditions
Speaker 1: are asking us or are giving us distraction. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just distraction. It's saying, I get it, you're having some
Speaker 1: really negative feelings around this death right now, but don't
Speaker 1: think of those negative feelings, think of these positive feelings,
Speaker 1: think about heaven. Isn't that cool? And on the face
Speaker 1: you're like, isn't that such a nice offering for them
Speaker 1: to give to me? But it's not getting rid of
Speaker 1: the negative emotions. It's just distracting you from them temporarily.
Speaker 1: They're still there, and they're there until they're gone. And
Speaker 1: I think, like, I would love for our faith traditions
Speaker 1: to have a better language at helping us here in
Speaker 1: this world sit with our feelings. I would love to
Speaker 1: know that churches are doing the thing where they're telling
Speaker 1: you about heaven if that makes you feel good, but
Speaker 1: also saying to you very clearly and forthrightly, every emotion
Speaker 1: you feel is allowed and is in fact holy because
Speaker 1: God made them all. That's what I want to hear.
Speaker 1: All of it's valid, and I want to And this
Speaker 1: is not a theology conversation because I really don't know
Speaker 1: where I stand, But I if I believe in a
Speaker 1: higher power, a God, a Jesus, whatever, I believe that
Speaker 1: like that higher power is always telling us that pretty
Speaker 1: much everything about us is okay because we were made
Speaker 1: in the higher powers image. And if I'm feeling sad
Speaker 1: today and sadness is in me, it is holy. It's holy,
Speaker 1: and how can I respect it and not just distract
Speaker 1: myself by thinking about who my mother is playing the
Speaker 1: tambourine with in heaven? You know that's right?
Speaker 2: And also this idea that there are negative emotions and
Speaker 2: positive emotions.
Speaker 1: It's just emotions, an on or off.
Speaker 2: I love that you just called them all holy, and
Speaker 2: I'm with you on that one. There is no part
Speaker 2: of the human experience that is not holy. It doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that some people aren't jerks and that there's like
Speaker 2: not bad behavior, that's not what we're talking about. But
Speaker 2: we're talking about, like the way that you feel is
Speaker 2: the way that you feel, and can we find a
Speaker 2: way to surround that with love and curiosity and support
Speaker 2: and connection instead of trying to shove people out of
Speaker 2: what they feel by saying they're doing it wrong or
Speaker 2: this is the right way to be or get out
Speaker 2: of this. And like, I think this is why these
Speaker 2: conversations are so important, because we have inherited those rules
Speaker 2: around goodness and badness, positive and negative, what you're supposed
Speaker 2: to be doing and what you're not supposed to be doing,
Speaker 2: And how do you honor the debt?
Speaker 3: Like stop right, Like, let's just be in this moment,
Speaker 3: in this.
Speaker 2: Humanness that we're having and see each other.
Speaker 3: How rad would that be?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, and how can we respect these emotions as
Speaker 1: multifaceted beings in and of them selves. What if a
Speaker 1: good thought exercise is to even personify our grief and
Speaker 1: talk to it.
Speaker 2: I love that you just said that, because there's a
Speaker 2: course that I've been running for like ten years now
Speaker 2: called Writing Your Grief, and one of the prompts in
Speaker 2: there is personifying your grief. So it's this whole like
Speaker 2: creative prompt around can you if grief has a voice,
Speaker 2: If grief is a character, how does it move? What
Speaker 2: does it where? How does it speak? Does it speak?
Speaker 2: If it has a voice. Let it like, let's listen.
Speaker 3: I love that. So I love that you just brought
Speaker 3: that up. Yeah, there's just like a nice little Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, now I'm thinking, like, what am I naming my
Speaker 1: grief today?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Who is she? We're gonna call her Sally today. She
Speaker 1: really wants to watch reruns of Designing Women and then
Speaker 1: maybe put on some old gospel records after that. And
Speaker 1: I think Sally would like have some hagandash butter pecan
Speaker 1: ice cream with me because my mother used to love that.
Speaker 1: And Sally has a big laugh. That's today for grief.
Speaker 3: See, I love her.
Speaker 1: I love her too. Oh my goodness, she's great. Oh Sally,
Speaker 1: come on in the front door, Sally.
Speaker 2: We have got the ice cream getting to the proper
Speaker 2: thowt texture a speak. I love this and this is
Speaker 2: this is what becomes available when you throw out the
Speaker 2: inherited rule book.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and throwing out the inherited rule book allows
Speaker 1: me to just like see things that I once thought
Speaker 1: were static as a multifaceted. One of the things I
Speaker 1: talked about in the Vibe Check episode with Zach and
Speaker 1: Sayeed it was that, like, we are taught so much
Speaker 1: from an early age that grief itself is an exercise
Speaker 1: in scarcity and a practice in a scarcity mindset. But
Speaker 1: what of grief is abundance? I've been trying to look
Speaker 1: for in the ways since my mother has died, in
Speaker 1: what ways my grief over her and grieving her has
Speaker 1: expanded my world? So much of our default thought about
Speaker 1: grief is that like, it sucks, it's sad we lost something.
Speaker 1: But my reef that I've been experiencing since my mother
Speaker 1: passed away has been abundant in so many ways. When
Speaker 1: people ask me how I'm feeling now, I say, my
Speaker 1: mother died a few weeks ago. It's kind of weird.
Speaker 1: And then you know what they tell me their grief story.
Speaker 1: They tell me about someone who died. They tell me
Speaker 1: about a loved one, and that story and that sharing
Speaker 1: is abundance. It's a new connection, right. I was in
Speaker 1: the bank cashing out the CD that we had tucked
Speaker 1: away to cover my mother's youneral expenses, and nice bank
Speaker 1: lady was like, so what are you using this for?
Speaker 1: And they expect like a down payment for a house, Sure,
Speaker 1: my kid's going to college, And I was like, for
Speaker 1: my mother's funeral. And then we just talked for twenty
Speaker 1: minutes in the bank office and by the end she's
Speaker 1: crying and I'm crying, and I know all about her aunt.
Speaker 1: Something that's abundance, right, So how can I see grief
Speaker 1: not just as scarcity but as abundance, SAYI Jones on
Speaker 1: the podcast said, one of the phrases he likes to
Speaker 1: use and he's hurt from someone else, is that we
Speaker 1: are not just grieving, we are anointed with grief.
Speaker 3: I loved that phrase from him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And if you look at anointing in the biblical sense,
Speaker 1: anytime any character in the Bible had a special anointing,
Speaker 1: it meant that they had a gift that had to
Speaker 1: be shared. You weren't making full and good use of
Speaker 1: your anointing unless you were using it to help and
Speaker 1: share with other people. And so on some days, not
Speaker 1: all days. Thinking about grief in that way helps me.
Speaker 1: It's abundance, it's building community, it's sharing stories, it's bigger,
Speaker 1: it's not just scarcity.
Speaker 2: I love that we laid that down, that idea that
Speaker 2: grief can be an anointing and grief is abundance.
Speaker 3: We lay that down.
Speaker 2: After our conversation about none of this is about talking
Speaker 2: you out of your grief.
Speaker 3: I think sometimes we can.
Speaker 2: Like conflate abundance with celebrity, and then we're right back
Speaker 2: to where we started again with like hold on positive
Speaker 2: vibes only, and if it's abundance, it's a celebration, and
Speaker 2: we're only going to talk like we can like derail.
Speaker 3: That so quickly.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, hey, before we get back to my conversation
Speaker 2: with Sam Sanders. You know, Sam created that character for
Speaker 2: his grief, the glorious Sally who eats butterbecan ice cream
Speaker 2: and watches a marathon of designing women. I love how
Speaker 2: that unfolded. That was that was completely unscripted, everybody. The
Speaker 2: Writing your Grief course that I mentioned in that part
Speaker 2: of the show is truly one of the best things
Speaker 2: I've ever created, and it includes that prompt on personifying
Speaker 2: grief that Sam ran with to find the voice of Sally.
Speaker 2: So if you want to explore your grief in creative
Speaker 2: and truly helpful ways, check it out Writing your Grief.
Speaker 2: You can find it at refuge in grief dot com
Speaker 2: backslash wyg, which is for Writing your Grief, or click
Speaker 2: the link in the show notes.
Speaker 3: All Right, everybody.
Speaker 2: Back to my conversation with co host of vibe Check,
Speaker 2: Sam Sanders, what I love in that story about your
Speaker 2: conversation with the woman at the bank, Like I remember
Speaker 2: when I was first, when we were first shopping my
Speaker 2: book around to publishing houses, people were like, this is
Speaker 2: so great, it's so necessary, it's so needed, but nobody
Speaker 2: wants to talk about grief. So we pass, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know, nobody ever wants to talk about grief. If
Speaker 2: you talk about it as this finite thing that if
Speaker 2: you do the steps correctly, you're over it and you
Speaker 2: never talk about it again, Nobody wants to talk about that.
Speaker 2: But if you open up opportunities for people to tell
Speaker 2: the real truth about their grief and connect in that
Speaker 2: without being hijacked or bypassed or talked out of it
Speaker 2: or cheered up or any of those things, then everybody
Speaker 2: wants to talk about it. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: this is something that we see coming out of that
Speaker 2: Vibecheck episode, is that when you talk about grief in
Speaker 2: unbounded ways, not as a measure of psychological health as
Speaker 2: to how quickly you can snap back to normal and
Speaker 2: be positive, but when you talk about it like a human.
Speaker 2: Everybody wants in on that conversation.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, well, and like, that was the least scripted
Speaker 1: and pre planned episode of Vibe Check we've ever taped.
Speaker 1: So one of the EPs of the show is a
Speaker 1: dear friend of mine and he lives like a mile
Speaker 1: down the street. It's hanging out with him. We both
Speaker 1: have dogs, a walker dogs other. Sometimes we're talking about
Speaker 1: life whatever, and I was like, Brandon, hear me out.
Speaker 1: All I want to talk about right now is my
Speaker 1: mother's death. And vibe Check is a show where the
Speaker 1: three of us talk about our feelings. Would it be
Speaker 1: weird to do that? He's like, do it. Then we
Speaker 1: tell the rest of the team and they're just like
Speaker 1: do it. And then we're all like, well, just stop there.
Speaker 1: We're not going to script this. We're not going to
Speaker 1: research this, we're not going to have bulleted talking points
Speaker 1: and try to stick a certain landing. We're just going
Speaker 1: to talk about it. In that episode was off the cuff,
Speaker 1: and I think that is what our grief conversations maybe
Speaker 1: need more of. I'm over twelve steps for anything. I'm
Speaker 1: over a playbook or a grief one on one for dummies.
Speaker 1: I need to hear myself think out loud about this
Speaker 1: and allow others to hear that too, so that they
Speaker 1: know that they can do it as well. And that's
Speaker 1: what I think the episode accomplished. It was a goal,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think we've covered this a lot already,
Speaker 2: but like one of the things that you said in
Speaker 2: that episode was like, this is so important because I
Speaker 2: feel like they're shame around grief and I want to
Speaker 2: pull one thing in just to make sure that he's mentioned.
Speaker 3: So, your dad died when you were a kid.
Speaker 1: Eighteen, Yeah, eighteen.
Speaker 3: Interesting intersections.
Speaker 2: So my partner died the day before his son's eighteenth birthday.
Speaker 2: So like this, like loss of your dad at this
Speaker 2: like really pivotal, just graduating from high school, just turned eighteen,
Speaker 2: all of this stuff, and then here is this person
Speaker 2: who disappears, right, So I wanted to bring him into
Speaker 2: into our expere into our conversation. And also when you
Speaker 2: talked in the Vibe Check episode about we need to
Speaker 2: be able to talk about this without shame, it made
Speaker 2: me curious as to how have you experienced that shame
Speaker 2: previously and what was it like being a young man
Speaker 2: losing your dad and navigating all of those things that
Speaker 2: are inherent in being a young adult, a young adult
Speaker 2: black man in this culture. Yeah, I guess my question
Speaker 2: in all of that soup is like, where did you
Speaker 2: intersect with that shame that you mentioned in this episode?
Speaker 1: It was compounded, and I'll tell you I but first
Speaker 1: I'll say, like, the circumstances of his death just it
Speaker 1: was wild. So my father died December fifteenth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and two. So winter of two thousand and two, I
Speaker 1: had finished high school. The first week of June in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, I had graduated. I was set
Speaker 1: to go off to California to college. I ended up
Speaker 1: not going because my mother had her stroke which paralyzed
Speaker 1: her in September of that year two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: and then right after that, my father was hospitalized with
Speaker 1: in stage kidney failure, which would kill him by the
Speaker 1: time we got to December of that year. So basically
Speaker 1: June I graduate, September, my mother's paralyzed, my father's already
Speaker 1: in the hospital, and by December he dies. I deferred
Speaker 1: a year from college just to take care of them,
Speaker 1: and then I ended up staying in San Antonio to
Speaker 1: go to undergrad to care for my mother. But over
Speaker 1: the course of that year before my father died, that
Speaker 1: summer to fall, it was probably the most depressing time
Speaker 1: in my life. I'll never forget my aunt Alta, my
Speaker 1: mother's sister. She and I had Thanksgiving dinner in the
Speaker 1: hospital cafeteria, and my mother was on one floor of
Speaker 1: that hospital and my father was on another. And this
Speaker 1: is after I had turned down the chance to go
Speaker 1: to Stanford to be there with them, after I had,
Speaker 1: as an eighteen year old, had to close down the
Speaker 1: family businesses, and I was just like, I don't see
Speaker 1: how things get worse than this, Right, So I experienced
Speaker 1: the loss of my father in just more of a
Speaker 1: low point in life period. You know, my mother died
Speaker 1: last month, But my life outside of that is pretty good.
Speaker 1: I like my two jobs, I just bought a house.
Speaker 1: I'm love in La right, Like, life was okay. So
Speaker 1: that was the biggest difference from the start. But I
Speaker 1: also think I had a lot more shame around grieving
Speaker 1: my father, and it was all compounded by being closeted
Speaker 1: at that moment in time. I really didn't start to
Speaker 1: come out until my mid twenties and my father died
Speaker 1: not knowing that I was gay, or I hadn't told
Speaker 1: him that I'm gay. I think he knew, and there
Speaker 1: were moments, especially when in his last several months of
Speaker 1: life when I was his primary caregiver, where I could
Speaker 1: just see in his eyes that he knew, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. But we never had that conversation, and
Speaker 1: so I think had I been out of the closet
Speaker 1: the way that I dealt with my grief and talked
Speaker 1: about my grief, a big part of it would have
Speaker 1: been a conversation about how to make peace with knowing
Speaker 1: that I hadn't come out to him before he died.
Speaker 1: Because I wasn't out, I just didn't have that conversation
Speaker 1: with anybody, not even myself. So my grief, the totality
Speaker 1: of my grief was not truncated. What's the word I'm
Speaker 1: looking for. I couldn't have all of the grief conversations
Speaker 1: I wanted to have or on my father's death because
Speaker 1: I wasn't out of the closet, and so I did
Speaker 1: not grieve as holistically or as fully as I'm able
Speaker 1: to grieve now with my mother's death. Right, I also
Speaker 1: think that life was just in such disarray. I was
Speaker 1: just trying to keep my head above water and really
Speaker 1: try to not think about grieving. I was still taking
Speaker 1: care of my mother, who was bedridden. I was still
Speaker 1: figuring out if I might go to college or not.
Speaker 1: I was still figuring out how to live as an
Speaker 1: eighteen year old with no functioning parents. My father had died.
Speaker 1: My mother was there, but she couldn't be a parent
Speaker 1: to me anymore. So all of a sudden, I'm eighteen,
Speaker 1: not in school. One parent is dead, I'm taking care
Speaker 1: of the other. There's really no supervision. My church was
Speaker 1: there to support, but they weren't going to tell me
Speaker 1: what to do. So I was just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to make sense of this very new life
Speaker 1: that was thrust upon me. And I think making sense
Speaker 1: of that meant that, like I maybe didn't give myself
Speaker 1: enough time to just live grief holistically. Now at thirty eight,
Speaker 1: with my mother passing once, she had been sick and
Speaker 1: bedridden for twenty years, so we knew it was going
Speaker 1: to happen at some point. I don't think we expected
Speaker 1: it to happen now because she had lived twenty years.
Speaker 1: We all thought she's going to live to be like
Speaker 1: eighty five, just bed ridden, so I wasn't ready for it,
Speaker 1: but I knew that death was coming. But I also
Speaker 1: think that I'm in a place in my life where
Speaker 1: things feel more settled and I'm able to just take
Speaker 1: more time to think about my grief. The fact that
Speaker 1: last weekend I drove down to San Diego. It has
Speaker 1: been a weekend on the beach and think about grief.
Speaker 1: That was a luxury I was not able to afford
Speaker 1: myself when I was eighteen. So my life is more
Speaker 1: comfortable now, which means I have more space to just
Speaker 1: let the grief be, if that makes sense. But also
Speaker 1: so much these conversations are easier because I can talk
Speaker 1: about being gay, having a mother, and growing up in
Speaker 1: a church that was anti gay until it kind of wasn't,
Speaker 1: and having a mother where I think the last person
Speaker 1: in my life close to me who accepted that I'm
Speaker 1: actually gay was my mother, and I don't think it
Speaker 1: clicks to her until I brought a man home for
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving two years ago. So a lot of my grief
Speaker 1: is working through that. My mother is the love of
Speaker 1: my life. I don't think she actually accepted the totality
Speaker 1: of my life until the end of hers What the
Speaker 1: fuck is that about? But even being able to say
Speaker 1: that that's part of the conversation. I couldn't do that
Speaker 1: when I was eighteen and my father died. Sorry, that
Speaker 1: was a very long answer.
Speaker 3: I love that answer because this is the reality here.
Speaker 2: Like, we don't grieve in a vacuum, we don't love
Speaker 2: in a vacuum. There are cultural issues, there are communal issues,
Speaker 2: there are interpersonal issues, and they all have to do
Speaker 2: with how fully are we allowed to know ourselves and
Speaker 2: how fully are we allowed to let other people know us?
Speaker 2: And that's not always an easy answer, right. It's not
Speaker 2: always safe to be seen as who you are or
Speaker 2: to be loved as who you are. And sometimes the
Speaker 2: people we love aren't capable of loving the totality of
Speaker 2: your life the way that you just said, right, And
Speaker 2: there's just so much to grieve in all of that.
Speaker 2: There's so much to grieve in all of that. Like
Speaker 2: it's just like, it's ridiculous to me that we think
Speaker 2: that grief is this siloed thing that happens at this
Speaker 2: very specific time when a person dies and it's over
Speaker 2: really quickly, Like babe, grief.
Speaker 3: Is like the backdrop of the world right.
Speaker 2: It is everywhere, and until we make space for that
Speaker 2: and open conversations about that, then we're not gonna get
Speaker 2: the full abundance that we're longing for.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, think thinking more
Speaker 1: on like the difference between grieving my father and my mother.
Speaker 1: And I talked about this a little bit on vibe check,
Speaker 1: but in a Twitter threat a few months ago. I
Speaker 1: want to say, actuly, a few weeks ago, round Father's Day.
Speaker 1: One of the things I had to make peace with
Speaker 1: allowing myself to do well some of the world building
Speaker 1: we do around dead loved ones. My father was a
Speaker 1: very present father. He was always there, and because he
Speaker 1: actually was the parent who did like pick up and
Speaker 1: drop off forever everything, So every band practice, every meet,
Speaker 1: every whatever, if my dad was the one there. He
Speaker 1: was a constant in our lives. But like many straight
Speaker 1: male fathers, he was physically present and emotionally distant. You know,
Speaker 1: they're very good at that, those men. And so I
Speaker 1: found myself after his death continuing to hold down to
Speaker 1: his hold on to his memory in my heart and
Speaker 1: in my mind. But I made his memory this character
Speaker 1: that grew emotions and in the twenty one years that
Speaker 1: he's been gone, I felt the memory of my father
Speaker 1: become a fully formed character who changes and lives and breathes.
Speaker 1: And there's some moments in my life where I feel
Speaker 1: like he and I are like throwing back cocktails and
Speaker 1: shit talking. There are some moments in my life where
Speaker 1: he is my champion or my hero, or there's some
Speaker 1: moments in life where he is like the prankster. But
Speaker 1: like the memory of my father has become its own being.
Speaker 1: That is almost what I need him to be when
Speaker 1: I need it. And I used to get mad at
Speaker 1: myself for building him up in that way in my
Speaker 1: heart and in my mind, but now I'm kind of
Speaker 1: like it's allowed. It's my dad and it's my mind,
Speaker 1: and this helps. And so part of this whole idea
Speaker 1: of like grief as abundant, some of that abundance is
Speaker 1: like you get to do with your dead loved ones
Speaker 1: memory whatever you need to do with it, and you
Speaker 1: get to build that world. And that actually has been
Speaker 1: so cool. And my father's memory has been able to
Speaker 1: sustain me and parent me in ways that my father
Speaker 1: when he was here might not have been able to do.
Speaker 1: So I like it.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it, and I love what you just said
Speaker 2: there that like whatever you grow that relationship into or
Speaker 2: imagine into for that relationship, like that is yours. Sort
Speaker 2: of like staking this claim to your own life.
Speaker 1: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: Honestly, every conversation that I've had for the last year,
Speaker 2: like we always come back to you agency and sovereignty, right,
Speaker 2: Like this is your life.
Speaker 1: Yes, your heart, your mind, your love, your life.
Speaker 2: Yes, And that other people get to have theirs as well,
Speaker 2: and that other people's love, life, grief, all of these.
Speaker 3: Things are not a threat to yours exactly.
Speaker 2: You get to love as you love, and explore as
Speaker 2: you explore, and grieve as you grieve. And can we
Speaker 2: acknowledge that in each other and share that with each
Speaker 2: other and not see it as one of you is
Speaker 2: doing it right and one of.
Speaker 1: You is doing it wrong and acknowledge is just going
Speaker 1: to be different. You know, my brother and I are
Speaker 1: ten months apart in age. Our parents literally had us
Speaker 1: back to back, and I took care of my mother
Speaker 1: for about the first five years after she had her strength,
Speaker 1: and my brother took care of her the last five
Speaker 1: years and the last five years or so she had
Speaker 1: de benia so his experience caring for her was different
Speaker 1: than my experience caring for her, And so I know
Speaker 1: that the way she lives in his head after she's
Speaker 1: gone is going to be different than what it was
Speaker 1: for me. That's okay, right, Like, that's okay. And now
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, I'm still just weeks out from
Speaker 1: her death, and I don't think her memory has come
Speaker 1: back to me and the way my father's has yet,
Speaker 1: but I'm waiting for her to show up. I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, Regina, when you come back into my heart
Speaker 1: and my mind in this like new form, post death form,
Speaker 1: just for me, what you're gonna be like, I'm excited
Speaker 1: to see, if that makes sense, I'm excited to see.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to see what the character of my dead
Speaker 1: mother becomes in me and how I talk to that.
Speaker 2: I love that I could talk to you, but I
Speaker 2: want to, like at least start turning in the direction
Speaker 2: of the door. So there are two questions that I
Speaker 2: want to get into. So thinking about that difference between
Speaker 2: being able to tell yourself the whole truth before you
Speaker 2: can tell others the whole truth, and the difference between
Speaker 2: the aftermath of your dad's death and the aftermath of
Speaker 2: your mom's death. Like, one of the things that I've
Speaker 2: seen in my inbox, in my comments in my DMS
Speaker 2: stemming from your episode is how thankful people are that
Speaker 2: a bunch of men are sitting down and having this conversation, right,
Speaker 2: that there is something so special to hear any people,
Speaker 2: a group of people, but specifically a group of men
Speaker 2: come together and really make space for each other and
Speaker 2: listen to each other and hear each other. And this
Speaker 2: isn't something that comes out of the blue, right like this,
Speaker 2: Like my mom died and I decided to start having deep,
Speaker 2: vulnerable conversations with people in my life. That's that doesn't
Speaker 2: just arrive. Yeah, it's reminded me of when I was
Speaker 2: getting ready for our time here together. I remember reading
Speaker 2: about an incident with your male friends in grad school.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was grad school or undergrad
Speaker 2: where it was an interview.
Speaker 3: I read with you a while ago, where you were.
Speaker 2: Talking about you hadn't come out yet, and your straight
Speaker 2: male friends were like, dude, stop hurting yourself by pretending
Speaker 2: to be something else.
Speaker 3: Please please be who you are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was the thing. It's like one of the
Speaker 1: biggest catalysts and like coming out journey was not gay
Speaker 1: people being like, come out girl, because my straight friends
Speaker 1: being like, we already know when we see you struggling,
Speaker 1: what the hell? That's what it was like. That was
Speaker 1: a catalyst, and like yeah, my dear friend Desmond Surrett
Speaker 1: love him dearly, sat me down well after midnight and
Speaker 1: an I hop in Harvard Square. I was like, we're
Speaker 1: here for you, dude, Like we know. Yeah, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: I for sure cut you off, go ahead, finish your thought.
Speaker 2: No, I was hoping you would pick that up and
Speaker 2: tell that story a little bit.
Speaker 3: But there's there's.
Speaker 2: Something in there. And then also sort of looking at
Speaker 2: your career and being known as a person who actually
Speaker 2: somebody writing about your career with NPR somebody wrote surfacing
Speaker 2: uncommon pathways for emotional sincerity has long been the object
Speaker 2: of Sanders work.
Speaker 3: Is not sweet. I love this, appreciate that.
Speaker 2: So there's this connection there, or this sort of call
Speaker 2: and response that I saw as I was learning about
Speaker 2: you and reading what you've said about yourself and what
Speaker 2: others have said about you and listening to you obviously
Speaker 2: that there's this long standing, deeply rooted interest in what
Speaker 2: is below the surface?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and how do we connect there? And how do
Speaker 3: we talk about that?
Speaker 2: And I wonder if that that assessment that that person wrote,
Speaker 2: surfacing uncommon pathways for emotional sincerity has long been the
Speaker 2: object of Sanders' work. Does that feel accurate? And if so, like,
Speaker 2: how how do you see that showing up in not
Speaker 2: just your grief? And this is a super long, complicated question, apologies,
Speaker 2: welcome to my brain, but like, if it does feel accurate,
Speaker 2: how does that relate not just to your grief, but
Speaker 2: the way that you are connecting with the people in
Speaker 2: your life through that vulnerability, depth, and honesty.
Speaker 3: That is the.
Speaker 2: Longest, most convoluted question ever in the world. And if
Speaker 2: you heard a real question in there, let me know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the question is like, how did you get
Speaker 1: cool with talking about feelings? And talking about feelings a
Speaker 1: lot and in different ways. I talk about feelings as
Speaker 1: they relate to entertainment and popular culture. When I covered politics,
Speaker 1: I talked about the way our emotions inform our political lives.
Speaker 1: When I was a news reporter, a lot of the
Speaker 1: work was like this thing just happened, how do people
Speaker 1: feel about it. I've always liked looking at the journalism
Speaker 1: do through the lens of emotion, like stories or facts
Speaker 1: and figures and numbers and whatever, but there are also
Speaker 1: stories about how people feel, and how they feel always
Speaker 1: drives the action for any news story. So that's always
Speaker 1: undergird how I approached like my professional work. And then
Speaker 1: I think personally, maybe part of why I'm so eager
Speaker 1: to have these kind of conversations in adulthood is because
Speaker 1: in childhood I just really didn't have them. I was
Speaker 1: surrounded by a loving family and a loving church and
Speaker 1: people who cared for me, but there were two things
Speaker 1: that kept me from being truly emotionally honest as a kid.
Speaker 1: I was gay in South text asn't very closeted. And two,
Speaker 1: I had a really bad stutter. It was very hard
Speaker 1: for me to talk for a very long time. I
Speaker 1: don't think I really worked through it fully until my twenties.
Speaker 1: So I remember this yearney in aching to be better
Speaker 1: able to express myself as a kid and say all
Speaker 1: these things I wanted to say. I think part of
Speaker 1: why I gravitated to music and playing the saxophone was
Speaker 1: because that was a way that I could express something
Speaker 1: without a stutter on it, right, So I think that's
Speaker 1: the second reason why I'm so into having these kind
Speaker 1: of conversations as a grown up. I'm one of those
Speaker 1: people who like loves talking to strangers. I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm in a long line waiting for something. Oh, we're talking.
Speaker 1: We're talking. I'm at the CBS, we're talking. Don't put
Speaker 1: me in an uber where the ride is longer than
Speaker 1: half an hour, because by the end I'm walking out
Speaker 1: the car being like, I think it's all gonna work out.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get custody. Keep me posted on Blair, like
Speaker 1: I get in.
Speaker 3: There right exactly.
Speaker 1: And I think all of that is like from this,
Speaker 1: it's like feeding and nurturing this child too, for a
Speaker 1: few reasons, just didn't get to have all the conversations
Speaker 1: he needed to have as a kid. So now I
Speaker 1: probably overconversate and I found ways to get paid to conversate,
Speaker 1: which isn't even a real word, but I like it conversate.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think the part of it, I.
Speaker 2: Love the play on over conversate and overcompensate. Love that.
Speaker 2: But this is also like medicinal time travel, right, like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, here is my life, and it is an
Speaker 2: answer to what I longed for as a child, Like
Speaker 2: we're always doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I tell folks that Vibe Check, which is on
Speaker 1: purpose a show hosted by three black gay men. I
Speaker 1: tell folks Vibe Check is having the podcasts and cultivating
Speaker 1: the friendships that I wish I could have had as
Speaker 1: a young queer black kid in South Texas. I didn't
Speaker 1: have that. I didn't have a saight in Zach when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I would have loved to have
Speaker 1: those friends as a kid. I get to have them
Speaker 1: now as an adult. And my favorite letters we get
Speaker 1: from listeners are younger queer folks saying, listening to y'all
Speaker 1: is like hearing my gay elders and the elder sure,
Speaker 1: all al whatever, but take it. Yeah, if we we're
Speaker 1: modeling something that people don't get enough of, especially queer folks,
Speaker 1: let me do that. I love doing that.
Speaker 3: I love doing that exactly.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the whole reason for this podcast, right,
Speaker 2: is to have the conversations that we long to have,
Speaker 2: that we need to have personally, interpersonally collectively, to give
Speaker 2: people conversation starters, to give them something to live into,
Speaker 2: to give them something that says it is okay to
Speaker 2: do this.
Speaker 1: Yes, Well, it's like I mean, not to totally overuse
Speaker 1: the most overused quote of all time, which is incorrectly
Speaker 1: attributed to Nelson Mandela, but that Marian Williamson quote. You
Speaker 1: know when I let my light shine, it shines right
Speaker 1: on you. Whatever. It's so, it feels corny, but it's true.
Speaker 1: Modeling this kind of behavior helps other people start doing
Speaker 1: it themselves. Modeling a grief conversation. Modeling a mature and
Speaker 1: friendly conversation between queer men, between black men that allows
Speaker 1: other people and inspires them to do it themselves. Se
Speaker 1: if just one person leaves this episode or that Vibe
Speaker 1: Check episode and says to themselves, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about Greek with the loved one today. All of it
Speaker 1: was worth it. All of it was worth it. That
Speaker 1: was actually the point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a great setup for closing question. Okay,
Speaker 2: knowing what you know and living what you have lived,
Speaker 2: what does hope look like for you today?
Speaker 1: Hope looks like my dog lay it on me. My dog,
Speaker 1: Zura is the sweetest dog ever, an old, lovely pit bull.
Speaker 1: She has been with me through every major milestone of
Speaker 1: my last twelve years. She's moved across the country with
Speaker 1: me twice. She was in the room when I introduced
Speaker 1: my mother to my boyfriend, and she finally like got
Speaker 1: it that I was like actually gay. Like forever, Zora
Speaker 1: was with me and with my aunt Paulette as she
Speaker 1: died of cancer. She has been in the room and
Speaker 1: in the space as I've navigated friendships and relationships. She's
Speaker 1: just been there for it all. She has been the
Speaker 1: forest cump of my life, just kind of like always
Speaker 1: there for all the big moments. And when I see her,
Speaker 1: I see the entirety of what she's lived with me,
Speaker 1: and I also see an ending coming. She will die.
Speaker 1: She is old, she's grayer this year than she was
Speaker 1: last year. She's on flower medication, she's on arthritis medication.
Speaker 1: She's had in the last six months two major surgeries.
Speaker 1: She will die. And what I get to do every
Speaker 1: day was Theora the dog is make peace with that juxtaposition.
Speaker 1: I've lived a whole life with her, and it feels
Speaker 1: so big and I know she's going to die. What
Speaker 1: do you do in the face of that? Like, we
Speaker 1: know that everything we love will leave us, but a
Speaker 1: dog is a very present reminder of that, And what
Speaker 1: do we do when we have a dog in our lives.
Speaker 1: Even knowing that they're going to leave us before we
Speaker 1: want them to, we love them even harder. I love
Speaker 1: her more every day. I love her more today. Sorry,
Speaker 1: cry with you. I love her more today with her
Speaker 1: scars and her arthritis and her crotchity old bones, and
Speaker 1: I have to pick her up and get her in
Speaker 1: the bed now. And I love her more today than
Speaker 1: when she was a little bitty puppy. Isn't that hope?
Speaker 1: That's hope, you know? So like for me, it's like
Speaker 1: that is hope, knowing all of this will end and
Speaker 1: loving it anyway. You got me. I'm crying. My dog
Speaker 1: is hope. My dog is hope she will leave me,
Speaker 1: And so what, I still love her. Love God, damn.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's going to be the dog that set.
Speaker 3: Me off, right. It's always the dog.
Speaker 2: I can do such a good emotional callous to most things,
Speaker 2: but the second it's a dog.
Speaker 1: Mean, I mean every time, yeah, every.
Speaker 2: Time, every single time. All right, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for being here, for both being on this show, for
Speaker 2: being on your shows, and for being in the world
Speaker 2: in all the ways that you are in the world.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 1: This was an honor and a pleasure. Thank you for
Speaker 1: the work you do. I feel fortified after this conversation.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you. All Right, we are going to
Speaker 2: link to vibe check in the show notes obviously, anything
Speaker 2: else you want people to know about, or places they
Speaker 2: can look for you, or any other you know missions.
Speaker 1: I'm on social channels at Sam Sanders. My other show
Speaker 1: for a Vulture is not really in the spirit of
Speaker 1: the Vitract conversation or your show, but it is a
Speaker 1: pop culture podcast I host. So if you wanted to
Speaker 1: mention it, cool, but like, no need to. You know,
Speaker 1: different worlds.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's it, all right, everybody, stay tuned for
Speaker 2: your questions to carry with you. I'm going to go
Speaker 2: compose myself. We'll be right back each week. I leave
Speaker 2: you with some questions to carry with you until we
Speaker 2: meet again.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: One thing that really struck me in this conversation was
Speaker 2: how much fun it was. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: ways to be playful, even when you're talking about difficult things. Right,
Speaker 2: Playfulness is healing. I think you learn a lot about
Speaker 2: who you are and what you need when you allow
Speaker 2: yourself to be freed from that cage and play a
Speaker 2: little bit right. I also really liked how Sam looks
Speaker 2: back on his grief soon his dad died and sees
Speaker 2: it in context. What was available to him then is
Speaker 2: different than what's available to him now, and one way
Speaker 2: of grieving one context isn't more correct than the other.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's such kindness and such honoring in that view of
Speaker 2: the past self and the current self. So maybe that's
Speaker 2: something you might play with in your own life. Who
Speaker 2: were you back then and what kind of emotional life
Speaker 2: or emotional expression was available to you? And who are
Speaker 2: you now today? Knowing what you know and what is
Speaker 2: available to you at this time. I think that kind
Speaker 2: of respectful questioning or curiosity, I think that can apply
Speaker 2: to any pivotal part of our lives, not just death. Yeah,
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 conversation
Speaker 2: affected you, And while you're at it, you could also
Speaker 2: tag at Sam Sanders let him know.
Speaker 3: How his story affected you.
Speaker 2: Spread your reflections are around. Follow the show at It's
Speaker 2: Okay Pod on TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else
Speaker 2: to see video clips from the show and use the
Speaker 2: hashtag It's Okay pod on all the platforms, so not
Speaker 2: only I can find you, but others can too. None
Speaker 2: of us are entirely okay, 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 leave a review as I
Speaker 2: requested earlier. I love to read your reviews. I'd love
Speaker 2: to pass them along to our guests to coming up
Speaker 2: next week on the show. Temblock, author of the book
Speaker 2: From Scratch and the very very popular Netflix show by
Speaker 2: the same name, and just a lovely all around human being.
Speaker 2: Follow It's Okay on your favorite platform so you do
Speaker 2: not miss an episode It's Okay that You're not Okay.
Speaker 2: The podcast is written and produced by me Meghan Devine.
Speaker 2: Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio,
Speaker 2: with logistical and social media support from Micah, post production
Speaker 2: and editing by Houston Tilley, Music provided by Wave Crush,
Speaker 2: and very quiet background noise provided by Luna gently pawing
Speaker 2: at me to go get her some snacks