Speaker 1: Life and art and the professional and the personal and
Speaker 1: the way they intertwine and they dance together, and I
Speaker 1: see that I used to ask questions like why, how?
Speaker 1: I don't even ask questions anymore. I'm just like, this
Speaker 1: is a gift. I am supposed to learn something in
Speaker 1: all of these sectors and in reality and life. There
Speaker 1: is no separation.
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, tembay Lock,
Speaker 2: author of the memoir From Scratch and the hit Netflix
Speaker 2: series of the same name. Temby joins me to talk
Speaker 2: about love and Hollywood and time and meaning, all the
Speaker 2: little things settle in everybody, all of that coming up
Speaker 2: right after this first break before we get started.
Speaker 3: Two quick notes.
Speaker 2: One, this episode is an encore performance. I am on
Speaker 2: break working on a giant new project, releasing a mix
Speaker 2: of our favorite episodes from the first three seasons of
Speaker 2: the show. Some of these conversations you might have missed
Speaker 2: in their original seasons, and some shows just truly deserve
Speaker 2: multiple listens so that you capture all of the goodness.
Speaker 2: Second note, While we cover a lot of emotional, relational
Speaker 2: territory and our time here together. This show is not
Speaker 2: a substitute for skilled support with a license mental health provider,
Speaker 2: or for professional supervision related to your work. Take what
Speaker 2: you learn here, take your thoughts and your reflections out into.
Speaker 3: Your world, and talk about it.
Speaker 2: Hi rans So, as has happened a lot of times
Speaker 2: on the season, I've known about today's guest four years.
Speaker 2: We just never actually met until this conversation. I first
Speaker 2: found Tim Baylock's work years before she wrote her best
Speaker 2: selling book From Scratch, back before the hit Netflix series
Speaker 2: From Scratch, back when she had her very first blog
Speaker 2: called The Kitchen Widow. We talk about that first creative
Speaker 2: vehicle of hers in the show to day, and how
Speaker 2: flinging yourself out into the world creatively speaking, can open
Speaker 2: pathways to a life you couldn't have dreamed of in
Speaker 2: those early days when you started out. You may have
Speaker 2: seen the hit Netflix show From Scratch, based on Tembe's
Speaker 2: New York Times bestselling memoir From Scratch. The book and
Speaker 2: the show centers on her life with her late husband Satto,
Speaker 2: from Italy to Los Angeles and back again. They mix
Speaker 2: love and food, and in laws and illness. Both the
Speaker 2: book and the show have been immensely popular, and to me,
Speaker 2: that really speaks to our collective need for love stories
Speaker 2: that aren't that usual, like everything worked out for the
Speaker 2: best Hollywood happy ending thing. This need that we have
Speaker 2: for stories that aren't all gloom and doom either. Now
Speaker 2: Tambay manages to convey the truth about grief without slipping
Speaker 2: into either one of those outdated tropes, and you're going
Speaker 2: to hear all about that in our conversation. Tambay Locke
Speaker 2: is a writer, executive producer, and an accomplished actor. You
Speaker 2: will hear in our conversation that I was thrilled to
Speaker 2: learn that Tembay was in one of my very favorite
Speaker 2: shows of all time that most of you have probably
Speaker 2: not seen, Eureka from the Sci Fi Channel. She's also
Speaker 2: on the hit show Never Have I Ever, among other credits,
Speaker 2: and there's this really neat section in the conversation you're
Speaker 2: about to hear where Tembe talks about those roles and
Speaker 2: what was going on in her life when she recorded
Speaker 2: those shows, and then what it's like seeing herself in
Speaker 2: them now. It's like this emotional archaeological dig via television.
Speaker 3: Fascinating.
Speaker 2: We also get into the challenges of creating a show
Speaker 2: based on deeply personal and emotional parts of your life,
Speaker 2: trying to stay true to that story while also protecting
Speaker 2: the tender parts of yourself, all while trying to make
Speaker 2: a show that other people will want to watch, something
Speaker 2: that will genuinely move people, as you'd imagine, and juggling
Speaker 2: all of that stuff isn't always easy, honestly, in every show,
Speaker 2: there's so much going on behind the scenes. All your
Speaker 2: favorite shows, oh, your favorite movies, friends, real humans are
Speaker 2: doing real life just offstage. Anyway, You're gonna hear all
Speaker 2: about it in my conversation with actor, writer, executive producer
Speaker 2: and all around amazing human Tembilack. I am so happy
Speaker 2: to have you here and to actually be able to
Speaker 2: see you and talk with you, and no one will
Speaker 2: be surprised that we've actually been chatting forever and could
Speaker 2: have been doing this hit record a long time ago.
Speaker 3: But here we are, here, we are.
Speaker 1: Here, we are.
Speaker 2: I have been talking with a lot of people who
Speaker 2: who carry a loss with them into the conversation, and
Speaker 2: I started asking people to introduce us to their person,
Speaker 2: and I really love this. Before we get rolling with
Speaker 2: all of my questions, would you introduce satatas.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's a pleasure and an honor. Thank
Speaker 1: you first of all for opening that space to do
Speaker 1: that right. It's rare that someone even asks that question
Speaker 1: of you, and I always find it's a privilege to
Speaker 1: be able to bring Saddle forward. I mean, he's always
Speaker 1: here in my sense, and I know we can get
Speaker 1: into that later, but for me, his light is always within,
Speaker 1: and when I get to sort of shine it outward,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to do that. So Sado, my late husband,
Speaker 1: his resume would say Italian born chef and you know,
Speaker 1: lover of literature and I amateur guitar player, lover of newspapers,
Speaker 1: all of those things. He was a gentle, beautiful soul
Speaker 1: and he was a soulmate and a best friend, someone
Speaker 1: who made me look at the world in new ways
Speaker 1: and often through the prism of tiny, small moments. He
Speaker 1: was a tiny, small moments person and I can be
Speaker 1: a big picture person. And that ability for him to
Speaker 1: sort of synthesize down a moment or an experience or
Speaker 1: the meeting of a new person was was a gift
Speaker 1: in my life. And he was the father of my
Speaker 1: of our daughter. Yeah, it was cool. It was cool.
Speaker 1: He could also be complete. You know, he's Sicilian born,
Speaker 1: so he had a streak of like a kind of
Speaker 1: like incomparable pessimism that could like run through everything. It
Speaker 1: was just like everything had to put those to it,
Speaker 1: and that I found that like both hilarious and dramatic
Speaker 1: in the ways that you know we sometimes see on TV.
Speaker 1: But he could hold it lightly, so that was also nice.
Speaker 2: I love this. There's like so many directions I want
Speaker 2: to go with bringing him here into this space. One
Speaker 2: thing that I want to say, it's like I think
Speaker 2: sometimes we sort of lionize the dead, Like you don't
Speaker 2: speak all of the dead, You only say the good things.
Speaker 2: And it's like when you get to have a real conversation,
Speaker 2: when you get to introduce your person as the totality
Speaker 2: of who they are. You know, after my partner died,
Speaker 2: I always felt like when I got to talk about
Speaker 2: him or heard somebody else talk about him, it made
Speaker 2: them become three dimensional again.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, right, absolutely sudo hated. I'm laughing at it
Speaker 1: before I can even get it out of my mouth.
Speaker 1: Here he is in his three dimensionality. You know how
Speaker 1: you call a number a one eight hundred number to
Speaker 1: like get something done and then they've got all the
Speaker 1: prompts and you have to wait. That vexed him to
Speaker 1: know end. He just wanted to get to a human
Speaker 1: and he was so impatient, so ridiculously impatient that I,
Speaker 1: you know it, slammed down the phone and he'd be like,
Speaker 1: I kid, and it was always like who are you?
Speaker 1: You were a grown man five minutes ago and you
Speaker 1: got on a vote and they asked you to push two,
Speaker 1: three or four and you lose your freakin' mind. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that's him in the three D Hi everyone, I think
Speaker 1: he's sure.
Speaker 3: I love this.
Speaker 2: It's a really good lead into one of my questions here,
Speaker 2: Like the Hollywood way is to sort of two dimensionalize
Speaker 2: complex stories, right, and so much of Hollywood, especially around
Speaker 2: grief stories, is like this transformation narrative of these terrible
Speaker 2: things happened to you that we only pan on for
Speaker 2: a second, and then we come into this great transformation
Speaker 2: where Heroin learned hard lessons that only this tragedy could
Speaker 2: help them learn, Like what all of this terrible stuff?
Speaker 2: So I wonder, having started with the realness and the
Speaker 2: three dimension, what was that like for you coming into
Speaker 2: what can be like a two dimensional transformation?
Speaker 3: Narrative Hollywood arc.
Speaker 1: I don't think any writer really comes to the table
Speaker 1: thinking I want to bring this to the two D
Speaker 1: like like you know, you want to get it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But there is something in the predominant sort of narrative
Speaker 1: of what's going to be easily consumptible for people, right,
Speaker 1: you know, Hollywood's very fascinated with like having a sense
Speaker 1: of optimism at the end. That's what makes it different
Speaker 1: than French film.
Speaker 2: Right, maybe I need to make friends.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's my problem.
Speaker 1: French film can hang out in the existential and like
Speaker 1: leave you on a note, like the whole film can
Speaker 1: end and you're like wait, huh, like what you know?
Speaker 1: It's the sense of closure and wrapping up and like
Speaker 1: the need to have someone sort of finished that ninety minute,
Speaker 1: two hour experience with a sense of optimism. That core
Speaker 1: drive runs deep in Hollywood, and there's times when that
Speaker 1: is necessary and it actually is helpful. But around grief narratives,
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's always so helpful, and I
Speaker 1: think it's done us a big, big, big disservice collectively,
Speaker 1: and it's very reductive. So when we when I our team,
Speaker 1: but really certainly me as the person who had lived
Speaker 1: my own grief and who'd written about it in a
Speaker 1: book and was now part of a team adapting it.
Speaker 1: I was very like, we can't do that thing. And yet,
Speaker 1: as will happen, you're going to get notes along the way,
Speaker 1: and I mean notes from your producing and studio partners
Speaker 1: who are trying to sort of guide the ship in
Speaker 1: a different way because they're thinking of their bigger audience.
Speaker 1: People are also tapping into their own unprocessed stuff and
Speaker 1: the idea of going near it on the page scares
Speaker 1: them and they're like, ooh, how is that going to
Speaker 1: come off? And we don't know, is that tonally right?
Speaker 1: Could be a little too mess that could turn people off.
Speaker 1: Maybe they'll so they're always trying. So there's this tug
Speaker 1: and pull right between the creators and the writers. What
Speaker 1: are the needs and interests and demands of the people
Speaker 1: were paying for the product that you're making. To say
Speaker 1: it very bluntly, somewhere in there, there's a struggle. So
Speaker 1: for us, I always came back to the thing I'm making.
Speaker 1: If someone were to watch this who had never grieved
Speaker 1: someone in a profound way, like they hadn't hit the
Speaker 1: rough that profound loss, right, and we all know when
Speaker 1: we've had that first deeply profound loss. I wanted the
Speaker 1: show to be some sort of really honest guide to that,
Speaker 1: and I said, let the magic, if you will, the
Speaker 1: Hollywood magic, the tensil, the light. They'll let that live
Speaker 1: in the surroundings, but that the core people, the people themselves.
Speaker 1: Let the sort ofquote unquote aspirational qualities because of television
Speaker 1: and film. Let that live in the set design, let
Speaker 1: it live in the music, right, but let the actual
Speaker 1: human experiences be as raw as possible. And in so doing,
Speaker 1: I would hope that who that the viewer would be
Speaker 1: like oh oh oh, that oh okay, and be kind
Speaker 1: of stopped in their tracks, not in a way that
Speaker 1: makes them run and turn it off, but actually makes
Speaker 1: them lean in. That's what we attempted to do. That's
Speaker 1: what I was hoping to do. That was that I
Speaker 1: felt like, if I could just if that becomes my
Speaker 1: north star, I'm just going to keep reaching for that,
Speaker 1: and if I can get as close to it as possible,
Speaker 1: then I will have done the best. Our team would
Speaker 1: have done the best that we could do. That's a
Speaker 1: very long answer, but it's my way of saying that
Speaker 1: there is a disservice that we have done in Hollywood
Speaker 1: by the way, we've done this and stories around people
Speaker 1: of color, We've done it in stories around and we've
Speaker 1: done in many, many stories. Grief is just one of
Speaker 1: the ways. And I think we are in an era
Speaker 1: now of a desire for more honest and real storytelling
Speaker 1: and that includes grief.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a perfect answer, because to me, a lot
Speaker 2: of the speaking and teaching and occasionally ranting that I
Speaker 2: do is like, we've only got two options in our storytelling, right,
Speaker 2: We've got like, no matter what happened to you, everything
Speaker 2: works out for the best, and everything is glorious and
Speaker 2: sunshine and puppy dogs and the widowed person finds love
Speaker 2: again and that makes everything better. Or we've got this
Speaker 2: depressing stuck in a corner. Nobody wants to see this like,
Speaker 2: And if those are your only two options, you're gonna
Speaker 2: choose optimism, even if it's fake.
Speaker 1: Absolutely listen. I am someone who dear Lord. I hang
Speaker 1: out in the gray so much I'm like, can I
Speaker 1: see the color.
Speaker 3: Something?
Speaker 1: He is kind of where I live. So though that
Speaker 1: sort of binary look at it's either full optimism or
Speaker 1: you're you know, crumpled under a table and you can't
Speaker 1: come out. That just doesn't resonate with me, because, for
Speaker 1: one thing, I can touch on both of those moments
Speaker 1: in a single.
Speaker 2: Day and a half an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, in a whole spectrum of things in the middle.
Speaker 1: So let's see all of those colors and let's make
Speaker 1: space for the full totality of the human experience even
Speaker 1: if there is not a sense of resolution. This this
Speaker 1: like addiction to resolution that we have. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that a lot gets resolved in a lifetime.
Speaker 2: It's so weird that addiction to resolution, and that all
Speaker 2: so many of our stories show us that resolution is possible,
Speaker 2: and so many of us insist that other people find
Speaker 2: resolution in their stuff, but like, who actually lives in
Speaker 2: that things? Like, there's some things that can get resolved,
Speaker 2: but there are some things that don't, and those stories
Speaker 2: are the stories that we need. How do you live
Speaker 2: inside things that don't get resolved, that don't get a
Speaker 2: Hollywood ending?
Speaker 1: Yeah, or they get resolved and get And by the way,
Speaker 1: there's something called spiral learning. You circle back to that
Speaker 1: moment again in a new place in your life, and
Speaker 1: suddenly you're like, oh, I'm working on that again. Oh
Speaker 1: that showed up again. So resolution is an quote unquote,
Speaker 1: it's an ongoing experience. You resolve it for that moment,
Speaker 1: and then a new moment in a new set of circumstances,
Speaker 1: and a new you appears, and suddenly you're doing the
Speaker 1: work all over again. And that is called.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is.
Speaker 2: And I really do like as a you know, as
Speaker 2: a writer, as a storyteller, Like I come back to
Speaker 2: this too, like the power of telling the truth is
Speaker 2: compelling theater, right, Telling the truth is compelling theater. And
Speaker 2: I mean theater in the broad sense of like Hollywood
Speaker 2: and television and books and be like, oh all of
Speaker 2: the theater things, but like that those are the stories
Speaker 2: we need because we really take we take our stories
Speaker 2: and we learn how to do life from them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I love what you said.
Speaker 2: You said something about like the layers in the answers
Speaker 2: to this question, Like I know that a lot of
Speaker 2: people when we're trying to figure out how to be
Speaker 2: supportive for somebody going through any kind of hard time,
Speaker 2: whether that's grief or illness or lost my job or whatever,
Speaker 2: Like we think about what have I seen in movies
Speaker 2: in the movies.
Speaker 3: My job is to cheer you up. In the movies.
Speaker 2: We're going for you coming back to normal and not
Speaker 2: being so sad anymore. So like when we lie in
Speaker 2: the media, when we lie in our storytelling, we train
Speaker 2: people the wrong way to love each other.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I knew that, for whatever reason in this lifetime,
Speaker 1: things lined up in a way that I had this
Speaker 1: opportunity with making from scratch on a global platform, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, dog gonet, I'm going to take my shot,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to try to get as close to
Speaker 1: truth as possible because I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: part of the canon that is constantly putting out just
Speaker 1: this sort of middling you know, I don't know the
Speaker 1: word schlock comes to mind, but like it was like,
Speaker 1: I'm just like I just can't. I can't. And I
Speaker 1: know because I and I'm going to truly date myself.
Speaker 1: But many of our listeners, I'm sure your listeners will know,
Speaker 1: I was a child who when the film Terms of
Speaker 1: Endearment came out. I can't tell you how many times
Speaker 1: I saw that film as a child. Now, you one
Speaker 1: would think that's not a film for children, and yet
Speaker 1: there was something about the honesty in that movie. And
Speaker 1: when we were breaking the story for From Scratch and
Speaker 1: we were trying to take a book, crack it open,
Speaker 1: and make it into eight episodes, we talked about certain
Speaker 1: key moments in film and television that we had seen
Speaker 1: collectively as writers that each of us responded to, is
Speaker 1: that that was truth. Okay, what element of that could
Speaker 1: live in our show? Right terms of Germ is one
Speaker 1: of those shows that came became in films that came up.
Speaker 1: So you're right, insofar as the things we see, they
Speaker 1: leave an imprint on us. Right, So my young Psyche
Speaker 1: saw particularly, I'm going to just break it down the
Speaker 1: scene with Shirley McLean and Deborah Winger when she's in
Speaker 1: the hospital and she's dying and the mother is like shake.
Speaker 1: So you know, like I was like, oh, a lioness
Speaker 1: fighting the system, asking for good care, a mother and
Speaker 1: a daughter, the kind of breaking a part of a
Speaker 1: relationship to open up a new chapter for both of them.
Speaker 1: You know, it was like all of it I got
Speaker 1: as a child. That's the power of storytelling. And I
Speaker 1: cannot stress the importance of that now at a time
Speaker 1: when there is so much loss and death in the world.
Speaker 1: I mean that post pandemic, if there is such a thing,
Speaker 1: because COVID is still very ongoing and unfolding experience. We've
Speaker 1: just normalized a certain level of death now in the
Speaker 1: world right to the virus. There's the death around climate change,
Speaker 1: and it could go on. There's the whole systems that
Speaker 1: don't sort of support and work. So we're all experiencing
Speaker 1: these griefs and we need to be able to talk
Speaker 1: openly and honestly.
Speaker 2: This is the thing is that like this stuff isn't siloed.
Speaker 2: As much as the medical industry or the psychiatry industry,
Speaker 2: or the media industry want to silo these things. They
Speaker 2: are all the same cloth. Like the ways that we
Speaker 2: portray any kind of hardship in books or on the screen,
Speaker 2: like this trickles out into life, right Like we don't
Speaker 2: know how to talk about the cascading and multifaceted grief
Speaker 2: of the last several years.
Speaker 3: We don't know how to talk about.
Speaker 2: The grief that is unspooling because of the political batshitness
Speaker 2: in the world and the rise of fascism. We don't
Speaker 2: know how to talk about grief in communities of color.
Speaker 2: We don't know how to talk. We don't know how
Speaker 2: to talk about any of this stuff, and there are
Speaker 2: many many reasons for that, Like I could talk about
Speaker 2: that forever, but this is not about me. But like
Speaker 2: there there is such a void in our understanding of
Speaker 2: how to talk about these complex issues without reducing them
Speaker 2: or bypassing them again, like we come back to that
Speaker 2: binary option of we can either reduce it to something
Speaker 2: that has a resolution and a happy ending, or we
Speaker 2: can just not.
Speaker 3: Look at it.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately we are just not looking at it.
Speaker 1: Oh, I completely completely agree, and it's hard to look
Speaker 1: at but it's necessary and those of us who have
Speaker 1: the ability to do that work. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to even be in media. I have
Speaker 1: dear friends who even even people who are not close
Speaker 1: to me, but people as strangers I would meet who
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm thinking specifically in hospital settings when
Speaker 1: Sada was very ill, who just would like cut through
Speaker 1: it at the soda machine. Yeah, just could see like
Speaker 1: I was that caregiver who was stressed, beyond stressed, and
Speaker 1: they would just drop a nugget of knowledge that was
Speaker 1: just truth, right, and then they'd go back into their
Speaker 1: world and I could carry that truth with me. I
Speaker 1: had the privilege of dear friends who had walked similar paths,
Speaker 1: who were you know, decades ahead of me, who would
Speaker 1: take me by the hand and say, let me give
Speaker 1: you an insight into the truth. So I think it's
Speaker 1: this combination of people we meet in the three D
Speaker 1: every day in our quotidian lives and what's happening in media.
Speaker 1: And I hope that we And and by the way,
Speaker 1: I will say, you know, I'm not a TikTok person,
Speaker 1: but I will say that even if somebody for a nanosecond,
Speaker 1: and I think the sort of medium there is short
Speaker 1: format that if you get thirty seconds of truth, even
Speaker 1: through a format like TikTok, and perhaps it opens up
Speaker 1: a portal for you to ask more questions and then
Speaker 1: you go to more substantive sources for help. Okay, great, TikTok.
Speaker 1: You just did something nice, right, You brought a little
Speaker 1: kernel of truth into someone's day that might open up
Speaker 1: something else. So we, I think, have to be excavators
Speaker 1: in our lives for truth, right, And if we can
Speaker 1: offer that to someone at a grocery store, at the
Speaker 1: post office or pumping gas, and we're just like, you know,
Speaker 1: do that I try to do it when I'm in
Speaker 1: situations where I can. I kind of sense someone's a
Speaker 1: caregiver and there's some signs around that. Sure I can
Speaker 1: recognize the signs, and I'm like, oh, here's this little
Speaker 1: bit and it may be useful or maybe not. They
Speaker 1: can only decide, right, But I was given that gift,
Speaker 1: and so I try to offer it again, and I
Speaker 1: certainly try to do it in my work when when
Speaker 1: and where I can.
Speaker 2: It's that power of acknowledgment, right, I'm telling the truth,
Speaker 2: and we think that that tool of a small nugget
Speaker 2: of acknowledgment of the truth of somebody's situation, like that
Speaker 2: can't possibly be enough, and it is everything, right.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's little. You follow the bread crumbs.
Speaker 1: That's when I say, I mean, you're following your breath
Speaker 1: the bread crumbs. And for me, I know, I had
Speaker 1: the privilege of like being in I write about this
Speaker 1: in the book, it's like being with my mother in
Speaker 1: law who had a whole different understanding of grief right
Speaker 1: first of all, her age, her culture, So she was
Speaker 1: a teacher for me around grief and that was really
Speaker 1: really valuable in a way that no one else in
Speaker 1: my life could teach me.
Speaker 2: There's a lot in there also about sovereignty and agency
Speaker 2: and boundaries. Right. I love that you said I'm going
Speaker 2: to drop this nugget here, but you only pick it
Speaker 2: up if it feels good to you.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, absolutely, because there is a lot of unsolicited
Speaker 1: quote unqu and I don't need that any So it's
Speaker 1: a very fine line. Like I kind of like sometimes
Speaker 1: if I because I'm like, oh, do I really do
Speaker 1: I say this? Is?
Speaker 2: This?
Speaker 1: Is this? You know, I have to try to check
Speaker 1: myself a little bit, right, But I also often say
Speaker 1: I just feel my heart. It is called to say
Speaker 1: this if it resonates if not, like go with go
Speaker 1: with God, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, right.
Speaker 1: And there were times when people would say stuff to
Speaker 1: me that in the moment I was like, and lo
Speaker 1: and behold. Four years later something would I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what that person was talking about. Oh now I
Speaker 1: get it. Now I'm ready to take that in. But
Speaker 1: you know, and so you never know, You just never
Speaker 1: never never never know.
Speaker 4: You never know.
Speaker 1: But it is it's true that we have to have
Speaker 1: the agency to select what is useful for us. Now,
Speaker 1: what is additive, what is expansive in our lives. What
Speaker 1: is uplifting and we take that and we take the
Speaker 1: next step. I don't even waste time anymore. And people
Speaker 1: give me crazy, but I'm just like, okay, thank you,
Speaker 1: moving on, bless your heart, right.
Speaker 3: Heart, we love this.
Speaker 2: I want to go with. So much of what we've
Speaker 2: been talking about is like that, that mix of the
Speaker 2: personal and the professional and how those intertwined. So if
Speaker 2: it's okay with you, I want to dive into that
Speaker 2: a little bit. So one of the things that I
Speaker 2: learned about you that I did not know is that,
Speaker 2: oh goodness, you are in one of my favorite series
Speaker 2: of all time. I was eureka, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So here's the thing, Well, thank you for that.
Speaker 2: The way that I screeched when I saw that kind
Speaker 2: I just say, okay, continue.
Speaker 1: I loved being on the show, and that show was
Speaker 1: a savior for me in many many ways. I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you in the practical, professional way, and then
Speaker 1: I'll tell you like the emotional way. Practically. It arrived
Speaker 1: in my life at a time when I was in
Speaker 1: the crux of caregiving, said I was for super sick,
Speaker 1: going through lots of chemotherapy. I had a child who
Speaker 1: was under the age of five at home, and I
Speaker 1: had not been working. And as we know currently, as
Speaker 1: we're recording this, we're in the middle of an industry
Speaker 1: wide writer an actors strike for exactly these reasons, right,
Speaker 1: And I remember when the audition material came in for
Speaker 1: Eureka to play the role of Grace. I was like,
Speaker 1: I cannot do this, and I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: had a It was like my system was like I
Speaker 1: can't do it. And I remember talking to my acting
Speaker 1: coach because I quotched on it, and she was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, go in and dedicate this performance to
Speaker 1: somebody you love. Forget about whether you get it or not.
Speaker 1: Just dedicate it to someone you love. I go in
Speaker 1: and do the thing. I get a call back, I
Speaker 1: do another one. I get the call back. Before you
Speaker 1: know it, I'm on set and I have the job.
Speaker 1: It filmed in Vancouver, I lived in la and it
Speaker 1: required that I was away for periods of time, so
Speaker 1: I had to create. Suddenly, this job made me so
Speaker 1: I was earning money now, which was great, earning my
Speaker 1: healthcare great, needed all those things, but it made me
Speaker 1: have to build a community at home because I had
Speaker 1: to be a way to work. So suddenly I had
Speaker 1: to instantly call upon friends, and I had people who'd
Speaker 1: come over to do my daughter's hair and I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. People who were bringing food because my husband
Speaker 1: could drive people who And so this TV series gifted
Speaker 1: me in two ways. I was carrying so much by
Speaker 1: myself alone, and suddenly working forced me to shift into
Speaker 1: a new gear and a community emerged. I mean I
Speaker 1: emerged because I had to seek them out, you know,
Speaker 1: actively seek them out, and that ultimately became a gift
Speaker 1: because it was a teaching tool for me. I think
Speaker 1: I had become so conditioned that I had to carry
Speaker 1: everything on my back. So suddenly I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, my artist gets to sort of sore and
Speaker 1: explore it. Me with these amazing other actors and creators
Speaker 1: on set, my family isn't actually falling apart. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: actually good for them to have other energies. And so
Speaker 1: the show was very additive in my life. Plus them,
Speaker 1: the writing is so good on that show. And I'm
Speaker 1: playing the role of a woman who loses her husband
Speaker 1: and then he lives in these multiple timelines, which I
Speaker 1: was like, I didn't even get the full wisdom of
Speaker 1: that until years later when my own husband died and
Speaker 1: I was watching the series with my daughter, and suddenly
Speaker 1: the role that I played had a whole new meaning
Speaker 1: because she was asking these deeper questions of herself, which is,
Speaker 1: where does he live in time and space? And that's
Speaker 1: a big, big question. I mean, so it's sci fi.
Speaker 1: For those listeners who don't know, Eureka is clearly a
Speaker 1: sci fi show. It's fantic, it's it is a really
Speaker 1: good show. I don't know that. I love that you
Speaker 1: love it. I loved doing it. I loved beginning to
Speaker 1: play opposite Joe, and that show lives in a very
Speaker 1: it lived. It came at a very particular time in
Speaker 1: my life and taught me a lot.
Speaker 2: Of lessons that continue to unfold in the true sense
Speaker 2: of sci fi work. Yes, yes, right, And it reminds
Speaker 2: me of what you know, Echoes what you just said
Speaker 2: a minute ago, that something that happened, when it happened,
Speaker 2: you understood it in one way, and then it continued
Speaker 2: to unfold and have a different something else about it
Speaker 2: gets revealed, And it's not like I think sometimes we
Speaker 2: apply that reductive model here to like, oh.
Speaker 3: You weren't ready back then.
Speaker 2: Like no, oh, I was a different person back then,
Speaker 2: and this hits different now.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know good pieces of literature, they're great books. And
Speaker 1: you know, take a favorite book that you had as
Speaker 1: a teen or as in college, let's say, and return
Speaker 1: to it every ten years of your life. Yeah, reread
Speaker 1: that book every ten years. It will means something different.
Speaker 1: You will meet the text in a different way. And
Speaker 1: I say, you know that that was my experience with
Speaker 1: with Eureka. I mean, I'm sure if I watched it
Speaker 1: again in ten years, it'll mean something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that reminds me.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: I loved Sallenger when I was in high school, and
Speaker 2: Franny and Zoe was my favorite book.
Speaker 3: Loved that book.
Speaker 2: And I remember that I read it shortly before Matt died,
Speaker 2: and it was a completely different book from me. But
Speaker 2: one of the things that it gave me was a
Speaker 2: window to that teenage self. Oh, I know, it told
Speaker 2: me things about her that I'd forgotten.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, right.
Speaker 3: And I hear that.
Speaker 2: And what you're saying that when you come back and
Speaker 2: you watch Eureka and you see yourself playing the role
Speaker 2: of a widow, what it tells you about who you
Speaker 2: were then and who you might be now and makes
Speaker 2: you curious about what's next. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's so deep for me because I'm watching a
Speaker 1: younger version of myself who is pre widowed. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, so I'm not just watching the character.
Speaker 1: I'm watching the person playing the character knowing that she
Speaker 1: is about to have a major turning point in her life,
Speaker 1: you know. And I'm thinking about, like, you know, there's
Speaker 1: certain scenes I'm watching and I'm like, oh, I remember
Speaker 1: that scene when we shot that and I just called
Speaker 1: home because you know, Satoh was coming back from chemo,
Speaker 1: and like, oh, you know, I remember having to bring
Speaker 1: a little bit of that into the scene because it
Speaker 1: was such a big thing happening in my personal life
Speaker 1: that I couldn't separate it from my work that day.
Speaker 1: And I thought, you know, all I can do is
Speaker 1: integrate it. Yeah. So anyway, blah blah blahah. You may
Speaker 1: not use any of that stuff, but it's there.
Speaker 2: I have used in all of it because I love
Speaker 2: that show. But there's a theme here, right. One of
Speaker 2: the things that I do when I'm getting ready to
Speaker 2: talk with somebody is look for a theme.
Speaker 3: It's what my brain does.
Speaker 2: And you've got You've Got Grace and Eureka, and then
Speaker 2: you've got Never Have I Ever, which is also a
Speaker 2: show centered around grief. I think a lot more so
Speaker 2: in the first season, sure, but it's everywhere in that show.
Speaker 2: So you were a different person when you started Never.
Speaker 3: Have I Ever?
Speaker 1: Yes, So here's the crazy thing about Never Have I Ever?
Speaker 1: Is again it was one of those things where like,
Speaker 1: and maybe this says more about me. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: an actress, but like the part came through, the audition
Speaker 1: material came through, and I'm like, Okay, what what am
Speaker 1: I going to do with this? How am I going
Speaker 1: to make this special for me? Right? And the thing
Speaker 1: about doing a Mindy Kaling project, And this is not
Speaker 1: uncommon with what are expected to be high profile shows
Speaker 1: or shows where you don't want the information to get
Speaker 1: out too quickly in sort of like in the Internet
Speaker 1: world of it all, so they don't release the whole scripts.
Speaker 1: I got just my material with a little bit of
Speaker 1: context around the storyline. That was it. So what that
Speaker 1: means is it wasn't until in the middle of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: which is when the show dropped on Netflix, because I
Speaker 1: filmed it prepten. Then suddenly the world changed and we're
Speaker 1: all in lockdown. I'm sitting on the couch with my daughter,
Speaker 1: who is the same age as the daughter that I
Speaker 1: have on screen in the show. And that's what I realized.
Speaker 1: The show is about grief. So I'm watching it in
Speaker 1: real time. Wow, because I didn't know. I didn't have
Speaker 1: the privilege of having read all the scripts. I read
Speaker 1: the scripts that I was in, so I didn't know
Speaker 1: the largest storyline because it had been sort of underlocking true.
Speaker 1: And so then I'm like, holy, I am losing it
Speaker 1: on the couch with my daughter, and my daughter's watching
Speaker 1: it like cringing because the mom that I play on
Speaker 1: screen is absurd. I mean, let's face it, elasism. She's
Speaker 1: an absurd mother. I love playing her because I get
Speaker 1: to dial up all of that stuff. But again, life
Speaker 1: and art and the professional and the personal and the
Speaker 1: way they intertwine and they dance together, and I see
Speaker 1: that I used to ask questions like why how? I
Speaker 1: don't even ask questions anymore. I'm just like, this is
Speaker 1: a gift. I am supposed to learn something in all
Speaker 1: of these sectors and in reality and life there is
Speaker 1: no separation. There's no separation between you know. If I
Speaker 1: go as big as between this world and the other world,
Speaker 1: this veil, you know, this side of the veil and
Speaker 1: the other there's just no separation. It's all this experience
Speaker 1: that we are all living through and having. And I
Speaker 1: find that in life. I find it in my art,
Speaker 1: and I try to integrate them consciously when and where
Speaker 1: I can. And I'm grateful when I have the awareness of, oh,
Speaker 1: let me try to integrate these two things. Whenever I
Speaker 1: feel like a sense of separation, now, I'd say, I
Speaker 1: got to find a way to enter. I don't like this,
Speaker 1: I don't I need to integrate these experiences, and I'm not.
Speaker 1: Always takes me sometime a minute before I am ready
Speaker 1: to do that, or I give myself permission. But it's
Speaker 1: really valuable when I can, you know, it's really valuable.
Speaker 1: And I think grief taught me that. I think I
Speaker 1: really felt like for the longest time, my work was
Speaker 1: one thing, my personal life, and my grief was something else.
Speaker 1: And then I realized, you know what, it's all my life.
Speaker 2: That's right. As I read several times in things about
Speaker 2: from Scratch, you are living the source material, right, like
Speaker 2: we're always living.
Speaker 3: The source material, always.
Speaker 4: Always, always, always, always always, and you know, yeah, so
Speaker 4: that again, never have I ever was a true, true gift.
Speaker 1: And the other gift in it is to be a
Speaker 1: part of again a show, something that's in the zeitgeist,
Speaker 1: in this case, the globalitgeist, which is pointing an arrow
Speaker 1: to say it's okay to grieve and it can look
Speaker 1: like this, And you know, I just feel honored that,
Speaker 1: like some part of me got to be a part
Speaker 1: of that. That's my ministry.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it, I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it, and you know I when I was widowed,
Speaker 2: so two thousand and nine, the landscape of grief both
Speaker 2: in like the way that the medical and the psychological
Speaker 2: profession talked about it, but specifically how media culture talked
Speaker 2: about it like it was a wasteland. So I've been
Speaker 2: able to see the developmental arc, right, the narrative cultural
Speaker 2: arc of what is changing and how are our portrayals changing?
Speaker 2: And I think this is true not just in grief,
Speaker 2: it's across the board that we're starting to see our
Speaker 2: storylines reflect the truth of existence in a lot more ways.
Speaker 1: And you're a part of that work.
Speaker 2: I mean absolutely, Yeah, Yeah, you've been laying the track.
Speaker 1: You've been laying the track for years, and it is
Speaker 1: a part of the collective change and that is so important.
Speaker 1: I remember first discovering and be like, holy moly, there's
Speaker 1: a just a there's just a cut through it on
Speaker 1: us to hear right, and that kind of to be
Speaker 1: truly brazen in that way and to sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: keep that drum beat of honesty going. It's really really
Speaker 1: valuable and it's not easy to do, but I think
Speaker 1: collectively and culturally humans need someone who's keeping the drum
Speaker 1: beat of truth even while people doing other percussive instruments
Speaker 1: and they're doing wind instruments and you know whatever, but
Speaker 1: someone's going to be reading the drum of truth or
Speaker 1: it don't work. I mean, I don't know therums in
Speaker 1: a symphony. Clearly, I'm not a musical person.
Speaker 3: I'm going with the drum beat because it's true. I
Speaker 3: love that. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 2: Before we get back to my conversation with Tembe, I
Speaker 2: want to talk with you about creative approaches to grief.
Speaker 2: And I'm both Tembay and I have written about grief,
Speaker 2: turning our experiences into books and television shows and podcasts.
Speaker 2: But even before any of those things happened, writing was
Speaker 2: how we survived grief itself. Actually, I should just speak
Speaker 2: for myself. Writing was how I survived now. Writing isn't
Speaker 2: going to cure anything, but it can help you hear
Speaker 2: your own voice inside whatever is going on in your life,
Speaker 2: and that's in incredibly powerful. My thirty day Writing your
Speaker 2: Grief course is still one of the best things I've
Speaker 2: ever made for you. With all of the things that
Speaker 2: I've created, it's still one of the best things I've
Speaker 2: ever made. There are a lot of grief writing workshops
Speaker 2: out there with prompts like tell us about the funeral.
Speaker 2: Writing your Grief is not like that. The prompts are deeper,
Speaker 2: they are more nuanced. They're designed to get you into
Speaker 2: your own actual story, really into your heart and out
Speaker 2: of your brain. You can read all about the Writing
Speaker 2: your Grief course at Refuginggrief dot com backslash WYG. That's
Speaker 2: WYG for Writing your Grief. You can see a sample
Speaker 2: prompt from the course and get writing your own story
Speaker 2: in minutes. The course is self guided, so you can
Speaker 2: start right now. Refuginggrief dot com backslash w y g.
Speaker 3: Or find the link in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Okay, back to the fabulous Tambei Lach. You've mentioned a
Speaker 2: few times here, and it certainly intersects with me. But
Speaker 2: like this service, especially in the wider context of all
Speaker 2: of the things that we've been talking about, You've said
Speaker 2: about from scratch that making this show was the hardest
Speaker 2: and highest form of creativity in service to love that
Speaker 2: you ever could have imagined.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said it, right, I mean, that's it. It was. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I get emotional just thinking about it because
Speaker 1: I think I'm still processing the experience, and quite frankly,
Speaker 1: it might be for the rest of my life. But
Speaker 1: I did the depths to which it was difficult, and
Speaker 1: I mean that in the sense of what it required professionally.
Speaker 1: To me, it was a hard show to make, just
Speaker 1: on the purely production level of like what does it
Speaker 1: mean to make shows in Hollywood? It was a hard show.
Speaker 1: It was a hard show. We made it in the
Speaker 1: middle of a pandemic. It had three languages, it was
Speaker 1: in two countries, in five cities. It required a lot.
Speaker 1: It was not an easy shoot. Okay, Then there's the
Speaker 1: emotional piece that I am processing because I am kind
Speaker 1: of a I was a doula, a sharp you know,
Speaker 1: to two hundred people trying to tell the story that
Speaker 1: was essentially my story, but it had to be anchored
Speaker 1: in my truth, but be universal enough to resonate with everyone.
Speaker 1: So then there's this whole sort of creative and intellectual
Speaker 1: piece and emotional piece that's happening. And I showed up
Speaker 1: every day to step into my past, my very immediate
Speaker 1: visceral past, sometimes with my own you know, the set
Speaker 1: dressing would have artifacts from my own home right inside
Speaker 1: of the set dressing. Okay, it's not easy things what's doing,
Speaker 1: but I felt like it had to have a visceral
Speaker 1: truth to it that I The only way I knew
Speaker 1: to capture that was to put as much reality in
Speaker 1: the frame as possible, and that meant offering up literally pieces,
Speaker 1: tangible pieces of the lived experience into this on screen.
Speaker 1: So there was that that was happening. There was the
Speaker 1: work with my sister, where I'm working intimately with a
Speaker 1: family member and we're navigating what does it mean to
Speaker 1: work together as siblings, which is beautiful by the way,
Speaker 1: it was deepening, but it was also there were so many, multiple,
Speaker 1: many many layers that were unfolding daily, and every day
Speaker 1: when it was hard, and I mean hard, go back
Speaker 1: to my home or sometimes if we were shooting on
Speaker 1: location a hotel, and I would just go, why am
Speaker 1: I doing this again? Yeah? Okay, what was the original
Speaker 1: purpose of this? What's the north star? And I thought
Speaker 1: this was in service to some kind of love? And
Speaker 1: that would give me enough juice, enough clarity, enough grace
Speaker 1: to show up the next day and do it again,
Speaker 1: and then do it again and then do it again.
Speaker 1: And I think when we do things in service of love,
Speaker 1: and I am not talking about romantic love, although I
Speaker 1: can part of it, sure, it's part of it. I
Speaker 1: am talking about the bigger loves right that is incredibly
Speaker 1: clarifying as a purity of purpose. That's what I was said,
Speaker 1: what is? And I did? I asked myself a lot.
Speaker 1: Why am I here? I asked that so many days
Speaker 1: on set, literally, I was like, why am I here?
Speaker 3: Exactly? Why did I sign up for this?
Speaker 1: Why? You know, why did I sign up for this?
Speaker 1: What do I have to offer everyone here? Let this
Speaker 1: happen without me here, because if I don't need to
Speaker 1: be here, why am I putting myself through this, so
Speaker 1: there always had to be some real reason for me
Speaker 1: to be on set in a particular day. And by
Speaker 1: the way, there were a couple of days where I
Speaker 1: don't need to be here and I wasn't. I excuse myself,
Speaker 1: but I was there, gosh, ninety five percent of the
Speaker 1: time because I always found that there was some element
Speaker 1: that I could add that no one else had, some
Speaker 1: piece of the truth, that if it just had a
Speaker 1: little sprinkle of this, it might make the show better.
Speaker 1: And I hear now from viewers. People will say little
Speaker 1: things back to me, things that the moments that they enjoyed,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, so glad we got that in.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we were able to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such a unique position to be in where
Speaker 2: you have created something beautiful and useful from something truly devastating,
Speaker 2: and that dissonance.
Speaker 3: Is a thing. It's a real thing.
Speaker 1: It's a real thing, and I don't you know, there
Speaker 1: are people perhaps better suited to discuss this in more
Speaker 1: clinical terms of what is you know, and I'm not
Speaker 1: a psychologist. I have not studied it, so I can't
Speaker 1: speak to that. There's a term for it where people
Speaker 1: talk about sort of like resilience post trauma or something
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: There's like clo traumatic growth.
Speaker 1: There you go, that's what it's called. That's that's the
Speaker 1: clinical term pot right, Like, Okay, I don't I can't
Speaker 1: speak to any of that, don't about all that. I'm
Speaker 1: still trying to figure my own life out. But you
Speaker 1: have articulated that when we can honor and name the
Speaker 1: moments where we've been able to take something difficult, a
Speaker 1: loss and transmuted in some way. I remember talking to
Speaker 1: a minister once who said, I have a parishioner who
Speaker 1: works on cars every weekend. And he doesn't just work
Speaker 1: on his car, he works on his neighbor's cars, and
Speaker 1: it is his grief work. He and his father had
Speaker 1: worked on cars when he was growing up. His father
Speaker 1: had passed, and what he chose to do with that
Speaker 1: pain was to work on neighbors cars. Like if somebody
Speaker 1: is car broke down, he'd be like, can I change
Speaker 1: I'll change your oil to me. That is an active beauty, right,
Speaker 1: It's not. Yeah, it's not a TV show, but it's
Speaker 1: the same damn thing. It's like I am using I
Speaker 1: guess as the verb that comes to mind or I
Speaker 1: am stepping into my lived experience, my hurt and doing
Speaker 1: something of service with it. And that can be changing
Speaker 1: someone the loyal in their car.
Speaker 2: And it's beautiful the image that comes up for me
Speaker 2: as you as you talk about that. You know, we
Speaker 2: started out saying, how, like you know, Hollywood loves the
Speaker 2: transformation narrative, bad things happen to help you grow and
Speaker 2: become your deepest and best self. And it's easy to
Speaker 2: reduce everything you just said to that transaction. But that's
Speaker 2: not what I heard you say. What I heard you
Speaker 2: say is can we tell ourselves the truth that something
Speaker 2: big and deep just happened? And how does the truth
Speaker 2: of that intersect with who we are, who we've been,
Speaker 2: Who this person? If you're grieving a loss of a person,
Speaker 2: who this, what this relationship is? And is there a
Speaker 2: way that I can make a life that serves that
Speaker 2: in a way that feels aligned with everything I am
Speaker 2: and everything I know. That is a very different way
Speaker 2: of describing that than hey, you used this terrible thing
Speaker 2: to become your true self? Right, like that's or or
Speaker 2: that martyrdom matrix of like I remember the night of
Speaker 2: Matt's funeral, people coming up to me and saying You're
Speaker 2: going to be such a good therapist because of this,
Speaker 2: You're going to help so many people. I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: first of all, really bad timing, but second of all,
Speaker 2: like what you're saying there is that I wasn't a
Speaker 2: good enough therapist before and somebody had to die in
Speaker 2: order for me to be of use, and also that
Speaker 2: that sort of deeply entrenched you are only valuable if
Speaker 2: you are of service to others, which is just I mean,
Speaker 2: there's so much wrong with that. But this is again
Speaker 2: like one of those one of those gray areas, like
Speaker 2: do stop applying binary shit to humans?
Speaker 3: It doesn't work.
Speaker 2: But that whole area of like what does living with this?
Speaker 3: Whatever? This is?
Speaker 2: What is living with this in the most true way
Speaker 2: for you and who you are.
Speaker 1: Look like absolutely because thank you. First of all you
Speaker 1: said that way better than I did. And I will
Speaker 1: add to this that this service piece. You know, sometimes
Speaker 1: in the reductive way of looking at things, people think, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you did this service and now you're better.
Speaker 1: I can tell you right now I would do the
Speaker 1: act of service. I would show up on set in
Speaker 1: service of love, and then I'd go home and be
Speaker 1: a hot Christmas mess. Right. It wasn't like I was
Speaker 1: somehow newly evolved. I was just like in the moment
Speaker 1: and I was in my own unfolding And what I
Speaker 1: shared earlier about the person who you know changes the
Speaker 1: oil on the neighbor's car, I often when I think
Speaker 1: of that story, think about and what was the walk
Speaker 1: back to his house like after he changed the yes
Speaker 1: and getting back into bed and opening the fridge in
Speaker 1: his house because he's still sitting then with the grief
Speaker 1: for a moment, he was able to show up in
Speaker 1: service of it, and yet he still carries it. Servicing
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean you've alleviated yourself of grief. The grief
Speaker 1: doesn't sort of got into vapor and disappear because you've
Speaker 1: now employed it as an act of servant. I still
Speaker 1: grieve that of every day, even though I made at
Speaker 1: this TV show, right, And I you know, there are
Speaker 1: whole scenes that I don't ever have to watch again ever. Right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, we are just in the moments we're in.
Speaker 1: And just because you quote unquote use your grief where
Speaker 1: you serve others doesn't mean that you still don't feel
Speaker 1: crazy and still feel profound losses, a sense of profound
Speaker 1: loss that you feel in the gray.
Speaker 2: I love the spectrum of being human in this right
Speaker 2: and the permission giving and the go I go back
Speaker 2: to that sort of like the transactional analysis thing of
Speaker 2: like you you did this thing, and now you should
Speaker 2: feel better, which loops back to what we were talking
Speaker 2: about with like the old way of telling stories reinforced that, right,
Speaker 2: I remember. I think it's in the beginning of my book,
Speaker 2: or maybe it's not. Maybe it's just in something that
Speaker 2: I was saying, and I remember saying pretty early on
Speaker 2: in my own grief, I'm like, if I ever get
Speaker 2: married again, no one will ever know about it, because
Speaker 2: I don't want them to think I'm all better. And
Speaker 2: also as a grieving person, I remember when I was
Speaker 2: reading grief books as a newly widowed person. I was
Speaker 2: thirty eight when that died, and I remember I would
Speaker 2: flip to the back of the book and see if
Speaker 2: the author was married, and if they had remarried.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't read their book because.
Speaker 2: I was like, you don't understand me, right, I have
Speaker 2: so much to say on this.
Speaker 1: Well. I don't know. If you hear the bird that's
Speaker 1: warbling outside, he's literally communing with us because he must
Speaker 1: be feeling this too, or she I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: a bird outside.
Speaker 2: On this, because mockingbirds always have a lot to say.
Speaker 1: Anyway, maybe I too. So similarly, like was so I
Speaker 1: don't need to be with you and your story of remarriage.
Speaker 1: I was a whatever that is, good, God speed, good
Speaker 1: for you. Not my path, not my reality. I don't
Speaker 1: need that teaching, and I don't need any teaching. That's
Speaker 1: pointing tool. This is the thing where you go because
Speaker 1: I don't know what I need that in my life.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that I'm going to have that.
Speaker 1: I don't even know if I want that. And oh
Speaker 1: there's so much. It's like, it's not about replacing this
Speaker 1: other person. It's not like I know how special any
Speaker 1: kind of intense human connection is. It's the goal isn't
Speaker 1: to just sort of go out and replicate that. I
Speaker 1: couldn't even understand that, right, But so many books were
Speaker 1: like about that, and it was a selling tool in
Speaker 1: many grief books. It's a big publishing selling tool of like, well,
Speaker 1: see what they've done, so you can follow whatever they
Speaker 1: did and you'll get there. Yeah, Like that's insane. That's
Speaker 1: not a thing. So I was very clear in writing
Speaker 1: from Scratch, and when I wrote from Scratch, full disclosure.
Speaker 1: I am remarried now. I was not when I wrote
Speaker 1: from Scratch. In fact, I just started dating when I
Speaker 1: started to write the book. So I thought that was
Speaker 1: gonna be fun. I'm like, Hi, I'm dating you, and
Speaker 1: I'll see you on the weekend after I spent all
Speaker 1: week writing about my dead husband. Good luck to you.
Speaker 2: It's such a good sorting metric.
Speaker 1: So when I wrote the book Robert, who I was
Speaker 1: dating then with whom I'm now partner married, it was
Speaker 1: a very particular path to walk. And at a certain point,
Speaker 1: I said, here's the thing. You're stepping into a full story.
Speaker 1: That is, you're marrying not only me in seventh grade
Speaker 1: and me you know, as a toddler and me you
Speaker 1: know in high school. You're you're partnered with me who
Speaker 1: married Sado when I was twenty five years old, who
Speaker 1: became a mother with this man, Like, you're marrying all
Speaker 1: of that, just like I'm marrying every part of you.
Speaker 1: And so let's just get to know all of that
Speaker 1: and see what happens. And if we can't get to
Speaker 1: know all of that, then this doesn't have to happen
Speaker 1: because I don't know any other way to do it.
Speaker 1: So really, the goal after loss cannot be we just
Speaker 1: all have to be partner. That is the most absurd.
Speaker 1: It's so absurd thing I have ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: It should that happen. If you want that to happen,
Speaker 1: And if you meet up in time and space with
Speaker 1: a partner who has the desire and capacity and curiosity
Speaker 1: to want to do that with you, and you want
Speaker 1: to do that with them, then perhaps let's see what happens. Right.
Speaker 1: But dear Lord, this this thing of you know, putting
Speaker 1: that on people, I am not here for it. And
Speaker 1: get I recognize that people look to me now as
Speaker 1: someone who's reported to be like, hey, temp, you did it,
Speaker 1: let me see it. I'm like, good luck with that,
Speaker 1: because I'm still figuring it out. Like I'm okay, yes.
Speaker 1: All I can say is that it is possible. Love
Speaker 1: after loss is possible. That's all I can say it,
Speaker 1: because it actually is. I am living proof of that.
Speaker 1: But the how to or like that, that's the goal
Speaker 1: because by the way that love can show up in
Speaker 1: so many ways, it doesn't have to show up in partnership.
Speaker 1: That's one way the love that you got that you
Speaker 1: can show up in the world. It can show up
Speaker 1: in so many different ways. It's not about you need
Speaker 1: to be remarried, right.
Speaker 2: It's such a weird requirement too, Like it like the
Speaker 2: holding up of heteronormativity and that partnership is the only
Speaker 2: valid form of adults existence. Like all, there's so much
Speaker 2: in that. And then we get into the like human
Speaker 2: beings are replaceable and just like plug a different person
Speaker 2: in and then we're all good again. There's just there's
Speaker 2: so much in there. And I love the transparency and
Speaker 2: the honesty with which you live this additional love story.
Speaker 1: And by the way, and also keeping you know, being
Speaker 1: in contract with with my husband to say you are
Speaker 1: not some new chapter like you were not just some
Speaker 1: like hey, and now the next character comes into this play.
Speaker 1: You have your own and we have our own unfolding
Speaker 1: and story. That is, there's connective tissue there, but it's
Speaker 1: not just like a book into some other story, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and giving us ourselves the grace and space to find
Speaker 1: our path.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Human beings are so complicated and so complex, and
Speaker 2: that's actually where the good stuff is, I think. So
Speaker 2: it's basically what we're saying. So it was actually pretty
Speaker 2: recently on social media you wrote that for a while,
Speaker 2: your ability to imagine felt dulled and that you are
Speaker 2: stepping into or inviting yourself into a season of radical imagination.
Speaker 2: So can you tell me what that looks like or
Speaker 2: what you're talking about? Like, I didn't like I took
Speaker 2: it completely out of context, so I'm gonna say it
Speaker 2: again here. You recently wrote that for a while, your
Speaker 2: ability to imagine had felt dulled, and one of the
Speaker 2: next posts, or even later in that post, you said,
Speaker 2: I can see now that the very act of being
Speaker 2: willing to imagine was its own kind of salvation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in terms of grief, there were so many days
Speaker 1: when it was subsistence living. What do I need to
Speaker 1: get through today? I am not trying to imagine next Thursday,
Speaker 1: let alone my life in five years, not even a
Speaker 1: thing or what I want to do or wherever I go.
Speaker 1: It's I need to just be and I need the
Speaker 1: grace to be. And that was exactly what I needed
Speaker 1: at the time. Other stages of my grief, i'd get
Speaker 1: a glimpse of, like, huh, what if an opening an
Speaker 1: aperture around or a desire and imagining of something else
Speaker 1: that I might want to add new into my life
Speaker 1: that had never been there before. And I call that
Speaker 1: the gift of imagination, right, being able to imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be very literal and saying there was times, especially
Speaker 1: as a grieving mother, where I could not imagine beyond
Speaker 1: the moment I was in with my child. And then
Speaker 1: sometimes I would allow myself to imagine me, let's say,
Speaker 1: at her college graduation, and it just would like a
Speaker 1: little bit of sunshine would like flow into my heart.
Speaker 1: It's just the possibility of that, right, And it got
Speaker 1: me through the day. So that's where imagination was a salvation.
Speaker 1: I think what I'm meant in the post and what
Speaker 1: i mean about the season of my life that I'm
Speaker 1: in now, is that I understand the power of imagination.
Speaker 1: That to be able to imagine and to give over
Speaker 1: to imagining is a radical act of salvation because it
Speaker 1: is saying I want more from life, Oh what might
Speaker 1: that look like? Oh? Who might be a part of that?
Speaker 1: Oh it becomes a way through. Doesn't change your today,
Speaker 1: but it's holding what is rude, what is true and
Speaker 1: happening right now? And also and yet being able to
Speaker 1: imagine what could be. And there was a time before
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, I just this just is what
Speaker 1: it is. I'm not even going to think about imagining
Speaker 1: something else. So I I it's something I'm experiencing, it's
Speaker 1: something that I'm unfolding, it's something I'm putting language around it.
Speaker 1: But the best way I can say it is that
Speaker 1: to be able to give myself the permission to imagine.
Speaker 1: And the fact that I we're talking now was because
Speaker 1: I created this thing called the Kitchen Widow, which was
Speaker 1: an imagining of something that I might that what if
Speaker 1: I did create something that could speak to my particular
Speaker 1: corner of my own lived experience of grief using media,
Speaker 1: filming recipes food. It was like this little concoction of
Speaker 1: my little corner of the Internet that spoke to sort
Speaker 1: of my understanding of me. Processing th was an that
Speaker 1: was an act of imagination. It was pure imagination, and
Speaker 1: it ultimately saved me. The fact that I gave allowed
Speaker 1: myself to imagine this corner of the universe that was
Speaker 1: unlike anything I'd seen, but that was right for me,
Speaker 1: and it opened up many doors. And so I'm hoping
Speaker 1: now to step into a season, or I am stepping
Speaker 1: into a season of my life that wherein I am
Speaker 1: allowing my imagination. I'm inviting it, I'm welcoming it. I'm
Speaker 1: getting curious about, well, what's hanging, what's over in the
Speaker 1: imagination space, what does she want to do over there?
Speaker 1: That could be interesting? And who knows what the hell
Speaker 1: it will open up? Maybe some good shit'll come out
Speaker 1: of it. I don't know, but it didn't hurt me.
Speaker 1: It's free to imagine. Imagining is fucking free, and that's powerful.
Speaker 1: And I think about my ancestors. They had to radically
Speaker 1: imagine a state of freedom beyond that that they knew.
Speaker 1: That radical act of freedom is why I'm here. That
Speaker 1: radical act of imagination is why I'm here. They could
Speaker 1: see something that they knew they might never actually live themselves,
Speaker 1: but they could seed it forward in their acts of generosity,
Speaker 1: in seeding things for the future that would become. I
Speaker 1: mean I could, I could, really like, I could unpack
Speaker 1: this a lot. But imagination matters, it does matter, and
Speaker 1: it can be an act of salvation and transformation in
Speaker 1: small and in big ways.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad I asked that question.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad. No I'm like, thrill do you ask it?
Speaker 1: Because it's also making me think about it more deeply. Right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 2: I normally end with a question on hope, but I
Speaker 2: think you did it, oh right, because like the question
Speaker 2: is knowing what you know and living what you've lived,
Speaker 2: what does hope look like for you?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Does it figure into anything?
Speaker 2: And maybe you have a different answer to that question,
Speaker 2: but I definitely heard the answer in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, That's That's kind of where I am now is
Speaker 1: I know things are going to happen. Life is going,
Speaker 1: as I like to say now, life is going to
Speaker 1: keep lifing. Life is just going to keep doing what
Speaker 1: it does. Things are going to unfold, Surprises are going
Speaker 1: to happen, Losses are going to roll in pains, and
Speaker 1: joy will sit side by side. What I have a
Speaker 1: kind of say in is giving myself permission to still
Speaker 1: hang out in the dream state even while everything is
Speaker 1: a shit show, And there's power in that. There's power
Speaker 1: in hanging out in the dream state while everything is
Speaker 1: a shit show? Is that the way we want.
Speaker 4: To end this?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's a mic drop in my opinion, right.
Speaker 2: It is everything that we've been talking about for the
Speaker 2: last hour, that the both and of things right, that
Speaker 2: the additive principle of life is really the thing, it's
Speaker 2: not the replacement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love this.
Speaker 2: We really could talk for like hours and hours and
Speaker 2: hours and hours, but I want to wrap us up
Speaker 2: for the listeners here, and I just like, I'm I'm
Speaker 2: so glad that you're in the world and that we
Speaker 2: actually got to meet. So obviously I'm going to link
Speaker 2: to both the book and the Netflix show from scratch.
Speaker 3: We'll stick in.
Speaker 2: A link to Eureka because if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 2: you really should.
Speaker 3: Everybody.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else that you want people to know
Speaker 2: about where to find you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you can find me in my website. It's
Speaker 1: tenblock dot com. I have a newsletter you could certainly
Speaker 1: sign up for that. And I have a podcast now, Megan,
Speaker 1: I'm following you. I like these long form conversations. It's
Speaker 1: called Lifted. You can get it anywhere you get podcasts.
Speaker 1: I'm working on season two now, and this has been
Speaker 1: an absolute delight. I'm honored to speak with you. I
Speaker 1: feel so moved and uplifted by your questions.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
Speaker 1: Incredibly thoughtful and you're a powerful, powerful voice in this world,
Speaker 1: and so thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, stay tuned for your questions to carry
Speaker 2: with you coming up right after this break. Each week
Speaker 2: I leave you with some questions to carry with you
Speaker 2: until we meet again. The biggest thing that stuck with
Speaker 2: me this week was longevity. Sort of maybe it's like
Speaker 2: starting before you know what you're doing or why you're
Speaker 2: doing it. Ten May and I talked for a long
Speaker 2: time before we got rolling, and we talked for a
Speaker 2: long time after we wrapped the actual show. We both
Speaker 2: started this work of publicly talking about grief, trying to
Speaker 2: find ways to tell a truer, truer word, a more
Speaker 2: accurate story of grief in these four months that we
Speaker 2: weren't quite sure of right in blogs in the early days,
Speaker 2: in videos in the early days. We both knew we
Speaker 2: needed to say something, to do something, and we both
Speaker 2: started with just the next few steps we could see.
Speaker 3: In front of us.
Speaker 2: And what we've each created in the years since is
Speaker 2: light years away from those early projects, completely different from
Speaker 2: what we first envisioned. But those initial steps made it
Speaker 2: possible to do everything we've done since. So I guess
Speaker 2: my message here for me and for you is do
Speaker 2: the thing right.
Speaker 3: You don't have to know how it all works out.
Speaker 2: You don't have to see nineteen thousand steps in advance.
Speaker 2: You don't have to wait until you're sure everything is
Speaker 2: in its very final form for all time. You just
Speaker 2: need to start. Take the seed of the story, that
Speaker 2: first spark of desire, and try it out, Play with it,
Speaker 2: see where it leads. I think that approach applies to
Speaker 2: so much of life. If there is something in you
Speaker 2: that's pulling you forward, even a little bit, try it out,
Speaker 2: see what happens next. How about you, what's stuck with you?
Speaker 2: From this conversation. Everybody's going to take something different from
Speaker 2: today's show, but I do hope you found something.
Speaker 3: 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. Remember to leave a review of this episode
Speaker 2: or the show in general on the pod platforms that
Speaker 2: allow reviews. I know they don't all allow reviews, at
Speaker 2: least I haven't figured out how to leave review on
Speaker 2: every single podcast platform, but they are out there and
Speaker 2: I love your reviews. Follow the show on It's Okay Pod,
Speaker 2: on TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else to see
Speaker 2: video clips from the show, and use the hashtag It's
Speaker 2: Okay Pod on all the platforms, so not only I
Speaker 2: can find you, others can too. None of us are
Speaker 2: entirely okay, and it's time we start talking about that together. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's okay that You're not okay. You're in good company.
Speaker 2: That is it for this week. Friends, Remember to subscribe
Speaker 2: to the show. Get your own conversations going by sharing
Speaker 2: this episode with friends, therapists and community groups and random
Speaker 2: strangers and coffee shops with consent. Of course, podcast episodes
Speaker 2: are really good conversation starters, especially if it's a topic
Speaker 2: that feels interesting to you but you're not really sure
Speaker 2: how to start talking about it. Use the episode as
Speaker 2: your foot in the door. Coming up next week, Elise Lunan,
Speaker 2: author of the New York Times bestselling book On Our
Speaker 2: Best Behavior. Follow the show on your favorite platforms so
Speaker 2: you don't miss an episode. It's Okay that You're Not Okay.
Speaker 2: The podcast is written and produced by me Megan Devine,
Speaker 2: Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio,
Speaker 2: Logistical and social media support from Micah, post production and
Speaker 2: editing by Houston Tilly, Music provided by wave Crush, and
Speaker 2: today's background noise provided by the very faint background burbal
Speaker 2: of the water fountain. I set up outside to keep
Speaker 2: the pollinators hydrated in the heat wave.