0:00

Grief is a human experience, and the care we

0:02

receive should be too. EverNorth Behavioral

0:05

Health ensures all members have access to

0:07

live, specialized support in person or virtually,

0:09

with a 100% follow-up

0:11

commitment to make sure they get the help they need.

0:14

There's always a person there. With

0:22

EverNorth's wide range of behavioral solutions, care

0:24

can be personalized, simple, and more accessible.

0:27

Learn more at evernorth.com/grief

0:30

support. I've

0:59

been trying to spend as much time as possible with

1:01

my kids. But

1:11

whenever I go down to my basement,

1:13

I'm reminded that grief doesn't go away.

1:17

So, I'm in the basement of my house, and

1:21

surprise, it is filled with boxes. This

1:27

spring, I started feeling guilty about all

1:29

those unopened boxes, and about all the

1:31

voicemail messages from listeners during the first

1:33

season that I hadn't gotten around to

1:35

playing. Last

1:46

season, I'd ask you to leave a message if

1:48

there was something you'd learned in your grief that

1:50

might be helpful to others. Brad,

1:57

eight years ago, his dad died. I

2:00

took my mom's life and then

2:02

took his own. I lost my only

2:04

child and she was doing it.

2:06

I'd only had time to listen to about 200

2:08

of the calls before I had to select some

2:10

and write the final episode of the podcast, but

2:13

there were more than a thousand calls I hadn't heard.

2:16

I have never shared anything like this

2:18

before, but I feel... I have never told

2:20

this to anyone. My mother,

2:22

she was very, very abusive. Even

2:25

though I wasn't going to do another podcast,

2:27

I decided a few months ago I'd listen

2:29

to all your messages. I mean, you'd taken

2:31

the time to leave them. The least I

2:33

could do was listen. Society

2:36

was telling me, it's just a

2:38

miscarriage. Just get over it. And

2:40

I had degrees, the person

2:43

that I was. There is

2:45

life after death, both for oneself and

2:47

for the relationship of the person. I

2:49

realized that my relationship with my parents

2:51

wasn't over as I feared it would

2:53

be. Every day I'd put in

2:55

my AirPods and I'd hear your sadness.

2:58

You hear those words? Your child has

3:00

cancer. Your bravery. It's okay to

3:02

cry. And it's okay to talk about it.

3:04

And it's okay that it sucks. And your

3:06

love. When I wear this jacket,

3:08

I feel wrapped in his love

3:10

even 27 years after his

3:12

death. You

3:16

helped me feel my own sadness in

3:18

a way I'd never allowed myself to.

3:21

I'm embarrassed to say, listening to your

3:24

messages, I cried more than I ever

3:26

have before. I held

3:28

him in my arms. I

3:30

could feel his heart pounding in my chest.

3:33

I said it's already and I got you. I love

3:35

you. And I felt his heart

3:37

stop. Today

3:42

I've listened to probably about three hours of voicemails from

3:44

people. And

3:47

we don't have time to stop. I'm

3:52

calling from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It

3:54

took more than two months, but I listened to

3:56

every one of you. I listened to

3:58

more than 46 hours of voicemails. your calls.

4:01

The sobbing may last a minute or

4:03

two, but I honor

4:05

that. There's strength and vulnerability. The

4:08

soft experience is actually the thing that pulled

4:11

us together. So many

4:14

grieves and silence hold it in, carry the

4:16

weight, it has to go somewhere. I

4:19

didn't understand why I was so emotional. I

4:21

mean, I've always been pretty good at controlling

4:23

my feelings. When I

4:25

was done listening to all your calls, I went

4:28

down to the basement and for the first time

4:30

in months opened up a box

4:32

at random. It turned out

4:34

to be full of my dad's papers. He was a

4:36

writer. And the first paper

4:38

that I picked up was an essay

4:40

he'd written that I'd never seen before.

4:43

And it stunned me. Here

4:45

it is. Doesn't

4:47

have a year on it, but... It's

4:50

called The Importance of Grieving. I

4:53

came across this section where he was talking

4:55

about kids and the importance of kids grieving.

4:57

And he quotes a psychologist, psychoanalytic studies have

5:00

shown that when a person is unable to

5:02

complete a morning task in childhood, he either

5:04

has to surrender his emotions in order that

5:06

they do not suddenly overwhelm him or

5:09

else he may be haunted constantly throughout his

5:11

life with a

5:13

sadness for which he can never find

5:15

an appropriate explanation. When

5:18

I read that, I just thought, that's me. That's

5:21

exactly what I did. And

5:23

it's true. I have

5:25

lived through my entire life with

5:27

a sadness for which I can never find

5:29

an appropriate explanation. And

5:34

here it is my dad writing this

5:36

when I was a little kid. He

5:39

knew he was at great risk of dying

5:41

early. And

5:43

maybe he did write this with me in mind,

5:45

my brother in mind. And maybe

5:47

he thought, one day, maybe those kids will come across

5:49

this essay. I like to think of it

5:51

as like a message from him.

5:54

Reading that sentence that my dad

5:57

somehow picked out, I realized. I

6:00

guess for the first time that I

6:02

didn't really grieve my dad's death at all,

6:05

and that I didn't really grieve my brother's death. I

6:08

didn't allow myself to. That's

6:10

why going through all this stuff has been so

6:14

overwhelming. I thought I was just going

6:16

through my mom's boxes to organize them,

6:18

but what I opened up was hidden

6:22

boxes of grief that I'd stored away,

6:24

that I'd buried when I

6:26

was 10 years old, and then when

6:28

I was 21, and listening

6:30

to your voicemail messages, listening to 46 hours,

6:34

it opened up all these boxes in my own head

6:36

and in my own heart, that

6:39

I need to deal with all this stuff, not

6:41

just this literal stuff in the basement, but I

6:43

can't just keep it all stored away anymore. So

6:49

that's why I'm doing another season of

6:52

this podcast. I don't want to keep

6:54

this sadness, this grief buried any longer.

6:56

I can't. It's like

6:58

that listener Jen said, it has to go

7:00

somewhere. It doesn't go away. And

7:03

in trying to bury my own sadness, I

7:05

realize now I've also buried my ability to

7:08

feel joy. I don't

7:10

want to live half a life any longer.

7:12

I want to feel all there

7:14

is. We'll

7:19

be right back with my guest,

7:21

Francis Weller, whose book about grief

7:23

and loss was a revelation to

7:25

me. All

7:34

There Is with Anderson Cooper is supported

7:37

by Evernorth Health Services. Grief

7:39

is a human experience. Shouldn't

7:41

the care we receive feel human too? That's

7:44

why Evernorth Behavioral Health ensures all

7:46

members have access to live, specialized

7:48

support anytime, in person or virtually,

7:50

with a 100% follow-up commitment to

7:52

make sure that they get the

7:54

help that they need. So

7:57

no matter what stage of grief your employees may

7:59

be in. there's always a person

8:01

ready to listen. Stressful times can lead

8:03

many to bottle up complex feelings, especially

8:05

at work. 59%

8:08

of those suffering say nothing. This

8:10

can have unexpected and serious mental

8:12

and physical health implications. And with

8:14

EverNorth's data-driven risk monitoring tools, they

8:16

can help spot challenges early and

8:19

step in to guide individuals to

8:21

care before they undergo any more

8:23

suffering. Each person's grief is as

8:25

unique as they are, which is

8:27

why EverNorth offers a wide range

8:29

of personalized behavioral solutions to meet the

8:31

needs of every member that they serve.

8:34

Learn more at

8:36

evernorth.com/grief support. Grief

8:39

is a human experience and the care we receive

8:41

should be too. EverNorth Behavioral Health

8:43

ensures all members have access to live

8:45

specialized support in person or virtually with

8:48

a 100% follow-up commitment to

8:50

make sure they get the help they

8:53

need. There's always a person there, guiding

8:55

your employees using data-driven risk monitoring tools

8:57

so bottled up feelings don't turn into

8:59

further suffering. With EverNorth's wide

9:01

range of behavioral solutions, care

9:03

can be personalized, simple, and

9:06

more accessible. Learn more at

9:08

evernorth.com/grief support. Welcome

9:14

back to All There Is. My guest is

9:16

Francis Weller. He's a psychotherapist whose book, The

9:18

Wild Edge of Sorrow, was sent to me

9:20

by a listener named Cynthia, whose son John

9:22

died in 2016 when he was 32. Cynthia

9:27

wrote me a letter saying she hoped something

9:29

in Francis's book would speak to me. I

9:32

started The Wild Edge of Sorrow and it

9:34

blew me away. I underlined

9:36

things on nearly every page. When

9:40

I got back from Israel, I wasn't sure

9:42

that I should even do this

9:44

podcast. And I felt like in

9:47

the face of so much suffering in Israel

9:49

and in Gaza, talking

9:51

about my grief or talking about

9:54

any individual person suffering, I

9:58

mean, does it matter in the face of? that

12:00

brought up the grief that I never processed as

12:02

a child. I was able to

12:04

finally cry and grieve as that 13 year

12:06

old girl who never could really cry it

12:08

out because she had to develop

12:10

skills to survive and thrive. I

12:13

was stunned by what she said because I feel

12:17

very similar. Very few of

12:19

us had our grief, our

12:21

losses held adequately by

12:24

anybody. So that unheld

12:26

material doesn't just

12:28

dissipate, it doesn't just go away. It

12:32

burrows in and

12:34

becomes someplace that we will have to

12:36

return to at some point. You hear

12:38

that all the time. I do. And

12:40

I've also encountered that myself, just how

12:42

much that melancholic

12:46

echo was with me all through my life.

12:48

I was the youngest of eight kids and they're

12:50

all gone. And suddenly I'm

12:53

having to take care of him, get

12:55

him dressed. I

12:58

was now the parent of this man who couldn't

13:00

really take care of himself. So

13:02

all of what I was feeling, the

13:05

grief, the sadness, the fear, the

13:08

anger, all of that had to be submerged.

13:11

There was no room for it. We

13:14

were in survival mode. So all

13:16

of that just had to disappear. And

13:18

I didn't touch that until, gosh, probably

13:22

in my forties, it began to push its

13:24

way back to the foreground. It

13:26

doesn't go away. It doesn't go

13:28

away. It shouldn't go away. It's

13:31

part of our story. It's part of our

13:33

history. It's part of the depths

13:35

of who we are. And

13:37

so it really does request to require

13:40

demand at some point, some

13:42

acknowledgement. I mean, isn't that what's happening

13:44

for you right now, Anderson? Yeah. I mean, but

13:46

I don't even know what that means. Like I,

13:49

I don't even know, like what does that mean to it? Well,

13:52

it does mean that

13:54

we have to at some point be willing

13:56

to turn toward that grief because the strategic

13:58

posture is always. moving out

14:00

and away, getting busy, doing our

14:03

life, doing our career. At

14:05

some point, there's a pivot we have to make and

14:08

turn and face all of

14:10

the untended grief that's in our life.

14:13

I mean, we live in what

14:15

we could call a very heroic culture. And

14:19

we're told to buck up, to get

14:21

over it, to rise above it. Even

14:24

in our spiritual traditions right now, how

14:27

do you transcend this trouble? But

14:30

we're never really taught how to be with it. When

14:32

we're asked to carry it alone, privately,

14:35

we end up carrying it around in new holds, dragging

14:38

this weight behind us. And

14:40

so we rarely feel like we're in the current of

14:42

life. We're a relief, living

14:45

more tethered to the past than we are in

14:47

our current life. So

14:49

to really do grief work is actually to get

14:51

present. It's to be in this time, in this

14:53

place. But throughout our history as

14:55

a species, grief has always

14:58

been communal. It's never been private until now. And

15:00

in that privatization, in that

15:03

sense of having to sequester my grief within

15:05

my own being, I feel like

15:07

I'm all alone in this. And that's one of

15:09

the most intolerable places for the soul to be.

15:12

What is the next step? I mean,

15:14

I feel like a well, an ocean

15:16

of tears just below the surface. For

15:20

the last two months, I've

15:22

just felt it constantly there. And it

15:24

bubbles up all the time now. You

15:27

have to make a slow titration into

15:29

that territory. I don't think we dive

15:31

head first into it. We

15:33

have to build some faith that

15:36

the grief itself won't swallow

15:38

me. So you can do little

15:40

writing practices to begin to know that I can

15:42

touch into that space and step back

15:45

out, touch into it, step back

15:47

out. Begin to see that when you're there

15:49

and when you return,

15:51

I'm not going to drown. This

15:53

grief belongs here. It'll actually

15:55

help me become more human. I

15:58

think I would do that over the decades.

16:00

kids by going to wars and going to

16:02

places where people were suffering and touch it

16:06

and then be able to step back and leave.

16:08

Yeah. So, in answer

16:11

to the question, how do you begin

16:13

to feel again? You say slowly.

16:16

Slowly. There's

16:19

three principles. One is to

16:21

slow down the pace because the

16:24

faster we go, it's like skiing, you know,

16:26

water skiing, you know. Speed is

16:28

great for water skiing, but it keeps

16:30

you on the surface. To get into

16:32

the depths, you have to slow down. So

16:34

pace is the first thing. Second

16:37

thing is warmth. Can

16:39

I bring warmth to this place that

16:42

sometimes for all

16:44

of our lifetime but also for generations has

16:47

been carried coldly? So

16:49

can I bring warmth to it? Compassion,

16:51

kindness, affection, curiosity.

16:53

Self-compassion you're talking about. Self-compassion. And

16:55

the third movement is to bring

16:58

it into some type of communal

17:00

attunement where we can share what's

17:02

there. Talking to other people about it. Talking

17:05

to other people about it. So those three movements

17:07

of slowing down, warming the place

17:10

and bringing it into communal regulation,

17:13

those are the things that we needed as a child. Think

17:16

about that, right? When we get

17:18

hurt, when we're witnessing like your father's death,

17:22

to slow down and just make that the

17:24

only thing that mattered. With

17:27

someone sitting you down with you and

17:29

just having their arms around you and just say

17:31

this is so sad. You

17:35

must be so sad. And

17:37

then to bring the affection and the warmth to

17:39

that place so that someone

17:41

sees you and someone

17:43

gets that how much

17:46

you are lost in this moment. And

17:49

that brings the communal element to it as well at

17:51

the same time. So

17:53

those are the things that we needed as a child.

17:56

And when that doesn't manifest, what

17:59

we're left with is how do

18:01

I cope? How do

18:03

I survive? How do I endure

18:05

this? Well, we endure it

18:07

primarily by pushing it away. I

18:09

feel like I turned deeply inward as a

18:12

little child and I've always

18:14

felt like a shell of the

18:16

person I was meant to be or the person I

18:18

was and I think that's the reason I felt that

18:21

because I don't think I've ever emerged from that defensive

18:24

crouch. So

18:27

even just saying that, can you turn towards

18:29

that boy who made that decision? Can

18:34

you just be with that for a moment and

18:36

just say, that was hard.

18:39

I was alone. There was

18:41

nobody there for me. Not

18:43

to have pity for that boy, but

18:46

to begin to give some element of what

18:48

it is that

18:50

he needed in that moment, in that

18:52

time. My mom would try

18:54

to talk to me about my dad,

18:57

tell stories about him and

18:59

I just found it, I

19:02

just could not respond. I would

19:04

say, oh yeah, I remember that, but I just wanted her to

19:06

stop talking. It is interesting I

19:08

realized recently how angry I am over

19:11

what happened when I was a kid. Well,

19:15

we think grief is only tears, but

19:17

grief is also outrage. Grief

19:20

is also a form of protest. What

19:22

happened to me was not alright,

19:25

whether it's molestation or death by

19:27

suicide of a brother. Like for

19:29

you, those scars there, they

19:31

need to be protested. That outrage is a

19:34

very important part of our

19:36

grieving. It's not just, like

19:38

I said, it's not just our tears, but it's

19:40

also our saying that what happened

19:45

stays with me. Grief, when

19:48

we're really in it, we are in

19:50

the commons of the soul. Yeah,

19:54

what I mean by that is that any time you walk

19:56

down the street, any pair of eyes you look

19:58

into, they walk into the soul. no loss.

20:02

No one's been excluded from that club. So

20:04

it's what it's probably one of the most, if

20:08

not the most common human experience

20:10

is one of loss. But when you're

20:13

in a grief-phobic culture, that language,

20:15

those commons don't get to be visited.

20:17

So when it comes up, when it

20:19

arrives at our door, we don't

20:21

know how to be a good host to it. We

20:24

don't know how to express it. So

20:26

we don't recognize it. I share

20:28

this with you. I mean, your tears today are

20:30

very touching to me.

20:32

I deny that I'm crying at all. Well,

20:36

try as you may. They are very

20:38

familiar to me. And I

20:42

think that's the beauty of what you're doing right

20:44

now, Anderson. You

20:46

write about revisioning grief. What

20:50

do you mean by a revisioning of grief? Well,

20:55

our familiar story is that it's something

20:57

to get over or fix or get

20:59

through as fast as possible. But

21:02

what if we could reimagine our relationship

21:04

to sorrow, not as

21:06

something to just endure, but to

21:09

change it into an ongoing companionship?

21:12

I mean, tell me a day that you've been

21:14

through in your life when there wasn't at least

21:16

some element of grief in it. Never.

21:19

Never. But still,

21:21

we have this estrangement to it. Right?

21:24

You know, it's not bloody up to this thing. So

21:27

to revision this as an ongoing

21:30

process, I'm walking with grief every

21:32

day. That keeps

21:34

me in deep relationship to

21:37

my soul. It keeps

21:39

me in relationship to the world. And

21:42

it keeps me capable of

21:44

responding to what arises in my

21:46

internal life or my traditional lives

21:50

with warmth, with kindness, with

21:52

some measure of care

21:54

and compassion. So we

21:56

do need to revision grief, not as an unwinded.

21:59

a welcomed guest, but

22:02

a continuous presence that we

22:04

can befriend. I'm not

22:06

saying it's not a difficult guest at times,

22:08

absolutely. Stephen Colbert talked

22:10

about it as a tiger in the room

22:12

with him. You know, I

22:14

want to say something about living with grief.

22:17

It's like living with a beloved

22:20

tiger. There are times when it

22:22

is, when I say grateful for it, I don't

22:25

want to say that it's

22:28

no longer a tiger. It

22:30

is, and it can really hurt you.

22:32

It can pounce on you in moments

22:34

that you don't expect. But it's my

22:37

tiger, and I wouldn't want

22:40

to get rid of the tiger. It's

22:43

going to live as long as I do.

22:45

It's painful, but there's some

22:47

symbiotic relationship between me and this

22:50

particular pain that I've made peace

22:52

with. So I don't

22:55

regret the existence of it. But

22:58

that again does not mean I wish it had ever become

23:00

my tiger. Yeah. I

23:03

mean, grief is fierce. Grief

23:06

is not depression. There's

23:08

a wild energy. It's feral. It's

23:11

difficult. But we can

23:13

come into relationship with it. And I think that's

23:15

part of our aliveness, I think, because when

23:18

you meet someone who has digested

23:20

grief adequately, they're

23:23

not numb. They're

23:25

not flattened. They're actually quite

23:27

alive. We can't just say, well, I'm going

23:29

to shut down grief. Well, that has

23:32

a cascading effect. It

23:34

also shuts down joy, shuts down

23:37

our aliveness. So

23:39

to feel alive, I have to welcome this

23:42

tiger. I have to welcome this difficult presence

23:44

in my life. But I've

23:47

known so much more joy since doing that than

23:49

I ever did before that. I

23:52

want to ask you a little bit about your own experiences, because

23:54

you say in the book it was through the dark waters of

23:56

grief that I came to touch my unlived life. I

23:59

had built a strategically control life in which I

24:01

was appreciated and respected, but when I plunged into

24:03

this place of emptiness, it was like

24:05

a wall that had been blocking my view was shattered,

24:07

and I could finally see how I was limiting my

24:09

life in hopes of avoiding the

24:11

emptiness. And you said, facing our

24:13

emptiness is the key to our freedom until we

24:16

do, we are driven by lifelong

24:18

patterns of avoidance. When

24:20

I read that, I was like, wow. Yeah.

24:24

And that's it. At the heart

24:26

of all of our sorrows is this profound

24:28

experience of emptiness. And

24:30

I ended up feeling so emptied that

24:33

I really performed my life for the

24:35

first 40 years. You performed your

24:37

life for the first 40 years. Yeah,

24:39

I was performing the goal of the good

24:42

man, but I wasn't inside my life.

24:45

And that was so incredibly painful, and I

24:47

began to see how much I had propped

24:51

up a fiction. That was

24:53

the beginning of my return, to coming back

24:55

into this experience of being able to say,

24:58

I'm here, I feel, I

25:00

weep, I'm in pain. That's

25:03

where I began to feel human again, was through those

25:06

outcast parts of me. Strength

25:09

doesn't get us down the road very far. It's

25:12

these vulnerable parts of us that bring

25:14

us back into the commons, back into

25:16

relationship with others. These crises

25:18

that happened in our life, the death of your

25:21

brother, these rough initiations

25:23

are invitational spaces to

25:26

cross some threshold into some deeper sense of who

25:28

we are meant to be. We're

25:31

obsessed with happiness, but the real work isn't

25:33

to be happy, it's to be alive. And

25:36

when people come into my office, one

25:39

of the first complaints is often I'm depressed. But

25:41

when I listen to them for any length of

25:43

time, it's not depression, it's

25:45

oppression. It's the weight of

25:47

untouched sorrow that has settled on

25:49

them like sediment and become this immovable

25:52

place in their heart. So

25:55

we have to be able to loosen that territory

25:57

up and bring them back into some closeness to

25:59

that, because there's so much vitality and grief.

26:01

I just reread Joan Didion's book. She said, I know

26:03

why we try to keep the dead alive. We try

26:05

to keep them alive in order to keep them with

26:07

us. I also know that if we are to live

26:10

ourselves, there comes a point. There

26:17

comes a point in which we must relinquish the dead.

26:20

Let them go. Keep them dead. Let

26:23

them become the photograph on the table. Let

26:25

them become the name on the trust accounts. Let

26:28

go of them in the water. Knowing this

26:30

does not make it any easier to let go of him

26:32

in the water. I

26:34

mean, is that the goal? I

26:36

don't know. I don't

26:38

know if there's a goal. I

26:41

don't know what we need all the time. I think we

26:45

are one of the few cultures that

26:47

has almost no relationship to ancestors. Whereas

26:49

many traditional cultures, that's a very primary

26:51

way of... It's as

26:53

if the dead are not gone. They're

26:55

still in the currency of life, of

26:58

imagination, of dream, of

27:00

feeling. They're in the land.

27:03

I like that idea. So it's

27:05

not something past. It's

27:08

a very current and alive relationship.

27:11

I have in some odd

27:13

ways a better relationship on my mother now than

27:16

I ever had when she was alive. So

27:18

I think the ancestors are very much a part

27:20

of who we are and what we're carrying. We

27:23

are suffering from a profound amnesia. We have forgotten

27:25

how to be human. We have forgotten how to

27:27

tend the commons of the soul. So

27:29

all those forms of human expression are

27:32

basically grief rituals. The

27:34

anthropologists, archaeologists think that we were

27:36

probably doing ritual before we actually had

27:38

language. We

27:40

were burying people ceremonially,

27:43

ritually. Right after

27:45

9-11, Hisona just moved to New York City

27:47

and we went to visit him. And

27:50

everywhere that we went, there

27:52

were circles of people. Some silent, some

27:55

singing, some praying. There

27:58

were shrines everywhere. It's

28:01

deep in our psychic structure to

28:04

take what is unbearable into

28:06

ritual. You can't think your way through grief.

28:09

You can't try to understand it or figure

28:11

it out. It's too

28:14

emotional and too embodied, and

28:16

ritual is the language of emotion and body. It

28:19

gives the psyche a way of expressing

28:23

what the mind cannot totally comprehend.

28:27

I spent some time in West Africa in

28:29

a village in Burkina Faso, and

28:33

there was a grief ritual happening someplace in the

28:35

village almost every day. And

28:37

I remember walking up to one woman and saying, you

28:39

have so much joy. And

28:42

her response was, that's because I cry a lot. She

28:46

made that immediate connection between this

28:48

deep register of sorrow and the

28:50

upper register of joy. When we

28:52

deny that deeper register, the upper

28:54

register collapses, and we have

28:56

this very narrow band of what we're allowed to feel,

28:58

what I call the flatline culture. And

29:01

so we rely upon excitement and stimulation

29:03

and achievement rather

29:06

than genuine joy, because we can't

29:08

open to that deep place

29:11

of sorrow together. Multiple

29:14

times a year, three, four times a year, we

29:16

hold grief rituals across the country. And

29:19

it's a gathering usually for three days, usually 25 to

29:21

40 people. We

29:25

do writing practices together. We share in

29:27

small groups, trying to loosen

29:29

the ground. So by the time

29:31

we got to the ritual itself, you

29:33

were ready to move the grief out. The grief

29:36

is never meant to be permanently

29:38

stored in the body. It's

29:40

supposed to be consistently

29:43

moved out of the body. That's

29:45

the old idea, traditional idea. I

29:48

would love to have you come to a grief ritual. Maybe

29:50

you've had become a little more fully evolved. It

29:54

takes a lot to do this. I mean, it takes a

29:56

lot of courage. We are so self-conscious.

29:58

What will people think? with me. I

30:01

went to many grief rituals as a participant in my

30:03

in the 1990s. It took me three

30:07

grief rituals before I shed my first tear. But

30:09

I knew I carried this boatload of grief.

30:12

You know, not everybody listening to this will

30:14

be able to attend one of your rituals.

30:17

So what can

30:19

they do? Anything. I mean,

30:23

it doesn't have to be complicated like a three day

30:25

grief ritual. It could be just getting together with your

30:27

friends and saying on Friday night, the

30:29

topic is loss. But

30:32

let's just agree not to fix each other. Let's

30:35

just agree not to give advice.

30:37

Let's just, you know, light a candle, say a

30:39

poem, say a prayer, whatever you want to do. But

30:42

let's begin to tell the stories. I think people

30:44

are just longing for

30:46

permission. I

30:48

think that's partly what you're giving them with

30:51

this podcast. I understand you're giving them permission

30:53

to begin to speak about the griefs that

30:56

they have been carrying sometimes for

30:58

decades. That's what we need. Because

31:01

just doing this by yourself is

31:03

not enough? To express it to really,

31:06

I mean, a lot of people

31:08

come back and they say, well, I had a very emotional week

31:10

and there was a lot of grief. I said, did you happen

31:12

to share that with anybody? And they'll often say, no, I don't

31:15

want to burden anybody. But that's like

31:17

recycling grief. You said,

31:19

we cannot figure our way out of grief.

31:21

We must turn toward our experience and

31:24

touch it with the softest hands possible. Only

31:26

then in the inner terrain of silence and

31:29

solitude will our grief yield to us and

31:31

offer up its most tender shoots. This

31:33

move is another form of sacred ritual

31:35

crafted in the moment and consecrated by

31:38

the grace of compassion. Yeah.

31:41

It's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah,

31:44

I told a story in that chapter about this woman

31:46

I was working with. She said, you know, I hate

31:48

going home at night. She was going through a pretty

31:50

ugly divorce at the time. She said,

31:52

well, when I get home, it's dark in

31:55

there. It's cold. There's

31:57

nobody there. I'm lonely. I

32:00

said, well, can you imagine this as the holiest time of

32:02

day? That when you

32:04

open the door, you're greeting your most

32:06

vulnerable self. Can you

32:09

imagine greeting her and saying,

32:11

I'm home. Let's put the fire

32:13

on. Let's start some soup. I'll start the tea.

32:16

Tell me about your day. And

32:18

then I remember this line from the poet

32:20

Rainer Maria Rilke, where he said, I am

32:23

too alone in the world, but

32:25

not alone enough to make

32:27

every moment holy. Now,

32:30

that's when you create a

32:32

consecrated space. That's when you

32:35

turn loneliness into solitude. That's

32:37

when it becomes this sacred

32:39

ground, when you can

32:41

meet these tearful, sorrowful

32:44

brothers, sisters, others that

32:46

are there. And you can

32:49

grant them, the audience, that they are

32:51

craving some sense of

32:53

I'm with you, rather

32:55

than what's on TV tonight. We

32:58

keep finding ways to avoid. It's

33:00

as if we try to mask over, to

33:03

anesthetize the absence of what it

33:06

is we really want, is

33:08

some place to come home to, some

33:11

place of belonging. We rarely

33:13

have that. And that is really at the heart

33:15

of our grief. That's what we're talking about, is

33:17

how alone we are, too alone. So

33:20

to someone who's listening to this, and they

33:22

do feel alone, what do you recommend?

33:26

Well, my hope is that every one of us

33:28

has at least one person we could speak to,

33:31

one little place of shelter. And

33:34

if not, there are places where you can

33:37

go to speak and share

33:39

what's going on. We

33:41

read our wounds as if

33:43

they're indictments against our character,

33:47

rather than symptoms of a larger loss.

33:50

This loneliness, this depression, the anxiety,

33:52

whatever it is that we're feeling,

33:56

it's really not some

33:58

commentary of my character. character, but really the

34:02

soul's trying to call our attention back to

34:04

what is missing. What

34:07

do we need to feel even some remote sense of

34:09

contentment in this life? Well,

34:11

we need to know that we belong, that

34:14

we have some places to bring what has

34:16

been touched by pain or loss or

34:18

grief. We need these places,

34:20

and so finding one or two

34:23

people that can welcome

34:25

us into that shelter is necessary.

34:28

Safe work opens the

34:30

heart to compassion for others, but we

34:32

need to practice the capacity to turn

34:35

towards our own suffering with kindness, with

34:37

warmth, with affection. There

34:39

is no suffering, no challenge,

34:42

no loss that doesn't require

34:44

some degree of self-compassion.

34:49

Thank you so much for talking to us. It's been a

34:51

pleasure, Anderson. Francis

34:54

Weller's book, which I really recommend, is

34:57

called The Wild Edge of Sorrow, Rituals

34:59

of Renewal and the Sacred Work of

35:01

Grief. You can find out

35:04

more information about him on his website,

35:06

francisweller.net. Next

35:10

week on All There Is, I sit down with President

35:12

Biden in the White House. This isn't

35:14

an interview about current events or politics. It's

35:17

a conversation that I'm not sure any

35:19

other modern American president has ever had

35:21

before. It's a conversation about the losses

35:23

in his life, how they've shaped him, and

35:25

how he lives with grief today. You've got

35:27

to confront it. You've got

35:29

to deal with it, look at it,

35:31

understand it, and decide I'm moving on

35:33

because I have another purpose in life.

35:35

My two children are alive, my grandchildren,

35:38

my wife, my whatever it is. But

35:41

it's hard as hell. And

35:44

I mean this from the bottom of my heart. My word

35:46

is abiding. I

35:48

think it's critical that

35:51

people understand that they're always

35:53

going to be with you.

35:57

Your mother's in your heart every single

35:59

day. your brother, but in

36:01

your heart, you're there every

36:03

single day. And there'll

36:06

come a time you can sort of

36:08

welcome that, that you had that,

36:10

that it was there. President

36:12

Biden, next week on All There Is. All

36:17

There Is is a production of CNN Audio. The

36:19

show is produced by Grace Walker and Dan Bloom.

36:22

Our senior producers are Haley Thomas and

36:24

Felicia Patinkin. Dan DeZula is

36:27

our technical director, and Steve Ligtai is

36:29

the executive producer of CNN Audio. Support

36:32

from Charlie Moore, Carrie Rubin,

36:34

Shemrit Sheetrete, Ronnie Bettis, Alex

36:36

Manassari, Robert Mathers, John

36:39

Deonora, Lainey Steinhardt, Jameis

36:41

Andres, Nicole Pesceru, and

36:43

Lisa Namro. Special thanks

36:45

to Katie Hinman. Thanks for listening.

36:56

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36:58

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