0:14

Pushkin.

0:18

Hey, Dream listeners, if you like this podcast,

0:20

you're gonna love the book.

0:22

Yeah.

0:22

I wrote a book. It's called Selling the Dream

0:25

and it's coming out March twelfth, twenty twenty

0:27

four, on Atria. It's

0:29

about all of your favorite characters from

0:32

MLMs and some that you've never even

0:34

heard of. I hope check it

0:36

out previously

0:38

on the Dream.

0:41

So can I ask about your style

0:43

of coaching? I've watched a lot of your videos

0:45

and I feel like your style is I

0:47

don't want to say agro, but you're

0:50

very boisterous. You're very You're kind

0:52

of tough. Was that a choice

0:54

or is that just like how you naturally are?

0:58

Can I ask you a question?

1:00

Yeah?

1:01

Yeah? Do you pay for my coaching?

1:05

Do I pay for your coaching?

1:08

Yeah? Like, are you in accelerator program?

1:10

No?

1:10

My coaching's not boisterous?

1:14

Oh it isn't.

1:15

Yeah, No, not funny.

1:17

Do you tell people that when they sign up it's like you're

1:19

not going to get the same thing that you see on

1:22

online?

1:23

No, that wouldn't be accurate either. I think

1:25

that it's important to realize that what you see on social media

1:27

tend to be a snippet of somebody's personality

1:29

or like a little glimpse into their

1:32

life. But inside of my coaching, it is

1:34

very tactical. It is super super

1:37

kind, loving, open, empathetic listening.

1:40

It is responsive into what people

1:42

need, especially in my platinum coaching. It's

1:44

super conversational. But I think I'm really

1:46

different than people assume I am. From the internet.

1:48

Anyhow, So.

1:57

Two months after the conversation you just

1:59

heard, and days after this season launched,

2:02

jesse Lee died. There are very

2:04

few details I heard the same

2:06

way. I heard that she was broadcasting our chat

2:09

through texts from former friends like Aaron

2:11

Bees, who we spoke to in episode

2:13

one. I guess it was

2:15

only maybe

2:18

six weeks after or when

2:20

when did she pass?

2:21

September sixteenth?

2:23

Okay, yeah, it was about then.

2:26

Six weeks after I spoke to her. She

2:28

was gone. Yeah,

2:31

and I found out from you first

2:36

that she wasn't doing well. Why don't you talk me through

2:38

that?

2:39

Yeah? So, actually I didn't.

2:42

I didn't realize how

2:45

quickly the decline would be. On

2:48

my YouTube channel, I have members

2:51

that we have a

2:53

discord, and we talk pretty candidly

2:55

in there.

2:56

I don't think my audit discord is just kind of like

2:58

a.

3:00

Like a chat. There's different channels,

3:02

different companies, topics that we talk about within

3:05

multi level marketing. There's

3:08

an empathy chat, and there's just different

3:10

areas where we discuss specific things within

3:12

multi level marketing. I feel

3:14

like a lot of her followers are

3:17

experiencing a form of cognitive

3:20

dissonance. And when I heard that she

3:22

passed, I immediately

3:24

obviously thought of her family and the people

3:26

closest to her and how this has to

3:28

be such a shock for them, but

3:31

also for jesse Lee's audience.

3:33

You know, these people that have followed her for many, many

3:35

years, and now all of a sudden,

3:37

she's just gone. And the only thing

3:40

that they can

3:42

see is the last live

3:44

that she did where she told them that the cancer

3:46

was regressing and that her lymphotes

3:49

were going back to normal.

3:50

Well, hello, hello everybody, what's going on?

3:52

It's jesse Lee. You can call me Boss

3:55

Lee if you'd like to. How or

3:57

the people's mentor I haven't done

4:00

it live like in a minute, so well,

4:02

that's not really true. I did a coffee and on the floor

4:05

two days ago. Okay, I did just get a

4:07

phone call. I guess it's been like four

4:10

or five hours now. I've tried to make the

4:12

rounds of people that I'm super close with, And

4:16

if I look like I'm exhausted,

4:18

if you're like, she looks really tired, like

4:20

I don't know that is because first

4:23

of all, I am okay,

4:25

I have not been sleeping well, which has been freaking

4:28

me out, if we're being very honest with each other, because

4:31

I can't sleep. I'm really bloated

4:34

from just this extra liquid that's in my abdomen.

4:36

I feel like I am I'm scared

4:39

all the time because the lymph nodes in

4:41

the net, like it is the biggest mind f

4:43

ever. And I have the strongest

4:45

mindset of anybody I've ever met, and I

4:48

still am over here on a daily basis, like

4:52

it hurts, it hurts, it

4:55

hurts my my kid, theesus and my kid, theseus

4:57

about liver anyway,

4:59

that the cough scary scary? Why

5:01

am I coughing up? Okay, so

5:05

so excuse me. I

5:07

got a call today

5:10

and mostly

5:12

my stomach turnover even thinking about it, And as soon

5:14

as I saw my oncologist's number

5:16

flash on the screen, I had like

5:18

a little minor panic attack, like do I let it go

5:20

to voicemail or

5:22

do I not? Uh? So I was

5:25

nervous. And then my doctor called today

5:27

and

5:29

and he said, and

5:33

he read my my pet scan from last

5:36

Monday, and it's very good news.

5:38

So for those of you who don't know, it's very good news.

5:41

Not a drop of chemo and not a blast

5:43

of radiation, not anything from a single

5:45

traditional on college except for to read my scans.

5:48

And he said that the

5:50

cancer is decreasing in my body.

5:52

Many of my limph notes have gone back to normal.

5:55

There's a few hot spots that were always there,

5:57

nothing has increased. And he

5:59

said, he said, oh, he's

6:02

like, just get another scan in six months and

6:05

we'll see how it's going. And

6:07

for those of you who don't know, when

6:13

I was diagnosed in and went to and

6:15

do you understand in March they told

6:17

me I wouldn't live to see November. And

6:20

now they're asking me to not get scanned for another

6:22

six months because the disease is regressing

6:24

so dramatically. So thank

6:28

you for all your prayers. Thank you for you guys who

6:30

have sent really encouraging messages. I know

6:32

I've had weird pains and

6:34

my kidney's hurt or my liver or something

6:36

hurts. I don't know what hurts, but

6:39

wow, I

6:43

love y'all so much. I appreciate you so much.

6:45

Keep the prayers coming. We got a long road to

6:48

go. Pray for this back pain

6:50

to go away, the stomach pains go away

6:53

because and keep praying for the cancer to go away, because

6:55

your prayers are definitely working. So God bless all

6:57

y'all. Thank you for being on this journey with me,

6:59

and let's keep this thing going. God

7:01

bless y'all.

7:04

And so how do you go from September

7:06

fifth saying Hey, I don't have to get another pet

7:08

scan for six months. You know, essentially

7:11

the oncology from the sounds from

7:14

her video, essentially it

7:16

sounded like the oncologist was giving her a thumbs

7:18

up, and it's kind of like then on the sixteenth

7:20

she's passed. And I feel

7:22

like that was such a shock to her followers.

7:25

And that's why I say, I feel like they're experiencing

7:27

cognitive dissonance because they know she's

7:29

gone, but it doesn't make sense.

7:32

They don't understand because of that

7:34

narrative that she created around her

7:36

cancer journey. The way that I found

7:38

out was from a post by Eric Worry, who's

7:40

a multi level marketing quote unquote coach.

7:44

So he was one of jesse Lee's

7:46

mentors and he

7:48

posted I think it was on Instagram and

7:51

I believe on Facebook somewhere around late

7:53

February where she was going

7:55

in for surgery to have part of her colon

7:57

removed, and he at that point

8:00

said that she had been diagnosed with stage four colon

8:02

cancer. So that was how the world found out about

8:04

this. It wasn't from jesse Lee, it

8:06

wasn't from anybody in her inner circle. It was from

8:08

Eric Worry, which is interesting

8:11

to me because that's how the world found

8:13

out that jesse Lee her

8:15

health was declining, was because he

8:18

also posted on Facebook

8:20

and Instagram and everywhere, which

8:23

I find really odd. Yeah,

8:25

I mean, is that his place? I don't think

8:27

so.

8:29

Yeah. So maybe she asked him.

8:32

I don't know, I don't I

8:35

don't know. I just it's uncomfortable that

8:37

he did that, you know, because at

8:39

the end of the day, this is her story, and

8:42

I may not agree with the

8:44

painting of the narrative and the lack

8:46

of truthfulness and the straight up misinformation,

8:49

but it was still her story to tell, right,

8:52

you know. Right, So that was February,

8:55

and I

8:58

saw her kind of go back and forth based

9:00

on what she was putting out on social media and whether

9:03

she was going to do chemo or not, and

9:06

there was speculation, not even speculation.

9:08

She said that she was considering doing chemo in

9:10

May, and she went

9:12

to an acupuncturist, and

9:15

that acupuncturist said, I

9:17

don't think you need chemo. You

9:19

need to go plant based,

9:22

and so that was when she switched to vegetables

9:24

and all of that stuff. And I watched her go back and

9:26

forth between going

9:28

to I think she was in Germany and she was seeing

9:31

a biohacking doctor overseas,

9:33

and then she was going to different treatments,

9:35

which from what she

9:38

has said, some of those treatments included

9:40

ozone both intravenously

9:43

and also rectly, and

9:45

coffee enemas and

9:49

high vitamin seed drips and

9:51

all kinds of other holistic

9:55

type treatments. I don't even know if I want to call

9:57

them treatments, to be honest. And

10:01

I feel like we all just watched her decline

10:03

on social media while she was smiling

10:05

and telling everybody you know, no, I'm beating

10:08

cancer, and it

10:10

created cognitive dissonance within her community

10:13

and her followers because they're like, oh, yeah, she's

10:15

saying she's great, but you look at her and you're like, but

10:18

your eye sockets look like they're you

10:20

know, drawn in or whatnot. And you

10:23

could see a weight loss,

10:25

a lot of weight loss. That temporal

10:27

wasting look was

10:30

really alarming to me, and I'm like, how can you

10:32

say that you're getting better when when

10:34

you are, you're physically you are

10:36

starting to change because of the weight loss.

10:40

And it didn't make sense to me. So I can't imagine

10:42

how her followers must have been.

10:44

Well, she was selling a weight loss product.

10:46

Right, yeah, yeah, even though they say

10:48

it's not weight loss, but all of them do before and after

10:50

pictures, right. So

10:54

then I found out she was in the hospital the September

10:58

eleventh, I want to say, or twelfth, somewhere

11:00

in there. And you

11:02

know, the next thing we know, I'm

11:05

hearing all this chatter about jesse

11:07

Lea's has passed. And

11:09

then people

11:11

started to post and to speculate, because again,

11:14

I feel like people didn't

11:16

understand what was really going on because

11:18

they believed what she was telling them.

11:21

After I, you know, I had interviewed her,

11:23

I was following along a little bit more closely.

11:26

The symptoms she was experiencing during

11:29

that time are end stage

11:31

cancer symptoms, right, Like,

11:33

Yeah, the

11:36

fluid in her abdomen from liver

11:38

failure, the difficulty

11:42

breathing, the back pain even

11:45

in that yeah, the cough in that final video

11:47

she can't fully catch

11:49

her breath, and

11:52

again the continued

11:54

weight loss. Yeah,

11:57

all of those things are very in line with

12:00

like multi organ failailure.

12:03

Absolutely a metastasized

12:05

cancer, which she did acknowledge that it had metastasized,

12:08

right she did.

12:09

Yeah.

12:09

Yeah.

12:10

In one of her videos that she did sometime

12:13

this past summer, early summer, she

12:16

was talking about how she

12:19

mentioned that it was in her esophagus.

12:22

She mentioned it was in I believe

12:24

twenty six lymph nodes or something like

12:26

that, of the thirty that they removed during

12:28

her surgery. She mentioned

12:32

areas being lit up on

12:35

a scan, you know, And this was

12:37

all after she had had the surgery, so she

12:40

was very aware that it had metastasized.

12:42

Yeah.

12:43

I don't know when she started saying this, but she

12:46

would introduce herself on almost every video

12:48

as welcome to jesse Lee beats

12:50

Cancer. Holistically. Is

12:52

that yep. Okay, yep.

12:56

So it was kind of a branded experience

12:59

sort of.

13:00

Yeah, And I do think that there's a place for

13:03

holistic type treatments, but I think

13:05

that we also have to depend

13:08

on, you

13:10

know, what we know works best against

13:12

the scenario that people are facing, and

13:15

you know that would be for cancer,

13:18

it's it's chemotherapy. And

13:20

I also but.

13:21

You do all of that and then you go, Okay, maybe

13:23

I'll just like pound the turmeric juice

13:26

or whatever.

13:27

Yeah, but or things

13:29

that can help with the symptoms from you

13:31

know, traditional treatments, things that can help

13:33

with nausea and you know, different

13:36

things like that. So I do think that there's

13:38

a place for that.

13:39

So she had had she been anti

13:43

chemo those kinds of things prior

13:45

to this, I

13:47

think, do you know, I know, I saw one video where

13:49

she was telling people not to get mammograms.

13:54

Yeah, she was definitely telling people not to get mammograms.

13:57

She was telling people they didn't need ultrasounds.

13:59

She was telling people, you know, just

14:01

trust your body and know your body, and

14:04

you can know your body and know how

14:06

you typically feel and

14:09

miss a life altering

14:12

thing diagnosis or

14:14

whatnot. I don't know how I want to word that, and

14:18

that's why they do a lot of screening things. So if

14:21

anything out of all of this, I really hope

14:23

that people get

14:26

screened when they have risk factors

14:28

for anything like this. Just

14:32

go to the doctor and get those things checked

14:35

out, get the screening done, and

14:37

just you know, I guess,

14:39

be vigilant about that. I hope that that's

14:41

the message out of all of this. At the end

14:43

of the day, jesse LEAs she was still a human

14:46

being, and to think about

14:48

her being in as much pain as she was,

14:51

knowing that there could have been you know, palliative

14:54

care to prevent some of

14:56

this, to slow down her

14:58

body's response to the pain and the spreading

15:00

of the cancer. I didn't know that that was a thing.

15:03

I didn't know that. I mean,

15:05

obviously, nobody should be in that kind of

15:07

pain, you know, and

15:09

we don't want other humans to experience that. But

15:11

to understand, like the physiological

15:13

aspect of what happens when

15:15

somebody is in late stage cancer and

15:18

then they're in pain and they have a fever

15:20

and their blood pressure is up and how

15:23

that just basically accelerates them

15:25

passing is heartbreaking to me.

15:28

Yeah, yeah, that you can't

15:33

catch your breath essentially, and yeah,

15:37

it must have been brutal.

15:39

I think that the spreading of misinformation

15:42

in these last six and a half

15:44

seven months that she has has

15:47

given on her platform is extremely

15:49

alarming. I know how commercial

15:52

cults operate, and how they look

15:54

at their leader and believe everything

15:56

that their leader is saying. And unfortunately,

16:00

you know, there's probably people out there that

16:02

are going to listen to her advice, you

16:04

know, because we could get into a whole conversation about

16:07

well, if I am only going to be given nine

16:09

months, or if I do chemotherapy,

16:11

I'm going to be given ten months. There

16:13

is a very distinct difference in someone

16:16

saying I'm choosing to live my life the

16:18

way that I want to live for these

16:20

next nine months or however many months i'm

16:22

given. That's not what she was

16:25

doing. Her whole brand was,

16:28

in my opinion, villainizing the

16:30

medical community, villainizing the oncologists.

16:34

At one point she was calling them chemo pimps.

16:37

And you know, I understand

16:40

that that is probably

16:42

a very personal journey for people,

16:44

a very personal decision on whether they

16:47

want to fight this with chemotherapy and all

16:49

of the symptoms that may come with that or

16:52

whether they want to live their life on their terms for

16:54

however many months they have. But what

16:56

she was doing was in my opinion,

16:59

medical fear mongering. And

17:01

she was telling people prior to this, you

17:04

don't need to have ultrasounds, you don't

17:06

need to you know, get MRIs

17:08

and these are all very much what

17:10

she was doing to monitor her cancer journey.

17:13

We have medicine for a reason. And

17:16

if she had the way that she

17:18

had presented herself, would have been like, I'm

17:21

choosing to do what I want with the rest of the time that I

17:23

have here. I don't think any

17:25

of the creators in the anti EMLM

17:28

movement would have said a word. I think

17:30

they would have sent her well wishes and we would

17:32

have continued to cover MLM

17:34

leaders and companies. But because

17:37

she was doing it in a way where she

17:39

was spreading misinformation and doing what

17:41

I feel like I call it shock marketing,

17:44

where she says or said things that were really

17:46

offensive and then right after

17:48

she would pitch her coaching, or she would pitch

17:50

Keytones, or she would be packing

17:53

up keytnes at the same time, which

17:55

is representing the MLM company

17:58

at the same time that she's saying these really atrocious

18:00

things, and the fact that some of

18:02

her followers might

18:04

listen to her advice even though she passed

18:07

from it, and then seeing some of them saying,

18:09

oh, she cured cancer. She didn't cure

18:11

cancer.

18:13

She had saying she cured it.

18:16

People are saying that she didn't pass

18:18

from cancer, that

18:20

she passed from some sort

18:22

of a from

18:24

sepsis. They're saying she had

18:26

a kidney infection, and this and

18:28

that, and and maybe she had

18:30

some underlying things going on.

18:32

But when you have asitis, which is the

18:35

fluids, there's

18:37

organs involved, that's a late stage

18:39

cancer sign. The pain

18:41

was a late stage cancer sign, meaning

18:44

that it was spreading m

18:45

hm. So they just because

18:48

of what she said and how she presented

18:51

this cancer journey and the things that she said

18:53

about modern medicine and screening

18:55

and different things like that, these

18:57

people cannot fathom

19:00

that she actually passed from cancer.

19:04

I am talking to my friend Megan Carmichael,

19:07

who is a death Dola who

19:09

I've interviewed for the show before, but she hasn't made

19:11

it on. We've been internet friends for

19:14

ten years.

19:15

Oh that's amazing.

19:16

I interviewed her for the first

19:18

season, but we didn't use it, but it was about

19:21

she got tricked into going to a DOTA meeting.

19:23

Oh my god, because

19:26

the person was like, end

19:28

of life and essential

19:30

oils can be very helpful, and she was like that sounds great,

19:32

yeah, like anything to make your environment a little

19:34

more comfy. And then she gets there and it's like a Dota

19:37

pitch.

19:38

Oh my god.

19:39

But she emailed me the minute she found out

19:41

and said, you know, I'm thinking about all

19:44

of you and how this must feel really

19:46

weird, and I'm here to talk. So I'm going to talk to her also

19:48

for this episode.

19:49

Well that's going to be I can't wait for

19:51

that. I would love to hear what she has to say, just

19:54

about all of it.

19:55

She's a wonderful, wonderful person and I'm excited

19:58

to talk to her.

20:08

Hi.

20:08

My name is Megan Carmichael. I live in

20:10

Vermont, but I'm originally from California

20:13

and my mom died about

20:15

six and a half years ago when I was five

20:17

weeks out from my second child, and

20:19

so I was really thrown

20:22

into the world of what it means to die,

20:24

especially in our society today, and so since

20:27

then, I quit my banking

20:29

job and have really poured myself into

20:31

this full time. I've had some work in hospice

20:35

and with families that are preparing

20:37

for a death. I've worked with individuals

20:39

that are training to become death doulas

20:42

and all sorts

20:44

of things along the spectrum.

20:45

So that's kind of what I do.

20:48

Do you get this question a lot, like do

20:51

you have like a morbid fascination or what is

20:53

the vibe? Like what draws

20:56

you to this work?

20:58

Yeah, so I would never have called

21:00

myself morbid. I'm irish.

21:03

So I've always had sort of a healthy relationship

21:05

with death through my family. It's not something that

21:07

we've shied away from, and

21:10

our wakes have always been the funnest

21:12

parties that we ever threw. So growing

21:14

up I just sort of had that take

21:17

on death. But then seeing

21:19

it up close firsthand, and being

21:21

in such a vulnerable place, just you

21:24

know, with a newborn and a toddler, Yeah,

21:27

it was gnarly and

21:30

it really made me realize that I'm

21:32

not the only one that's about to face this. I

21:34

kind of looked around at all of my friends and was like,

21:36

oh my god, this is going to happen

21:39

to all of them. And

21:42

so the fascination is as much

21:45

social and economic

21:47

as it is about the

21:49

spiritual or the

21:52

kind of woo woo.

21:53

Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about

21:56

your mom's passing. I just like,

21:58

yeah, because I would imagine a lot of people,

22:01

especially if you are in that vulnerable space of

22:03

like having a newborn and a toddler

22:06

and you're super stressed out and then your mom is

22:08

dying. It's I don't

22:10

imagine a lot of people would come out of that experience

22:13

saying I'll do that again for

22:15

a job, you know, So tell me about eight

22:17

Yeah.

22:19

Let me take that on for fun, you

22:22

know. So my mom had been diagnosed right

22:25

when I was about three months

22:27

pregnant, like right through the first trimester, and

22:30

we pretty much knew it was pretty bad right

22:32

from the get go. My daughter was

22:35

one and a half at the time, and

22:38

you know, not everybody's a parent, so

22:41

I hesitate to use baby analogies,

22:44

but if you know what it's like when you have a newborn, you

22:47

just do what you have to do. And

22:50

I just had three times

22:52

as much going on. But

22:54

there was sort of a sense of clarity around

22:57

it all,

22:59

Like the short term decisions about

23:01

what should happen were so much clearer

23:03

and easier than they were before.

23:06

This truth was sitting on the table in front

23:08

of us. Do you know, do we

23:10

go to some other kid's second birthday party?

23:13

Or do we go down to my folks house and hang out

23:15

for the weekend?

23:15

Done?

23:16

Easy decision. I've always been a kind of person

23:18

that can lean into whatever is

23:21

easy in the situation. Obviously

23:23

it was like gut wrenching and heartbreaking,

23:27

but it was easy to know that

23:29

nothing I did or didn't do was going to change

23:31

things. That was

23:33

easy. It

23:35

was easy to know what my priorities were

23:38

on a minute by minute level. That

23:40

was easy.

23:41

What's a What is a death doula? And are

23:43

you a death doula?

23:45

I'm not a death doula, and it's mostly

23:47

because I don't have the bedside manner

23:49

needed for the job. Quite frankly, so

23:52

I would never take on that role with

23:55

families. But I have worked

23:57

to train death doulas with a

23:59

very good friend of mine named Jill Shock, who's

24:01

based in Los Angeles. She's death doula

24:04

la. What they really

24:06

do is very similar to what a birth doula

24:08

does in the sense that they are going to

24:10

meet you at a certain point in your journey,

24:13

and you're going to come together and make an agreement

24:15

about what appropriate support looks

24:18

like and what appropriate

24:20

payment looks like, and they

24:22

are going to walk with you and assist you within

24:25

those within that framework up

24:27

through a certain point in your journey, and

24:30

then they go away. I've

24:32

always struggled with what to like call

24:35

my job or whatever, or what

24:37

role I play and community

24:39

death educator has kind of been one that I've toied

24:42

around with. But after listening

24:44

to this uh this season, I was like,

24:46

fuck, dude, I'm death coach.

24:48

I was thinking of you when I wrote that death

24:50

coach. No, when I wrote that line, I

24:53

was thinking Megan in my head. I was like, yeah,

24:56

that's right, like you, there's

24:58

dead coaches who can help you have the best totally.

25:01

And like you know, a couple months ago, somebody

25:03

called and said, hey, I am in a specific

25:06

location helping a friend and we need

25:08

to find a speci type of burial

25:10

solution. Can you help? And

25:13

I do the leg work right. I call around,

25:15

I make the calls, and most importantly

25:17

what I do in that case is I say, hey,

25:20

you did the right thing by asking for help.

25:22

I'm really proud of you, and hey,

25:25

this is a person who I have vetted and

25:27

they're going to take good care of you.

25:29

You know, I heard about jesse Lee's passing and

25:31

I actually hadn't caught through to the very last

25:33

episode, so it was a complete shock

25:36

to me. I hadn't been aware of her

25:38

cancer journey at all, and I

25:40

just saw this thing flip through my fyp

25:43

on TikTok, and I

25:45

reached out to you because I knew that you had

25:48

profiled her. And in

25:50

grief theory, there's this concept

25:53

of ambiguous loss,

25:56

which is sort of like when

25:59

something leaves

26:01

your life, not as clear

26:04

cut as like the loss of a friend

26:06

or the loss of a coworker, right,

26:08

but like something kind of confusing leaves

26:10

your life. And I know that that can just

26:13

draw things up and it's a weird feeling.

26:16

And we as a society,

26:19

we walked through so much grief blindly.

26:21

And I think I just sent like one or two sentences

26:23

that just said, Hey, I'm thinking about you and your team.

26:25

That's got to be weird.

26:27

Yeah, Well, I really appreciated

26:29

the note, and I'm so glad we're getting to talk now

26:31

because it came at a time where I was I

26:34

was speaking to Aaron Bees, who was on the

26:36

first episode, who used to be best friends with jesse

26:38

Lee. We were kind of She

26:40

had told me a couple of days before

26:44

jesse Lee passed that it was coming,

26:47

and we'd been discussing what to do,

26:49

like, you know, regarding the show,

26:52

because it was the show had just come out,

26:54

like it was three days old or something,

26:57

and so there really wasn't any turning back on the

26:59

first episode. But I knew what was coming in episode

27:02

nine, and it really

27:04

helped to hear from you and to hear from her and

27:06

help me feel like, Okay, you know, I don't have

27:08

to make any quick decisions

27:10

here, and I don't have to throw I don't

27:13

have to trash it. But I was feeling

27:15

very conflicted about the whole thing.

27:17

When I find when I find

27:19

myself facing complicated grief, right,

27:21

like somebody that I didn't agree with or

27:24

I wasn't in alignment with, whether

27:26

that means they lose their job, right when your

27:29

enemy at work gets fired, or when

27:31

somebody who you're critical of passes

27:34

away. Right, there's this

27:36

idea of

27:39

complicated grief, and it can be hard

27:41

to sort your feelings out, and

27:43

so what I always go to in those situations.

27:45

It's called ring theory, and the idea

27:47

is like, right at the center of this circle

27:50

is the person who's immediately affected, so that would

27:52

be jesse Lee. And then in the next circle

27:55

around her are the people and

27:57

I put pets there closest to her, and

27:59

then beyond that it might be her colleagues,

28:02

and then her doctors or her support

28:04

staff. And then on the really outside of this

28:06

concentric circle, I'm going to talk or

28:08

think of the people that really

28:11

admire her and who she has become

28:14

really important to. And

28:17

whenever I'm feeling complicated

28:19

grief, I try to figure out who

28:21

on that concentric ring circle can

28:24

I can I connect with sort

28:26

of with my heart, And I really

28:29

am thinking a lot about her fans

28:31

and her followers and the people

28:33

that really

28:37

upheld her in a really special way,

28:40

and what this experience must be

28:42

like for them. And then I'd

28:44

almost put I'd almost put you and

28:47

me and the rest of the Dream listeners in

28:49

the circle outside of her

28:51

fans and followers, right, because

28:54

I think that all of us get affected

28:57

in some way by the loss

28:59

of an individual. And it's

29:01

also really complicated when

29:04

somebody is so public

29:07

about their illness for

29:10

the conversation to just drop off.

29:12

It feels really gross.

29:15

Right, We're so trained, and

29:17

we're trained not only to not

29:19

talk about people's medical privacy stuff,

29:21

but also to not talk about

29:24

the dead. Like, there's this idea that

29:27

people get to choose how they die, and

29:29

I will stand by that forever. Whether

29:33

that means you want to go for the most aggressive

29:35

treatments, if you want to get preventative

29:38

treatment that is wildly aggressive, or

29:40

if you want to forego everything

29:42

or go holistic. You

29:44

get to choose how you die.

29:47

And most people die

29:50

how they live. So if

29:52

you live a life of

29:55

not telling the truth, if

29:57

you lived a life of manifesting,

30:01

if you lived a life where you tried to

30:03

speak things into truth,

30:06

you will die that way. And

30:09

I think that if we were to just

30:12

stop our careful

30:14

criticism of this type of

30:16

behavior that she had in life,

30:19

if we didn't continue that through,

30:21

that would be inauthentic. And

30:24

one thing that woman was was authentic.

30:27

She was the same through her

30:29

life and death.

30:30

Yeah, I don't want to take that away from her. I do

30:32

think where she crossed a line

30:34

is the instructing

30:37

of her you know, fans to

30:42

absolutely not take care of their own

30:44

health in the same

30:46

way that she wasn't, you know, like the don't

30:48

get mammograms and chemo

30:51

is always bad and you should know

30:53

when you have cancer, just intuitively if you

30:56

know your body. Those kinds of messages that were coming

30:58

out over and over again, I

31:00

think we're really dangerous. And

31:03

so I'm glad we're talking about this because again,

31:06

people aren't talking about her

31:08

death, or if they are talking about it, there's a

31:10

whole story that's been made up now about how

31:12

she passed.

31:13

I want to say it's dangerous to say that

31:15

to people. It is also dangerous to tell

31:17

people to put a seven hundred dollars starter

31:19

kit on a credit card when you don't

31:21

have money for your light bill.

31:23

Right.

31:23

It has been dangerous, right,

31:26

right, So if we weren't

31:28

critical, and we should be critical of

31:30

the things that she said point by point

31:32

and say not only was what she

31:35

said dangerous the way she said it was dangerous,

31:38

the the

31:41

framing of the story,

31:43

right, the framing of it's just my

31:45

kidneys, the

31:48

number of videos I saw where she was going

31:50

through dramatic weight loss saying this

31:52

is what health looks like, that's

31:55

dangerous. We should talk about

31:57

it, and we have to. And she

31:59

never shied away from the quote unquote haters

32:02

when she was alive. It would be inauthentic

32:05

to not be having this conversation.

32:07

Yeah.

32:08

Another thing that it is really important

32:10

when people are grieving or when somebody's dying

32:13

is this concept of anticipatory loss.

32:15

It's when you get a chance to sort

32:19

of gree grieve and your brain starts

32:21

to build the neural pathways almost

32:24

to accept what's about to happen. And

32:26

what I saw happening in this case,

32:29

and I was always looking backwards, right. It really didn't

32:31

dive into this until after she had died.

32:34

But what I saw was the amount

32:37

of false hope that she was giving

32:40

to herself and to

32:42

her followers really didn't allow

32:45

any anticipatory grief at

32:47

all. There was one video that

32:49

she did where she talked about making a will,

32:51

and that was pretty powerful, I

32:54

thought, because it seems like there was a little crack

32:57

into the real.

33:01

What could happen. Yeah.

33:02

Yeah.

33:03

But then at the same time, death

33:06

is a cognitive dissonance, right. We

33:09

are wired as humans to survive.

33:12

That's why suicide and suicidal

33:14

ideation are so fucking scary

33:16

because our brain is not working the way it's

33:19

like supposed to work to

33:21

keep us alive.

33:23

Well, when I got hospitalized during the making

33:25

of Season one, was it season one or two? It was two?

33:28

Actually, sorry, it was right before the pandemic. I

33:30

took a medication that gave me this thing called Stevens

33:32

Johnson syndrome, which can kill

33:34

you. It's like an

33:37

autoimmune reaction to certain medications

33:40

and it makes your skin fall off essentially. But

33:44

when I got admitted to the hospital, I was in the hospital for

33:46

like three days, four days. They

33:49

were we were having a measles outbreak

33:51

in LA and it looks

33:53

exactly the same, so they were I had

33:55

to go into like one of those isolation wards

33:59

at the hospital, and I remember thinking

34:01

the first night I was in there, because I still felt like horrible,

34:04

like my body was on fire and

34:06

I had rated this crazy rash all

34:08

over and I was They were really worried,

34:10

you know, and I had IVS and everything, and I

34:13

remember like just sitting there watching

34:15

TV and in my room all by

34:17

myself and thinking I

34:20

had a good run. And I couldn't believe

34:22

that I had that thought, like me the

34:24

one he's so scared of death. I just I

34:27

just flashed into my head like, hey,

34:30

my daughter's awesome. I

34:32

had a cool career, Okay,

34:34

And then I was like, what am I thinking? I

34:38

didn't die? But I had that graceful

34:40

feeling about it.

34:41

That's your future self coming

34:44

to you to be like, hey, just

34:46

so you know, like you're really afraid of this.

34:48

This is the closest you've ever been to believing it might

34:51

happen. Just so you know, this is

34:53

the feeling you have.

34:54

Okay, all right, Well I'll look forward to

34:56

that.

34:57

Yeah, dude, I wish you could have been

34:59

there for the last six weeks of my dad's

35:01

life. It was the fucking funnest

35:04

party I have ever been to. It

35:06

was it was a ben.

35:09

We went on a bender. It

35:12

was ordering every kind of food that he

35:14

wanted, even though he could only take a few bites.

35:17

He was like getting out in the sun every day.

35:19

He had this home health aid that helped

35:22

him set up his full speaker

35:24

system, Like he pulled every speaker

35:26

out of the garage. He goes, what the fuck do I care what the neighbors

35:28

think? Yeah, I'm dying. Yeah, I don't care

35:30

about volumeting. I'm not trying to be polite anymore.

35:32

I mean it was an

35:35

absolute joy. It was hard

35:38

after he died because it felt like the that

35:40

fun was actually over.

35:53

I have seen a lot of people die. I

35:55

have been present while

35:57

people were in the dying process

36:00

and while people actually took their last

36:02

breaths, and I have seen literally

36:04

more dead bodies that are just like

36:07

fresh right, very recent.

36:09

And it's not

36:11

scary.

36:13

There's nothing to be afraid of when

36:15

you see it, and you see it on the people's

36:17

faces and you see it in the room. The

36:20

thing I'm afraid of is

36:23

how everybody else. The scary thing is

36:26

the relationships and how they're affected. Right.

36:28

The scary thing is what happens to everybody who's still

36:30

alive. But I've seen their faces,

36:32

I've been there. They're not scared.

36:36

You should not be scared, Okay.

37:00

The Dream is written, hosted, and executive

37:02

produced by me Jane Marie. Our

37:05

producer is Mike Richter, with help from Nancy

37:07

Golumbiski and Joy Sandford. Our

37:09

editor is Peter Clowney.

37:11

The Dream is a

37:12

Co production of Little Everywhere in Pushkin Industries.