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Breaking the Silence: Understanding Modern Loss
4 Plays11 months ago
In this episode of The Glam Reaper Podcast, Jennifer sits down with Rebecca Soffer, Co-founder and CEO of Modern Loss.
Rebecca opens up about her personal journey as a grief coach and author, sharing how Modern Loss has become a beacon of solace for countless individuals navigating the tumultuous seas of bereavement.
Rebecca also emphasizes the significance of creating safe spaces for individuals to share their experiences and feel understood and Jennifer states the value of providing solace to those grappling with loss, underscoring the universal nature of grief and the need for greater societal understanding and support.
Tune in now as we navigate the depths of grief and loss with Rebecca Soffer!
Key Topics:
-Starting the profound journey through sorrow and grief.
-Creating strong connections amid modern experiences of sadness and loss.
-Obliterating Stigma Around Grief
-Creating Safe Spaces for Sharing
-Importance of Being Heard in Grief
Quotes From The Episode:
There is no fix for grief, there is no fix for loss
- Rebecca Soffer
We don't necessarily need somebody to solve all our problems, we just need to be seen, heard, And that's it.
- Jennifer Muldowney
Timestamp:
[00:00] Podcast Intro
[01:37] Rebecca recounts her journey founding Modern Loss, an online publication and community focused on navigating grief and loss in various aspects of life.
[07:46] Jennifer reflects on their unconventional career path, contrasting it with societal expectation.
[09:49] Rebecca discusses her diverse approaches to connecting with people through various mediums.
[16:27] Rebecca expresses gratitude for Stephen Colbert's support of Modern Loss, discusses the evolution of societal attitudes toward grief.
[21:33] Rebecca talks about her focus on real-life interactions and speaking engagements following the release of her second book.
[24:21] Jennifer and Rebecca explored various subjects concerning grief, writing, and individual encounters.
[27:04] Outro
Connect with Rebecca Soffer:
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rebeccasoffer/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccasoffer/
Twitter - https://twitter.com/rebeccasoffer?lang=en
Website - https://modernloss.com/the-modern-loss-handbook/
Connect with Jennifer/The Glam Reaper:
Facebook Page - Muldowney Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/MuldowneyMemorials/
Facebook Page - Rainbow Bridge Memorials: https://www.facebook.com/rainbowbridgememorialsdotcom
Instagram - @muldowneymemorials & @jennifermuldowney
Twitter - @TheGlamReaper
Email us here: glamreaperpodcast@gmail.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Grief Management
00:00:00
Speaker
There is no fix for grief.
00:00:01
Speaker
There is no fix for loss.
00:00:03
Speaker
There's just like waking up and doing it and like fucking up and then doing it again.
00:00:07
Speaker
And then.
Introducing Jennifer and Rebecca
00:00:21
Speaker
Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Glam Reaper podcast.
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm your host, Jennifer Muldowney, a.k.a.
00:00:27
Speaker
The Glam Reaper.
00:00:28
Speaker
On today's episode, this is somebody who I have watched.
00:00:33
Speaker
Sounds creepy.
00:00:34
Speaker
I've watched for a very long time and I'm very, very thrilled and honored that she is gracing us with her presence on our podcast.
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm really, really thrilled.
00:00:41
Speaker
So I want to I want to introduce Rebecca from Modern Laws.
00:00:46
Speaker
So she co-founded Modern Laws.
00:00:47
Speaker
She's an incredible author.
00:00:49
Speaker
She reaches out to people in grief.
00:00:51
Speaker
It's just I'm going to let her introduce herself in
The Mission of Modern Loss
00:00:55
Speaker
her own words.
00:00:55
Speaker
But I'm just so thrilled to have her.
00:00:57
Speaker
So welcome, Rebecca.
00:00:58
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:59
Speaker
Thanks so much for having me today.
00:01:02
Speaker
So what can I tell you?
00:01:03
Speaker
What can I start out with for you?
00:01:05
Speaker
Okay, well, I guess tell me.
00:01:07
Speaker
So you're author of many books.
00:01:09
Speaker
Your social media speaks to a lot of people.
00:01:12
Speaker
You've met Gayle King, who...
00:01:14
Speaker
Who's awesome.
00:01:15
Speaker
She's as awesome as you want her to be.
00:01:18
Speaker
She actually attended a funeral that I did.
00:01:21
Speaker
Wow.
00:01:22
Speaker
In a funeral.
00:01:23
Speaker
She was in the front row and I was the celebrant.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I remember just standing up there going, oh, my God, like the pressure.
00:01:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:29
Speaker
Ripples.
00:01:30
Speaker
She's a tall, physical, like literal and, you know, metaphorical presence, if you will.
00:01:38
Speaker
And she's Oprah's best friend.
00:01:39
Speaker
I know.
00:01:40
Speaker
Right.
00:01:40
Speaker
It's like one degree.
00:01:42
Speaker
You just like that one step away.
00:01:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:45
Speaker
Tell us, how did you start your journey?
00:01:48
Speaker
How did you come into this?
Exploring Grief Beyond Funerals
00:01:50
Speaker
Sure.
00:01:50
Speaker
Well, yeah.
00:01:52
Speaker
So again, like pleasure to be here.
00:01:55
Speaker
My name is Rebecca Sofer and I run Modern Loss, which is, you know, really been around for the last 10 years.
00:02:02
Speaker
We just celebrated 10 years of existence.
00:02:06
Speaker
It initially was started as an online publication.
00:02:11
Speaker
To this day, we've run thousands of pieces that are
00:02:15
Speaker
you know, 99.5% of which are not written by me, but are written by people all over the world who have something to say in a very narrowly focused way about one aspect of the long arc of loss.
00:02:28
Speaker
And there are first person accounts and they're about just like everything under the sun.
00:02:32
Speaker
Like you would think they would just be about funerals or sadness, but no, they're about sex and finance and identity and how do we make decisions and how do we parent and how do we have careers?
00:02:43
Speaker
You know, because
00:02:45
Speaker
The goal is really to show that grief is all.
00:02:49
Speaker
It affects every single aspect of our being because, you know, at the risk of sounding like woo, we are grief, like we are alive.
00:02:57
Speaker
And so it's going to affect every part of, you know, our existence.
00:03:03
Speaker
And this was certainly, you know, since we started this, I co-founded it with my friend Gabby Berkner.
00:03:10
Speaker
In late 2013, you know, as I said, we've published now thousands of pieces on the site.
00:03:16
Speaker
They're all free to access lots of, you know, resource pieces, how to pieces from experts.
Personal Experiences with Grief
00:03:21
Speaker
And I've written two books.
00:03:24
Speaker
I do speaking all over at companies and nonprofits and foundations.
00:03:29
Speaker
And I really love that stuff.
00:03:30
Speaker
I even do grief comedy shows because that's kind of like my real jam.
00:03:35
Speaker
You know, my background is in journalism and political satire.
00:03:40
Speaker
And this was certainly not a path that I would have chosen to take in life.
00:03:44
Speaker
This was something that life kind of foisted upon me as most of us experience, which is like life happens and we make decisions with the information that we have at the moment.
Founding Modern Loss
00:03:55
Speaker
And the information I had at a particular moment in my life was learning that my mom is
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:17
Speaker
loving life because I really felt like I was starting to cook with gas.
00:04:21
Speaker
You know, my career was officially starting.
00:04:23
Speaker
I had just gotten my journalism degree from Columbia, my master's.
00:04:27
Speaker
I was living in this resplendent, tiny one bedroom apartment.
00:04:31
Speaker
And then bam, I got a phone call.
00:04:34
Speaker
My mom was dead.
00:04:35
Speaker
And I found out when I got to the hospital.
00:04:38
Speaker
And I had just seen her an hour beforehand because we had just been on a family camping trip.
00:04:43
Speaker
My dad was in the car with her.
00:04:45
Speaker
And from one second to the next, I went from somebody who kind of thought she knew what her life looked like to someone who had absolutely no idea what type of terrain she was navigating because her person, which was my mom,
00:05:03
Speaker
was no longer living.
00:05:05
Speaker
And that's what I call the after of my life, which was, you know, being forced to become intimately acquainted with profound grief and loss way earlier than I kind of thought I would be.
00:05:17
Speaker
And then having to navigate it just four years later in an on another level because my dad died from a heart attack.
00:05:24
Speaker
So by the time I was 34, I had no living parents.
00:05:28
Speaker
And I was incredibly familiar with how stigmatized the topics of grief and loss are in our culture.
00:05:35
Speaker
And I felt like that stigma was incredibly stupid.
00:05:39
Speaker
And I got sick of it.
00:05:41
Speaker
And so years later, in 2013, we launched Modern Loss.
00:05:45
Speaker
And it was really a direct response to feeling like there was a white space in the conversation about grief and loss that
00:05:53
Speaker
didn't anchor itself in platitudes, which I think have helped a total of zero people over the course of history, in cheesiness, you know, in just like clinical coldness, in like religious circles and like in and of themselves, some of those things can be helpful to somebody who is
00:06:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:29
Speaker
not just in spite of what they've gone through, but because of it sometimes, and are kind of being insistent on figuring out a way to tease some meaning from the mess of it all.
Breaking the Stigma of Grief
00:06:42
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And so that's what the goal of modern law is, is to just obliterate the stigma, make people feel less isolated in what is already an individual experience,
00:06:52
Speaker
And make them laugh along the way because we can't be so solemn all the time about this stuff.
00:07:00
Speaker
There's just no possible way.
00:07:01
Speaker
Like that means that you're just simply not gleaning any enjoyment or lightness out of your life.
00:07:06
Speaker
And you don't deserve that.
00:07:08
Speaker
You deserve to be reminded that you're still in there somehow.
00:07:12
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, I'm really proud of what we've done.
00:07:14
Speaker
I'm really proud of my work.
00:07:17
Speaker
And I started it during a time where I got a lot of
00:07:21
Speaker
really odd looks from people wondering why on earth I would want to work in this space.
00:07:26
Speaker
Well, I can fist pump you on that because I also get that.
00:07:31
Speaker
I think my parents sometimes look at me like, could you not have just gone work for Google?
00:07:35
Speaker
Could you not have just
00:07:36
Speaker
you know right it's like I was only just talking to somebody before you where I said you know my brother ticked all the boxes he had you know got the wife two kids the dog house all that sort of stuff nine to five job getting promoted I'm like I'm off to New York to start a funeral business bye guys
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, each of our journeys is individual.
00:07:57
Speaker
And it's interesting, actually, that you said that, you know, you touched on something there that honestly, my TEDx talk that I did was predominantly about it, which is grief is so unique to us all.
00:08:09
Speaker
And it doesn't have
The Universality and Growth of Grief Support
00:08:10
Speaker
to be the death of somebody.
00:08:12
Speaker
It can be a divorce.
00:08:13
Speaker
It can be, you know, what I specifically and I'm spoiler alert here.
00:08:17
Speaker
But, you know, I was talking about pet loss at the time.
00:08:20
Speaker
Mm hmm.
00:08:21
Speaker
It's dinkum out to it and still does, honestly.
00:08:24
Speaker
But yeah, it can be the loss of a beautiful piece of jewelry that your mom had or your grandmother had.
00:08:29
Speaker
It can be anything.
00:08:30
Speaker
And it's and I even, you know, in some of my celebrant talks, you just said, like, grief is who we are.
00:08:36
Speaker
It's the human experience.
00:08:37
Speaker
It is love.
00:08:38
Speaker
grief is just love in an entirely different form it's just it's a part of who we all are and every one of us is going to go through it so I think what you've done with modern loss and you know I'm going 15 years which is why I creepily said I've been watching you but you've almost I've grown with you guys um you know you've you're I mean you're up at like 40,000 followers I think on Instagram I mean you're you're everywhere I mean it's incredible like I said you're you've met Gayle King and she's
00:09:04
Speaker
approved your book in its highest form.
00:09:07
Speaker
It's it's such a it's been such a joy to watch and and watch people watch a community like that grow because it is so important for people to feel like they have a place whether it's online or in a book to grieve with like-minded people you know.
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah, totally.
00:09:23
Speaker
And the reason that there are so many different genres of my work, you know, digital, not just digital, but like publication, like online publication, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and then written books.
00:09:39
Speaker
and then live events is because I always want to keep figuring out new ways to connect with people and have people connect with each other and themselves in different ways.
00:09:50
Speaker
It's fun to play around with that because I use, say, a different language on the Instagram account that I do in some talks or in written essays that I might write for, I don't know, like Time magazine.
00:10:04
Speaker
I take on different tones and
00:10:05
Speaker
Because grief is like has endless permutations and combinations and loss does too.
Expressing Grief Through Community
00:10:11
Speaker
And, you know, it's like if you're talking people like, oh, is it morose to talk about grief and loss on this time?
00:10:16
Speaker
And I'm like, not really, because talking about loss is like talking about life.
00:10:20
Speaker
Like you could be talking about anything.
00:10:22
Speaker
It's what falls down.
00:10:23
Speaker
underneath that umbrella, you know, like, what are you talking about that stems from loss?
00:10:28
Speaker
And that could be anything.
00:10:30
Speaker
So, you know, I do have a lot of fun with it.
00:10:33
Speaker
And that sounds really weird to use the word fun.
00:10:35
Speaker
But I do because I feel like I feel very strongly that this is not something that I would have chosen to do in my life for a profession had it not been for personal experience.
00:10:47
Speaker
And as somebody who already had dedicated
00:10:51
Speaker
you know, in her mind, her career to telling stories and helping people tell stories, you know, I was going to do dirt.
00:10:58
Speaker
I was doing journalism or I was doing comedy, let's be honest, but satire, which is, you know, God's work to the world.
00:11:04
Speaker
I had decided that doing it through this niche was
00:11:09
Speaker
category was the way in which I almost like it was like it was like a mission for me like I felt like I really had the skill and the personality and the drive to be able to help people tell their stories through this realm and I see the connections that have been made over years I see people supporting each other on our Instagram feed in the comments every single month I do a prompt you know like Elmo was just in the news
00:11:36
Speaker
God bless them.
00:11:37
Speaker
Love Elmo or her.
00:11:38
Speaker
I don't know.
00:11:39
Speaker
I don't know Elmo's gender.
00:11:40
Speaker
I don't know.
00:11:40
Speaker
Does anyone?
00:11:41
Speaker
God bless Elmo.
00:11:42
Speaker
Who does not adore Elmo?
00:11:44
Speaker
And Elmo asked, you know, how is everyone doing on Twitter?
00:11:48
Speaker
There were like a billion responses and people were like traumatizing Elmo with all of their hard things that they were sharing.
00:11:56
Speaker
And that just goes to show that people are just waiting for an invitation to share their hard thing and talk about it and not for anybody to fix it for them.
00:12:08
Speaker
You know, the person who put said, hey, Elmo, like not great, Elmo, like I'm at the hospital, just found out I had a brain tumor, does not think that Elmo is going to excise that tumor or fix it for them or whatever.
00:12:20
Speaker
But they had somewhere to put their feeling.
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:12:24
Speaker
And yeah.
00:12:25
Speaker
someone to witness that.
00:12:27
Speaker
And every month on our Instagram feed, every single month on the first of the month, I put something up there with the same prompt, which is like, which tough dates do you have to get through this month?
00:12:38
Speaker
And so I've been doing what Elma's doing for years, every month.
00:12:42
Speaker
And it's
00:12:43
Speaker
I think, a real valve release for people because they need to put it somewhere.
00:12:48
Speaker
You know, people are always bracing themselves for the tough dates or like the Hallmark holidays or like whatever.
00:12:55
Speaker
And modern loss is meant to be this like really soft landing pad for them where they know that they're always going to be treated with different personalities for sure.
00:13:09
Speaker
But with like an I get it kind of attitude and you just need people who get it.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:16
Speaker
And it's I mean, it takes a red furry teddy bear effectively to open up the Internet.
00:13:23
Speaker
I mean, when I saw that, I was just grateful that maybe Elmo could break the Internet and not Kim Kardashian's ass would be nice for a change, you know?
00:13:32
Speaker
And let's bring proper etiquette, I don't know, is the word back to the Internet.
00:13:37
Speaker
It is fascinating and everyone deals with it in completely different ways.
00:13:42
Speaker
And I love what you said about it.
00:13:43
Speaker
It's almost like putting a bucket out into the world and just getting dump whatever you got to dump in there.
00:13:48
Speaker
And that's it.
00:13:50
Speaker
And I mean, even they talk about that in terms of supporting a friend in grief or whatever.
00:13:55
Speaker
You know, even just a partner and it doesn't have to be necessarily grief.
00:13:57
Speaker
But I mean, as you and I both know, it is part of grief.
00:14:00
Speaker
It doesn't have to be the death of somebody.
00:14:02
Speaker
But at the end of the day, you turn to your partner and you say, hey, you know, I had a bad day.
00:14:07
Speaker
I don't need you to solve it.
00:14:08
Speaker
I just need to get the words out of my mouth.
00:14:11
Speaker
And I just want you to sit here, listen, open the bucket, let me dump into it.
00:14:15
Speaker
And then we move on with our day.
00:14:17
Speaker
We have a glass of wine.
00:14:17
Speaker
We go for dinner or whatever it is.
00:14:19
Speaker
And I definitely think the female is a little bit more prone to needing that from male counterparts.
00:14:26
Speaker
It seems, you know, in my studies of psycho, psychology, I guess, whatever I be, of the male, female brains and stuff like that.
00:14:34
Speaker
It's we don't necessarily need somebody to solve all our problems.
00:14:36
Speaker
We just need to be seen, heard, and that's it.
00:14:39
Speaker
And then we can move on.
00:14:40
Speaker
We don't need you to solve, you know, come in on a horse and solve everything.
00:14:45
Speaker
One question I had is you worked with
00:14:49
Speaker
You've obviously met a lot of incredible, influential people over the course of the last 10 years, but you did say you started working with Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report, and he obviously has had his own grief and disgust.
00:15:04
Speaker
What's your thoughts on that?
00:15:05
Speaker
Have you...
00:15:06
Speaker
Have you done anything with him?
Celebrity Influence on Grief Conversations
00:15:08
Speaker
Is that something that you would consider doing?
00:15:10
Speaker
I mean, and I'm touching on this with like the likes of Anderson Cooper and, you know, these celebrities are opening up.
00:15:17
Speaker
Celebrity men, actually, which I find to be fascinating and great, are opening up grief and doing podcasts on grief and shows and stuff.
00:15:25
Speaker
What's your general thoughts on that?
00:15:27
Speaker
Oh, my general thoughts.
00:15:29
Speaker
I don't know, like if Stephen ever wanted to do something with me, obviously, I would say yes in a heartbeat.
00:15:34
Speaker
So sure, Stephen, I'm available for any of your grief oriented projects.
00:15:39
Speaker
No, he's been super supportive of modern loss and
00:15:43
Speaker
He wrote like a cover blurb for the first book, which was called Modern Loss, Candid Conversation About Grief, Beginners Welcome.
00:15:51
Speaker
And for the second book, my second book, which is called The Modern Loss Handbook, An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience, which came out about a year and a half ago.
00:16:03
Speaker
He was incredible.
00:16:04
Speaker
Like I just got like a billion notifications on my phone one evening and
00:16:10
Speaker
And saw that he had tweeted it out saying like what something like this is a new book from an old friend who does this beautiful job of talking about grief and loss.
00:16:21
Speaker
And I mean, yeah, that was probably one of the high moments of my life.
00:16:25
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, I think that it's great.
00:16:27
Speaker
You know, when Modern Law started 10 years ago, this topic was something that was really in the shadows.
00:16:33
Speaker
It was really, I think, relegated to the people who kind of really needed to talk about this stuff.
Cultural Challenges in Grief
00:16:40
Speaker
It was very much a niche.
00:16:41
Speaker
type of conversation, which is ironic because it's like the most universal thing that somebody can experience.
00:16:47
Speaker
And as you said, grief is not just death loss.
00:16:49
Speaker
I mean, if it feels like grief to you, it's grief.
00:16:52
Speaker
It's to say that it isn't.
00:16:55
Speaker
And I think that, yeah, fast forward many years, I do think we still have a long way to go, especially in terms of how we support each other at the workplace, you know, bereavement leave policies, stuff like that.
00:17:06
Speaker
I think we certainly have a long way to go.
00:17:08
Speaker
Our culture is really set up as a can do fix it type of thing.
00:17:13
Speaker
And there is no fix for grief.
00:17:15
Speaker
There is no fix for loss.
00:17:17
Speaker
There's just like waking up and doing it and like
00:17:20
Speaker
fucking up and then doing it again and then doing it better.
00:17:23
Speaker
I mean, that's just the way that it goes.
00:17:25
Speaker
And the hope is that as you fumble through it, you are kind of like picking up these random tools of resilience and coping that you can put into like a box.
00:17:36
Speaker
And then when you're having a really hard moment, you can pull from that box and try something from it.
00:17:41
Speaker
And I think that, but even though I still think we have a long way to come, you know,
00:17:46
Speaker
I do think that the pandemic has really forced us to contend with the reality of grief because it's everywhere we look, it's everywhere around us.
00:17:55
Speaker
And, you know, you throw a pebble and you're going to hit 30 people who have a story or 10 to share with you.
00:18:01
Speaker
And so people like Anderson and like Stephen, who are
00:18:05
Speaker
talking about this are really just being excellent grief role models for people.
00:18:11
Speaker
And the reason that I've always done stuff with, say, celebrities or people doing really cool things are not because I think it's really cool to do things with people who are, you know,
00:18:20
Speaker
well-known comedians or actors or whatever.
00:18:23
Speaker
You know, we featured so many well-known people over the years.
00:18:27
Speaker
And yeah, sure, it is cool.
00:18:28
Speaker
But more than that, it's like, let's see if you see that Mindy Kaling had something great to say about the Modern Lost book.
00:18:37
Speaker
You're like, wait, I love Mindy Kaling.
00:18:39
Speaker
She's awesome.
00:18:40
Speaker
She's really funny.
00:18:41
Speaker
I love her stuff.
00:18:42
Speaker
Wait, if she can talk about this stuff or if she's willing to open up, maybe I can do that, too.
00:18:46
Speaker
It's really meant to be
00:18:48
Speaker
Kind of like an unspoken encouragement to just kind of share your story with people who feel safe to share it with because you have no idea the support that can come out of this and you're not going to know until you try.
00:19:03
Speaker
And it's not fair because.
00:19:05
Speaker
When you have a really hard thing that you're dealing with, your pet died, you had a miscarriage, your husband died, you had this terrible divorce.
00:19:13
Speaker
It's fair to wish for the world to just cut you a break for the foreseeable future and for everybody to intuit what you need and preempt your sadness and hard days and text you and come with casseroles.
00:19:26
Speaker
But that's just not the way it goes.
00:19:29
Speaker
We're all just trying to keep our act together, everybody in the world right now.
00:19:34
Speaker
And so it really is up to us, the people going through it, to figure out ways to not only ask for what we need, but also to accept it.
00:19:45
Speaker
That's just the only way to go through it.
Supportive Communities and Acceptance
00:19:47
Speaker
Yeah, and it's working with communities like what you've set up and stuff like that can really just provide that support, give that strength, I guess, for people to be able to sort of ask for help and receive it.
00:20:00
Speaker
As you said, I mean, it's the receiving and the accepting of it that can nearly be the more difficult part.
00:20:04
Speaker
I know as an Irish person, we're not very good at that part of it at all.
00:20:08
Speaker
What is what are you working on now?
00:20:10
Speaker
What is the future?
00:20:11
Speaker
What are we what's the plans for Mother Laws?
Connecting Through Speaking Engagements
00:20:15
Speaker
Oh, my evil plans to take over the world.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, well, so my second book came out about a year-ish ago, a year and a half ago.
00:20:24
Speaker
And everybody's like, wait, are you writing another book?
00:20:27
Speaker
And I'm always like, God, writing a book is really hard, you guys.
00:20:30
Speaker
Like, I don't know if you noticed that.
00:20:32
Speaker
But writing 250 pages in 80,000 words, that's a lot of work.
00:20:37
Speaker
And the book that I wrote, the second book is really it's a handbook, which means it also has some interactive portions in it, which I want people to to do to write in.
00:20:46
Speaker
It's not like a workbook or a journal, but it has places where you can write.
00:20:50
Speaker
And so I've just been having a marvelous, meaningful time for the last year and a half going all over, like all over the world.
00:20:58
Speaker
You know, I've spoken to.
00:21:00
Speaker
in a lot of different places and countries.
00:21:03
Speaker
My book is available in other languages.
00:21:06
Speaker
And I've just been so moved and gratified to meet so many cool communities along the way.
00:21:13
Speaker
And I feel like in real life, interactions have been where I've been kind of focusing my attention.
00:21:22
Speaker
I do a lot of speaking at corporations, nonprofits, foundations about, you know, creating and
00:21:30
Speaker
empathetic work communities and, you know, specifically, yeah, like parenting through grief, pulling each other through friendships, how to create support systems, stuff like that.
00:21:40
Speaker
And there, it's what I really love doing right now, because it's just like, you can actually see the energy in a room change when you realize that people in it are having like an emotional exhale and realizing that they're the weight of their burdens
00:21:57
Speaker
can feel so much lessened if they are being divided up and shared and carried on many other shoulders.
00:22:04
Speaker
So I'm just kind of like evangelizing the whole like, you need community and hard things kind of thing.
00:22:10
Speaker
And I've really been loving it.
00:22:12
Speaker
So, you know, I would say that my speaking career is something that I'm putting much of my focus on.
Innovative Grief Engagements
00:22:20
Speaker
And yeah, there's always, you know, like I do, I do live comedy events and variety shows.
00:22:25
Speaker
I did a phenomenal job.
00:22:27
Speaker
thing called the Modern Lost Variety Show in New York City last year with Broadway singers and comedians and actors.
00:22:34
Speaker
And it was so phenomenal.
00:22:36
Speaker
And I hosted it.
00:22:37
Speaker
And it was a lot of like improv and like grief juggling.
00:22:40
Speaker
And it was just really, really fun.
00:22:42
Speaker
And so I just love getting the chance to play with that stuff.
00:22:46
Speaker
Because as I said earlier, I really like reaching people in ways that they find counterintuitive to how they feel like they'd be seen.
00:22:55
Speaker
in their grief and loss.
00:22:56
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:57
Speaker
And anything, anything, literally anything that brings that to the surface is a good thing.
00:23:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:03
Speaker
Anything.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:04
Speaker
Juggling.
00:23:05
Speaker
It doesn't matter.
00:23:06
Speaker
Well, it is amazing to have you on.
00:23:09
Speaker
Thank you so much for joining us.
00:23:10
Speaker
And we're going to leave all the links so that anybody wants to get in touch with Rebecca or book Rebecca for her next speaking or variety show.
00:23:17
Speaker
We'll leave all of those down below.
00:23:19
Speaker
Yeah, it was just amazing.
00:23:21
Speaker
We love what you do.
00:23:22
Speaker
We're here first and can't wait to see all the great things that you're going to do in the future.
Writing and Creative Projects
00:23:27
Speaker
And as somebody writing my fourth book at the moment, I... And it's so funny because people kind of just, oh, just write another one, you know.
00:23:36
Speaker
Right, I'll just like fall out of you.
00:23:39
Speaker
I guess it's just like, you know, there are some people who just they want to write lots and lots of books and that's great.
00:23:44
Speaker
I just I want to write when I have something to say.
00:23:48
Speaker
Well, and that's exactly it.
00:23:49
Speaker
But it's also I know you and I were kind of kindred spirits.
00:23:52
Speaker
It's we're doing all these other things.
00:23:54
Speaker
So for me, like if I could take a month vacation and go to a remote island, the book probably would fall out of me.
00:24:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:24:03
Speaker
But, you know, we've got podcasts, we've got speaking gigs, we have, you know, day to day jobs to do parenting, maybe not for me, but, you know, all these all the things, all the things.
00:24:12
Speaker
So yeah.
00:24:13
Speaker
You know, that's that's the that's where the book gets gets stalled for Uno Memento.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:24:18
Speaker
And, you know, the good news is it's like I would say my book, it's pretty all encompassing.
00:24:23
Speaker
I mean, it really has three goals.
00:24:25
Speaker
It's to help people stay connected to their person or their pet, stay connected to themselves and stay connected to the world around them.
00:24:33
Speaker
So it really is about like, you know, memory, ritual, but also like literal self-care, like, you know, managing anxiety, good sleep.
00:24:43
Speaker
you know, doing creative types of DIY therapies and then also like figuring out how to manage your social circles.
00:24:50
Speaker
Like how do you navigate friendships and intimate relationships and your work environment?
00:24:55
Speaker
So these are all like real things that people do need to figure out for themselves when they're moving through loss.
00:25:00
Speaker
And so, yeah, I think the good news for me about this book is that it's pretty evergreen.
00:25:05
Speaker
It's not going to be out of date
00:25:06
Speaker
next year as it were it's not like I wrote about like the latest shoes that everybody has to have which by the way is an amazing thing to write about I'm just I wouldn't be good at that I love you oh god you're great well thank you so much for the energy you bring to the space thank you for coming on the podcast we're very much fangirling over this um and yeah just thank you Rebecca and we look forward to watching this space thank you thanks so much for having me you