Pod Insights All There Is with Anderson Cooper Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin: ‘ Grief is a Badge of Love’ About this episode Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin talk with Anderson Cooper about their evolving understanding of grief since the murder of their son Hersh by Hamas after 328 days in captivity. For more of “All There Is with Anderson Cooper” visit cnn.com/allthereis.
Host: Anderson Cooper Showrunner: Haley Thomas Producers: Grace Walker, Emily Williams, Madeleine Thompson, Stephen Samaniego Associate Producer: Kyra Dahring Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski Technical Director: Dan Dzula Bookers: Kerry Rubin and Kari Pricher
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Anderson Cooper? Welcome to All There Is. Years ago, I read a book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and it's become a really important book for me. It's about his experience in Nazi concentration camps. It's really a book about survival. Frankl wrote, "Most men in a concentration camp believe that the real opportunities of life had passed, yet in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One can make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate." Frankl said that "any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal." He quoted Friedrich Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."
0:46 Anderson Cooper? "Whenever there was an opportunity for it," Frankl wrote, "one had to give them a why, an aim for their lives, in order to strengthen them, to bear the terrible how of their existence." "We had to learn," he says, "ourselves, and furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us." Now, that book, written in 1946, has helped me and millions of people. It also helped a 23-year-old man named Hersh Goldberg-Polin when he was maimed and taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th. Hersh was executed 328 days later, but his mom, Rachel, now carries that book, Man's Search for Meaning, wherever she goes.
1:28 Anderson Cooper? She's written a book now about her grief and pain, which is out. It's called When We See You Again. I sat down with Rachel and her husband, Hersh's dad, John, several days ago. You divide your life between what you called the before and the after. You're in the after now.
1:45 Speaker 01 Yes. From the second that Hersh was stolen, we plummeted down this rabbit hole odyssey of curvy torment. First for 330 days, and then, once Hersh was murdered, and we found out about that, we entered even another layer of otherness within this different world that we've been in. And that's where we live now.
2:19 Speaker 02 There's not one moment in my life now that Hersh is not on my mind. It's constant, and I suspect...
2:30 Speaker 02 It will always be that.
2:31 Anderson Cooper? What is that feeling?
2:33 Speaker 02 It's the whole gamut. It's deep longing to smiling as I remember something as simple as sitting on the couch and talking to him. But it's always there.
2:46 Speaker 01 I really start my day, the first words out of my mouth are to him while I'm still in bed, before I start my morning prayers. And there's a lot of dialogue throughout the day. And he's very present. And his presence is really a comfort. And it's a reminder of this delicious blessing of having had him. I don't associate him with the sadness. But then there's this longing, like I am hungry for him. Like I am thirsty for him. And this craving that I think intensifies, it doesn't lessen.
3:30 Speaker 01 There are people who say, well, if you're still grieving after X amount of time, then you have a disorder. Yes, I do. And I'm really proud of it. And I thought that etymology of disorder, dis from the Latin means opposite, disease, or disagree, or what have you. And so disorder, I am out of order. And my life, in many ways, was out of order because I buried my son. That's out of order. It's not unique. There are millions of people who have buried their children. I'm not saying I'm different. I'm just saying I have a disorder and I actually embrace it. I'm proud that I'm feeling out of order because of the love.
4:14 Speaker 01 That's why it's so painful.
4:17 Anderson Cooper? It's assigned to you the amount of love you have for him?
4:20 Speaker 01 Yes. The reason that I'm in this constant state of yearning is because of the love. The grief is a badge of love because it is the love that is continuing to grow in the absence of the person that we adore.
4:42 Speaker 01 And that's a price I'm willing to pay.
4:45 Speaker 02 I spend zero time trying to work on not grieving. What I work on is embracing the grieving, but also, at the same time, being able to smile, find joy, celebrate, et cetera. Not in place of, in addition to. And it's Hersh who helps me. I have him in my head and on my shoulder and in my ear, and I think he's saying, "Live. Find joy. Celebrate. Dance. Be happy." And I'm trying to listen to him. I don't know what the afterlife is and what it looks like, but I convince myself that he's okay. He's okay. We need to work on us, but he's okay.
5:30 Speaker 02 And that helps me.
5:31 Anderson Cooper? Do you feel him?
5:33 Speaker 01 I do feel Hersh very much. I had this incredible experience a few weeks ago. We met with this young woman named Oriah, who was talking about how we integrate loss. And she was talking about this idea that I had never heard, toxic positivity, which is when people are constantly saying to you, "You're gonna be okay. It's okay. You're getting better." And to the point where I think it's actually emotionally barbaric and gaslighting to say that to people. There are people who are broken. Own your brokenness. I'm broken, and I'm gonna go through life broken.
6:13 Speaker 01 It doesn't mean I'm not gonna be happy or laugh or have amazing relationships and celebrate my two vivacious, dynamic, talented daughters.
6:21 Anderson Cooper? You can be both at the same time.
6:23 Speaker 01 Yes. So I Google, "What is the opposite of toxic positivity?" And it said, "Tragic optimism." And I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I love that." That is me. I am a tragic optimist. So then I said, "Who coined that phrase?"
6:43 Speaker 01 Viktor Frankl.
6:44 Anderson Cooper? No.
6:45 Speaker 01 And I was like, thank you, Hirsch. I mean, come on. I thought Hirsch just sprinkled that right on to me. There's something beautiful about the ability to still be optimistic, but you've been wounded. There is a real texture once you've had the perspective of intense suffering, which we've had. And everyone will have.
7:13 Anderson Cooper? One of the things you have said to me repeatedly is that there's nothing special about you or your loss. There are so many people who, as a result of October 7th, on both sides of the border, have suffered tremendous losses of children.
7:27 Speaker 01 Exactly. And all over the world right now. And it's not a team sport. You don't have to choose a side, even though I think sometimes that construct serves a tiny percent of people. We have so much more in common in this human endeavor of life. It unites us.
7:51 Anderson Cooper? It connects everybody on the planet, which is so.
7:53 Speaker 01 No one wants to see that. But that adversarial construct is what keeps us cheering for two different teams when really this is humanity. And how do we, as humans, acknowledge and recognize the pain and suffering and loss and grief and mourning that all of us have or will have?
8:15 Anderson Cooper? You talk in the book about the moment, the before was done and the moment the after started. And for you, that was the morning of October 7th, when you read the two text messages from Hirsch that you got. What did those messages say?
8:31 Speaker 01 The first one said, I love you. And the second one said, I'm sorry. And I just knew, there's no 23-year-old in the world who at 8:11 in the morning is writing those to his parents out of nowhere because everything's okay. It's because everything's not okay. And we now know that was already after his forearm was blown off.
8:57 Anderson Cooper? He typed those in a bomb shelter.
8:59 Speaker 01 With his non-dominant hand.
9:01 Anderson Cooper? Even calling it a bomb shelter, by the way, is kind of grandiose. It's a 5x8 concrete bunker essentially with an open doorway.
9:08 Speaker 01 Yes.
9:09 Anderson Cooper? In that room were more than 25 young people crammed together.
9:13 Speaker 01 Yes.
9:14 Anderson Cooper? Hamas had already come, had already thrown in multiple grenades. Hirsch's best friend, Aneer Shapiro, had already thrown out, at least according to eyewitnesses, 10 of those grenades. He was killed. Others threw grenades as well. And Hirsch, was his hand blown off throwing a grenade?
9:34 Speaker 01 Yes. Because Aneer had said to everyone, "Your natural response will be to close your eyes. If something's thrown at you, you have to keep your eyes open and try to throw out anything they're throwing in. And if anything happens to me, you keep doing it." And he ended up getting killed. And so the other kids who were inside were trying to do what Aneer had told them to do. And Hirsch was holding a grenade that exploded while he was trying to throw it out. And that's how his forearm below the elbow was blown off.
10:07 Anderson Cooper? You said in the book, "In the new world, our story is a story about pain. Pain that is agonizing, throat-choking, debilitating, soul-shattering. No one wants to hear that. People want hope, resilience, recovery, strength, survival, healing. They want thriving and rising from the ashes like the phoenix from the days of yore. But the pain is chronic, ever-present, constant, gnawing, circular, not linear. Bound in our straitjacket of suffering, John and I are still stranded in this tunnel, even though Hirsch is no longer there."
10:38 Speaker 01 I think about that a lot. I had a really meaningful conversation with this ultra-orthodox rabbi after Hersh was killed. And he said, "Hersh was thrown into this very deep, dark place, and because you are his parents, you were there with him, and you will always be there." It felt like a validating affirmation. And I had another friend who said, "Part of you is already in the world to come." And that's why you feel so confused here, because there's a percentage of you that you put in the ground.
11:19 Anderson Cooper? You felt that at Hersh's funeral, looking into the hole that he was going to be put into. You felt you were in there.
11:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:26 Anderson Cooper? Irene Weiss, who is a Holocaust survivor, virtually her whole family was killed.
11:31 Speaker 01 I heard her on your podcast.
11:32 Anderson Cooper? Yeah. I just want to play something that she said on the podcast.
11:36 Speaker 03 The harp keeps working, but the soul never forgets. It's imprinted on the soul that keeps the memory, the pain, the grief. It's just always there.
11:51 Anderson Cooper? The 13-year-old girl that you were, do you still feel that little girl at times? Or did you bury her early on?
12:00 Speaker 03 Now, that's a good question. That's really a very good question. I am stuck there. I am really stuck there. That's where all the grief is. It's not the depression that you could read about in books. It's a pain and it's a melancholy. I'm different. I'm holding on. And yes, I'm 13 years old most of the time. Very difficult. I am, I can see I'm strange among other women or friends. I think I probably am misunderstood too, that I'm reserved or not friendly or something like that.
12:44 Speaker 03 Very hard to, I see another side all the time.
12:52 Speaker 03 Not fair, not fair.
12:54 Speaker 02 She talked about at the end where she's with her friends and she's not all there.
13:00 Speaker 02 I, on the one hand, feel like I'm now much more comfortable being open and emotional with my buddies. At the same time, I find myself frequently saying, act like you're in the conversation, throw out a comment here and there, pretend like you're there, even if you're not. It's just constant brain working. There's no stopping and relaxing and detaching. It's always something running.
13:30 Speaker 02 But the bigger thing, as I listened to Irene talk, is, and we've said this for a long time, we weren't in the bomb shelter, we weren't taken hostage, we weren't in tunnels. And I feel in some ways, like it's an insult to her in some ways, to compare our experiences.
13:52 Anderson Cooper? I actually talked to her daughter a couple of days ago and I mentioned that she was going to be talking to you and she actually made a little video for you.
13:58 Speaker 03 Oh, my gosh.
14:01 Speaker 03 I watched you both advocating for your son and was deeply disturbed by his death. When I was 13, I lost most of my family in Auschwitz. But losing a son, a child, is a special kind of pain. At age 95, my own grief goes in stages. Sometimes it is hard to bear, other times the feelings are more quiet. And then again, I am full of rage at the world that creates such murderers. I wish you strength in dealing with your grief.
14:46 Anderson Cooper? Do you feel that rage at all?
14:49 Speaker 01 I don't feel the rage, but I love what she said because
15:01 Speaker 01 I love that she's held on to the pain for 80 years. It's so permissive. It's really beautiful. Because I don't plan on getting rid of this pain.
15:18 Speaker 01 I really don't.
15:19 Anderson Cooper? You don't want to?
15:21 Speaker 01 I don't think that it's attainable. I think that it's so integral to who we are. And I think that it's
15:32 Speaker 01 it's just part of us now. And I'm comfortable with it. And pain also promotes healing. We don't have to be terrified of pain. And I love that she very much acknowledged in the previous video, there's something about when your crisis happens to you, when your trauma happens, you do get stuck in that place. John and I were both 53 years old. We had had a really good run. But I do think of people like Irene, or you, or other friends who, as children, had their big loss.
16:16 Speaker 01 And you get stuck in that place. And I don't think there should be shame involved with that. But I think for many years, a lot of people felt that because of the toxic positivity of being told, okay, it's been three years, two years, you know, five years, 10 years. Come on. You know, integrate it and let's go. And I think that's done a lot of damage to a lot of people. And so I love that her message is, I'm 90 years old. This happened when I was 13 and it has been on my back and I'm carrying it.
16:51 Anderson Cooper? I like that she says, some days it's more quiet, but it's still there.
16:54 Speaker 01 It's always there, for sure.
16:56 Anderson Cooper? You said, then there are days when suddenly there's a whisper of sun, not out there in the sky, in me, in us. It's coming from within the four of us, we who used to be five. We were figuring out how to float with one of us not present. You also said, I hope I can teach myself how to miss someone forever and love someone forever in a way that doesn't run me over each day anew. Have you gotten any closer to that?
17:22 Speaker 01 I'm not sure.
17:26 Speaker 01 I don't know if it's closer to that, but it's different. And it's just getting more familiar with this sensation that's always right here. I always feel like he's right here, that longing is right here. But you can get comfortable with wanting. I don't like it, but I can get familiar with it. There's a scene in Gone with the Wind, in the burning of Atlanta. And it's Rhett Butler is trying to lead the horse that's carrying the wagon with Scarlett and everybody.
18:11 Speaker 01 And the horse is getting spooked by all of the flames and destruction around it. Rhett Butler puts a fabric over the horse's head and is lead-- and then the horse, and he's talking gently to the horse and the horse is okay. But every few minutes, the horse freaks out. And I kind of feel like the horse. I'll be freaking out and then I'll talk myself down and I'll soothe myself and then, but then I'll realize, holy cow, like this, I cannot believe this is our reality. And I'll get spooked.
18:44 Anderson Cooper? You must have had that repeatedly in the 330 days.
18:49 Speaker 01 Oh, my gosh.
18:50 Anderson Cooper? Before you learned he had been executed.
18:52 Speaker 01 Yes. It's not grief. Those 330, that was torture. That was an exquisite. Perfected torture. Knowing that your child is being tortured and you know it, and being starved and you know it, and has no arm and you know it, is absolute excruciating torture. And how do you just keep breathing? And that's when I had a lot of really confusing self-care problems. It was extremely hard for me to shower because I knew he wasn't showering. It was extremely hard for me to eat because I knew he wasn't eating.
19:36 Speaker 01 It was extremely hard for me to drink water because we knew they weren't drinking. They would maybe get half a cup of saltwater from the sea or dirty water. It was excruciating. And a lot of my problem now, I know that Hersh is not starving anymore. I know he's not dirty anymore. And yet, when every single time I shower, I'm uncomfortable showering. And when I drink water now,
20:10 Speaker 01 it's uncomfortable, which is really damaged. And yet, I earned that damage. It's real.
20:22 Anderson Cooper? I should point out that I first met you when I interviewed you on CNN on October 16th. Some eyewitnesses had told you that Hersh had been wounded and you knew that part of his left arm had been blown off. You didn't have any video of him at that point. And while I was interviewing you, I saw a picture of Hersh that we put up that you had given us, which was Hersh in the bomb shelter. I realized that I had actually seen a video of Hersh being kidnapped. I'd been shown it several days before by some Israeli soldiers at the Nova Music Festival site on one of their phones. I actually exclaimed when I saw it. Jesus.
21:04 Anderson Cooper? His hand has been blown off.
21:08 Anderson Cooper? But I had no idea when I was talking to you that that's who that was until I saw the photo. And I was trying to figure out, how do I handle this? What do I do? And I realized, I'm not going to say anything now. And soon as the interview was done, I said I was going to call you. And then I informed you of that and sent you the video. I said this to you in the 60 Minutes interview. I feel terrible that is the way you saw what happened to your son.
21:29 Speaker 01 I actually think that was actually a perfect way. And I'm not saying this because we're here and we really were so struck by your humanity that evening. Because you handled it in such a perfect way. You were as gentle and human and kind and benevolent as possible, given this terrible thing that you had to give over to us. So we're actually thankful that it was you and that you did it in the way you did it.
21:59 Anderson Cooper? I want to read something that you wrote about grief. You said, "What if instead of hating, tolerating, or just putting up with grief, what if I'm all wrong? Maybe I actually owe grief an apology. For so long, I've been confused, desperate, and in such profound pain, I haven't been thinking straight. I've been looking at grief through mud-colored glasses. I've decried grief as a trespasser. I've tried to bar the door. I've screened its calls. I've written libelous, disparaging remarks about grief. But perhaps grief is merely the messenger, and by trying to prevent it from entering the room of my soul, I've exhausted myself. Now I see how that very effort depleted my mangled body and spirit even further. I think that much of the festering, blistering pain that we broken feel comes from trying
22:41 Anderson Cooper? to deny the love that continues to grow after a person dies. With a bolt of revelation, I see that grief is a badge of the love that continues to grow after its recipient is no longer here. Why in the world wouldn't we want to wear that precious badge proudly?" Do you feel like you have a relationship with Hirsch still? And that it grows?
23:01 Speaker 01 That I definitely feel. The way that I love Hirsch today is different than how I loved him yesterday. Or last week. Or last month. Or last year. Or on October 6th. It really is like bamboo and continues to grow and develop and change shapes and textures. And what I have learned that's most revelatory for me is that...
23:29 Speaker 01 Love is stronger than time and love is stronger than death.
23:38 Speaker 01 And I don't think that about hate. I actually think hatred is this very powerful emotion. But I think with time, it can peter out. And I think love keeps growing. That's what's so glorious. Because that gives me comfort, knowing that this love is going to keep changing and shifting and curving around and...
24:07 Anderson Cooper? It's not going to disappear.
24:08 Speaker 01 No, it's, it's, there are no chance in the world. Even what Irene was saying, that gives me hope. Eighty years from now, you're still going to love this kid.
24:17 Anderson Cooper? But you're still going to feel pain.
24:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, but that's all right. It's okay. I'll take it. It's the price.
24:25 Anderson Cooper? Because you get the love too.
24:27 Speaker 01 Yeah. It's a package deal.
24:31 Anderson Cooper? We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Rachel and John.
24:35 Speaker 04 I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. We're going to talk about rethinking how we die. How we think about death in the first place greatly informs how we live. Our guest is Dr. B.J. Miller. He's a hospice and palliative care physician.
24:53 Speaker 05 We are aging as a people. This is a worldwide phenomenon that we are aging and therefore getting closer to the end of life on some level as a group. It's not at all surprising that you'll see a revving up of interests, services, and also sort of anxiety that pushes us away from the subject and makes us cling to life.
25:14 Speaker 04 Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.
25:23 Anderson Cooper? You both went through this experience for 330 days, knowing, believing Hirsch was alive. And when they came to tell you they'd found Hirsch and he'd been executed, you discovered something. What was it you discovered?
25:41 Speaker 01 That that had been the good part. There was the hope that we were getting him home. And now we knew he'd never come home. And he didn't. A lot of people say like, "Oh, you finally got him home." Or, "We finally got all the hostages home." Hirsch never came home. Hirsch never came back to my home. I got him back in a bag and we put him in the ground six miles from our house. That's not coming to my home. And so it was a whole new universe of now where are we? How do we do this? But we're doing it.
26:26 Anderson Cooper? Funerals in Israel are so different than here. There's no casket. There's a body in a shroud. It's put in the ground. It's very elemental. It's very real.
26:37 Speaker 01 Yeah. We traditionally cut your shirt right above where your heart is when it's one of the seven closest relatives, mother, father, brother, sister, daughter, son, spouse. And you tear your shirt upon hearing the news and then you wear that shirt throughout the Shiva, throughout the seven-day mourning period. So we happened to have been wearing whatever T-shirts we were wearing Sunday morning when they came to tell us. And no one's wearing a suit. No one's dressing up. No one showered. It was one of the hottest days of the year in August in Jerusalem.
27:14 Anderson Cooper? There were thousands of people there.
27:15 Speaker 01 There were thousands of people there. It was just miserable because it should be miserable. And that I really like. It's very real.
27:26 Anderson Cooper? I just want to play part of that.
27:28 Speaker 01 Finally, my sweet boy. Finally, finally, finally. Finally, you're free.
27:36 Speaker 06 I will love you and I will miss you every single day for the rest of my life. But you're right here. I know you're right here. I just have to teach myself how to feel you in a different way.
27:49 Speaker 01 I remember at some point during the eulogy that I gave, hearing this rolling cascade of screaming. People were screaming. His friends were on the ground screaming, screaming. It was very helpful.
28:12 Speaker 02 One of the many lasting images in my head of that day is we walked out of our apartment and we got in the car for a slow procession and the entire route, the most common thing that we saw was people holding a sign with one word on it, "Slika," which means "I'm sorry." There was this communal, national sense of "we failed you and we're sorry."
28:48 Anderson Cooper? During, when you were speaking at the funeral, you looked up and you said, "I'm sorry." You screamed out, "I'm sorry."
28:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, as we were burying him.
28:55 Anderson Cooper? And those were Hersh's last words in text to you as well, "I'm sorry" in that bomb shelter.
28:59 Speaker 01 Yeah. I think he was sorry because he thought he was dying and he knew it would be horrific for us. And I also was feeling terribly sorry that I had failed to save him.
29:13 Anderson Cooper? On the 328th day, you went with other families to the border and the idea was to have families on loudspeakers, talking to their loved ones, being held hostage. And you screamed out for Hersh.
29:31 Speaker 06 Hersh!
29:35 Speaker 06 It's Mama.
29:39 Speaker 06 Hersh. It's day 328. We are all here. All the families of the remaining 107 hostages.
29:57 Speaker 06 Hersh. We are working day and night and we will never stop.
30:05 Anderson Cooper? Did you believe he, maybe he could hear you?
30:08 Speaker 01 We had been told that they were close enough that there was a chance that they could hear us. And it ended up being the most primal scream I've ever
30:21 Speaker 01 given over in my life. And I remember there was a cameraman in front of me who, he jerked and burst into tears. And I, I have no idea
30:35 Speaker 01 if Hersh heard me in that moment, but I think he heard me in other ways, at other times, for sure.
30:44 Anderson Cooper? In that day, that was the day he was executed?
30:47 Speaker 01 They think that they were executed later that afternoon. So I also am very thankful that I did go. I think that that was a very important thing for the universe to chronicle parents screaming to their child before he was taken from the universe.
31:09 Anderson Cooper? You had very little information about what Hersh's life had been like for those 328 days. And it wasn't until Orellevi gets released that you actually get to learn about the days that Orellevi spent with your son.
31:30 Speaker 01 Right, and that was unbelievable and will always be something for the rest of my life that I treasure. That, those couple of hours that we spent in the hospital with Orel, whose name in Hebrew, the name Orel means light. And we had been living in complete darkness. First originally when Hersh was stolen and then certainly after Hersh was killed. We were in the darkest, most black
32:01 Speaker 01 Drenched place and suddenly on the evening of 496, we meet light, we meet Ohr.
32:11 Anderson Cooper? Ohr told you that Hirsch was not broken.
32:13 Speaker 01 And that he was laughing, that there was laughter. He said, well, he kept saying this mantra that he was saying to himself constantly, which was a quote from Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. When you have a why, you can bear almost any how. When you have a why, you can bear almost any how. And we were just floored that that's what Hirsch was doing. And he said, oh, he said to me, your why is your son. You have to get out of here. You're going to bear this. You're going to deal with this because you have a son at home. And Eli Shirabi wrote about it in his book, that Hirsch said the same thing to him and
32:58 Speaker 01 he said it to Eli Akko. He was saying this to everyone and to himself. And that became so illuminating for John and me. And I had never read the book.
33:12 Anderson Cooper? It's a 1946 memoir by Viktor Frankl about his time in concentration camp.
33:16 Speaker 01 It's in my bag. I travel with it because it's Hirsch. It's a piece of Hirsch. And I didn't know. And so all of the sudden, we find out he's, he's making people feel okay. He was still himself. Yes, he was missing an arm. Yes, he was hungry. Yes, he was scared. They were all miserable, but he wasn't broken. And he could have been broken. It's not that I don't, I mean, I'm broken. I mean, heck, like, that's my identity. It's not that I'm anti that. What Ohr was telling us is that, yes, it was horrible and he was okay.
33:58 Anderson Cooper? Do you know what your why is?
34:02 Speaker 01 Part of our why is figuring out our why. And part of our why is picking up Hirsch's why. And I'm really fascinated by this idea. The Baal Shem Tov, who was sort of the father of mystical Judaism 300 years ago, said, was once asked, what's the purpose of this life? Like, why are we all here? Why do we all get here? What's the point? And he said, every soul is sent to this world so that one day their soul can do one kindness for one person, just once.
34:43 Speaker 01 It doesn't mean you're not supposed to do thousands of acts of kindness and betterment and improvement and trying to fix this place. But you're here, and I'm here, and John's here, and all of us are here because there's one specific thing that we're supposed to do once. That, did Hirsch do his one kindness when he was three and we were living in Berkeley? Did he do it when he was 13 and he was in eighth grade and he was nice to somebody who no one was nice to? Or was it saying something empowering to someone in a dark tunnel under Rafa when he was 23? I don't know, but I know that he did it, and that's why he was able to go.
35:26 Speaker 01 And I do wonder to myself, have I already done my one kindness, but I'm still here because someone else has to do their kindness to me? And I think figuring out our why is clearly having something to do with this colossal Herculean challenge we've been handed in the losing of Hirsch.
35:52 Anderson Cooper? You found a notebook that Hirsch had kept back in 2015.
35:57 Speaker 01 He had just turned 15. He was a freshman in high school.
36:00 Anderson Cooper? It's just a sort of...
36:01 Speaker 01 Musings of a ninth-grade boy with very bad handwriting.
36:07 Anderson Cooper? I want to read part of what you found that he wrote. It's all about a tunnel. This was on October 26, 2015.
36:16 Anderson Cooper? Every so often, you arrive at a tunnel and you enter the unknown, and you don't know when you'll get out. To walk in the dark, in the beginning, you're upset and you're not ready, and you feel that you arrived at the edge. But it is not the exit or the end. It is just a change in the situation. How much time it will take to get to the end of the tunnel depends on the person. If it is with despair, it will take a longer time. Or if you enter with all of your might, it will pass quicker. My tunnel was when I was the new one. But like everything in life, I passed through the tunnel. Who knows how many more tunnels I will encounter? But I'm not afraid to slow down or even to make a U-turn. What is sure is that I am walking to the end of the tunnel. He writes about tunnels 12 times in this, in this passage.
36:56 Speaker 01 Eight years before he was held in a tunnel.
37:01 Anderson Cooper? What do you make of it?
37:02 Speaker 01 It's a very strange passage. And I don't really know what to make of it. But I also want to take it as a message to us that we all have these metaphorical tunnels that we run into. We don't know if they're going to be long or short or deep or shallow or when are we getting out? And hopefully, we'll endure until it's our turn to, to get out.
37:26 Speaker 02 Even after he was killed, it gave me strength that he was ready for the challenge, and he took on the challenge. And I think he really believed that we're all coming to get him. Just a question of when.
37:41 Anderson Cooper? Is there something you've learned in your grief that would be helpful for others?
37:44 Speaker 01 There's a, a precept in, in the Jewish tradition and in other, in other religions as well, that every, every person is a whole universe. I think that that's a really beautiful way of looking at people. And I think a lot of the people who we were talking to when Hirsch was alive, we realized that they were looking at Hirsch as one boy in the whole wide world. And we were looking at Hirsch as one world and the whole boy. And that, that's really beautiful. And that's why there's such suffering when we lose someone. Because we're losing a whole world. And that's a gift, that we miss our people so much.
38:28 Speaker 01 It is the most human thing we can ever experience, this loss.
38:34 Anderson Cooper? Does it help you to know that you are on a road that has been walked down by everybody who's ever lived?
38:41 Speaker 01 For me, for sure.
38:42 Anderson Cooper? It helps me.
38:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's not unique. It's not unique. It's just, it's challenging. Okay, I'll do it.
38:52 Speaker 02 Don't fight the grief. Don't try to diminish the grief. Just figure out how to carry it in a way that I can walk through the world still while the grief is always on me.
39:05 Speaker 01 Yeah. And that's why it's two containers of confusion that we deal with or try to deal with. Because there's the death and all of the grief and loss and mourning and pain. And then there's this compartment. I think of it as like those storage lockers. That's the 330 days. It's like that I really put in a storage locker and I just feel...
39:32 Anderson Cooper? Because you had to get through it.
39:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:34 Anderson Cooper? You had to, you had a job to do.
39:35 Speaker 01 And so I was compartmentalizing it. I was saying like, yes, you're terrified. Yes, you're traumatized. Yes, you're being tortured. That's later. Go. So I kept putting all of this...
39:45 Anderson Cooper? What was it you would say every morning when you woke up?
39:47 Speaker 01 I would say, "Hope is mandatory. Go."
39:50 Anderson Cooper? Hope is mandatory.
39:51 Speaker 01 Hope is mandatory. Not a suggestion and not advice. It's a command.
39:56 Anderson Cooper? Hope is mandatory, go, you would say.
39:57 Speaker 01 Go. And then I'd fling the blanket off and go, even though I wanted to crawl up in a fetal position on the floor next to my bed and be weeping out of complete...
40:12 Speaker 01 Terror.
40:13 Anderson Cooper? So for, to function, you had to push it all down.
40:16 Speaker 01 Yes.
40:16 Anderson Cooper? And, which I'm very familiar with, and propel yourself forward.
40:19 Speaker 01 Yes, pushing, pushing, pushing, and then putting all that stuff into the storage locker. And I don't know now what to do with that. Meaning, I'm so busy dealing with the grief and anguish and, and missing and yearning. And every day longer is I miss him more, I don't miss him less. But I have a storage locker of horrific things. Do I have to go through that? Do I have to unlock it? I don't know what to do with that.
40:50 Anderson Cooper? Do you feel its presence?
40:53 Speaker 01 I do, because weird things happen, right, when I'm showering. Well, that's from the storage locker. That's not from him being dead. Because a lot of people lose people and they don't have a problem showering, or eating, or drinking, or John said recently, "Maybe one day you'll wear your hair down again." I put my hair up on October 7th and I've never taken it down. I used to wear makeup. I've never worn makeup again. I used to wear jewelry. I've never worn jewelry again. Like, that's the 330 days.
41:24 Anderson Cooper? So that you have not even begun to unpack or turn to?
41:29 Speaker 01 Uh-uh. And I, I don't know. Is that possible? I mean, Irene would probably know. Like, am I 53 now, forever, standing next to this storage locker? I don't know. I hope there's a way that I can be normal, whether I open it or I don't.
41:50 Anderson Cooper? Do you want to open it?
41:51 Speaker 01 No. And I, I, is that allowed? Can I just keep all of that horror locked up? Is that an option? Or will it? Is it like when you ignore that, oh, something's off in the fridge and you just keep the door closed, like, oh, and then one day you open the fridge and you're super overwhelmed? Like, is that gonna happen? But what if I promise I'll never open the fridge?
42:16 Anderson Cooper? Not that my little fridge is comparable at all, but I mean, that was my strategy my entire life.
42:22 Speaker 01 How'd it go?
42:23 Anderson Cooper? Forty years. I lasted 40 years and then I found myself weeping uncontrollably while going through boxes of my dead family's things and not knowing why am I weeping?
42:33 Speaker 01 Right, but 40 years for me will take me to 96?
42:36 Anderson Cooper? You can maybe make it.
42:37 Speaker 01 I can make it, right? And then if I lose it, so then put me in the ground next to Hersh all as well.
42:42 Anderson Cooper? But I lived half a life in those 40 years.
42:45 Speaker 01 Right.
42:45 Anderson Cooper? Which I don't think you want to do.
42:47 Speaker 01 Right. So I guess I, I don't know.
42:52 Anderson Cooper? I don't know. When you need to know, you'll know. Rachel Goldberg-Polin's new book, When We See You Again, is out now. Later this week on Thursday, I hope you join me at 9:15 PM for my streaming show, All There Is Live. You can only watch it on our Grief Community page, cnn.com/allthereis. It streams live there for free. You can also communicate with others in the comments who are watching at the same time. If you missed the live stream, it'll be posted the following day for a week on cnn.com/allthereis. It's a really special show and all the older episodes of it are available on demand for CNN subscribers. Also, if there's something you've learned in your grief that you think could be helpful for others, feel free to leave us a voicemail
43:31 Anderson Cooper? at 404-827-1805. We may use your message on an upcoming episode of the podcast. Thanks for listening. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, you're not alone.
43:44 Speaker 07 Get ready for election night. CNN is available to stream live now with an All Access subscription. Plus, get exclusive content and interactive Q and As with CNN's journalists. Subscribe now. Visit cnn.com/allaccess.
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