Re-Air: Nora McInerny: Move Through Grief Paralysis

We're revisiting our episode with Nora McInerny in honor of National Grief Awareness Day. Nora McInerny (Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast, author of Bad Vibes Only) helps us build understanding around grief by taking us through her own grief journey. She discusses what her life was like before suffering extreme loss, what happened upon receiving her husband’s terminal brain cancer diagnosis, and how she dealt with a miscarriage and the loss of her father and husband weeks apart. Nora and Mayim consider the struggle of dealing with people’s expectations of your feelings during mourning periods, why it may be difficult to relate to people who are moving through grief, and the importance of allowing oneself time to truly grieve. They discuss reasons why mourning is so specific and individualistic, productivity associated with grief, and the benefits of finding a support group. Mayim breaks down the typical grief timeline, its physical symptoms, and its potential impact on every area of one’s life. Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.bialikbreakdown.com/ ⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠ https://www.youtube.com/mayimbialik%E2%81%A0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Mayim Bialik?

  Hi, I'm Iain Bialik.

• 0:05Jonathan Cohen?

  I'm Jonathan Cohen.

• 0:06Mayim Bialik?

  And welcome to our Breakdown. So tomorrow, actually, is National Grief Awareness Day. And we thought, in honor of this day, that we would revisit another oldie, but a goodie. It's an episode we did with really wonderful author and podcaster and kind of expert on grief, Nora McInerney. Nora is known for being very outspoken, giving practical tips on moving through grief paralysis. Her personal story, which she will talk about, she had a heartbreaking miscarriage and lost her father and her husband, all within weeks of one another. A really unbelievable story of grief and also of healing and resilience.

• 0:48Jonathan Cohen?

  She gives us a lot of practical tools on how to combat the struggle of dealing with other people's expectations during the mourning and grieving process, and why it may be difficult to relate to others moving through the grieving process. I could really relate to what she was talking about, feeling alone and isolated, but how grief is such an important part of the human experience. Bypassing it can have really detrimental impacts on our mental health, physical health. And by actually embracing this and understanding this process, we can move through it much more easily and actually get a lot of love, compassion, and joy even from experiencing these emotions.

• 1:32Mayim Bialik?

  She also talks about why there's no set timeline for grief and kind of how that plays out. Also, how specific and unique everyone's mourning experience will be. She's also going to talk about some of the physical symptoms of grief and the benefits of getting support. And we just couldn't think of a better guest than to have Nora on in honor of National Grief Awareness Day.

• 1:53Jonathan Cohen?

  Just before we get to this episode, a reminder that there's a place to get exclusive content, not released anywhere else. That place is on Substack. Check out Iain Bialik's Breakdown on Substack and join the growing Breaker community there. Ask questions and participate in the AMAs that are now living on Substack. And again, check out Iain Bialik's Breakdown on Substack to join the community.

• 2:18Mayim Bialik?

  And now, we hope you enjoy taking a look back at our episode with Nora McInerney. You are not unfamiliar with a variety of aspects of breaking down, as it were.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  One of my favorite pastimes.

• 2:35Mayim Bialik?

  And, you know, there's so much about, you know, kind of your journey that is exceptional, meaning it is outside the realm of so many people's understanding. But, you know, a tremendous amount of the work that you do, which seems to obviously have started from a very, very personal journey, is one that you've really been able to expand out to sort of cover a variety of grief experiences without, you know, kind of some of the things that many of us often fear when we experience grief, right? That no one will understand, no one will be able to relate. And in fact, that is very true.

• 3:18Mayim Bialik?

  You know, about three months after my father, a blessed memory, died, a woman came up to me in synagogue, and she was trying to be so nice.

• 3:29Jonathan Cohen?

  They're always trying to be nice.

• 3:30Mayim Bialik?

  And what she said is a very banal thing. She said, "I know exactly how you feel." And I know. So here we are in-

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Was he your dad, too?

• 3:43Mayim Bialik?

  So this was literally, it was a, there are certain services that you go to when you've lost someone. So it was a, it was a specific service for people who had lost people. Also, I'm a public person, so like, everyone knew certain aspects of my father's passing, and I, I did choose to write about it a lot. And about three months is when you get that really angry irritability that comes with grief, when no one can do anything right.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  The best part, I think, of grief is just that blind indiscriminate rage.

• 4:17Mayim Bialik?

  Well, this poor, sweet woman, she, I mean, I, I kept it together, but, you know, I remember saying to myself, like, this is exactly the point of grief, is that you, you absolutely, you don't know. You don't know him, you didn't know him, you don't know me. That's like what was going through my head. But, you know, the place where you've really, you know, made this very specific mark, you know, and as you say, it's very, very niche, is you've taken something that is not just your experience. Your experience in particular is even outside of the realms of what anyone, right, can imagine. You said that's what people say, like, "I can't even imagine." But you really, you really have, you know, built this kind of understanding around it.

• 5:00Mayim Bialik?

  And it's, you know, really, your life's work has been really making something that could be the least accessible thing, for so many reasons, accessible. So, I would like to know a little bit about, you know, the years before, uh, let's say...

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Oh, do you, I can tell you what my life's work used to be.

• 5:22Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I'm very, I'm super curious. So, tell us, tell us where you're from, tell us, like, you know, did you have experiences with grief or anything like that when you were a kid? Or were you just like a normal person growing up, thinking that life was gonna be fine?

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Well, first, you wanna know what my nickname was, growing up? Blossom.

• 5:40Jonathan Cohen?

  Me too.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Blossom, yeah. Because guess what I love to wear that kids didn't really understand in the 90s? Hats. Okay, sorry, I wore a bowler hat to my third grade photo. Okay, sorry, you rubes in Minneapolis didn't know fashion. It's called style, okay? I look like, you know, the fourth stooge. Get over it. I look cool. I felt confident and never lived in town. Did not stop. I was like, "Guess what? Hats are cool. You will see them on TV." I grew up in Minneapolis. My family's Catholic. We also love funerals, right? But I do think that, you know, growing up, um, now I realize, like, Jews do death best.

• 6:20Mayim Bialik?

  We kind of do. I don't wanna brag.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  My God, I'm like a yard side candle, what? I'm like, "Oh, it's so beautiful." Like, sitting shivv, like, everyone else having to just shut the fuck up until you wanna talk.

• 6:31Mayim Bialik?

  That's right.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Brilliant, like, brilliant.

• 6:34Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, we've definitely got death down.

• 6:36Jonathan Cohen?

  Living, not so much.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Living, we're not so good at. Dying, very good. Dying? We can talk, but I grew up Catholic. My life was, I always wanted to be a writer and I remember telling my mom when I was a kid, like, I don't think it'll happen because like my life is too good. Like you, nothing is gonna happen to me. Thanks a lot for loving my dad, you boring person. And, you know, my parents worked in advertising, both of them. So I worked in advertising when I graduated from college and I wrote tweets for great clips for years and, you know, put together social media strategies for, you know, an unnamed fossil fuel brand that absolutely did not be, need to be on Twitter and would not believe me. They're like, I think, you know, I think we should be there.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  I'm like, I, I'm gonna disagree. I'm gonna go ahead and disagree, but you, you do you. And so I just had the most boring life, truly. Like, nothing had happened. And, I mean, aside from wearing that bowler hat, getting a bowl cut also in third grade, so I also looked like Macaulay Culkin. That was like an unfortunate thing. But I just had a very, very charmed life that I did not realize was charmed until I didn't have it anymore. And I did all the stuff that, you know, you have to do in your twenties. Like, just go around tapping terrible men on the shoulder, being like, will you love me? You're the wrong guy. Could I be the right girl for you?

• 8:05Speaker 02

  I'll change my personality. Like, what do you like? Me too. Oh, sports. Sports and music. I, same. Beer, love it.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  And then I met this guy named Aaron and it turned out we'd followed each other on Twitter. This is such a 2010 story. We followed each other on Twitter and I had tweeted these, like...

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Twitter was such a different place. It was so joyful. And I tweeted that I was gonna be at this art show to really just like prove how cool I was. And he was like, I'm going there tonight. And he broke through this group of friends, by friends, I mean, only my first cousins, my only friends, and was like, you're Nora McInerney. I was like, yeah. He's like, I'm per mort. I like, we tweet, we tweeted each other. And I like, of course, I knew he was coming. He had mentioned he was coming. I had like clicked on his little icon. I knew he was cute. I knew he was cute. And I looked through all his tweets. I was like, he loves Taylor Swift. I love Taylor Swift. I had stolen from our office, the Taylor Tells All issue, where it's like, they break down her lyrics. And I brought it to him. And

• 9:09Speaker 02

  I handed it to him. And he like, held it to himself. And he kept it forever. He kept it. I still have it. And we just like, you know, all the boring stories. Every love story is so boring, because they're all the same. Right. It's like, I found him. Like, it's just-

• 9:23Mayim Bialik?

  And how, how old were you when y'all met?

• 9:26Speaker 02

  I was 27, which in the Midwest, it's like, you are going to die alone.

• 9:30Mayim Bialik?

  Correct. I mean, that's well beyond-

• 9:33Speaker 02

  My dad's primary fear. He was like, when I was your age, I had two kids. So, you know. And Aaron was 30. He was 30 or 31. I just know that he was in his 30s. And that felt like huge to me. I was like, I'm sorry, he's like, older. He's an older man. He's older. He like owned a home, was the home, a tiny little shack that was like falling into the earth, that he definitely should not have paid any dollars for. Yes, but it was his. And I was so impressed. And it was just so easy. And we were together for a year. And then he had a seizure at work. And that night, we found out it was a brain

• 10:15Speaker 02

  tumor. And then four days later, they took it out of his skull. And a month later, we were married. And he had stage four brain cancer. And then, and then, and then. And I do remember-

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Standing in the hospital hallway before we knew, but you always kind of know, but we had like just that magical thinking where like we had just joined this thing called Instagram. And he was like, take a picture, like take a picture. So I've got like my iPhone four and I'm like taking a picture as they're closing the doors to the MRI room. And I just thought like, okay, like this is one of those moments that's a before and an after like this, whatever happens after this, like I know my life will be different. And, um, and it was, and you mentioned like, everything is so personal. There is no like knowing exactly how someone

• 11:12Speaker 02

  feels, but I think in those moments, in those like first weeks after he had brain surgery and then got his diagnosis, like I felt simultaneously like I'd been separated from the normal world. We were sitting in a hospital room for so long, like our world had just shrunk down. There was all this possibility. We're going to be together. We're going to get married and have babies and, you know, wear matching outfits and family photos and all of that stuff. And then we're just in this little room, but so is everyone else in this hospital. Like so is everyone else. Like no one is here because they want to be, except the people who work here and are being paid. Everyone else here is like here

• 11:56Speaker 02

  against their will because something terrible happened. And I felt so separated from the world and also so connected to it in a way that I just hadn't had to before. Like I just, I had so much sympathy, like so much pity, I should say, for people who are going through hard things and almost no empathy because I just refused to imagine. I refused to imagine.

• 12:22Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and I think that's sort of, you know, I want you to, if you don't mind, you know, I'd kind of like to go back a little bit because, you know, when you think of kind of the first year of a relationship, um, you know, I kind of, I break things up in kind of three month, you know, phases. I think that's kind of how a lot of, a lot of human cycles go that way. So like the first three months is like, it's lust and it's bliss. And it's like, oh my gosh, this is it. I mean, usually of course there's a whatever. And then you kind of get to like the next three months and then it's like, oh, we've been together six months. It's like half of a year and the next anniversary is like the big one, right? Yeah. And then like you you curve around nine months and by then it's been someone's birthday, some parent has had something happen. Like you've been through a couple of things and

• 13:05Mayim Bialik?

  you're like, wow, we made it through. Or like, I wish he would this, or I wish she would that. But like, you're there. And then when you come around to a year, you're like feeling, if you're still liking each other and sex feels good, you're like, we made it to a year. Like, the world is our oyster, right? So then to have, to have this happen, like, as both a scientist and a human, I'm like, I think you were probably in shock. Oh, totally. You know, for a large extent also of this kind of experience. So, My MB Alex Breakdown is supported by Quince. You know those pieces in your closet that you reach for over and over again? That sweater that somehow works with everything? The jeans you know will always fit just right? The bag you carry everywhere? Those are the

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• 15:36Mayim Bialik?

  Here's the question, and so many people have spoken to you and you speak so beautifully and you say many incredible things. But I'm really interested in, in these kinds of things and I hope you'll kind of go with us.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  I will, yes.

• 15:49Mayim Bialik?

  Had y'all talked about getting married?

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, we had and

• 15:53Mayim Bialik?

  Cause you're from the Midwest. You talk about it on like day three.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Of course, like and honestly, we talked about it on date two and I'm not joking. Date two, it was just, everything was so easy. It was just so annoying and to other people. So I was like, God, I like him so much. And actually on our second date, you know, I did like the whole like, so like, you know, like, have you had like recent, have you seen anyone recent? I don't know why, like, cause I was just in that unhealthy, like, uh, let's, let's pick our scabs for each other kind of thing. I would never do that now, but, uh, he'd only had one other girlfriend and they had been together for 10 years. And they'd broken up weeks before we went out. And I was like, oh, well, I guess this is over because that's not gonna work.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Like, no, like, of course not. And then we went out like two days later.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  And we were talking and he was telling me all about his family and I have, I come from a family of four. He comes from just, you know, a family of two, him and his sister. And I was like, well, I want four kids. And he was like, I could do two. And I was like, well, three. And we shook on it. And he was like, if we have three kids, I stay at home. I was like, absolutely. I would never do that. I would never, ever, ever do that. You can be a stay at home dad. And I had just moved into his house at the one year mark. My lease was up and, um, I hadn't told my parents, cause.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Not because, oh, I'm an adult and I don't care what they think because I'm afraid of what

• 17:20Mayim Bialik?

  Correct. No, no, I totally, we get it. So you had moved in?

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I moved in like on October 30th.

• 17:28Mayim Bialik?

  Got it.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  And then maybe a few days before, October 30th was like our last normal night. He used to throw this party called Halloween and like he would DJ and it was like $5 at the door at some, you know, at this bowling alley, Elsie's in Northeast Minneapolis. And it was, he was the kind of person who really made like everyone feel like the party couldn't happen if they weren't, unless they were there. So when he said like invite anyone, he really meant invite anyone and everyone he knew invited anyone. And it would be like hundreds and hundreds of people that he didn't know. And I got so drunk. I got so drunk. I puked on his car and I puked in his car. And I puked the whole next day. And then

• 18:13Speaker 02

  we went to work on Halloween and he had a seizure. I was just like, God, I ruined our last normal weekend. Like by just laying in bed being like, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die here. This is where it goes. But yeah, we talked about getting married and, you know, and, and having kids and I was, you know, painting the bathroom because he had painted it green screen green. Cause he thought that was funny. And he was just, because he was funny. And he was like, yes, if everyone do a green screen video in here.

• 18:44Mayim Bialik?

  Totally.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  The bathroom was like this, just like the size of a toilet. It was just like a toilet with a shower like over. It was so small. It was like, where would you shoot a video? Like where, what, what scenario are you planning for here?

• 18:58Mayim Bialik?

  So did he have any other symptoms? I mean, like looking back?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  When you look back, sure, but they were all, um, now, now having met so many people with brain tumors, so many people with glioblastoma. My mother's friend's husband died of glioblastoma. I actually had to reschedule my first date with Aaron to go to that funeral because it was a night funeral. It was very classy. And his had presented, like, he was reading the newspaper upside down. And this normally mild-mannered man was rude and mean. And Aaron didn't have any of that. He was, it was in a part of his brain that apparently he didn't need, like, the upper right. You probably know what.

• 19:35Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, you need all of it. But yes, it was, that's a part that you didn't see.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  It seemed like a vacant part.

• 19:40Mayim Bialik?

  You didn't say, right, it's just open for rent. No, but like, one that didn't cause, for example, behavioral changes or.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, personality changes, like the best place for a bad stage four brain tumor.

• 19:52Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  So he had headaches, but like, don't we all? And like, he couldn't fall asleep, but like.

• 20:00Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Isn't that normal when you're, you know, in your twenties and ever, or thirties and have a stressful job?

• 20:05Mayim Bialik?

  And, and I, I'm curious about this also because, you know, you are a writer and you have, you know,

• 20:12Mayim Bialik?

  a, a different way you look at the world as, as writers tend to. So what was that moment of getting engaged? Was it in a flash? Was it a, like, how, how did it come about?

• 20:24Speaker 02

  We had talked about it and we were like, we'll get married the summer after next. So that would have been the summer of 2012. But there was no, like, formal anything. We'd just been talking about it and we didn't know what kind of brain tumor he had. And it was Halloween night. And he had had his MRI and they had told him that there was a brain tumor. And I had decided that it was benign.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Or just like, maybe like a conjoined twin they had forgotten about. Or it was just going to be something that would be scary and then it would be over and we would be over it.

• 21:01Mayim Bialik?

  That's the bargaining stage of grief.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Oh, the bargaining stage. And I was like, yeah, no, that's, we can, that's totally acceptable. It'll be like such a great story. He'll have a handsome scar. Awesome. And. I remember we were in this dark, dark hospital room and his mom, who I love, and who was just so sweet, was like, can I stay here too? And I was like, yes, like, of course, like, can I? I'm only his girlfriend. Like, where do I fit in here? And she stayed in like, the chair that reclines into a twin bed. And I stayed in bed with him, which felt incredibly scandalous, even in this situation. I was like, but in like, a little hospital bed. And I remember him whispering to me,

• 21:43Speaker 02

  like, you can't marry me now, because I'm gonna be sick. And I was like, no, you won't. And also, like, no one tells me what to do, except my dad. And there's like, the heart monitor light illuminating, like, his beautiful profile. He had the best nose. And I remember telling him, like, you're, we're gonna get married. We're gonna get married as soon as you're out of here. And like, that's that. And now we're engaged. So, he was like, okay, but you, like, you really shouldn't. And I was like, well, I'm really going to. So, there we go. And I told, we told his mom the next day.

• 22:19Mayim Bialik?

  You didn't wake her in the middle of the night?

• 22:22Speaker 02

  I'm sure she, like, heard and was like, okay. But she was a flight attendant, so she literally can fall asleep anywhere with no, like, she was like, okay, yeah, oh, it reclines? Even better. Great, luxurious. So, so that was it. And we didn't have a date. He was diagnosed a few weeks later.

• 22:41Mayim Bialik?

  What was the prognosis at that point?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  You know, we had walked into the oncologist's office bargaining. We'd walked into the oncologist's office with the belief that only an oncologist can tell you, you don't have cancer. Like, truly, that is what we thought. We were like, yeah, so we just have to go there. They'll tell you it's nothing. And then we can go. We made lunch plans. So, we had a place to go. We had taken the whole day off of work, which, America, I love it. Greatest country in the world. I was like, can I take a whole day off? Like, my boyfriend had a seizure and they took a brain tumor out of his brain. Totally no big deal if not, but it would be cool if I could go. I can come back in the afternoon, which I did. Great.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  So, we went to the oncologist's office and they told us that it was stage four glioblastoma. And we had said before, no matter what.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  And I don't remember if Aaron said this, or I said it to the doctor, but we had talked about it beforehand. And we told them, like, we never want to know how much time there is, like, ever. So even if right now, you're saying like, he has four days to live, we don't want to know. Like, we just never, ever want to know. And that's that. And we never want you to even bring it up, ever. And so they never did. But

• 24:07Speaker 02

  I Googled that word once on my phone. And the first result, how you get like, that little preview, it says expectancy, three to five years. And I remember trying to close my phone so quickly, but he saw it. And he saw me see it. And then we just pretended that neither of us had seen it.

• 24:25Mayim Bialik?

  You did get married?

• 24:27Speaker 02

  We got married. We got married one month later, at the same place where we met.

• 24:30Mayim Bialik?

  Wow. And when did you get pregnant?

• 24:34Speaker 02

  The next, I got it so hard. I always forget how years work.

• 24:39Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  I'm like, and then, but I had a baby in January. We got married December 2011. Ralph was born January 2013. So you're gonna have to do that math because I was an English major.

• 24:53Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. So, yeah, so you were married less than six months, let's say, and you got,

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 24:58Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. And you got, you got pregnant. What was that?

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Through science.

• 25:02Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Through science. Like, and all this happened.

• 25:05Mayim Bialik?

  As opposed to praying hard and asking for a virginal, uh, got it.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. As opposed to just, you know, like, it, there was no spontaneity to it. It was like, you're gonna go jerk off in a cup.

• 25:16Mayim Bialik?

  Got it.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  I'm gonna lay down and a nurse is gonna put it in me. And set an egg timer, a literal egg timer. So before he started chemo, there was a lag between

• 25:24Mayim Bialik?

  Got it.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  brain surgery, diagnosis, chemo. And at the appointment where we were told he had cancer, I asked about, like, is it gonna be safe to have kids?

• 25:34Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  And they looked at me like, well, no, because he's gonna be radioactive.

• 25:39Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  And he's gonna be taking this chemo that is so dangerous that he, you can't share a water glass with him.

• 25:45Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Uh, and your toothbrushes should be in separate cups.

• 25:48Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  And you shouldn't exchange fluids. Very sexy. And I looked into you immediately. He was like, well, I want to have kids. Like, what are we gonna do? And we've, uh, he'd Went and froze his sperm for like a couple of months and IVF was so expensive. We were both young. We had no money in the bank at all. And so we did IUI, which is Intray uterine. Intray uterine insemination, which I literally asked the IVF doctor, I was like, do you have like a freer version? Like a cheap, what if you just put it in me? Is that possible? And he was like, yeah, we could. I was like, great, then just do that one and we'll do it. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn't, it doesn't. No big deal. And Now we have Ralph. And now we have Ralph. And now we have Ralph. Yeah.

• 26:33Mayim Bialik?

  Were there conversations about what that would be like in terms of the decision to parent, knowing, you know, that at a certain point, it might be not the two of you?

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, there were. There were.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  I think the

• 26:54Speaker 02

  when I think about that time in our life, people kept saying to me, like, wow, it's so good of you. Like, so good of you to stay with him. Or like, oh, this has to be like, this is so brave of you. And I just think like, not really. And when I look back now, especially having, Ralph is about to turn nine next week. I just think, oh my God, I don't know that I could do what Aaron did for me. You know, and I'm so glad he got to be a dad and we decided to go forward with it when we took our niece and nephew, his sister and her children to Disney World. I had never been.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Aaron had been so many times. He was like on a first name basis with it and called it Disney. I was like, okay, well, it's Disney World. You should use the full name because not everyone, not everyone here like knows what all the rides are. Okay. So we took them to Disney World and it was like the end of the night and every kid on the shuttle back to the hotel was like crying, losing their minds. And Aaron was holding our nephew, who was also losing his mind. And he was like, I want to do this. Like, I want to do this. And

• 28:07Speaker 02

  You think, like you think you know what you're agreeing to, you know what I mean? Like you always do. You think you have like a sense of what you're doing. But you really don't, you know, like, I mean, I knew I would most likely be raising Ralph without Aaron. But you can't live in that knowledge and still live, you know what I mean? Like when people say things like, well, we're all going to die eventually, which people said to Aaron when he had cancer. Well, we'll probably all get cancer. It's like, okay, then you get it right now. Right. Like if it's so, so easy. Well, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Yeah, but you don't think you will.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  You know, that's why you get out of bed. Like if you truly live believing like it could end at any moment, you wouldn't get up. And it's like, we had to live these parallel lives where we're like planning for the worst. Like we had a date with an estate planning attorney to plan out, we had no money. What were we even planning for? It was like, and, and we made medical directives. So that he would know what I wanted in case I was, you know, who knows what happens during birth. Like we all, we did this stuff together. But we also lived like we were just going to be like a normal couple, you know? Like he was still putting money into his retirement. He was like, we were, we were making decisions about having a child,

• 29:31Speaker 02

  about how to raise this child as if he were going to be there forever. And I think that's so generous. And I also think it's just because we were so naive and thank God for that. I want everyone to have like the gift of not knowing. Like of, and of not anticipating and living with this.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  You're all like, when you're already living on that ledge, like on the knife's edge where like it could just end. Like any, it could just truly end and you both know that.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  It really is a gift to like, not be able to project that far into the future. I think that's what anxiety is. That's what worry is, like sort of trying on those feelings in advance. There's no preparing, no amount of worry, no amount of like, trying to imagine what it would feel like that could prepare me for that. And Aaron was just very, very much in the present moment all the time. Like just bizarrely mentally healthy. I've never met a person like him. Like I tried to explain like what depression was like to him. And he was like, oh, oh, man.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  It's like, you just feel that every day? I was like, yeah, just like all the time. Like, I just feel like, you know, like, what's the point? Should I get up? And he was like, what?

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 30:56Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and I think this, this, you know, feels like an appropriate time to, to also mention that you had had a hell of a month the month before this. Your October leading into.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:11Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:11Mayim Bialik?

  So, so just kind of to, to flash forward.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we just had this beautiful, normal marriage.

• 31:19Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Like, we really did, like where I would be like, I told you to take out the trash.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  And I meant now, like I literally meant now, come on. And like when he was dying, he was like, I'm not going to know how Game of Thrones ends. And I'm so glad he doesn't because he got to die when it was amazing. Okay.

• 31:37Mayim Bialik?

  So, and the, so you, you, you had Ralph.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  We had Ralph and.

• 31:43Mayim Bialik?

  You got pregnant with.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Yes, I got pregnant again. And when I talk about like truly being naive, I do think now, part of it, you mentioned shock, I think I spent a lot of those years in shock. And I did not know anything about trauma. I did not know anything about, at no point did any medical professional say to me like, are you okay? Like, do you need something? Yes, I could have used like every Ativan that in the world that would have helped. I could have used, you know, a therapy, but when would I have gone? Like, when between work and having a baby and taking care of somebody? Like, there was just no way to do that.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  We decided to have another baby and it seems delusional now, part of it, you know, like it really does, but I, I, I wanted Ralph to have a sibling. I wanted him to have a sibling that was, you know, Aaron's child, like Aaron, we had all this extra sperm. It felt like I didn't want to waste it. And, and what do you do? You know, like, is it moral to have a baby with a man who's not there anymore? I don't know. And I wanted him to be there for it. I felt like Ralph had these magical powers and had like, kept Aaron alive. And so would two babies keep him double alive? I don't know. But I got pregnant and it felt miraculous and

• 33:05Speaker 02

  it felt amazing. And it felt so sad to watch this disease progress and know that I was like, growing a life while I was also watching like a life end. And it was obvious, like it was obvious that like, that tumor was growing and like clipping into other parts of his brain. So I lost that baby on October 3rd. And then my dad died five days later. And Aaron was like, wow, he just had to scoop me, huh? Just had to-

• 33:35Mayim Bialik?

  Was your father ill? Was it sudden?

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, my dad was a marine in Vietnam and he was exposed to many chemical agents that are not good for a 17 year old and an 18 year old and a 19 year old to breathe in. And he had all kinds of cancer and he told us about it in May of 2014 and he died in October. So, yeah.

• 34:02Mayim Bialik?

  So, that-

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:05Mayim Bialik?

  And then-

• 34:06Speaker 02

  Kind of got to skip through some stuff.

• 34:07Mayim Bialik?

  Well, no, but, but then literally approximately six weeks later,

• 34:14Mayim Bialik?

  and you, you lost Aaron. So-

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:17Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. So- So then you did an amazing thing in that you were very productive in your grief and you wrote-

• 34:25Speaker 02

  So productive.

• 34:26Mayim Bialik?

  You wrote-

• 34:26Speaker 02

  So productive. I wrote, I wrote, I wrote. Two days after Aaron died, it was Thanksgiving. And we had Thanksgiving, just insane, just like, talk about shock, talk about just like-

• 34:36Mayim Bialik?

  That's also very, very Midwestern Catholic, like, I'm, nothing will stop you. I mean, that's-

• 34:42Speaker 02

  No, no, no, we will give thanks.

• 34:44Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, okay.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  There is still much to be thankful for, thank you.

• 34:48Mayim Bialik?

  Thank you.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Let's count our blessings.

• 34:50Mayim Bialik?

  What was, what was that dinner like?

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Quickly, it was the worst dinner of my life. I hated every minute of it. I think we made the kids watch, like, the, and our, every, all of our kids were very little. I'm pretty sure that was the night they all watched Die Hard and we, like, left the room. Like, my mom was mad at me because I was just on Tumblr all night, you know, like, responding to 14-year-old girls who were like, OMG, you're, you, you are, your husband died. I'm so sad. I was like, thanks.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Thanks, stay young. Being an adult is the worst. Stay, stay 14, it does not get better. It actually gets a little worse and then maybe, maybe much worse. So, that was a terrible Thanksgiving and I had been writing, I'd been writing since Erin was sick. I'd been writing my whole life. And Erin was the first person I dated who ever cared about it and read my writing, even though this is, you know, this is like height of the blog era. So I was writing for all these little blogs and writing really interesting things, like our leggings pants.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  And I believe they are to this day.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  I was ahead of my time because that was 2010. I was saying, yes, they're pants. You don't need to, you don't need to cover it up with like a long cardigan. You can just, you can just wear them as pants. And now?

• 36:10Mayim Bialik?

  I disagree, but it feels like the wrong time to have that conversation.

• 36:15Mayim Bialik?

  Um, so, so you wrote, and, yeah, and I guess I would like to, you know, I know it's hard to encapsulate, but because I am a Jewish person of the traditional variety, you know, I, I, I remember, and it's not the same, it was my father, not my, like, I'm not at all comparing, but-

• 36:39Mayim Bialik?

  You know, I did read Year of Magical Thinking, you know, the Didion book, which my, you know, my mom and I both read. Essentially, the only book I could read. I could not read during my first year of grief. I don't know what short circuited, but I couldn't even read magazines. It was very strange. But what I learned is that while all grief is different, there are certain things that are similar and I, things like I mentioned, that like rage sets in around three months. Like, I've found that to be universally true of everyone I've spoken to, no matter what the loss was, that there's like, so certain things happen. You start dissociating at this month. You start, you know, anyway.

• 37:18Mayim Bialik?

  So what I remember of that year was that it really did take a year for something to cycle through. And I don't know if it's because like, you know, you've lived every day once without that person existing. And, you know, the Jewish custom is very, very specific. You know, there are restrictions we have, obviously, for the first eight days. And there are restrictions we have for the first 30 days. But then there are restrictions that carry on for an entire year, which I held to. So what I know is that, you know, when that year's up, you know, you host a kiddish, like a little, you know, wine and cookies thing.

• 38:01Mayim Bialik?

  And then, you know, something shifts. Your identity shifts. You're no longer a mourner, meaning you're no longer required to, you know, say the prayer three times a day and all those things. So, you know, obviously, your first six months were very productive. What, when, when did something shift for you where you felt, okay, this was one phase and now like, I gotta like, you know, whatever it is. I have to shower more regularly. I need to parent this child more actively. Like, how long was that?

• 38:33Speaker 02

  So long, so long. And I think that the one of America's biggest shortcomings is even if you have beautiful and useful, helpful, like transformative grief traditions, like you are so fortunate to have, it doesn't matter because we mostly care about productivity and you will get, I got three days off for my dad dying. The average person gets three to five business days off for bereavement leave. I did not have a job anymore. I found it impossible to read, impossible to wake up, impossible to go to bed at night, impossible to do anything really, other than watch Bravo and rearrange my furniture in the middle

• 39:18Speaker 02

  of the night, take everything out of my cabinets. Just another phase of grief that I found is just weirdly purchasing things that you can't afford. Like just being like, you know what I need? I'm gonna need $300 worth of old Navy workout clothes. How do you spend $300 at Old Navy? I'll show you. Okay. I will show you. And I think those, those traditions are so important because they signify something, right? And they signify something to the outside world that tells people like, I am a mourner. These are the things that I need to do.

• 39:50Mayim Bialik?

  It's a status and we don't have that really in our culture anymore. Like, what's your status? Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  No, it's like, let's go, let's get out there. And so I, I was productive in so many ways that were unhelpful and so many ways that really represent the financial reality that I was in, which is we, Erin did not have life insurance outside of like the nominal amount that you get by just being employed. I was no longer employed because I couldn't go to work and then they didn't want to pay me.

• 40:22Mayim Bialik?

  And you had a toddler.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I had a toddler. And, you know, there'd been this, you know, sort of GoFundMe thing that was set up and I was so ashamed of it, like so ashamed to have needed it, that I paid off Erin's medical bills and I paid for the funeral and then I just would get wasted at night and give the money away because I would go through and see people who, whose communities couldn't raise $500, who couldn't do, you know, whatever. And I started to do all of these things, start, you know, started an organization that gave money to people who didn't have it in tragedy, started a A widow's group because I was forced to meet this woman whose husband had also died, who I didn't want to meet, and now she is one of my best friends, Mo.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  And I wrote my first book in the six months after Aaron died. And I got that book deal because-

• 41:17Mayim Bialik?

  She's my kind of depressed.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Very productive. Let me, I will do anything to not feel.

• 41:22Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. Emotions can't hit a moving target.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  They cannot. And I truly, like, I thought I was a genius. I thought, one year, it will expire. I will no longer be a mourner. So if I just stay as busy as possible.

• 41:36Mayim Bialik?

  It'll be like it never happened.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  It'll be like it never happened. I will be the smartest person ever. I will never have to get super sad. I will never have to get my sad on other people.

• 41:44Mayim Bialik?

  Yep.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  And, um, you know, Aaron and I had written his obituary together. I don't know if you knew that.

• 41:51Mayim Bialik?

  I did.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  So his obituary went viral, like 2014 viral. And the woman who would become my agent had reached out to me and said, someday you should write a book. And if you ever want to, we can talk. And I literally emailed her, like, maybe a day after Aaron's funeral, I was like, yeah, I'll write a book, I'll do it now. And I wanted to do it in that moment because people kept handing me books.

• 42:15Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  And all these books, one, I could not read, but two, they were all like told from this like really like safe distance, like 10 years later, 20 years later, like, oh, this is what it means. And I was like, it doesn't mean anything.

• 42:29Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, I, I mean, obviously I didn't write a book, but it was actually something that my book agent asked me to do. He specifically asked me to compile my essays on grief, specifically for that reason, because like, writing in the moment of grief is very, very, very, very different. And when I read them now, when I read my essays, I'm like, who was that person? Like, it's very, very strange. So was that kind of, did you feel like a year was like, oh, a shift?

• 42:57Speaker 02

  Almost a year to the day that Aaron entered hospice, I could feel that grief in my body. My neck and shoulders are locked up. I'm like, completely unhinged. I'm rage tweeting. My friend Mo was like, um- You should come over. I know you're having a hard time. Like, I couldn't like move my neck and shoulders. Like, everything was so tight. I'm all over the place. She's like, come over and burn things. I love fire. Oh, I brought a bag of like those, this is not a bill from like, I'm like, why would you send it if it's not a bill?

• 43:26Mayim Bialik?

  So you can burn it when you're in grief.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  They're like, it's a pre-bill. So like, just anticipate, like, this is what you'll like, this is not a bill, but if we wanted it to be.

• 43:34Mayim Bialik?

  This is to make you mad enough. So when the bill comes, you pretend it didn't come.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  If it was a bill, it would ruin you. Okay.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Because brain surgery costs more than your house is worth, you loser. So I burned all those things. And then the side gate opened and this guy showed up and I was like, oh, God, and I have to pretend to care about like whoever this person is. And he just basically sat there all night and listened to Mo and I talk about our dead husbands. It was my husband. It's Matthew. And I was like, after a couple hours, I was like, what is your deal? Like, is your wife dead? Like, what, like, what brings you here? And he was like, oh, no, I'm divorced. And I truly was like, that's the worst thing I've ever heard. Like, someone stopped loving you and I don't know how you're still alive. Like, I would die. I would die. And he was like, oh, no one's put it to me that way. I was like, yeah, she just decided not to love you anymore.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  That's crazy. That is crazy. Your life is horrible. Like, and you have kids and you had to explain that to them? Like, he was just like, whoo, okay.

• 44:37Mayim Bialik?

  That's also a little bit of like, if we look so hard at you, we don't have to look at me, right?

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Yes, like, yeah. It's like, I could, I, you know, the thing, the difference with Matthew and so many other observers is like, I knew he didn't feel bad for me. Like, I knew he was just interested and he was curious and he wasn't judgmental. And Mo and I were saying crazy things, crazy things, crazy things. And he was like, mm, just listening, listening, so quiet, so handsome. And I went home and I found him on Facebook and I sent him a message and I told him to ask me out.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  And a year to the day of Aaron entering hospice, I, that's when Matthew could go out. Matthew was like, I have Wednesdays free. That's the only day I don't have my kids. And I was like, okay, we'll go out on Wednesday. And I had had this moment where I was like, This is the day that Aaron went into hospice and it always will be. And it can also be something else. And so I went out to dinner with him and we just talked for hours and hours. And it happened so similarly to how it happened with Aaron in that it was just easy and I didn't have to ever wonder. I didn't have to ever have to

• 45:55Speaker 02

  think like, oh, am I texting him too much or not enough? But the presence of Matthew truly made, like, made my grief hit.

• 46:08Mayim Bialik?

  Do you know why that is?

• 46:10Speaker 02

  I think just his, like, one, his physical presence. I'd not had, like, a man around. And like, his presence, his aliveness, knowing that there would be more with this person or maybe another person, but there would be no more with Aaron. It's like, knowing there would be more possibly with Matthew made it more real that there would be no more with Aaron. Matthew's like, he was just a, he was such a safe place to be

• 46:51Speaker 02

  and so many people aren't. And I remember one of the first, first few times we hung out, like, I couldn't get a babysitter. Ralph was in bed. And so Matthew came over and I was on the floor reading Mary Oliver's Felicity, this book of poems she wrote after her partner, like, her lifelong partner died, sobbing on the floor, like, reading him these poems. And he was like, it's really beautiful. It's really beautiful. Like, do you want me to, like, rub your back and you can just, like, cry? And I was like, yeah, I do. That's exactly what I want. And I didn't have, like, I didn't, I don't want to say I didn't have

• 47:32Speaker 02

  the safety, but kind of, like, I didn't have a place to just do that and feel that. Because I was afraid to show people who had known me for so long, like how much it hurts. And I thought if I showed them that, then that would be all they could see. And they would never see me any other way. And they would just feel bad for me. And I didn't want anyone's pity. I didn't want to just be like this sad story, which I could kind of sense that like, it was just a sad story for people to repeat, you know? And I didn't want that. And it wasn't, it was sad to Matthew.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  But he didn't have the, the burden of having known every previous version of me, if that makes sense.

• 48:20Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah. And what would you say, you know, obviously there's, there's going to be a lot of people who, you know, who hear this conversation and may not relate specifically. But I, I think that it might be helpful maybe for you to tell us sort of, what things most kind of moved you forward? You know, you talk a lot about, and we do as well, like, we don't really get over things. We get through them, you know, but they, they don't, you know, it's kind of like grief shifts, but it doesn't really go away. Like, it's a thing, like, I still have these moments where it's like, oh, I gotta call my dad, I gotta tell him that thing. Like, like, literally, like, that's still, and it's been, you know, years.

• 49:05Mayim Bialik?

  And there, there's still that, like, weird notion of like, I didn't get to know this, or I didn't get to go there emotionally, you know, like, all those things. But what, I'm, I'm curious if you can share sort of what, what has, you know, been enduring? Meaning like, are you a, you know, are you a therapy person? Are you a meditation person? Are you a get up, get out there person? You know, was writing, you know, essentially for you an anchor? Like, what, what has helped? Because a lot of people get into a grief paralysis, and it's very, very hard to get out of it, or to move through it.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know what I see more often is what you and I do, which is like this frenetic need to try to alchemize it into something else, to try to use it for self-improvement. Oh, I'm going to help you. I'm going to do this thing. I'm going to do this thing. I tell everybody like, what if you didn't? Like, what if you didn't? You don't have to. You don't have to. Every person who's lost like a child, or a husband, or a parent to some horrible disease is like, I need to start a thing to keep their memory alive out in the world forever. No, you don't. No, you don't. And people live inside of you. They live in like the stories you tell. And I spent so much of that time, and I don't, I

• 50:25Speaker 02

  don't regret it, right? I don't regret the things like I did. I think they were like helpful until they weren't anymore. But I also look back at those years and I think, oh, my gosh, that is a person who's just like, who's just too afraid to be with it. And the only thing that has helped is actually being with it and actually allowing myself to fall apart. I didn't also have like the luxury of, of, of being able to. And most people don't. Like, most people have like no safety net. And so I don't think that you're stuck if you are still sad years later. But I do think, you know, my mom's friend,

• 51:10Speaker 02

  the one who had lost her husband, had said to me when Erin died, she sent me an email. I love boomers. Sent me an email from her work email. Like, and it's like, I believe we have a sacred responsibility to live fully in the face of our losses. Next line. It's a bitch, though. That's the whole email. That's the whole email. I was like, yes, that is it. Like, you do have this sacred responsibility to live fully. But living fully does not mean, you know, accomplishing and like performing and, and trying to do things like living fully is so much smaller and quieter. And it, it for me has meant that I got married and

• 51:54Speaker 02

  I blended a family. But it has also meant that I try to like actually enjoy my life, which for a long time, I think a lot of those things that I was doing was me.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Trying to prove that like I still deserved to be alive because Aaron was so young. He was 35 and he was so kind and everybody loved him and I'm kind of an asshole. And I just wanted to like,

• 52:24Speaker 02

  earn it, right? Like I wanted to earn my survival over his and you don't have to do that. But the things that have been enduring for me are I've, I've gone in and out of therapy. Sometimes I think, maybe we have like too much therapy?

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Sometimes I think you could just like, it's a whole different topic.

• 52:47Mayim Bialik?

  That's also very Midwestern of you. It's like, do we really need to talk about feelings until we get through them?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  Do we need it? Do we need it? Eventually they'll just shift.

• 52:57Mayim Bialik?

  Eventually they'll just go away.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Go, they could just go. I literally in my first book, wrote a chapter that about how I didn't need therapy. Cause what were they going to tell me that I'm sad? What? No, like I, I absolutely did. I had PTSD. I was like, oh, is it not normal to like flashback to your husband's like skeletal face? Or like be looking at a, a live man who's around his age and watch him die in front? Is that weird? Is that, I just thought that's what people did. It's very cinematic, so I don't.

• 53:25Mayim Bialik?

  I was also going to mention though, that, you know, one of the things most recommended is to go, you know, to obviously grief groups, but especially for, for, for, you know, people who lose someone who are not in the quote, "normal" demographic of when we typically, it's a very, very hard thing to kind of break into. You know, I've heard, I think it was Moshe Kasher who described what it was like to get sober when he was 15 in a room full of like 40 and 50 year old dudes. Like it's, you do, you need to have some, some peer experience, you know, that's specific. And so I do want to, you know, mention that like it's, it's extremely significant and important

• 54:04Mayim Bialik?

  to acknowledge that while all grief has things in common, yeah, it's, it is, it's exceptionally specific.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  The writer Laura McCown, who's also a sobriety person, had said, "One stranger who..." Understands you completely can do what, you know, all the friends and family

• 54:20Mayim Bialik?

  Yep.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  In the world cannot like that is the necessary palliative for for change. And I did not want to be friends with any widows. Like I did not want that to be my identity at all. I was forced into it and I'm so glad for it. And what endures is not the formal organization, but so many of those relationships. And I can open up my DMs, get an email. I get a message at least once a day from a fresh widow and I feel that connection to them. Like it really is like it is a a siblinghood of of of people who have experienced that that kind of loss and Mo is still the person that I call.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  You know, she came to when I was pregnant with the baby that had Matthew. I thought that I was miscarrying again and she took me to the hospital. Like she's the person that I called to go with me. And those relationships are very enduring and so are the the relationships that I have with people who loved Aaron. And I think I am really lucky. Not everybody gets that. Sometimes a family just falls apart when, you know, the the hub to the wheel dies. And I'm so glad to have I had lunch with Aaron's mom today and she and Matthew's mom are taking all the kids to a movie on Monday because they don't have school. I'm very lucky for that. I'm very, very lucky for that.

• 55:43Mayim Bialik?

  And I think also, you know, when I especially when I obviously I have teenagers. I have a 13 year old and a 16 year old. In particular, when I hear people talk about like, you know, heartache, you know, in their teen years or, you know, when I think back to being I didn't find any point to dating in junior high or high school anyway. I mean, I don't think anybody found a point in dating me either. But the the notion that I'm trying to get to is that like. True adult relationships often do come from sharing really, really deep, really emotional, really intellectual kind of things. And while it's important to have all different kinds of friends and friends that you have light time with and friends that you like go get drinks with and like you la you go to clubs with, like all that fun stuff.

• 56:27Mayim Bialik?

  When it comes down to it, the relationships that will kind of see you through are ones that often involve a real connecting of deep and important information. Whether that's, oh, we shared someone we lost, or we have that kind of connection. Like, so when I hear young people who are like, but I love him so much. And it's like, well, live a little bit, you know? Have a little bit of life before we decide we, you know, can't move on from this particular situation. Here's an awkward question.

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:59Mayim Bialik?

  Where's God for you? Do, did you have a relation? Yes. Meaning, did you have a relationship? Because, you know, a lot of people wonder, like, you know, what, like, this could rock anybody's faith in anything in the universe. And you don't have to have a relationship with God. But I am curious. You were raised Catholic, and sometimes that means that you don't want to, you know, have associations.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:22Mayim Bialik?

  But I also don't know if you had a, any sort of religious, spiritual, mystical notion of what this transition, you know, for Aaron was or could be.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was raised Catholic. I, like most of us, I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm like Catholic in a way. Like, I will go when my parents ask me to go. And my dad was very Catholic. And Aaron was there with us when the priest came and they renamed it. They keep renaming things, I think, so they know who, like, you know, is a fair-weather friend and like who's really up on it. They change all the responses and it was like, oh, I knew it, I knew it. And so they don't call it last rites anymore, but I think they should because that's more beautiful. So the priest came to do last rites and it was my siblings and my mom and Aaron standing

• 58:18Speaker 02

  around my dad's bed. And it was so beautiful. And we said the same prayers that, you know, my dad would say to us when we were with us when we were little to put us to bed. And I hadn't said them in a long time. And Aaron had this tank top that he liked to wear that said Satan in rainbow colors.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  And he was just not raised religious. He just didn't take anything that seriously. And we left there and Aaron's, the left side of Aaron's body was no longer working. He had a sling. He couldn't lift our child. He couldn't drive a car. And I remember that night before we watched Game of Thrones. He said, I don't know what that was, but it was so beautiful and please make sure I have that. And we did that for him. Same priest. You know, they don't like check your membership card or anything. They'll just show up. And, and it was like Aaron's mom and my siblings then.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  It was so beautiful.

• 59:35Speaker 02

  And I was the only person there when Aaron died.

• 59:39Speaker 02

  And I felt like, at least for a brief moment,

• 59:45Speaker 02

  I could see through this little keyhole.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  I'm like, God, you know, like, why we're all here and like, what it all means and how holy it is to exist.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  And how beautiful it is to,

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  to be with someone when it all ends. And that was, I think, the closest to God that I will ever feel. Besides giving birth, is being present for his death. And when Aaron was sick, I could not have believed less in a God. I was like, cool. And, you know, it was just sure.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  That it had just been so dumb, all of that, all of that effort as a child and an adolescent. And I think now I see, I see God in people and in the way people can show up for us more than I do in, you know, a specific institution or a specific structure. But I will say that the smell of incense and a Hail Mary will always just, oof, that'll always do it for me.

• 1:01:07Mayim Bialik?

  Thank you for, for sharing that, you know, specifically, I think it, it is. I think it's important also, there's such a, you know, there's, there's, there's such a variety of reactions to, you know, to sickness. I mean, there's a variety of reactions to just existing every day in our healthy bodies. But I think especially, you know, if people are raised with this notion of if you do these things, things will be good for you, it can be very, very difficult when life, you know, happens. And, and I think the notion also of like, everything's for the best, like, that doesn't always feel so, you know, it doesn't really always fit, which is another thing that people, I'm, you know, I'm sure said to you at some point, and mostly it's people don't know what to say.

• 1:01:52Mayim Bialik?

  Like, I, I really give most people the benefit of the doubt when trying to, you know, interact surrounding grief.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  And I think the worst thing, I mean, I can forgive all the dumb things people said to me. I mean, at the funeral, more than one person was like, you're still beautiful. Oh, like, you can, you can still find someone. I'm like, oh, like tonight, like, what is, like, what are you, is it you? What's going on? Uh, or like, oh, my God, have you lost weight? It's like, yeah, I have. Yeah, I'm extremely stressed out. I'm six feet tall. In no way should I be a size four. Yeah, I've lost weight. Thank you. Like, well, it looks great. I'm like, thank you.

• 1:02:28Mayim Bialik?

  Right, you should have more death around you.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Boomers, boomers, love a thin woman. They're like, tell me, oh, how'd you do it? How'd you do it? Oh, you just didn't eat? I love it.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Good for you.

• 1:02:40Mayim Bialik?

  Um, so you, um, you, you did, you, you married Matthew.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  I married, I married that guy from the backyard.

• 1:02:48Mayim Bialik?

  You have Ralph.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:49Mayim Bialik?

  And he has children from, uh, his previous marriage relationship. So there's four?

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  There's four, there's four. We had a baby one year after that first date.

• 1:03:02Mayim Bialik?

  Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. So he, he had two, you had Ralph, I see. So we truly blended.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  We truly blended.

• 1:03:10Mayim Bialik?

  And, and what is your life generally like now? I mean, obviously that's a very, very full house.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Um, it's a very full, I know, it's like one of the, the oldest just moved into his first apartment.

• 1:03:20Mayim Bialik?

  Wow.

• 1:03:21Speaker 02

  And the youngest just learned how to ride a bike. It's like, we just have a very big spread of humanity. And I do think that it's like really easy to be like, oh, like what a happy ending. And also, and this kind of gets back to the comparison stuff too. You know, where people are like, oh, God, I'd rather, oh, would I rather date a widow? Or would I rather date someone who's divorced? You know, like, oh, or like, isn't he jeal, isn't Matthew jealous? I'm like, yeah, he can't wait to be dead. What are you talking about? What is he jealous of? Um, but, you know, you can't have a blended family unless two other families have been destroyed, like, and so all of our kids, except for baby, like, know what loss is. And they know what trauma is.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  And I want so badly for my life's work to be making sure that they know that your current happiness or your future happiness does not, you know, eliminate any suffering, that your suffering does not preclude you from ever experiencing happiness again, that you are allowed to love what you had and love what you have, and that those things do not need to be. You know, at odds with each other.

• 1:04:34Mayim Bialik?

  I mean, I think adults need to hear that.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  Adults need that. Like, it's true. It's like, I, I, I'm always so surprised at the number of widows I meet who are like, oh, no, I just cannot find a guy who can like, handle, like, my dead husband. I'm like, what does he want to fight him? Like, what's, like, what's the, and, and like, this is, you know, a family portrait of me and Aaron and Ralph? And then, that's, of, I can't.

• 1:05:00Mayim Bialik?

  You're doing great.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  This is, you know, it's like, we have photos of like, all of our family, like, up on one wall, because it's all, like, it's all fine. It's all, it's all fine. And it does not need to be, uh, a, a competition. And it doesn't need to be that way. I don't know. It's, people are so, and I think I was like this too, like, on that second date, when I was like, ugh, you had a girlfriend before, and you just broke up with her? Ick. Never. You could, we could never be in love. It's like, why not? Like, why not? Like, we are all like, the sum of all of our experiences, and that is okay. You're never going to find a person who is tabula rasa. And if you do, that is a red flag.

• 1:05:45Mayim Bialik?

  Divorce, obviously, is a different kind of, you know, um, it's a different kind of grieving, you know, it's like the lowercase g. But, but also, I think that's something really important that you point out, because also, you, you feel like, gosh, well, this happened to my kid, or my kids, so now I need to try and avoid anything that even makes them feel negative. And I mean, I think so many of us fall into that. It's like, we put a lot of, it's projecting also, you know, it's putting a lot of, like, oh, here's grief I can feed with candy. Here's grief I can take to Disney World, right? Like, this grief, I can dress up nice, right? And, um, yeah, I remember that was like, one of my first, not mistakes, but questions, you know, when we got divorced, like I said to the,

• 1:06:28Mayim Bialik?

  to our, our family therapist, I'm like, well, what if he wants to like, see his, and we, she's like, no, you don't have to call every time, you don't have to write a letter, you don't have to be able to produce the image of your ex, who might be at work, or whatever. Sometimes you just have to sit in shitty feelings, like, it's like a terrible lesson. It's terrible for adults to do, you know, which is why we drink and do drugs. Anyway.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  And, and like keep so many therapists employed like, and we do this for our kids so that the next generation of mental health professionals have job security.

• 1:07:03Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Okay. Like, but yeah, we want, I don't know, we all, we're built to, we're built for comfort, right? Like, we're not built to be like, God, how can I like, just step into this and like, feel as bad as possible?

• 1:07:16Mayim Bialik?

  We're built for, we're built for survival, you know, and, and exceptional things happen to humans when we exist. And, you know, we also, we don't grow up typically anymore in ways that put us in touch with nature, life cycles, like, we're just, we're very, you know, removed from that. We have a very, you know, pristine image of what we'd like. And, you know, the media delivers it to us for sure.

• 1:07:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't know, like, when Aaron died, I was like, do I have to call, do I have to get him up here like now? Like, it felt like, like I have a, I have a, I have a crime scene or something and I need to, and it's like, no, he could have stayed for like, hours. Like, we could have taken our time, but I just didn't know.

• 1:07:59Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  And I do think, you know, I never saw death, I never saw like, grief really up close. And I do think it's helpful for kids. They can, they can, they are tuned to how adults feel.

• 1:08:19Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, yeah. You think you're hiding it, they can tell.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  You're bad. You're a bad actor.

• 1:08:24Mayim Bialik?

  You're always a bad actor with your children.

• 1:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Your kids are like, I'm not buying it. Really? Things are good? And you're like, things are so good that my mascara is on my chin. Uh, cause that's how I like to wear it. So thank you for that. Uh, kids know, they know. And it's scarier for them when we act like it's not a thing.

• 1:08:43Mayim Bialik?

  When a child's internal reality does not match the external reality, it feels like they, it makes you feel crazy as a child. And kids don't really know how to process, I feel crazy. And what it looks like is, I don't trust my feelings or yours. And you get all sorts of defenses and all the things that Jonathan and I love to talk about.

• 1:09:06Mayim Bialik?

  Nora, it's really, really a pleasure to talk to you. We really appreciate your honesty and your vulnerability. And just so I can get this right, your first book was It's Okay to Laugh, Crying is Cool Too.

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:09:18Mayim Bialik?

  Then we have second memoir, as it were, No Happy Endings, which is about sort of the happy ending, which everyone's like, oh, look, you figured it out. Everything's fine. And then there is a Hot Young Widows Club.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the TED book.

• 1:09:33Mayim Bialik?

  Yep. There's also a Bad Moms book, which is-

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  There's a Bad Moms book?

• 1:09:37Mayim Bialik?

  I actually didn't even realize that, and that's super awesome.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Nobody does. I love that so much. The guys who wrote the movie, I think like the studio got a book deal and they were like, will you write this book?

• 1:09:48Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah, it says, a hilarious and heartfelt book based on the movie.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Mayim Bialik?

  That put you into labor in 2016.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  It put me into labor and I love, I love that movie and I love the guys who wrote it. They're so kind and generous. It was supposed to be a ghost write and then they were like, no, you wrote it. Put your name on it.

• 1:10:04Mayim Bialik?

  Okay, but then we have a new book.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  Then we have a new book.

• 1:10:07Mayim Bialik?

  And tell us briefly, what's that one?

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  So Bad Vibes Only is essays about, funny essays about hard things in modern living, like parenting and your children's privacy and growing up as a millennial in the tackiest generation. It's not our fault, just like the tackiest era of media that was just hellbent on giving us all eating disorders and then now having Gen Z be like, um, actually it's body neutrality and being like, we're working on it, okay? We're working, your mom didn't give you Snackwell's cookies, okay? Like, your mom didn't give you like 100 calorie packs in your lunch, all right? So just give us a minute, we're, we're trying.

• 1:10:52Mayim Bialik?

  Thank you, Nora, and we look forward to seeing what, what, what you write for us next.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  Yes, thank you.

• 1:11:03Mayim Bialik?

  When I asked her that question, what did I say? How did I say it?

• 1:11:08Jonathan Cohen?

  She said, "Do you..." First of all, you started with, "Do you know?" And anytime Mayim says, "Do you know something?" She's not asking because she's curious what you think. She has an entire thesis written out that she wants to explain to you, but she just wants to warm-

• 1:11:24Mayim Bialik?

  What did I say?

• 1:11:25Jonathan Cohen?

  She just wants to warm you up enough to get that in.

• 1:11:28Mayim Bialik?

  What did I say? I said, "Do you know..." What it wa- Well, because she said she finally felt-

• 1:11:36Jonathan Cohen?

  She finally felt grief when Matthew was around. It made it hit, I think she said. And you said something to the effect of, "Do you know..."

• 1:11:43Mayim Bialik?

  I'm making my Jell-O pudding pop face.

• 1:11:48Jonathan Cohen?

  "Do you know why having Matthew around made it hit?" Finally.

• 1:11:52Mayim Bialik?

  She had a very good attempt at an explanation.

• 1:11:55Jonathan Cohen?

  She was like, "I'm having a man around and..."

• 1:11:58Mayim Bialik?

  Well, she said it reminded her of all the things that Aaron wouldn't experience.

• 1:12:03Jonathan Cohen?

  And also, sometimes having someone else around is a grounding force. It helps us sort of not just cycle in our own little world.

• 1:12:08Mayim Bialik?

  You want to know what I think?

• 1:12:10Jonathan Cohen?

  Yes, I do want to know.

• 1:12:11Mayim Bialik?

  Well, so, one of the funny things about grief is grief bleeds into every emotion.

• 1:12:21Jonathan Cohen?

  Yep.

• 1:12:22Mayim Bialik?

  And specifically, you know, in that more acute phase, you know, for me, for sure, in that first year.

• 1:12:30Mayim Bialik?

  You know how like when you see a commercial that like makes you sad or, you know? It's like that, but times a million when you've lost someone, especially someone, you know, very close to you. So what happens is, it's a, you know, there's a certain conservation that the brain has. And when you feel other things, grief feeds in. So if, it's not so much that like, "Oh, I'll never feel joy again." It's that physiologically and neurologically, in that acute phase of grief, every emotion like love feels like guilt and death and grief.

• 1:13:14Mayim Bialik?

  Meaning it's like a, all roads lead to grief. And what it is, is it's partially protective.

• 1:13:21Jonathan Cohen?

  Well, she had been not feeling anything.

• 1:13:23Mayim Bialik?

  Correct.

• 1:13:24Jonathan Cohen?

  So she had been like this sort of-

• 1:13:26Mayim Bialik?

  Well, she had, she had been feeling other things.

• 1:13:28Jonathan Cohen?

  I mean, she was trying to distract enormously. So as soon as she slows down enough.

• 1:13:32Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and also starts feeling the other things the body can feel. It's that reminder of like, oh, but the overwhelming feeling is grief. That's how deep it is.

• 1:13:44Jonathan Cohen?

  Maybe that's the Ask Myself Anything. Why did Matthew make it hit? She also said that she didn't want to have people see her like that and just feel bad for her. And that if they saw her break down like that, they wouldn't see her any other way. And there's this notion that we can't be sad, broken around other people. They're like, how many times you say it's gonna be okay? Well, it's only gonna, it's only gonna be okay if it's, you're allowed to not be okay for a while.

• 1:14:11Mayim Bialik?

  Jonathan, maybe you could speak to this a little bit because you have a very specific reaction just when you're sad, sometimes when you're deeply sad. I cannot say the right thing.

• 1:14:24Jonathan Cohen?

  No, you can't.

• 1:14:24Mayim Bialik?

  Like, I literally, I, I.

• 1:14:27Jonathan Cohen?

  We had to have a talk about it.

• 1:14:28Mayim Bialik?

  We did have to have a talk about it, but maybe, do you want to speak to it a little bit? And everybody's gonna be different. Like, you know, a lot of people say like, oh, I don't really wanna, I don't really need to like bore you with the details about my dead. I will bore you with it. Like, I will tell you about every freckle on my dad's face. I'll tell you like.

• 1:14:45Jonathan Cohen?

  You made a movie about it.

• 1:14:47Mayim Bialik?

  I did, I made a movie about dads dying. No, but I'm saying like, everybody's got a different thing, you know? And also like, the, the Jewish grief that I come from, people were like, he wouldn't want you to be sad. I'm like, oh, well, you clearly didn't know my father. He would want me to make a movie about it. Throw my body into the grave with my mother, cover ourselves up. Like, everybody's got different.

• 1:15:09Jonathan Cohen?

  Dig out just to claim your space.

• 1:15:11Mayim Bialik?

  Screaming, a mess, a mess. But you have a very different kind of emotional processing I have experienced than I do. So what, what is it when you're deep? And I don't just mean like, oh, I'm sad. Like, when you're experiencing something deep, what is it?

• 1:15:26Jonathan Cohen?

  I, for a very long time, had a very difficult time accessing grief.

• 1:15:30Mayim Bialik?

  For yourself?

• 1:15:31Jonathan Cohen?

  For myself. So I would not want to feel sad. If I felt sad, I couldn't let myself cry.

• 1:15:37Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:15:38Jonathan Cohen?

  So then, when I actually would access it, and if I felt safe enough around someone, it wouldn't take me years often to feel safe around. And there's only a selective group of people on this earth that I will sort of go there with.

• 1:15:50Mayim Bialik?

  It's a weird club.

• 1:15:51Jonathan Cohen?

  Very small and exclusive club. No one wants to be a part of it. But when I do allow myself, or I'm able to, I say, because it's not really, I don't really feel like I have a choice if I'm...

• 1:16:03Mayim Bialik?

  Okay.

• 1:16:03Jonathan Cohen?

  So if I'm able to get to that place,

• 1:16:08Jonathan Cohen?

  I can be distracted.

• 1:16:09Mayim Bialik?

  What?

• 1:16:11Jonathan Cohen?

  So I can't just like, open the floodgates and go there. So if someone's like, if I feel like I'm imposing on that person, if I feel like they're like, "Shh, it's gonna be okay," and I'm like, "Be quiet, it's not gonna be okay," and then it will like, pull me out of this like, because I'm trying to ride this wave of emotion.

• 1:16:27Mayim Bialik?

  You know when you're like drunk, or stoned, or whatever, and like, some, some real shit happens, like there's a car accident,

• 1:16:34Jonathan Cohen?

  You just get sober.

• 1:16:34Mayim Bialik?

  And all of a sudden, you're sober. That's what it is. It's like, you're in grief, but if anything disturbs it, you're like, "Now I can't feel my grief," and it's your fault.

• 1:16:41Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah, I get grief constipated.

• 1:16:44Mayim Bialik?

  Grief-stipated.

• 1:16:45Jonathan Cohen?

  Grief-stipated, exactly. Uh, but no, it's a real thing. And like, if someone touches me too much, and they're like, trying to comfort me, and I'm like, "No, get away. It's not about you comforting me. I just need to feel my thing, and I just need you to pause."

• 1:17:00Mayim Bialik?

  Right.

• 1:17:01Jonathan Cohen?

  And just exist for a moment without distracting me.

• 1:17:05Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and I think also, you know, to kind of bring it back to, you know, to what Nora was talking about, like, it sounds like there was a lot of distraction that she did, which, you know, I didn't want to like, poke at her life any more than she let me.

• 1:17:18Jonathan Cohen?

  I wanted to ask, and I don't know how she does this.

• 1:17:21Mayim Bialik?

  So afraid of what you're gonna say.

• 1:17:22Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah, I'm sure. How does she not look at Matthew and think at any moment, something's wrong with him?

• 1:17:29Mayim Bialik?

  Oh, you know, I, I did, I, I almost asked that, but I, I do feel

• 1:17:37Mayim Bialik?

  like, the, the process she's been through, sounds like it has truly brought her to a place of kind of being present, meaning like, literally, doing what's in front of her. You know, I think having another child, uh, was probably a really, really, you know, huge transformative shift in kind of,

• 1:17:55Jonathan Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:55Mayim Bialik?

  You know, kind of creating that family. Um, but, and I actually thought of you, when I thought of asking her that, because, you know, again... And this is something we lean on a lot here. There's a tremendous variability, you know, to people's tolerance, to people's processing. And even the fact that like, and I wasn't really, you know, like, to say it's very Midwestern, to be like, "How much therapy do we need?", right? Everybody's gonna kind of have a different, you know, path and way around it. And you and I are much more like, sit in that melancholy kind of zone, you know, really deeply like, feel it to a place that it marinates. Like, I'm a real marinator, you know? You're Sunshine Roses? I'm sorry, did I, am I just meeting you?

• 1:18:41Jonathan Cohen?

  I don't know how I would be now. I mean, the biggest grief I experienced, I was a kid, four. And at that time, I think there was an enormous amount of shock I can relate to. And then, the other component was just like, I just shoved it all away.

• 1:18:52Mayim Bialik?

  Right, but I mean, just even with general emotion, like, she seems like a person, is what I'm saying, who, who naturally, you know, has an ability to, to move through things, you know, in a way that I was not gifted with.

• 1:19:05Jonathan Cohen?

  She's a faster emotional metabolism?

• 1:19:07Mayim Bialik?

  She's just different, you know? Just different, everybody's different.

• 1:19:12Jonathan Cohen?

  Different is okay.

• 1:19:13Mayim Bialik?

  Different is okay. All right, for those of you who are not following us on Instagram, please go to @bialekbreakdown. Make sure you subscribe. You can subscribe on the YouTube channel, uh, listen to us anywhere that you get podcasts. If you'd like to watch us, though, definitely go to my YouTube channel, subscribe, hit the little bell icon, ding, so you can get notifications. And, go to bialikbreakdown.com. If you want to ask me anything, you can submit a question there. B-I-A-

• 1:19:40Jonathan Cohen?

  L-A-K-

• 1:19:40Mayim Bialik?

  -breakdown.com.

• 1:19:42Jonathan Cohen?

  That's it.

• 1:19:42Mayim Bialik?

  From our breakdown, to the one we hope you never have, we'll see you next time.