Charlamagne Tha God: Feelings Are The Hardest Thing To Acknowledge

Charlamagne Tha God, co-host of “The Breakfast Club,” talks with Anderson about grief and his experiences with anxiety and depression. He reflects on the death of his close friend Jas Waters, healing from childhood trauma and why grief is something “you can’t run from.” For more of “All There Is with Anderson Cooper” visit cnn.com/allthereis. Host: Anderson Cooper Showrunner: Haley Thomas Producers: Emily Williams and Kyra Dahring Video Editor: Eric Zembrzuski Technical Director: Dan Dzula Bookers: Kerry Rubin and Kari Pricher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Anderson Cooper?

  Welcome to All There Is. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. My guest today is Charlamagne the God, a bestselling author, television host, and co-host of the popular radio show and podcast, The Breakfast Club. Charlamagne has been very candid over the years about mental health. He started a foundation called the Mental Wealth Alliance to close the mental health gap in black communities. He's also been open about his childhood experiences with bullying, sexual abuse, and his difficult relationship with his dad. He lost a cousin and two close friends to suicide. One of them, Jas Waters, was a writer on the show This Is Us, who died by suicide during the pandemic in 2020. Charlamagne has four kids, all daughters, with his wife, Jessica Gadsden. We sat down in New York last year.

• 1:18Anderson Cooper?

  I saw you being interviewed once, and you were asked, "What are you most afraid of feeling?"

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25Anderson Cooper?

  Do you remember what your answer was?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 1:28Anderson Cooper?

  You said grief.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Oh, wow, wow, wow.

• 1:30Anderson Cooper?

  Instantly, you said grief, the grief of death, 100%. You try not to think about it or speak about it. First of all, you do know this is a podcast about grief.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Absolutely. That's why when you asked me that just now, I didn't know what my answer was then. But the first thing that popped in my mind was it probably had something to do with mortality.

• 1:45Anderson Cooper?

  What is it about grief that, I don't know, frightens the right word? Or just you just don't want to allow yourself?

• 1:51Speaker 02

  I've looked at grief a lot of different ways throughout my life. I've been blessed to lose people that are close to me, but not like others have. I have my mom still here, my father still here. But my grandmother, who passed away in 2006, my mother's mom, like, that was one that was like, wow, you know? But I guess in order to deal with it, you don't deal with it, if that makes sense? Because even with my grandmother, I think I cried like once. I cried immediately when I first got the news. And then I think I cried like a week later because I didn't go to the funeral. Like, I don't even, I would not-

• 2:25Anderson Cooper?

  Really? Wow.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I can't do funerals.

• 2:26Anderson Cooper?

  So how old were you when, so 2006, you said she died? So you were, you're an adult.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I was in my 30s.

• 2:32Anderson Cooper?

  It's interesting because I didn't cry. I mean, I cried a little bit when I was 10, my dad died. But I've run from it my entire life, and it has hit me like a punch in the face.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  I don't know if grief is something you do or if it's just something you feel. My homegirl Jas Waters, who committed suicide during COVID.

• 2:49Anderson Cooper?

  Jas was a writer, a very close friend of yours.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And my homeboy Jarrell Garnett, who actually got shot and killed. It comes in waves, right? Like, these are people that I probably do think about every day. But like, when you get that feeling of grief, like, damn, I miss that person.

• 3:03Anderson Cooper?

  You were talking about, I think it was the day after, that your friend Jas had died. And you were saying that you didn't even kind of know what to think about it, and you haven't compartmentalized it yet. And I'm wondering, is that the way you deal with things? Compartmentalizing them, like putting them in boxes?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Not boxes, but trying to get an understanding. You know how they say people feel what they don't understand? So ever since I've heard that phrase my whole life, I've tried to get an understanding of something, just so I don't have a fear of it. And I think that's what it is for me with grief.

• 3:34Anderson Cooper?

  You've been incredibly vocal and bravely so about a lot of, you know, mental health struggles. You talked about you had your first panic attack, you think, when you were like in first grade.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Absolutely. The first day I got dropped off and my mom left me, I can remember that feeling to this day, like that uncontrollable, heavy breathing, heart pounding, you know, tears flowing. I just could not calm down. It was just a straight panic attack. And I was just afraid because my mom had left me in the first grade.

• 4:05Anderson Cooper?

  When were you actually able to put a name to it?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Oh, that wasn't until much later in life. I had to be like 31 years old, 32 years old, because I had gotten fired from radio for the fourth time. And I was back living home with my mother in Moncks Corner. And my daughter was like one or two. I remember driving down, you know, I-26 in South Carolina.

• 4:22Anderson Cooper?

  You were going to a comedy show.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  I was going, I was going to my man Lil Duval's comedy show in Orangeburg. I mean, this was a bad panic attack. Like, I've had the panic attacks where I've had to go check myself in the ER because my, this heart wouldn't stop beating. But this one really felt like it was about to be bad. And I remember pulling over, getting some water, taking a few deep breaths. And I was just like, just let me make it through the night. Made it through the night, went to the doctor the next day. And he was the first person to say to me, "Your heart is fine. It sounded like you had a panic attack. Do you suffer from anxiety?" And I was like, anxiety, what is that? And when he told me what it was, I'm like, oh. And he goes, "Are you stressed about something?" And I'm like, hell, yeah, I'm stressed about something. I'm living back at home with my mom. I just got fired for the fourth time, collecting unemployment checks. So I had a lot of stress, so in my mind, all I had to do was get another job. I just had to get back on radio and everything would be fine.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  But the next gig I got was The Breakfast Club. Five or six years later, I'm having more success than I've ever had in my life. But all of those problems still exist. The anxiety, the bouts of depression, it's all still there.

• 5:18Anderson Cooper?

  You still feel that, that anxiety?

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Yes, but I know how to deal with it now. And I think that's the most important thing. Even when you have kids, like, I can see those same traits in my kids because my daddy dealt with it, my sister dealt with it, and I deal with it. So when you see it in a child, you're able to recognize it and kind of know what they need to do. I didn't have that when I was young.

• 5:39Anderson Cooper?

  That's been so big for me, having kids. My mom had this sadness behind her eyes. And I didn't know what it was for much of my life until I kind of learned her childhood and her story. And when I had kids, I looked in the mirror and I saw that same sadness in my eyes. And I was like, I do not want my kids to see that in my eyes. And I want to, I want to face this stuff.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Oh, that's something I write down. I actually have written down, "I want to raise trauma-free kids." I don't know if that's possible, you know? But I at least know that that trauma is not going to come from inside the household. I pray that it doesn't, you know? A lot of the traumas that we probably experienced growing up, I'm 47, came from literally right there, inside the house, from right there in our family.

• 6:22Anderson Cooper?

  It's in the house. It's like one of those horror movies. You realize how much is actually in the house.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  That family should be a safe space. I got one of my younger daughters, she really does like act out a lot. Somebody told me once that it's because they feel safe around you. Like, when your child acts out, it's because they feel safe around you. Because I never would do that to my pops, at all. My pops was a heavy disciplinarian. I remember my first breakthrough in therapy was me crying because I realized my daddy used to discipline me for things he never taught me.

• 6:49Anderson Cooper?

  What was the moment you decided, "I'm going to do therapy"? So I think you started, you said in 2015, 2016?

• 6:54Speaker 02

  2015. I just remember I was on vacation, just like a family thing. And I just remember feeling something I hadn't felt in a long time, and that was just peace. And I was like, yo, how do I feel like this all the time without having to vacate? Because we can't vacation all the time. We got to do this, we got to work, right? So to be able to afford those vacations. And so when I thought about the way I was even living at the time, caught up in the whole hip-hop radio personality lifestyle, not doing right by my wife, still dealing with the anxiety and the depression, experiencing this new level of success. Like, I just felt like if I didn't, you know, go unpack some of this, which I now know to be unhealed trauma, I was going to crash and burn.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  And so I just literally started to go. I started to go just for my anxiety and depression. But therapy, man, you start peeling back those layers. Next thing you know, you're like, oh, my God, I hate my-

• 7:47Anderson Cooper?

  Maybe we should do two days a week.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, oh, I just thought I came here for anxiety and depression, but I hate my dad. But I didn't. I just, I didn't get from him what I thought a father should give to a son.

• 8:00Anderson Cooper?

  The moment I realized I hadn't grieved and that that was the source of kind of a lot of the struggles I'd had throughout my life was I found this essay my dad had written about the importance of grieving in the 70s. And I'd never seen it before, just randomly found it in his files. And in it, he quoted this doctor who said that "A child who doesn't grieve or isn't able to kind of express their emotions as a child will end up throughout their lives essentially suppressing their emotions and having," I think the quote was, "a melancholy they can never quite put their finger on." And I wonder, like, how much of the depression you felt and the anxiety is from? I mean, it seems like it's all stuff from childhood.

• 8:45Anderson Cooper?

  As I think most people's stuff is all from childhood.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, as you get older, you realize that you're going to spend so much of your adult life trying to heal you in a child. And even when we have these conversations about grief, I'm like, man, what's worse? Grieving when somebody has passed or grieving when somebody's alive? And what I mean by that is, same thing I'm saying about, you know, being a child who felt like I didn't get from my father what I wanted. In a way, I grieved that. There's a grief behind that because I wanted to just be a young kid, young son who was like getting that, like, love from their dad that they thought they got. And I'm not saying my dad didn't love me, he did. But my dad also raised me out of fear and not love because he didn't want me to make the same mistakes that he made. And that's, when I got older, and he read actually my second book, which is called Shook One: Anxiety Playing Tricks on Me,

• 9:32Speaker 02

  which is literally me just talking about all the things that I learned in therapy. And he read that book, and it was the same week that my younger cousin, he was 25, he completed suicide that week. And so my dad was in that space, and he called me. It was the week of Thanksgiving 2018. He goes, yo, I just read your second book. And then he's talking about my cousin who completed suicide. And that's when he told me that he was on 10 to 12 different medications growing up for his mental health. He was going to therapy two and three times a week. He tried to kill himself, and me and my oldest sister were much, much younger. And when he told me all of that, Anderson, man, it just allowed me to give him a level of grace that I probably hadn't. But I still haven't had those conversations with him the way that I want to.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Like, there's still so much I'm learning about my dad, even things I'm learning about my mom, and they're still here, right? So there's a level of grief there.

• 10:22Anderson Cooper?

  I think there is grief about- Lots of stuff like it's not just death. It's not having the life you wanted. It's loss of relationships, the anxiety, the, the stress. You talked about molestation as a child. You were eight years old.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  It's the most confusing thing in the world. Like you eight years old. And I don't know if I would have thought it was wrong if she didn't tell me not to tell folks. You know, when you know, cause you're sneaking around like, so why, why are we sneaking for? If it's, if it's okay, then it should be okay. Like, why do we gotta sneak? So, oh, you don't want me to tell my grandma? You don't want me to tell my mom? Hmm, something ain't right about this. Then you now you got a jerry curl and I don't like the smell of it. You know what? Stay away from me. Like, like that's literally where my mind was at with it. And so.

• 11:00Anderson Cooper?

  That's how it ended. You told her to stay away cause you didn't like that.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  I had, you remember those little firecrackers? Like they're like little white paper and you can throw them and they pop? I just used to throw those at her, throw those at her. And that's when she was like, oh, you know, and she used to call me ugly and you had a big nose. And then I started letting her do it again because I didn't want her calling me ugly. That hurt more than being molested, right? So it's just like, okay, have your way. I don't even quite remember when it stopped, but I just know growing up as an adult, I realized, oh, that's why I'm a people pleaser. That's why I will let somebody, you know, get the best of me as long as they feel good. I'll take the lesser. I'll take the L as long as they feel good because of what I experienced when I was eight

• 11:45Speaker 02

  years old, because I didn't want her to call me ugly and say I had a big nose. So I would just do whatever I needed to do to please her. That's it. And that shows up, man, that shows up in high school, wanting to make everybody laugh just because you wanted to distract people from what hurt you. If she was saying, I got a big nose and I'm ugly. Okay, well, let me be the funny person or let me be the disruptive person. Let me do all of these different things to, to just distract from me. Talk about, oh, he's so crazy, blah, blah, blah. But at least you're not touching on my insecurities.

• 12:18Anderson Cooper?

  Not getting to the core of what's, what's there.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Exactly. I always say for men, it is very hard for us just to admit our feelings are hurt. I wonder the last time, Anderson, you've said to somebody, you hurt my feelings.

• 12:31Anderson Cooper?

  When I was trying to get my son to admit that his feelings had been hurt by somebody. I said, oh, you know, sometimes my feelings are hurt, but in real life, like not with my kid, never.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  How often do your feelings hurt?

• 12:42Anderson Cooper?

  A lot of the time.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Exactly. But we don't ever express that. And sometimes, especially in relationships that you have with people, it opens up so much communication when you just simply say, yo, man, you hurt my feelings. Straight up. For whatever reason, those four words open up communication in a way that I can't even really explain. It just does. Like somebody that you love, I'm not even talking about like a significant other. I'm just talking about a regular, everyday person that's your friend, does something that you don't like and you kind of like, you know, grit your teeth a little bit or clench your fist a little bit, like, but what you really wanted to say to that person that, yo, you hurt my feelings. And now y'all can have a conversation about it. You might be stewing for three, four days, sometimes a week, acting funny with a person and, yo, what's wrong with you? And like, oh, everything's good, everything's good.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  No, that person hurt your feelings and you want to say it to them. So just say it. You hurt my feelings. It just disarms people. And then for whatever reason, you're able to just spill your guts and tell this person exactly, you know, how it is that they hurt your feelings.

• 13:41Anderson Cooper?

  So many of the people who I know who have become successful in society's eyes are driven by rage or anger or childhood feelings of inadequacy. For many people, it overwhelms them and destroys them. For others, it fuels them.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  It's fuel when you don't know any better. It can be poison when you do. And, and what I mean by that is when you don't know any better, like you don't have any choice, right? Like you don't have a choice but to keep it moving. Like you literally have to just keep going cause you don't know any other options and you think something's wrong with you. So you just keep it moving. Like you can't have fear. Like, you know, even if you grew up in the church, I grew up with Jehovah Witness. My grandma was a Baptist. They teach you fear and faith can't coexist. So whenever those feelings do come in you of anxiety, you ain't got no choice but to keep it pushing. But then when you know better and you start to understand what anxiety is, you realize just keeping it pushing can actually kill you. You can't just keep it pushing.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  You need to go deal with whatever's causing that anxiety inside of you, which is usually just unhealed trauma.

• 14:46Anderson Cooper?

  I had read that sharks have to keep moving in order to force water through their gills so they can breathe. And that's why sharks can't stop. They have to keep moving. And I used to imagine myself as this shark, like constantly having to move, constantly having to work. And that idea is really warped, obviously.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  You know, staying busy, just for the sake of being busy is a response to trauma.

• 15:08Anderson Cooper?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Because you're trying to keep your mind off what it is you don't want to deal with. That's why nowadays I have no problem not doing anything. And that's how I know I've done enough work on myself cause I'm not running from anything. Like those moments when you actually can sit down and be still and you don't want to go anywhere, like I want to be at home. That is a great feeling to have as opposed to, oh, I gotta be going to do, I gotta fly this place or I, I need to be in the studio doing this or I need to be writing, I need to be doing. That is just sometimes a response to trauma because you don't want to actually deal with what's keeping you pushing through that water like, like the sharks do.

• 15:49Anderson Cooper?

  More from Charlamagne in a moment.

• 15:53Speaker 03

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• 16:55Speaker 04

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• 17:08Anderson Cooper?

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• 17:22Speaker 04

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• 17:28Speaker 05

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• 17:36Anderson Cooper?

  Your dad had told you he had thought about or tried suicide. Your cousin, your friend Jas, I think other people in your life as well. The thing to me that's so insidious about suicide is once that word has entered your lexicon and you've talked about having thoughts, like those thoughts come to you and they thankfully leave, but can you talk a little bit about that?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Yes, there has been times where I've thought about that. I remember one time sitting in the backyard, the end of the year of COVID or maybe the next year, but I remember sitting in my backyard and it was summertime. And I literally could hear Jas's voice clear as day say, you still here? Meaning like, like you still here, like on earth? That's how I trans, that's literally, like, you know how sometimes you feel like you're having a conversation with somebody in your mind and it's like, I heard her say, you still here? And I'm like, yeah, I'm still here. And then she kind of laughed like she was joking, like, of course you are, you know, like you got things to do. Like, but that, that's literally what I was thinking in that moment.

• 18:37Anderson Cooper?

  I heard you also say something about hearing your grandma and you just talked about hearing Jasmine. Do you believe, you know, Jas is watching you? Do you believe you can, really?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Without question.

• 18:48Anderson Cooper?

  You feel friends you've lost?

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Not just feel, see. I've had big, big dreams. Like when my grandmother first passed away, it was two dreams. I've only had two, but it was two dreams I had of her. Remember Max Headroom?

• 19:00Anderson Cooper?

  Yeah, of course.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  And remember like it was like the TV screen, like every head was on the TV screen? I had a dream, it was like that, but it was my grandmother's face and it was just like static and she was like, and I was like, oh, what was that? But then the next time I had a dream of her, and I don't even remember the distance between the dreams, the next time I had a dream, I was sitting in her house, in the chair that she passed away in. And it was my grandmother, but she looked very, she looked young, long, beautiful black hair. And we were having a conversation about my niece who had just been born. And so she literally was having a conversation. I was like, yo, have you seen, and I said my niece's name. And my grandma's like, oh yeah, I've seen her. She's so beautiful. It was literally that clear. I've done ayahuasca. I'm going to do it again, but I did it once a couple of years ago.

• 19:43Anderson Cooper?

  What did you take away from it?

• 19:45Speaker 02

  It was a few different things.

• 19:46Anderson Cooper?

  You did three days?

• 19:46Speaker 02

  I did three days.

• 19:47Anderson Cooper?

  So multiple, multiple Ts and?

• 19:50Speaker 02

  Multiple. Literally every single.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Trauma, every single thing I feel like I might have done wrong to someone, everything that people have done wrong to me, it's like it was on this table like these papers in these cups. Like, I could see it. And I was being forced to look at it and stare at it. And, you know, we talk about grief. Yes, a lot of, a lot of that comes up and some of it is for the dead, but not so much as it is for the living, if that makes sense. Like, it wasn't so much the people who are no longer here, because I feel like those individuals at peace, in a lot of ways, they'll be carrying you through an experience like that. And you'll see them in a different way. You'll see them in their spiritual form. But you're more so grieved about things that are going on right now, friendships that

• 20:35Speaker 02

  you've lost, um, different ways that you can show up, you know, for your kids better, right? Like, you know, feeling upset because you're like, damn, I don't think I'm parenting, you know, in the right way with, with this particular child.

• 20:49Anderson Cooper?

  Did you set, like, an intention with each journey?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  My, my intention was show me what, what needs to be seen. And that's, that's literally what I saw. Like, you know, you talk about grief, man, I, I, for me, it came up that I wasn't the greatest friend to people, you know? Just simply because I was always so much into my own brain. I was always so much into what it is I want to do as far as my career is concerned. But then I realized, I've always been kind of that selfish. And I always haven't been, you know, the best friend to people, right? And a lot of it had to do with my mouth talking too much or saying things that I probably could have had a lot more empathy for, right?

• 21:29Anderson Cooper?

  I think I am not a terribly good friend either. I think a lot of it has to do because I'm so in my own head and have been for so long and have been trying to propel myself to keep moving forward.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:40Anderson Cooper?

  It's not pleasant to be around.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  No. Especially, you know, for me, I've been doing radio for 27 years. And so, when you lock in on a goal.

• 21:49Anderson Cooper?

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  And I've been fired four times.

• 21:51Anderson Cooper?

  Yeah, I've been doing this for 30 years. I mean, it's the same thing.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:54Anderson Cooper?

  It's like.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  And, and, and I can't, I can't worry about what's going on with people in my hometown that I, that I used to love, like, you know, I still love, right? So they might be going through their different experiences and they may not have gotten the same opportunities that I got, or their life took a different path. And then you find yourself judging them and you shouldn't.

• 22:12Anderson Cooper?

  One of your books, Get Honest or Die Trying, which is obviously a play on Get Rich or Die Trying. The title, it reminded me of a quote from Elaine Pagels, who's a religion professor from Princeton. And she told me a quote from the Gospel of Thomas, which is one of the so-called Gnostic Gospels. Jesus says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." You have been so vocal in ways that so few people have in public life about the good and the bad and, and the fears and anxiety. If you bring that forth, what is within you, that will save you.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:55Anderson Cooper?

  And it will save others, frankly. And if you don't bring that forth, if you keep it locked up, as I have for a long time, it will destroy you or can destroy you.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you can't hear what you don't reveal.

• 23:05Anderson Cooper?

  Hmm.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  And so if that's sitting inside of you.

• 23:08Anderson Cooper?

  Jesus could have said it like that more succinctly.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  You can't hear what you don't reveal. JD said in the rap, but he got it from a philosopher. But, yeah, because all of that is sitting inside of you, right?

• 23:17Anderson Cooper?

  I worry so much about all the stuff I don't like about myself, letting my kids inheriting that.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  They won't because you can acknowledge it. I mean, that was the best, the biggest thing for me. It's like a gift and a curse, right? Anxiety can make you too critical of yourself, but then anxiety can also make you very self-aware. So you are me, aren't going to really, our kids aren't going to really have that problem because we have the awareness to look in the mirror and be like, I'm the problem.

• 23:44Anderson Cooper?

  Hmm.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  And if you can teach that to your kids, if you can teach your kids to look in the mirror and say, I'm the problem and I know what I need to fix, I know what I need to work on to be better, then, then to me, you've won in life. If you can look in the mirror and see what's wrong with you, to me, that's like 70% of the battle.

• 24:02Anderson Cooper?

  You said, always check on your strong friends. And if you're a strong friend and someone checks in on you, be open to that check-in. If somebody is giving you that check-in, you have to be open and receive that.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Absolutely. That's something that jazz taught me.

• 24:13Anderson Cooper?

  I do not do that. I should do that, but I don't do that.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  I do. I live with my strongest friend, which is my wife, you know? But just, really just check on your people, period.

• 24:24Anderson Cooper?

  Do you, do you let people check in on you?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Yes, but I'm, it's tender, right? Because when you are going through something and somebody be like, how are you? Like, I'm good. No, how are you really? It's like, oh, you see me?

• 24:37Anderson Cooper?

  Hmm.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  And so that's when I don't have no problem being vulnerable. And I learned that after COVID. After COVID, when you ask somebody, how are they? You better be ready to hear a real answer. Because for some reason, us being in that house for that year, when you would ask somebody how they were during that time, you would get an honest answer. And you had to be ready to sit there for a while to hear how much this person was going to spill to you. So, yeah, depending who it is and how, how I feel in that moment, absolutely, when somebody asks me how I am, I'm going to spill my guts and really appreciate that check-in.

• 25:12Anderson Cooper?

  Is there something that you've learned about grief that would be helpful to others?

• 25:15Speaker 02

  A lot of times when people pass away or you lose a friend, people always say things to you like, oh, you got to give yourself time to grieve. I would say that grief comes in time. You don't pick and choose when it's going to happen. Like, I can be driving through Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and pass someplace that me and somebody like Drell used to hang out, and all of a sudden, all of these different memories flood my mind. Now you, you know, you're grieving. I go to my grandmother's house whenever I'm home in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, and I sit on the porch just to pray. And sometimes I'm overwhelmed with grief, sometimes I'm not.

• 25:53Anderson Cooper?

  Do you allow yourself to give space in those moments? Do you allow yourself to, to grieve?

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, you, I don't think you, I don't think you really have a choice. I think some people try to run from something that's just not, you can't run from it. So even when you say.

• 26:07Anderson Cooper?

  You can run from it for a long time, but it'll still, it'll still catch up to you.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  You think so, but it's on you.

• 26:12Anderson Cooper?

  Yeah.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  Right? You know what I'm saying? Like, it's on you. Like, it's like being in 110-degree heat. That sun is beating down on you. You, you can even stand in the shade for a second, you still going to feel that heat. So I wonder, like, can you really run from it? I don't think so. I think that people either choose to stop and feel it, or they try to distract themselves from what it is they're still feeling anyway. Feelings are the hardest thing for us to acknowledge. And you know why they're the hardest things for us to acknowledge? Because there's just some things that we simply don't want to feel.

• 26:42Anderson Cooper?

  Hmm.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  But you're going to feel it anyway. I don't care if it's grief, I don't care if it's sadness, I don't care if it's depression. When you go smoke that weed or drink that alcohol or go sit with your therapist, you're still feeling these things anyway. If anything, it just lessens the blow, but you still feel it. So I would rather just feel it in its whole totality. For me, it's just like, yo, just, just deal with that grief. Like, that is a very, very hard thing to do. And none of us understand death past the understanding of one day we're all going to die. And I think that's what complicates things. Even when you grieve, you're not just grieving because you missed the person, you hope that that person really is in a better place. We say that, but we say that for ourselves. You do know that, right?

• 27:28Speaker 02

  Because we truly have no idea where our loved ones go after they pass. But we say, oh, they're in a better place. How do we know? We don't, we really, and I'm not saying they're in a bad place, I'm just saying we don't know. I'm just simply saying, we need to all stop trying to figure out what happens after we go. And just enjoy this current moment that we're in. Because that, that can cause you a lot of grief too, stewing over things that you have no control of. I don't know how this is going to play out after I pass. So how much of this current moment am I missing thinking about what happens after I go?

• 28:07Anderson Cooper?

  Charlamagne, thank you very much.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Anderson, appreciate you, brother. Thank you for having me, man.

• 28:12Anderson Cooper?

  If you have thoughts you'd like to share about the conversation with Charlamagne, you can leave us a comment on our grief community page, cnn.com/allthereis. And if there's something you've learned in grief that would be helpful for others, we'd love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 404-827-1805. On Thursday, October 8th, I hope you join me at 9:15 PM for my streaming show, All There Is Live. It's on every other Thursday. You can watch new episodes live on cnn.com/allthereis. And it's free on our community page for a week after it airs live. Also on Thursday, October 8th, we're releasing a new podcast episode with Sheryl Sandberg. Sheryl served as Chief Operating Officer of Meta, formerly Facebook, from 2008 to 2022.

• 28:54Anderson Cooper?

  Her husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly at 47 while they were vacationing in Mexico back in 2015. Sheryl was 45 at the time, their two kids were 10 and 7. Years later, she found love again with Tom Bernthal, whom she met after Dave's brother introduced them. She joined me to talk about finding love after loss.

• 29:12Speaker 06

  I could mourn for Dave, and I could thank God that I have Tom at the very same moment. And one doesn't cancel out the other.

• 29:24Anderson Cooper?

  The past and the present can be present in the same space.

• 29:29Speaker 06

  I think after death, you can love two people at the same time. Tom is with me today, and I feel so lucky, and I love him like deeply. And I still love Dave. New love doesn't erase the old.

• 29:44Anderson Cooper?

  That conversation is out next Thursday, October 8th, along with a new episode of my streaming show, All There Is Live. Thanks so much for listening.

• 29:51Speaker 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.