May 1, 2019 • 32 mins
Best-selling author Nora McInerny calls herself a reluctant expert in difficult conversations. She talks to us about moving on without moving on when the worst thing in the world happens to you. Plus, her new book No Happy Endings.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
We are sort of living in this culture of relentless
positivity that does not leave space for suffering, which is
not an anomaly of life. It is a part of life.
It is absolutely a part of life. And that's okay.
It's okay for some things to just be bad for
a while, Like, that's okay. You don't have to rush
through and find a silver lining, like crank out some lemonade. Hello,
(00:32):
and welcome to you terms the podcast All about Change.
I'm Lisa Oz and I am Jill Herzig. And you know,
one of the things we've talked about as we've explored
this whole process of change and you turns is the
fact that when you are going through one, particularly if
it's a really tough one, some people really show up
(00:55):
for you. You, by the way, are a shower upper.
I don't think I am, but totally are. I think
the same way that moment, Like, is that guy who
pulls over the car when he sees a fender menders everybody? Everybody? Okay,
that is totally him, you know he I know he's
done this to you on the New Jersey turn. Obviously
(01:15):
it's his duty and it's the right thing. But you're
that person too, you like jump out of the car. Okay,
what can I do? How can I you? Definitely I
never saw myself that way, But thank you. It's true
you compliment, You've done it for me. Some people also
though skit at all, like that's that's a weird thing,
like it's going to infect there happiness, I think, or somehow,
(01:40):
you know, pull them down into the abyss that we
all kind of feel but we try to ignore so
that we can keep going. Yeah, I think I'm one
of those people. There was just a movie, I know.
I saw a trailer for a movie about a kid
who like falls to the water and drowns, and I
think he gets better. But I didn't want to watch
the movie because I'm so afraid of of even that story.
(02:04):
But when someone you know and love that's different in pain,
were right there? Well, our guest today knows all about
pain and storytelling and has combined them in a very
unique way. Um. We are joined today by Nora mcinnerney.
Oh that was beautiful, good job I was coached. Um.
(02:27):
She is the author of several amazing books, her most
recent one is No Happy Endings, and she's also the
host of Terrible Thanks for asking, which is at the
podcast full of these traumatic stories but told in a
completely unique and life affirming way. So thank you so
much for being with us, Thank you for having me.
(02:48):
I think it's important for listeners to know I was
exactly twenty one minutes late cause I got on the
wrong train. But I will tell you another subway story,
which is that I owe you a debt of gratitude.
You have single handed gotten me over my fear of
crying on the New York City subways. I'm so glad.
I can't believe that was a fear of yours because
that was when I lived here, my favorite place to
cry because no one cared. I was born and raised here,
(03:12):
and one of the lessons that you teach your children
is never show vulnerability on the subway. Oh see, I
grew up, so I came here late, and so I
was like, I guess I'll just cry here. Yes, But
when I listened to your podcast, terrible thanks for asking.
I Sometimes the tears sometimes just come, And most recently
I was listening to you reading from No Happy Endings,
(03:34):
and I cried a bunch. So it was on the subway.
Nothing bad happened, it was it was cathartic. But if
something bad had happened, you could have told it, it
would be that would have been a full circle episode
for us. So tell us about the for the for
the listeners who don't know your story, could you just
(03:57):
tell us about November and fourteen? Yes? Uh so for
people who are like, what is wrong with this woman
and why are all of her titles so foreboding in
I lost my second pregnancy on October three, and then
my dad died on October eight, and then my husband
died Novembers, like the worst month in the history of months.
(04:20):
It was. It was almost like to the point where
it's just so ridiculous. You're like, all right, here we go.
And my husband had had brain cancer and he'd been
sick for three years, and my dad had been sick
with cancer very briefly. And I mean, like every pregnancy loss,
it just happens out of nowhere. And it was at
like eleven weeks in in six days, really a route
(04:40):
like you are you are sort of conditioned if you
can just get through that first trimester. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no,
because tomorrow will be the second trimester, so I just
won't have this happen right now. So those were all
of the big losses that I had experienced in my
life period, and I had them all at once, had
them all within six weeks. And how are you not
(05:03):
just like a ball? Oh? I think I was. But
also I had a two year old child. And as
much as he can tell, because children are so perceptive,
so as much as he knew and he said goodbye
to his dad, he knew so much more than his
vocabulary would would indicate. But kids don't um stop. So
(05:26):
even if you are completely destroyed, they wake up, they
want breakfast, they want to play, then they want dinner.
I think in between they want lunch. Like they just
want things and they get them. So Ralph kept me
going in a way that I really don't think that
I would have had that motivation option to fold your tent. No,
(05:47):
because he was he and he was just so wonderful
and he was so wonderfully alive, and he had experienced
these losses to just in a different way. So it
was that. And then it was also a lot of shock,
like your brain just sort of packed stuff up, saves
it for later. And that has been something that I've
(06:09):
really worked through with the podcast and also with this
most recent book too. But but eventually it did catch
up with you. Oh yeah, and and and you sort
of had to hit bottom before you went and found
a therapist, which seems like it was really instrumental in
kind of helping you dig out. Was so instrumental. And
(06:29):
as far as I remember, it was never suggested to
me by anyone ever in the three years that Aaron
was sick. I mean maybe family would have said it
to me, But I look at all of the people
who are surrounding the patient who was Aaron. He was
he was the center of everything. Even after I had
Ralph was so focused on erin, and I could have
(06:51):
used one of those medical professionals saying like, also, do
you need out of van Like do you do you
need to go see somebody? Or you going to even
just the regular doctor, which I wasn't. I didn't see
a doctor the whole time, aside from for my pregnancy,
I didn't see I didn't do anything for myself. And
I could have really used I think a professional saying like,
(07:12):
go do this now. Even when it was pretty clear
that Aaron was terminal, that his cancer was going to
kill him, you just felt like, no, I have to
I have to focus entirely outwardly. I can't. Yeah, and
and like when what I've gone to Like Aaron and
I were, we needed money, so I worked full time
until he entered hospice. Um went to work almost every day.
(07:36):
He worked basically until he entered hospice. So we worked.
I took him to doctor's appointments and the aforementioned baby. Yeah,
we had a baby, and it just of all of
the priorities, it's you know, your your dying husband and
your baby, and then you just sort of slide right
to the bottom. So I'm very grateful. We talked about
(07:59):
showing up a friend who insisted he never came to Minneapolis.
He lives in Los Angeles, but every single day he
called me, he texted me, and he said, you have
to go to therapy. You have to go to therapy
or a friendship is done because I can't watch you
just fall apart, So go take care of yourself. So
clearly something turned around, because it hasn't even been you know,
(08:19):
four years, Um since that dreadful November, and you've written
three books and started a foundation and done ted talks
and have this podcast. How did you shift two being
so productive from the end of the world. Well, I
think that at first, productivity was a part of the shock,
(08:39):
and productivity was away for me, not to grave. It
was a way for me to say, look how good
I am at this? Like have you ever seen a
thirty one year old widow with a kid write a
book in six months? Because I did it, and I
put my makeup on every day, and my house is
still clean. And if you look at me, you cannot
pity me. You can not feel bad for me because
(09:01):
I am fine. Do not talk about me amongst yourselves.
Why so? Because I mean, I warrant to you the
idea that someone would feel. I don't want people. Nobody
wants to be a sad story, right, Like when something
happens to you, you still want to be a full person.
And because I was so young, it was thirty one,
(09:21):
none of my friends had lost a husband, none of
my friends had lost a parent. Yet there was a
very big gap between the people who loved me and
what they were capable of and what I would allow.
And I wasn't I wasn't even ready to say I
I'm I'm really destroyed right now, Like I did not
(09:42):
have the ability to say that or to accept help
from anybody. So at first, the productivity writing that first book,
starting a podcast that was truly a way to to
tell myself, if I can keep moving, this will never
catch up with me. But it did, and it caught
up with me when I met the man who is
my current husband, not a title he loves, but I
(10:04):
think it's so descriptive and h and falling in love
with him gave me like that place to be in,
a place to stop, and a place for somebody else
to almost insist on taking care of me. And I
feel like that's where things really really turned for me,
and the work became not a distraction but became really meaningful.
(10:26):
And I could see it not as trying to prove,
you know, my worth for being alive, like Aaron died
and he was the best, and I have to sort
of earn my right to be here, but really as
a way to honor him, Like what what good do
I do him and everything he was capable of and
won't get to do if I'm doing it out of
(10:48):
anything other than just like the thrill of being alive
and like the honor of being here. Really, it all
looks the same for me outside all achievements sort of
looks the same. But I think you know when you're
doing something from a productive place or when you're just
doing it to like get through something or avoid something.
And that was like the biggest Yeah, the biggest change,
(11:10):
I think is something that really would not be perceptible
to most people. When we come back, we're going to
unpack that a little and talk about that place of healing.
We've been talking with Noria mcinnerney about her personal you turn,
(11:34):
probably one of the most terrifying and traumatic ones from wife, mother,
daughter to widow orphan. But then how we were just
talking the last segment about how you came through it,
and part of it, I guess was meeting your current husband.
Part of that healing for you. Yeah, part of that
(11:54):
was meeting my current husband. And although you say in
your book that the timing felt really awkward, you were terrible.
It was terrible. I mean, there was no there was
never going to be a good time for me to
be happy again, right, like we want everything to be
what is the appropriate time? Like, no one, no one
can answer that. Um. I remember when Aaron was still alive,
(12:19):
I knew this woman and her husband had had brain
cancer for longer, and his had been completely different from Errands.
It had changed his personality, it had really incapacitated him.
And four months after he died, she texted me, I
have a date, and I thought, like I recoiled, and
I told Aaron like, oh, she has a date, and
he was like, don't talk about her that way, like
(12:40):
you have no idea, You have no idea, and he
very rarely reprimanded me, and I just thought, well, I mean, oh,
I would never write like like I will love my
husband so much that I would never love another person,
which as if those two things are contradictory to one another.
And Aaron, maybe seeing you know, my future, just thought like,
(13:03):
please do not think that way. So I met Matthew,
um like fifty two weeks after Aaron died, or wait now,
how many weeks? Fifty weeks? Fifty weeks after Aaron died,
and I just thought like, oh gosh, no, it hasn't
even been a year, as if like, in two weeks
then I can date you and uh, and finding happiness
(13:27):
felt like also that was wrong, you know, like like
it had it was somehow invalidating my love for Aaron
and also my grief for Aeron, which is still it's
present today too, but it's different and I didn't realize
and it was really resistant to the idea that you
(13:49):
can have more than one feeling at once and more
than one experience at once. Is it weird for Matthew?
I mean, is they're like, is he always trying to
live up to the bar that was set by Aaron?
I mean, I that's a good question for him. I
don't think so. They're very different, and our relationship is different,
(14:09):
and Matthews divorced and I certainly don't feel that way
about Yeah, I'm like, I mean, um, but it's also like,
I mean, just two different things. It's like apples and
and pizza. Who knows, like an apple can't be pizza,
I shouldn't try. I like what you're saying about you
turns in general, particularly you know, the really really hard
(14:32):
ones there that there's just no appropriate timeline. There's no um,
you know, there are no seven steps that you can
do in a choreographed way, and you're going to feel
a bunch of things, some of them really shitty and
some of them maybe not not bad at all. At
the same time, yeah, And I think that we're accustomed
(14:53):
to like knowing that a hard thing should feel hard,
but also we don't really want to see that in
one another, Like we don't really want to like you.
You mentioned Lisa as a person who shows up, and
that is so important when you show up for a person.
And it's also important to show up and understand that
(15:14):
some things you just can't fix, and to just be
comfortable being uncomfortable with someone else's discomfort, which is so hard,
especially if you're somebody's front, especially if this is a
person you love, if they're your family. You want to
show up and be like, and I've got a solution.
I've got a solution for this is not a fixable problem.
(15:35):
But people were were There are lots of people in
your life who were saying what you should do is this,
and what you should do is that? Oh yeah, yeah.
None of them were people who had lost a husband.
Um and the people that I know now and now
I know thousands of them, of people have lost their
their partner. We never do that. We never ever tell
somebody oh you should sell that house or oh no,
(15:56):
no no, don't move, or like, oh, quit your job.
We don't we don't. We listen and we are very
open with all of the mistakes that we've made, but
we don't try to push people down a certain path,
which is also something that I can look back in
my history and see when I saw somebody having a
(16:17):
hard time, what I tried to do is just jump
in and fix it instead of just listening and just
letting them be where they are, instead of trying to
rush them through to a solution and being like, now
that's over. Now we solved it. We got you a
new job, we got you out of that marriage. You know.
Just there's so many things other than death, where we
(16:37):
tried to just tie it up for somebody as fast
as we can did all the time, I try and
fix everyone around me all the time. You have a
really good number of a professional though. I just I
just do want to say that in case you're thinking that.
The next time you're you're like, oh, I know who
could help Jill, don't hold back on sharing the contact
place because a lot of your contexts have really helped me.
(16:59):
Have you ever done an angiogram? Yeah, I'm six. What
are you saying? Well, I'm a two. But I've read
that women typically test as a two because of however, right,
what if you not read my book, You've you got
to do an angiogram. It's amazing. Okay. Yeah, it's just
(17:22):
a personality typing system that breaks people into nine different
types and really just addresses the way that we habitually
respond to fear and then shows a path through that.
You probably a different a different description. No, that's perfect.
I'm the worst at explaining it. I'm so glad I
didn't try to answer them. Like, now, imagine there's like
(17:43):
nine things and they connect to each other. Yeah, so
you're a too. Huh, I'm a too. I'm a two.
But I think I'm going to retake it. What does
that mean about the caregivers? Okay? And why would you
retake it? Because women typically test in to it too,
just because that's kind of how we're conditioned to respond
(18:03):
to the world. Right, So I do recommend taking it
again in a couple of months. Where do you think
you really are? I think I'm a sex So okay,
so I've had six is anxiety? Well, we're called the loyalists,
but really it's a are we wear. Everyone else like
deals with fear, but they don't see fear as their
primary primary motivator. Six is I think they hold the
(18:26):
world together by their anxiety. So if you were you know,
and the thing is, if you're shaking your head yes,
which means you're probably a six, um, you might be,
it's not it's not just like you just like check check,
that's okay. Well, if you feel like you're holding it
all together with a very very very thin it's just
(18:50):
breast and any time. Yeah. So the catastrophe of November
two thousand fourteen is the worst possible nightmare for most people,
but for a six that's like the end of the
freaking world. Yes. And also it came with something that
I think six is and also just people in general
(19:10):
really like, which is a to do list. So when
you're taking care of someone, you always have something to do.
There's always something to do. And then when someone dies,
there's there's a lot of things to do, Like you
get to plan a funeral and check off all those boxes,
and then you get to go through miles and miles
of paperwork, and you get to answer your doorbell and
(19:32):
somebody's brought like a hot dish, which I think is
called a casserole in other parts of the world. And
you and you open all the cards and you right
thank you cards, and then after about a week that's done. Yeah,
and it's quiet, Yeah, and there's nothing else for you
to do. You know. I wanted to ask you if
(19:54):
you shared something that I felt after my mother died
a few years ago. And obviously this was not it
was not a cascade of loss like what you're talking
about at all, and I had plenty of time to
prepare for it. Nonetheless, I was pretty gutted, and um,
I just felt like I was walking around without skin on.
I was just like I was absorbing. I felt like
(20:17):
I was absorbing everybody's pain and I could relate to
it like I it was empathy on steroids. Did you
did you feel that? I think that I still feel that,
and I have to like actively try to turn that off.
And so sometimes I will be walking through the world
and I can just see everybody as such a human
(20:39):
and be like, oh my god, everyone has to go
through so much stuff, and like that guy is sad
and I don't know why. It's it's like a superpower
gone wrong some days, and I think that I will
just always be like that. But I do think that
the feeling you were describing. I relate to you almost
(20:59):
as like, Okay, when you keep pushing a bruise like
that kind of grief. Now when I push it, it
doesn't feel the same as as it did that first year.
But that first year I truly had you avoid almost
like all emotion. So I quit my job. Not smart.
(21:21):
You're a single mom, you should definitely keep a job.
My accountant was like, don't do why would you do that?
And I was like, well, I already sent the email,
so um, next time answer my midnine emails before I
do something really impulsive. And I packed up Ralph and
we just traveled for a year. We went to wherever
we knew someone who had an empty bedroom. We went
and stayed with them, and I just stayed busy, busy, busy.
(21:44):
So but when we come back, we're going to talk
more about where you are now and where this U
turn has brought you. So we're chatting with Norah mcinderney,
and we are talking about right now, I think you're
(22:06):
a podcast. I want to talk about terrible Thanks for asking,
and how you've transformed the pain that you went through
into a tool for helping thousands of people who are
struggling with loss, Um, how did you come about making
this podcast? What? What was the impetus behind it? So
(22:27):
that's the answer I wish I would have given people
right away. I wish I would have all the people
who asked me in that first year after Aaron died,
how are you? I wish I would have said, terrible, terrible,
thanks for asking. And before Aaron died, he and I
had written his obituary together and it went viral. UM
said per more, Aaron Joseph Age thirty five died due
(22:50):
to complications of a radioactive spider bite, and we revealed
that he is spider man, and UM I honored his
first wife, Gwen Stefani, and it was We did not
think that they would publish it. But I just want
all your listeners to know that obituaries are not fact check.
(23:10):
You pay for them, so they're basically an advertisement for
your life, so rite whatever you want. And we didn't
know that, so we published it, and the Star Tribune,
which is our local newspaper, gave it a bigger spot
and wrote about Aaron, and it went crazy viral, not
an intended consequence, but I started getting hundreds of emails
(23:32):
a day from all over the world. And it wasn't
just people who were telling me about their dead husband's
but I do have a niche there, and it was
just people who had gone through something. And it could
have been years ago, or it could have been very recent,
but they were spilling their guts to a complete stranger
because their friends and family had stopped asking or stopped
talking about it, or maybe never had talked about it,
(23:55):
and they didn't feel like they had that space. Just
still bring this thing up, because this thing should be
over right, they should be over it by now. So
some things you never get over stay with you forever.
And I want I want you to say that every
episode of your podcast for the rest of your life,
because we are sort of living in this culture of
(24:16):
relentless positivity that does not leave space for suffering. Which
is not an anomaly of life. It is a part
of life. It is absolutely a part of life. And
that's okay. It's okay for some things to just be
bad for a while. Like that's okay. You don't have
to rush through it, find a silver lining, like crank
out some lemonade. You can be sad, like you can
(24:39):
grieve and like American society is completely erased that from
from our culture, like just completely There's like a berievement
policy in every major company and it's like five days
for a spouse. It's crazy. So the first season of
the podcast came from my inbox. We just I just
(24:59):
went through my in box and I said, if I
had a podcast, would you be on it. I didn't
have a podcast by the wedding, nor did I know
how to make one or who made them at all.
I knew that I liked listening to them and that
I needed a job. So, um, so I found people
who make podcast turns out there in Minneapolis, American Public
(25:19):
Media is located like ten miles from my house, so
I went there to be possibly. Yeah. I went there
with an idea and they said, sure, we'll we'll try it.
We'll make ten episodes with you and see if it works.
And it works, and I've been doing it for four years.
It's pretty epically successful, which I guess feels a little funny.
(25:40):
It does feel a little fun because it it really
is all about the pain that people are going through.
And you know, I wanted to ask you because I
really love the podcast and I'm not even sure I
can explain exactly why I love it, but um, I
feel like it's a chiropractic adjustment to my attitude every
time I listen to it, and not just because I
(26:02):
feel like, you know, like what your mother used to
tell you, there's always somebody who's struggling more than you.
It's not really that's there's nothing more realistic about it.
But one of the things I really admire how you
you pull people's stories out of them in a very
patient way, with lots of details, some of which are
pretty agonizing to listen to, hence the crying. Um, why
(26:26):
is it important to extract those details that are like
the most intimate, the most wrenching ones. I don't know
that it's necessarily an extraction so much as making a
space for people to actually say those things. And when
we interview people, it's rarely face to face. So often
(26:47):
they're in a studio somewhere and the engineers out there
and the lights are dark, and they have headphones on
and they're in front of a microphone and it's quiet,
and they get to just talk. And we don't start
out saying, so tell me about this terrible thing that
happened to you. God that must have been hard, you know,
(27:08):
Nor do we say oh, I mean, uh, you know,
we don't tiptoe around it either. We give them the
chance to tell their story how they want to tell it,
and not just as a sad story. So it's never
a pity machine. Pity is the grossest thing in the world.
But I do want to make things. It's weirdly funny
sometimes it is, I mean, because because everything is always
(27:29):
so mixed together. One of the funniest moments of my
life was at the funeral home trying to pick a
casket for my dad. He wanted um that he wanted
just a pine box. That's what he wanted. And what
with the word that we're looking for, By the way,
is coffin. That's the difference, like onlined as a coffin
the big Cadillac ones are caskets, and my little brothers
(27:51):
standing there making like the shape with his hands and
going he wants like a Dracula box, I mean, keeps
making the shape with his hands and the woman's like,
you mean coffin. He's like, yeah, but but make sure
it's the like a Dracula box. And he just kept
saying that We're like idiot, we like, please stop. It's
just the woman was like, who are these four clowns?
And we are our father's children and this is this
(28:14):
is going to be um a fun day for us.
And later we have to go to the Mall of
America and make sure my dumb brothers have something to wear,
which my my dad would have just been. I was like,
you cannot show up to our dad's funeral dressed like
a dow fis Like, what do you mean you don't
have a belt? What do you mean you don't have
a belt? Like good God. So my sister like walking
(28:35):
through the Mall of America trying to get these adult
men dressed. My brother disappears, comes back. He's got a
box of Legos from Lego Land, Like that's not why
we're here anyway. So it's all it's all mixed together,
like these sad moments also have these incredible moments of levity.
And I'm never talking to someone looking for but like,
(28:55):
what's the funny part of this? Like can you make me?
Can you make me laugh about about the worst day
of your life? But I do. I do give them
a lot of quiet, and then those things just kind
of come out because often you. They have not been
able to tell this story in a way that isn't
the way that I told you at the beginning of
the show what happened? If you ask me, anybody can
(29:20):
tell you the facts of the worst part of their life,
right my baby dad, my dad died, my husband died,
like we can. We can get that out in a
pretty rehearsed way. And so when you give someone the
time to just tell you parts of the story that
aren't necessarily just the beat by beat storyline, I think
that's when you get those deeper moments that maybe they
(29:43):
didn't even know we're there. Do you find with the
people that you speak with, and also for yourself, do
you find that are you waiting for the other shooter? Stop?
Is it like like has has the worst happened? So
then you can just be carefuree and happy all the
time now, because because the universe is throne everything at
you or is it like, oh crap, you know something else?
(30:05):
So it's neither. I do know that I've not filled
my punch card. I mean, terrible things are going to
keep happening, like all around the world, and that's afraid
of them. Now. I know that whatever happens, I will
survive and tell the one thing that I don't survive, right,
But I also have no control over that. And we
have this blended family of four children who you know,
(30:28):
three fourths of them have been through something really traumatic
in their lives, and I want to reinforce for them
like you are not just the hard thing that happened
to you, but something hard did happen to you, and
it helped make you who you are now, and it
also will will be something that you draw upon when
the next hard thing happens, and it's going to happen,
like maybe this year it's the A C. T. And
(30:50):
And it's a hard thing, right and maybe and which
I completely blocked out all of that, is like really
it's this year, um and maybe maybe next year it's
something really really big we don't know, but it's it's
also not a way to live sort of staying like
tense and ready. That's that's worry. That's anxiety that robs
us so much of just like enjoying what we have now,
(31:13):
which is a mode that I have to pull myself
out of on pretty much a daily basis. I think
that's wise words for all the number six is out
there I think is wid wise words for any of us. Nora,
thank you so much for being with us today. Thank
you so much for having me and for letting me
be late because again got on the wrong training. Please
(31:34):
check out Nora's podcast it is called Terrible. Thanks for
asking yes, and also check out her new book, No
Happy Endings. UM. Thank you so much, and thank you
so much to Alicia Haywood, our producer who sets all
this up and gets us going. Um. And thanks to
all of our listeners and these everybody out there. Consider
(31:57):
reading and reviewing us if you haven't already, it means
a whole up to us and connect with us. Please
here at you Turns podcast. Review the podcast. That's very important.
You got to write it, I don't know why, algorithms said,
she said. And subscribe and subscribe and then also post
about it online all good things. Algorithms work. Nobody, Yeah,
We are sort of living in this culture of relentless
positivity that does not leave space for suffering, which is
not an anomaly of life. It is a part of life.
It is absolutely a part of life. And that's okay.
It's okay for some things to just be bad for
a while, Like, that's okay. You don't have to rush
through and find a silver lining, like crank out some lemonade. Hello,
(00:32):
and welcome to you terms the podcast All about Change.
I'm Lisa Oz and I am Jill Herzig. And you know,
one of the things we've talked about as we've explored
this whole process of change and you turns is the
fact that when you are going through one, particularly if
it's a really tough one, some people really show up
(00:55):
for you. You, by the way, are a shower upper.
I don't think I am, but totally are. I think
the same way that moment, Like, is that guy who
pulls over the car when he sees a fender menders everybody? Everybody? Okay,
that is totally him, you know he I know he's
done this to you on the New Jersey turn. Obviously
(01:15):
it's his duty and it's the right thing. But you're
that person too, you like jump out of the car. Okay,
what can I do? How can I you? Definitely I
never saw myself that way, But thank you. It's true
you compliment, You've done it for me. Some people also
though skit at all, like that's that's a weird thing,
like it's going to infect there happiness, I think, or somehow,
(01:40):
you know, pull them down into the abyss that we
all kind of feel but we try to ignore so
that we can keep going. Yeah, I think I'm one
of those people. There was just a movie, I know.
I saw a trailer for a movie about a kid
who like falls to the water and drowns, and I
think he gets better. But I didn't want to watch
the movie because I'm so afraid of of even that story.
(02:04):
But when someone you know and love that's different in pain,
were right there? Well, our guest today knows all about
pain and storytelling and has combined them in a very
unique way. Um. We are joined today by Nora mcinnerney.
Oh that was beautiful, good job I was coached. Um.
(02:27):
She is the author of several amazing books, her most
recent one is No Happy Endings, and she's also the
host of Terrible Thanks for asking, which is at the
podcast full of these traumatic stories but told in a
completely unique and life affirming way. So thank you so
much for being with us, Thank you for having me.
(02:48):
I think it's important for listeners to know I was
exactly twenty one minutes late cause I got on the
wrong train. But I will tell you another subway story,
which is that I owe you a debt of gratitude.
You have single handed gotten me over my fear of
crying on the New York City subways. I'm so glad.
I can't believe that was a fear of yours because
that was when I lived here, my favorite place to
cry because no one cared. I was born and raised here,
(03:12):
and one of the lessons that you teach your children
is never show vulnerability on the subway. Oh see, I
grew up, so I came here late, and so I
was like, I guess I'll just cry here. Yes, But
when I listened to your podcast, terrible thanks for asking.
I Sometimes the tears sometimes just come, And most recently
I was listening to you reading from No Happy Endings,
(03:34):
and I cried a bunch. So it was on the subway.
Nothing bad happened, it was it was cathartic. But if
something bad had happened, you could have told it, it
would be that would have been a full circle episode
for us. So tell us about the for the for
the listeners who don't know your story, could you just
(03:57):
tell us about November and fourteen? Yes? Uh so for
people who are like, what is wrong with this woman
and why are all of her titles so foreboding in
I lost my second pregnancy on October three, and then
my dad died on October eight, and then my husband
died Novembers, like the worst month in the history of months.
(04:20):
It was. It was almost like to the point where
it's just so ridiculous. You're like, all right, here we go.
And my husband had had brain cancer and he'd been
sick for three years, and my dad had been sick
with cancer very briefly. And I mean, like every pregnancy loss,
it just happens out of nowhere. And it was at
like eleven weeks in in six days, really a route
(04:40):
like you are you are sort of conditioned if you
can just get through that first trimester. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no,
because tomorrow will be the second trimester, so I just
won't have this happen right now. So those were all
of the big losses that I had experienced in my
life period, and I had them all at once, had
them all within six weeks. And how are you not
(05:03):
just like a ball? Oh? I think I was. But
also I had a two year old child. And as
much as he can tell, because children are so perceptive,
so as much as he knew and he said goodbye
to his dad, he knew so much more than his
vocabulary would would indicate. But kids don't um stop. So
(05:26):
even if you are completely destroyed, they wake up, they
want breakfast, they want to play, then they want dinner.
I think in between they want lunch. Like they just
want things and they get them. So Ralph kept me
going in a way that I really don't think that
I would have had that motivation option to fold your tent. No,
(05:47):
because he was he and he was just so wonderful
and he was so wonderfully alive, and he had experienced
these losses to just in a different way. So it
was that. And then it was also a lot of shock,
like your brain just sort of packed stuff up, saves
it for later. And that has been something that I've
(06:09):
really worked through with the podcast and also with this
most recent book too. But but eventually it did catch
up with you. Oh yeah, and and and you sort
of had to hit bottom before you went and found
a therapist, which seems like it was really instrumental in
kind of helping you dig out. Was so instrumental. And
(06:29):
as far as I remember, it was never suggested to
me by anyone ever in the three years that Aaron
was sick. I mean maybe family would have said it
to me, But I look at all of the people
who are surrounding the patient who was Aaron. He was
he was the center of everything. Even after I had
Ralph was so focused on erin, and I could have
(06:51):
used one of those medical professionals saying like, also, do
you need out of van Like do you do you
need to go see somebody? Or you going to even
just the regular doctor, which I wasn't. I didn't see
a doctor the whole time, aside from for my pregnancy,
I didn't see I didn't do anything for myself. And
I could have really used I think a professional saying like,
(07:12):
go do this now. Even when it was pretty clear
that Aaron was terminal, that his cancer was going to
kill him, you just felt like, no, I have to
I have to focus entirely outwardly. I can't. Yeah, and
and like when what I've gone to Like Aaron and
I were, we needed money, so I worked full time
until he entered hospice. Um went to work almost every day.
(07:36):
He worked basically until he entered hospice. So we worked.
I took him to doctor's appointments and the aforementioned baby. Yeah,
we had a baby, and it just of all of
the priorities, it's you know, your your dying husband and
your baby, and then you just sort of slide right
to the bottom. So I'm very grateful. We talked about
(07:59):
showing up a friend who insisted he never came to Minneapolis.
He lives in Los Angeles, but every single day he
called me, he texted me, and he said, you have
to go to therapy. You have to go to therapy
or a friendship is done because I can't watch you
just fall apart, So go take care of yourself. So
clearly something turned around, because it hasn't even been you know,
(08:19):
four years, Um since that dreadful November, and you've written
three books and started a foundation and done ted talks
and have this podcast. How did you shift two being
so productive from the end of the world. Well, I
think that at first, productivity was a part of the shock,
(08:39):
and productivity was away for me, not to grave. It
was a way for me to say, look how good
I am at this? Like have you ever seen a
thirty one year old widow with a kid write a
book in six months? Because I did it, and I
put my makeup on every day, and my house is
still clean. And if you look at me, you cannot
pity me. You can not feel bad for me because
(09:01):
I am fine. Do not talk about me amongst yourselves.
Why so? Because I mean, I warrant to you the
idea that someone would feel. I don't want people. Nobody
wants to be a sad story, right, Like when something
happens to you, you still want to be a full person.
And because I was so young, it was thirty one,
(09:21):
none of my friends had lost a husband, none of
my friends had lost a parent. Yet there was a
very big gap between the people who loved me and
what they were capable of and what I would allow.
And I wasn't I wasn't even ready to say I
I'm I'm really destroyed right now, Like I did not
(09:42):
have the ability to say that or to accept help
from anybody. So at first, the productivity writing that first book,
starting a podcast that was truly a way to to
tell myself, if I can keep moving, this will never
catch up with me. But it did, and it caught
up with me when I met the man who is
my current husband, not a title he loves, but I
(10:04):
think it's so descriptive and h and falling in love
with him gave me like that place to be in,
a place to stop, and a place for somebody else
to almost insist on taking care of me. And I
feel like that's where things really really turned for me,
and the work became not a distraction but became really meaningful.
(10:26):
And I could see it not as trying to prove,
you know, my worth for being alive, like Aaron died
and he was the best, and I have to sort
of earn my right to be here, but really as
a way to honor him, Like what what good do
I do him and everything he was capable of and
won't get to do if I'm doing it out of
(10:48):
anything other than just like the thrill of being alive
and like the honor of being here. Really, it all
looks the same for me outside all achievements sort of
looks the same. But I think you know when you're
doing something from a productive place or when you're just
doing it to like get through something or avoid something.
And that was like the biggest Yeah, the biggest change,
(11:10):
I think is something that really would not be perceptible
to most people. When we come back, we're going to
unpack that a little and talk about that place of healing.
We've been talking with Noria mcinnerney about her personal you turn,
(11:34):
probably one of the most terrifying and traumatic ones from wife, mother,
daughter to widow orphan. But then how we were just
talking the last segment about how you came through it,
and part of it, I guess was meeting your current husband.
Part of that healing for you. Yeah, part of that
(11:54):
was meeting my current husband. And although you say in
your book that the timing felt really awkward, you were terrible.
It was terrible. I mean, there was no there was
never going to be a good time for me to
be happy again, right, like we want everything to be
what is the appropriate time? Like, no one, no one
can answer that. Um. I remember when Aaron was still alive,
(12:19):
I knew this woman and her husband had had brain
cancer for longer, and his had been completely different from Errands.
It had changed his personality, it had really incapacitated him.
And four months after he died, she texted me, I
have a date, and I thought, like I recoiled, and
I told Aaron like, oh, she has a date, and
he was like, don't talk about her that way, like
(12:40):
you have no idea, You have no idea, and he
very rarely reprimanded me, and I just thought, well, I mean, oh,
I would never write like like I will love my
husband so much that I would never love another person,
which as if those two things are contradictory to one another.
And Aaron, maybe seeing you know, my future, just thought like,
(13:03):
please do not think that way. So I met Matthew,
um like fifty two weeks after Aaron died, or wait now,
how many weeks? Fifty weeks? Fifty weeks after Aaron died,
and I just thought like, oh gosh, no, it hasn't
even been a year, as if like, in two weeks
then I can date you and uh, and finding happiness
(13:27):
felt like also that was wrong, you know, like like
it had it was somehow invalidating my love for Aaron
and also my grief for Aeron, which is still it's
present today too, but it's different and I didn't realize
and it was really resistant to the idea that you
(13:49):
can have more than one feeling at once and more
than one experience at once. Is it weird for Matthew?
I mean, is they're like, is he always trying to
live up to the bar that was set by Aaron?
I mean, I that's a good question for him. I
don't think so. They're very different, and our relationship is different,
(14:09):
and Matthews divorced and I certainly don't feel that way
about Yeah, I'm like, I mean, um, but it's also like,
I mean, just two different things. It's like apples and
and pizza. Who knows, like an apple can't be pizza,
I shouldn't try. I like what you're saying about you
turns in general, particularly you know, the really really hard
(14:32):
ones there that there's just no appropriate timeline. There's no um,
you know, there are no seven steps that you can
do in a choreographed way, and you're going to feel
a bunch of things, some of them really shitty and
some of them maybe not not bad at all. At
the same time, yeah, And I think that we're accustomed
(14:53):
to like knowing that a hard thing should feel hard,
but also we don't really want to see that in
one another, Like we don't really want to like you.
You mentioned Lisa as a person who shows up, and
that is so important when you show up for a person.
And it's also important to show up and understand that
(15:14):
some things you just can't fix, and to just be
comfortable being uncomfortable with someone else's discomfort, which is so hard,
especially if you're somebody's front, especially if this is a
person you love, if they're your family. You want to
show up and be like, and I've got a solution.
I've got a solution for this is not a fixable problem.
(15:35):
But people were were There are lots of people in
your life who were saying what you should do is this,
and what you should do is that? Oh yeah, yeah.
None of them were people who had lost a husband.
Um and the people that I know now and now
I know thousands of them, of people have lost their
their partner. We never do that. We never ever tell
somebody oh you should sell that house or oh no,
(15:56):
no no, don't move, or like, oh, quit your job.
We don't we don't. We listen and we are very
open with all of the mistakes that we've made, but
we don't try to push people down a certain path,
which is also something that I can look back in
my history and see when I saw somebody having a
(16:17):
hard time, what I tried to do is just jump
in and fix it instead of just listening and just
letting them be where they are, instead of trying to
rush them through to a solution and being like, now
that's over. Now we solved it. We got you a
new job, we got you out of that marriage. You know.
Just there's so many things other than death, where we
(16:37):
tried to just tie it up for somebody as fast
as we can did all the time, I try and
fix everyone around me all the time. You have a
really good number of a professional though. I just I
just do want to say that in case you're thinking that.
The next time you're you're like, oh, I know who
could help Jill, don't hold back on sharing the contact
place because a lot of your contexts have really helped me.
(16:59):
Have you ever done an angiogram? Yeah, I'm six. What
are you saying? Well, I'm a two. But I've read
that women typically test as a two because of however, right,
what if you not read my book, You've you got
to do an angiogram. It's amazing. Okay. Yeah, it's just
(17:22):
a personality typing system that breaks people into nine different
types and really just addresses the way that we habitually
respond to fear and then shows a path through that.
You probably a different a different description. No, that's perfect.
I'm the worst at explaining it. I'm so glad I
didn't try to answer them. Like, now, imagine there's like
(17:43):
nine things and they connect to each other. Yeah, so
you're a too. Huh, I'm a too. I'm a two.
But I think I'm going to retake it. What does
that mean about the caregivers? Okay? And why would you
retake it? Because women typically test in to it too,
just because that's kind of how we're conditioned to respond
(18:03):
to the world. Right, So I do recommend taking it
again in a couple of months. Where do you think
you really are? I think I'm a sex So okay,
so I've had six is anxiety? Well, we're called the loyalists,
but really it's a are we wear. Everyone else like
deals with fear, but they don't see fear as their
primary primary motivator. Six is I think they hold the
(18:26):
world together by their anxiety. So if you were you know,
and the thing is, if you're shaking your head yes,
which means you're probably a six, um, you might be,
it's not it's not just like you just like check check,
that's okay. Well, if you feel like you're holding it
all together with a very very very thin it's just
(18:50):
breast and any time. Yeah. So the catastrophe of November
two thousand fourteen is the worst possible nightmare for most people,
but for a six that's like the end of the
freaking world. Yes. And also it came with something that
I think six is and also just people in general
(19:10):
really like, which is a to do list. So when
you're taking care of someone, you always have something to do.
There's always something to do. And then when someone dies,
there's there's a lot of things to do, Like you
get to plan a funeral and check off all those boxes,
and then you get to go through miles and miles
of paperwork, and you get to answer your doorbell and
(19:32):
somebody's brought like a hot dish, which I think is
called a casserole in other parts of the world. And
you and you open all the cards and you right
thank you cards, and then after about a week that's done. Yeah,
and it's quiet, Yeah, and there's nothing else for you
to do. You know. I wanted to ask you if
(19:54):
you shared something that I felt after my mother died
a few years ago. And obviously this was not it
was not a cascade of loss like what you're talking
about at all, and I had plenty of time to
prepare for it. Nonetheless, I was pretty gutted, and um,
I just felt like I was walking around without skin on.
I was just like I was absorbing. I felt like
(20:17):
I was absorbing everybody's pain and I could relate to
it like I it was empathy on steroids. Did you
did you feel that? I think that I still feel that,
and I have to like actively try to turn that off.
And so sometimes I will be walking through the world
and I can just see everybody as such a human
(20:39):
and be like, oh my god, everyone has to go
through so much stuff, and like that guy is sad
and I don't know why. It's it's like a superpower
gone wrong some days, and I think that I will
just always be like that. But I do think that
the feeling you were describing. I relate to you almost
(20:59):
as like, Okay, when you keep pushing a bruise like
that kind of grief. Now when I push it, it
doesn't feel the same as as it did that first year.
But that first year I truly had you avoid almost
like all emotion. So I quit my job. Not smart.
(21:21):
You're a single mom, you should definitely keep a job.
My accountant was like, don't do why would you do that?
And I was like, well, I already sent the email,
so um, next time answer my midnine emails before I
do something really impulsive. And I packed up Ralph and
we just traveled for a year. We went to wherever
we knew someone who had an empty bedroom. We went
and stayed with them, and I just stayed busy, busy, busy.
(21:44):
So but when we come back, we're going to talk
more about where you are now and where this U
turn has brought you. So we're chatting with Norah mcinderney,
and we are talking about right now, I think you're
(22:06):
a podcast. I want to talk about terrible Thanks for asking,
and how you've transformed the pain that you went through
into a tool for helping thousands of people who are
struggling with loss, Um, how did you come about making
this podcast? What? What was the impetus behind it? So
(22:27):
that's the answer I wish I would have given people
right away. I wish I would have all the people
who asked me in that first year after Aaron died,
how are you? I wish I would have said, terrible, terrible,
thanks for asking. And before Aaron died, he and I
had written his obituary together and it went viral. UM
said per more, Aaron Joseph Age thirty five died due
(22:50):
to complications of a radioactive spider bite, and we revealed
that he is spider man, and UM I honored his
first wife, Gwen Stefani, and it was We did not
think that they would publish it. But I just want
all your listeners to know that obituaries are not fact check.
(23:10):
You pay for them, so they're basically an advertisement for
your life, so rite whatever you want. And we didn't
know that, so we published it, and the Star Tribune,
which is our local newspaper, gave it a bigger spot
and wrote about Aaron, and it went crazy viral, not
an intended consequence, but I started getting hundreds of emails
(23:32):
a day from all over the world. And it wasn't
just people who were telling me about their dead husband's
but I do have a niche there, and it was
just people who had gone through something. And it could
have been years ago, or it could have been very recent,
but they were spilling their guts to a complete stranger
because their friends and family had stopped asking or stopped
talking about it, or maybe never had talked about it,
(23:55):
and they didn't feel like they had that space. Just
still bring this thing up, because this thing should be
over right, they should be over it by now. So
some things you never get over stay with you forever.
And I want I want you to say that every
episode of your podcast for the rest of your life,
because we are sort of living in this culture of
(24:16):
relentless positivity that does not leave space for suffering. Which
is not an anomaly of life. It is a part
of life. It is absolutely a part of life. And
that's okay. It's okay for some things to just be
bad for a while. Like that's okay. You don't have
to rush through it, find a silver lining, like crank
out some lemonade. You can be sad, like you can
(24:39):
grieve and like American society is completely erased that from
from our culture, like just completely There's like a berievement
policy in every major company and it's like five days
for a spouse. It's crazy. So the first season of
the podcast came from my inbox. We just I just
(24:59):
went through my in box and I said, if I
had a podcast, would you be on it. I didn't
have a podcast by the wedding, nor did I know
how to make one or who made them at all.
I knew that I liked listening to them and that
I needed a job. So, um, so I found people
who make podcast turns out there in Minneapolis, American Public
(25:19):
Media is located like ten miles from my house, so
I went there to be possibly. Yeah. I went there
with an idea and they said, sure, we'll we'll try it.
We'll make ten episodes with you and see if it works.
And it works, and I've been doing it for four years.
It's pretty epically successful, which I guess feels a little funny.
(25:40):
It does feel a little fun because it it really
is all about the pain that people are going through.
And you know, I wanted to ask you because I
really love the podcast and I'm not even sure I
can explain exactly why I love it, but um, I
feel like it's a chiropractic adjustment to my attitude every
time I listen to it, and not just because I
(26:02):
feel like, you know, like what your mother used to
tell you, there's always somebody who's struggling more than you.
It's not really that's there's nothing more realistic about it.
But one of the things I really admire how you
you pull people's stories out of them in a very
patient way, with lots of details, some of which are
pretty agonizing to listen to, hence the crying. Um, why
(26:26):
is it important to extract those details that are like
the most intimate, the most wrenching ones. I don't know
that it's necessarily an extraction so much as making a
space for people to actually say those things. And when
we interview people, it's rarely face to face. So often
(26:47):
they're in a studio somewhere and the engineers out there
and the lights are dark, and they have headphones on
and they're in front of a microphone and it's quiet,
and they get to just talk. And we don't start
out saying, so tell me about this terrible thing that
happened to you. God that must have been hard, you know,
(27:08):
Nor do we say oh, I mean, uh, you know,
we don't tiptoe around it either. We give them the
chance to tell their story how they want to tell it,
and not just as a sad story. So it's never
a pity machine. Pity is the grossest thing in the world.
But I do want to make things. It's weirdly funny
sometimes it is, I mean, because because everything is always
(27:29):
so mixed together. One of the funniest moments of my
life was at the funeral home trying to pick a
casket for my dad. He wanted um that he wanted
just a pine box. That's what he wanted. And what
with the word that we're looking for, By the way,
is coffin. That's the difference, like onlined as a coffin
the big Cadillac ones are caskets, and my little brothers
(27:51):
standing there making like the shape with his hands and
going he wants like a Dracula box, I mean, keeps
making the shape with his hands and the woman's like,
you mean coffin. He's like, yeah, but but make sure
it's the like a Dracula box. And he just kept
saying that We're like idiot, we like, please stop. It's
just the woman was like, who are these four clowns?
And we are our father's children and this is this
(28:14):
is going to be um a fun day for us.
And later we have to go to the Mall of
America and make sure my dumb brothers have something to wear,
which my my dad would have just been. I was like,
you cannot show up to our dad's funeral dressed like
a dow fis Like, what do you mean you don't
have a belt? What do you mean you don't have
a belt? Like good God. So my sister like walking
(28:35):
through the Mall of America trying to get these adult
men dressed. My brother disappears, comes back. He's got a
box of Legos from Lego Land, Like that's not why
we're here anyway. So it's all it's all mixed together,
like these sad moments also have these incredible moments of levity.
And I'm never talking to someone looking for but like,
(28:55):
what's the funny part of this? Like can you make me?
Can you make me laugh about about the worst day
of your life? But I do. I do give them
a lot of quiet, and then those things just kind
of come out because often you. They have not been
able to tell this story in a way that isn't
the way that I told you at the beginning of
the show what happened? If you ask me, anybody can
(29:20):
tell you the facts of the worst part of their life,
right my baby dad, my dad died, my husband died,
like we can. We can get that out in a
pretty rehearsed way. And so when you give someone the
time to just tell you parts of the story that
aren't necessarily just the beat by beat storyline, I think
that's when you get those deeper moments that maybe they
(29:43):
didn't even know we're there. Do you find with the
people that you speak with, and also for yourself, do
you find that are you waiting for the other shooter? Stop?
Is it like like has has the worst happened? So
then you can just be carefuree and happy all the
time now, because because the universe is throne everything at
you or is it like, oh crap, you know something else?
(30:05):
So it's neither. I do know that I've not filled
my punch card. I mean, terrible things are going to
keep happening, like all around the world, and that's afraid
of them. Now. I know that whatever happens, I will
survive and tell the one thing that I don't survive, right,
But I also have no control over that. And we
have this blended family of four children who you know,
(30:28):
three fourths of them have been through something really traumatic
in their lives, and I want to reinforce for them
like you are not just the hard thing that happened
to you, but something hard did happen to you, and
it helped make you who you are now, and it
also will will be something that you draw upon when
the next hard thing happens, and it's going to happen,
like maybe this year it's the A C. T. And
(30:50):
And it's a hard thing, right and maybe and which
I completely blocked out all of that, is like really
it's this year, um and maybe maybe next year it's
something really really big we don't know, but it's it's
also not a way to live sort of staying like
tense and ready. That's that's worry. That's anxiety that robs
us so much of just like enjoying what we have now,
(31:13):
which is a mode that I have to pull myself
out of on pretty much a daily basis. I think
that's wise words for all the number six is out
there I think is wid wise words for any of us. Nora,
thank you so much for being with us today. Thank
you so much for having me and for letting me
be late because again got on the wrong training. Please
(31:34):
check out Nora's podcast it is called Terrible. Thanks for
asking yes, and also check out her new book, No
Happy Endings. UM. Thank you so much, and thank you
so much to Alicia Haywood, our producer who sets all
this up and gets us going. Um. And thanks to
all of our listeners and these everybody out there. Consider
(31:57):
reading and reviewing us if you haven't already, it means
a whole up to us and connect with us. Please
here at you Turns podcast. Review the podcast. That's very important.
You got to write it, I don't know why, algorithms said,
she said. And subscribe and subscribe and then also post
about it online all good things. Algorithms work. Nobody, Yeah,
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