July 21, 2022 • 31 mins
Author, Marisa Renee Lee speaks with Senator Turner about healing, love and loss during a grieving experience. Marisa talks about grief, healing oneself and confirming that it's ok to maintain a spiritual relationship with a loved one that you've lost - that is a form of healing. While in the process of redefining her personal grief process, Marisa wrote a book called Grief is Love (April 2022). Grief is Love gives us the most uplifting and personal story of Marisa’s journey. As we read through her experiences she hopes to help others who are navigating through loss and healing.
Links:
Book- Grief is Love
Quote by Hellen Keller-
https://www.all-greatquotes.com/those-who-have-known-suffering/amp/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Turn Everything. Welcome to Hello Somebody, a production of The
(00:28):
Black Effect Podcast Network and I Heart Media. Where we
rage against the machine, where we raise our voices against
injustice and stand up for justice. Where we embrace hope
and joy with an optimism for a bright or more
justus future. Each week I'll be dropping knowledge, whether it's
(00:49):
a solo episode from me or a hearty discussion with
esteem guests doing great things in spaces and places of politics, entertainment,
social justice, and beyond. We get real, baby, I mean
really real. We get honest, We get up close and
personal for you, Yes, you, because everybody is Somebody. Before
(01:16):
we begin, I want to give a special shout out
to my team, Thank you, Sam, Tiffany, Sam and the
team over at Good Juju Studios, Erica England, Pepper Chambers,
the Hot One, and my social media team. Too often
we push on through tough times and we quickly push
(01:39):
ourselves to get over it. Yes, I am doing the
air quotes. I know you all can't see me, but
I want you to know that's what I'm doing. Whatever
life has thrown at us, sometimes it feels like a
ninety mile per hour pitch that has been thrown at us,
not just tossed us, thrown at us at our face.
Hello somebody, And I know that what connects us is
(02:01):
that we all have experienced some type of pain and
some type of grief in our lives. It's called being human,
and loss hurts us deeply. Many people deal with tragedy differently,
but overall, the feeling of loss is a universal feeling,
and sometimes people don't give themselves a time to grieve. Well,
I'm here to let you know that it is okay
(02:22):
to allow yourself to have those moments, to have those feelings,
to really be real and get deep down inside of
how you are feeling. It is okay, and it is
always helpful and kind and kind of spiritual to hear
others tell their powerful stories because we are connected by stories.
Stories are a love language. They say that music is
(02:45):
the universal language. Stories are the language that binds us
all together. And how do we deal with the loss
of a loved one or something that hurts us so badly?
So here to help us take a deeper look at
the grieving process and how to navigate through grief while
still loving on ourselves is Marissa reneed Lee. I can't
(03:10):
tell you how excited I am to have her on
the show. And I know I say this every single
week because you guess what, Hello, somebody. We only bring
the most fabulous people. But let me tell you a
little bit about Marissa. She is a called upon advocate,
writer and speaker on coping with grief. Her acclaimed debut,
Grief Is Love, came out in April of unspools the
(03:33):
story of her own grief journey and offers a compass
to others navigating loss. She is a rabbel rouser of
social healing, the former managing director of My Brother's Keeper Alliance,
co founder of the digital platform support O, and founder
of the Pink Agenda, a national organization dedicated to raising
(03:55):
money for breast cancer care research and awareness. She is
a regular contributor to Glamour, Vogue, in SNBC and CNN.
She is a graduate of Harvard and an avid home cook.
She lives with her husband that, their newborn son, bid It,
and their dogs Sadie. Oh my god, Marissa, it's so
(04:18):
good to have you with us today. Thank you here,
Thank you for having me. This is awesome And the
topic that you specialize in is so timely and I
do believe and I can't wait to hear what you
have to say about this, that the pandemic has exacerbated
feelings of suffering and loss and people are just kind
of wandering around even if they haven't physically lost someone
(04:40):
in real time. I talk to people all the time
who do have like just a feeling of loss or
feeling up that they are lost because of all the
pressures of life. So I want to center our conversation
with the quote from Helen Keller, and Helen Keller once said,
we bereaved are out alone. We belong to the largest
(05:03):
company in all the world, the company of those who
have known suffering. Oh I love that, and I just
think that is such a truism. So talk to us
about what led you on this journey and how it
is that you are using your own life experiences to
minister to others. Well, first of all, thank you for
(05:25):
that incredibly generous introduction, and thank you for making time
to talk to me today. I am a huge fan
and followed at your campaign and was cheering you on
from AFAR. So thank you for the work that you
are doing in the world because it is deeply, deeply important.
So you know, as I'm sure, you probably can guess
(05:45):
I became interested in grief and figuring out, you know,
what it really is and what we do with it
because I got stuck in the midst of it. My
mom was sick when I was growing up. She had
multiple scorerosis, and then as I was graduating from college,
she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, which we
(06:05):
knew immediately was a death sentence. And so I spent
a few years after I graduated trying to help her
and my dad figure out how to manage just a
very complicated health care situation. And at the same time,
you know, I committed myself to doing everything I could
to prepare myself, my family, my mom for her to
(06:29):
make this final transition. You know, I did all of
the research. I had the spreadsheets with the funeral songs
and Bible passages and what she wanted to do with
her things, and I had all sorts of hard conversations
with her, and I felt like I had prepared myself
for my mom to die, and then it happened, and
(06:52):
I very quickly realized there is no adequate preparation for
the loss of someone you love. And I spent a
lot of time kind of stuck in this place of
judgment and shame because I believed that you know, someone dies,
you do the funeral, You're sad for a few weeks,
and then you get over it and life moves on.
(07:16):
And I eventually hit a wall in that thinking a
few months after she died and decided that, you know,
there was nothing wrong with me for still having all
of these feelings, Like where the problem sits is in
how we talk about and define and describe grief and loss.
And so I decided I was going to write a
book in August of two thousand and eight, six months
(07:39):
after my mom died, that would not be just sad
and depressing, and that would be an honest account of grief,
and it would also be a New York Times bestseller.
So far, we've checked two out of the three boxes.
So I need everybody to go out and buy Grief
Is Love. So we can check the third box as well. Yes,
go out about working. Where can people find Target, Amazon,
(08:04):
Barnes and Noble, you know, truly anywhere you buy books,
so to pick it up. But it took a pregnancy
loss and the pandemic for me to actually start to
put pen to paper in late my husband and I
lost a much wanted pregnancy that we spent years trying
to make happen, between money and fertility treatments and all
(08:25):
the doctors visits and egg donors and everything else. And
when we lost that pregnancy, I realized that I really
wasn't over the loss of my mom. As we sat
in our grief, you know, trying to figure out what
was next for us, you know, what we were going
to do to grow our family, and just mourning all
of the hope that we had for this child that
(08:48):
we were not going to have anymore, I realized I
needed to find a way to more concretely redefined grief
for myself, and that actually led to me redefining it
in this book, like I wrote my way through the Pain,
and ultimately concluded that grief is not just about the
(09:11):
specific moment in time when you lose someone you love.
Grief is actually the repeated experience of learning to live
in the midst of a significant loss. And I say repeated,
and I say learning because at this point I'm almost
fifteen years out from my mom's death. There are constantly
things that come up, good things, positive, you know, happy moments,
(09:33):
and sad and difficult moments that connect to the loss
of my mother. You know, I'm not going to forget
that she existed and that we had this unconditional love relationship.
And so what I have committed to do and what
I try my best to describe in grief is love
is continue to have a relationship with her. What does
(09:54):
that look like? And that's what I am hoping to
help others with as well. Yeah, that is a powerful,
powerful thought. I mean, I'm just getting the chills listening
to you share your stories as I did in the
opening intro stories Behind Us Together. It cuts away from
all of the you're different from me kind of thing
(10:17):
that we go through as human beings. We can relate
to each other's stories. And that part about to continue
to have a relationship with her is really bringing tears
to my eyes because I lost my mom. Is have
been over thirty years now. She died in a brain aneurysm,
fully unexpected death. I remember seeing her that morning. I
(10:40):
was in my early twenties, you know, trying to find myself.
The most twenty year olds are the oldest of seven children.
And to be told that my mother was in the
hospital in a coma and then shortly after that the
doctor saying, you know she's not coming back. This machine
is keeping her allied. We need to unplug or do
you want to donate her organs? Oh? My God? And yeah,
(11:01):
I found myself questioning my faith, Yes, relationship with God?
Does God exists? And why would you take my mom
and leave so many other bad people living in the
world or even older when she was forty two years old?
For God's sakes? So just listening to you, I can relate.
I consider what you're doing a ministry and how you
(11:23):
learn helping other people heal through the process because it
is hurtful. And as you said, I'll have moments where
I can handle that my mom is not physically here,
and then I have moments as an orator, I usually
tell you know her story some way it fits into
a speech that I'm giving about hope and about promise.
(11:43):
Because I consider myself very much a psycho breaker. I
was not supposed to achieve what I achieved because my
mom died so young, and I'm the oldest and seven children,
and you know, all of the stereotypes of having a
single mom, you know, custodio parents, seven children, all of
that and then there are days where I can't tell
the story without and that's okay. And that is one
(12:07):
of the most important points in the book. And it's
the first chapter and it's the longest chapter for a reason,
is the chapter on permission, Like you need to not
feel bad about the fact that it's been thirty years
and sometimes it still brings you to your knees. Like
I think the sooner we normalize grief as more like
(12:30):
a wave, you know, I think about it like the ocean,
like the way the tide comes and goes, Like that
is what grief is, as far as you can tell
at thirty years out and as far as I can
tell and almost fifteen years out, like it comes and goes.
And I think we need to culturally normalize that experience
for people, especially in this moment of time where there's
(12:52):
so many people who are newly bereaved, and we need
to shift our framework around acceptance because you and I,
like we will probably never fully accept and be totally
a thousand percent okay with the fact that our moms
aren't here, like there are moms, Like that's it, right,
And I think what acceptance should actually be is acceptance
(13:15):
of grief as a normal part of your life from
here on out. You loved her, I loved my mom,
like we don't forget about them. And the thing that
I want to make sure people know is grief is love. Yes,
it centers my experiences with grief and loss and the
lessons I learned and the mistakes I've made. But everything
in the book is grounded in the leading research on
(13:37):
grief and loss, and specifically this theory that I did
some extra research on, called the continuing bonds theory, which
argues that one of the healthiest ways to live with
loss is to find a way to continue your bond
with the deceased in the present, Like your mom still
loves you, So what does that look like for you today?
(14:01):
That is so beautiful, and I think it really fits
with not a Western tradition, but I would say an
afrocentric tradition, non Western cultures. Ye, tend to commune with
the ends, with the ancestors. Yes, reminds me very much
of Black Panther really drove that point home. The ancestral plane, yeah,
(14:24):
or like Native American traditions even, Yes, Like I think
these ideas that we still tend to have in this
country around grief and loss, for better or worse, just
like everything else in this country. They are ideas that
are connected to whiteness and a Eurocentric framework for how
(14:47):
we do things, and that's just not It's not the
only way to do things, and that framework does not
necessarily work for us. I do believe that there's a
cultural connection, you know, even though many of us have
never been on the continent. There's these carryovers within the spirit.
It's in the stratosphere, is not physical, but they are carryovers.
(15:08):
The whole notion of the porn libations for my home
in that way, that is that carry over. There was
something you put in your book, Grief is Love, you say,
and I quote, I didn't give myself permission to grieve.
I gave myself permission to step up and soldier on.
(15:31):
So too often, you know, end quote, too often we
quickly just dust ourselves off without really taking the time
to settle into really how we're feeling in the moment.
And you did kind of hint at that when you
talked about the process of you and your husband being
pregnant and then having that loss another loss, and through
the loss of that child, you realized I'm not done
(15:54):
grieving for my mom? How did you come to that
point where I said, I'm not going to continue to
only this way. I want to take a different path. Well,
I mean, I will never forget like the day that
it was like physically the worst, because that was the
other thing about the pregnancy loss. I was dealing with
both my emotional pain and like serious physical pain unfortunately.
(16:16):
And I was on the floor of our bathroom, like
trying to fit my five seven fifty pounds self onto
our bath mat, just sick as a dog, you know,
like I could barely lift up my head to look
at my husband, and in that moment, like all I
(16:37):
wanted was my mom. And soon after that moment, the
pandemic started, and suddenly I found myself grieving for not
having my mom there with me to help me figure
this out, help us figure out how to move forward,
like as a couple, as a family, like what were
we going to do next? But then I also had
(16:57):
the grief that like we were all experiencing when all
of a sudden, life as you knew it disappeared right
and I felt like what I am doing? What I
have done to this point, you know, for the twelve
years prior following my mom's death, like it wasn't enough,
Like it just it wasn't. It wasn't working for me anymore.
And so I decided I needed to double down on
(17:20):
my commitment to not getting over it and really give
myself permission to have all of these complicated feelings about
these two separate but very connected losses and that I
was just going to be okay with that, whatever that meant.
And that's what I committed to, and I wrote an
article about it in May. A lot of people agreed
(17:41):
with me, and that then led to where we are today.
Like the book Deal and Grief is Love. That is
so beautiful and just the countless people who are going
to be blessed because you had the courage to use
your life experiences share them, be vulnerable enough to share them,
to turn it into a book. And now millions of
(18:02):
people can read it and they can even though people
grieving in different ways, they don't have to go through
it alone, like you're helping them pars out a ways
to deal with it. I feel another quote coming on
this is sister Taragi p Henson, and she said, first
of all, it is entirely impossible for any human to
(18:23):
always be strong. I was always apprehensive of the term
strong black woman because it dehumanizes us and makes it
seem like we don't hurt. Oh my god, now that's yeah.
Can we talk a little bit about that in the
(18:44):
context of your your book. I mean, this is probably
even beyond the context of your book, but Taragi is
making a really strong point. I mean, on one side,
being called strong, it's supposed to be a compliment, something
revel in. But on the other hand, it does signal
that you don't hurt and that you're not vulnerable, and
(19:05):
that you don't need love and help. Yeah. So one
of the things that I was forced to do as
I worked on grief is love was constantly go back
and ask myself, why, like why did I handle the
loss of my mother so differently from the loss of
this pregnancy, where I was very open about it and
like told everybody and just like did whatever I needed
(19:27):
to do. And you know, why did I feel like
I couldn't do that back in two thou eight And
what are all of the things that impact who I
am and how I show up and what I feel
comfortable doing in the world. And I realized that and
this is so obvious in retrospect, you know, you cannot
(19:47):
separate your identity from your reality. So there were definitely
things that I did and ways in which I responded
that we're very much rooted in this like strong black
woman narrative, and I took it a step further and
also realized we as black women have been forced to
(20:12):
be strong because more often than not, we are not safe.
And when you think about being vulnerable and grieving and
giving yourself a space to kind of like fall apart
a bit emotionally, it is really hard, too near impossible
(20:33):
to have true emotional and like psychological vulnerability if you
lack safety. And so I think it's really important in
conversations about grief and loss and trauma and healing and
really pretty much everything to think about whether or not
people are safe enough to really grieve and to heal,
(20:59):
and do we even give everyone equal access to the
things that facilitate healing, like time off from work, access
to mental health, you know, resources, etcetera. Why you're on
that point or is it too? Is black grief different?
I mean, because you've got the point that everybody doesn't
have access to the same tools. Grieving is universal. Don't
get me. Yes, yes, grief is universal. But I think
(21:24):
grief and healing, which is like a really important part
of this conversation, right because we're talking about living with loss,
not just like experiencing something as one moment in time.
All of those things are harder if you are not safe,
and that it means like emotional safety, physical safety, economic safety, etcetera.
(21:47):
Which I think therefore means that grief and healing it's
harder for black people. I think it can be harder
for women. It's harder for folks from Native American communities,
lgbt Q plus communities, etcetera. And what I have been
thinking about more recently is like, like, what does it
look like to grieve if you are a woman who
(22:10):
has an unwanted pregnancy right now and lives in a
state where abortion is no longer legal? You know, what
does it look like to grieve if you are the
parent of an lgbt Q child in Texas or Florida, Like,
you can't take the time to grieve if you don't
feel safe in doing so. You know, if you're if
(22:32):
you're worried about the well being of that child or
your own well being and the other example. So, yes,
I think grief is harder for for folks who are
more marginalized and who have been made vulnerable by society.
Yeah wow, this is I mean, we could we can
talk about this all day, pilling back the layers, grieving
(22:55):
a process never ending, giving yourself permission, knowing that it
will be with you for the rest of your life.
And that's okay. You're saying, yes, okay, what are some
of the tools some of the ways of tools that
you used and or that you can recommend to others
so that they can deal with, cope with, live with
(23:18):
their grief and know that it's okay to do so. Yeah.
So one of the things that I think we don't
talk about enough within our community is the importance of
accessing quality mental health resources. You know, grief is really hard,
and while it lands differently for everyone, there are things
(23:41):
that studies have shown around like how grief impacts your
body and your brain, and I think having professional help
to work through that is really important. And I personally
have access to it multiple times through my grief journey
and many different therapists, some better than others. But I
think sometimes we we over analyze therapy and view that
(24:02):
relationship like a marriage, when really I think of it
more as like a dating experience. You know, you don't
have to be with this person forever, But if you
go into the relationship with clear expectations and boundaries and
you know, knowing what you'd like to get out of it,
I think it can be incredibly helpful. The other thing
I will say has been really important to me throughout
(24:23):
my process is just accessing other forms of support, whether
it's paid support or family and friends who want to
help you while you're grieving. You know, saying yes when
someone offers to make dinner or watch your children, or
you know, asking for someone to take your dog for
a walk so you can take a break and do
(24:44):
a workout or go to therapy or whatever. Like asking
for and accepting help, I think is a really important
part of living with loss and really dealing with any
of life's significant challenges. Right. The other thing that and
truly this is the thing that has helped me the most,
and this is the primary premise behind grief is love,
(25:07):
and that is finding your own way to continue to
access the love of the person who is no longer
here and making sure that translates into real, tangible things.
So I'll give you an example, because this is one
that I am still working on in my own life.
(25:29):
You know, I'll have these moments where I will just
feel like, oh, I really missed my mom. You know,
I wish my mom were here. And what I have
been trying to make myself do more recently is ask myself,
like what am I really missing? Is it the way
she would encourage me when I would feel disappointed after
(25:53):
something not working out at school? You know? Is it
the way that she would rub my back and like
you know, provide that kind of like physical comfort. Is
it I would really love one of her meals, like
you know, like I try and get it like what
it is, and then I try to find a way
to access it myself. You know, if it's I'm feeling
discouraged because something professionally maybe didn't work out the way
(26:16):
that I had hoped, like I'll text the friend who
always has something nice to say, you know. If it's
I am just feeling exhausted and looking for comfort, try
to go to bed earlier or take a long shower
and like hide from my husband and my kid for
a little bit. You know, like like I try and
think about, like, like, what is it? Is there some
sort of gap that I can fill here or that
(26:39):
I can have filled in some other way, because you know,
at the end of the day, I know my mom
still loves me, just like I know your mom still
loves you, but they're not here. So like, what what
do we do about it? How do we care for
ourselves in a way that keeps us connected to these
people who love us and are no longer living. Yeah,
(27:00):
all of that. How about meditation or oh yes, yes, yes, yes,
I am all about meditation and just so much, whether
I like it or not, I have come to realize
that so much of grieving and healing is just quiet
time by yourself, and I think giving yourself that gift
(27:24):
of space to just be present for yourself and to
be present for whatever feelings come up as a part
of your grief, I think it's really important. Yeah, all
of that, all of that. Listen you all you gotta
run out, don't don't walk run or you know what,
(27:44):
you really don't have to physically go anywhere. You can
just go online and order order this book Marissa reneede
Lee Grief is Love and if you don't need it
for yourself right now, order it for somebody else. This
life's journey, all of us are gonna bump up against
some type of grief, some type of loss of a
loved one or loss of something, something that you wanted.
(28:08):
I believe when we say that what you're talking about
is interchangeable. It's not just about losing a physical People
can lose things. So the book obviously centers my experiences
of loss with my mother and our pregnancy. But I've
had friends reach out and say that they realized as
a kid, you know, they were grieving when their parents
(28:29):
got divorced. Or another friend who has had some significant
health challenges come up in recent years and is partly disabled,
now say that this book helped her think differently about
her loss of identity. So yeah, it's not it's not
just death. Unfortunately, grief is a part of life, and
(28:50):
we need to normalize that is a part of life.
We do need to normalize it and take some pages
of the books of other cultures that handled as much
depletingly do centric world view of ours in the United
States of America. One last quote to close us out,
Lisa Olivera said, just because no one else can heal
(29:12):
or do your inner work for you doesn't mean you
can shoot or need to do it alone. You are
not alone, Marissa, and I want you to know that
you are not alone. So whatever you're going through right now,
you need to know that you are not alone. Please
please go get professional help if you need it, Hug
(29:33):
on a loved one if you need it, and by
all means, go out and get this book. Grief is Love.
Marissa Renee Lee. It has been such an honor to
have you join us today on Hello Somebody. I'm believe
(30:02):
it about somebody, turn universe, about somebody. Time times. Yeah,
change is coming. The pain is nothing trying to shoot
for the stars. If you're gonna, ain't for something. Embrace
the love for your brother and sister. You need these
(30:23):
the mission brush, we need the puzzle. This pictures painted
up and frame it up for the world to see.
Hain't to hatred up. Enough is Enough's enough making changes
enough In turn of a voice of the truth to
wise words inspire the youth to keep their eyes on
the roof. It's the end. Never give up, keep conquering
goals to the eye. Intelligent, silver, wisdom is gold. Back
(30:43):
to the end. Now is your time. Stay firm, don't
fold to the A or you need is the three bones.
That's what Granny said. Now I'm gonna make sure these
words from Grannie Sprague for all the hair, to give
it your air. She can take you to the promised man.
I swear world pieces what they fear from Queen's the Cleveland, Ohio.
We're here, famous fans turning any quality and tell somebody
(31:07):
you don't even turn up, spanning somebody ship. In turn,
tell somebody can even turn up more times points t
one of those our hand well, Hello Somebody is a
(31:37):
production of I Heart Radio and the Black Effect Network.
For more podcast from Our Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Turn Everything. Welcome to Hello Somebody, a production of The
(00:28):
Black Effect Podcast Network and I Heart Media. Where we
rage against the machine, where we raise our voices against
injustice and stand up for justice. Where we embrace hope
and joy with an optimism for a bright or more
justus future. Each week I'll be dropping knowledge, whether it's
(00:49):
a solo episode from me or a hearty discussion with
esteem guests doing great things in spaces and places of politics, entertainment,
social justice, and beyond. We get real, baby, I mean
really real. We get honest, We get up close and
personal for you, Yes, you, because everybody is Somebody. Before
(01:16):
we begin, I want to give a special shout out
to my team, Thank you, Sam, Tiffany, Sam and the
team over at Good Juju Studios, Erica England, Pepper Chambers,
the Hot One, and my social media team. Too often
we push on through tough times and we quickly push
(01:39):
ourselves to get over it. Yes, I am doing the
air quotes. I know you all can't see me, but
I want you to know that's what I'm doing. Whatever
life has thrown at us, sometimes it feels like a
ninety mile per hour pitch that has been thrown at us,
not just tossed us, thrown at us at our face.
Hello somebody, And I know that what connects us is
(02:01):
that we all have experienced some type of pain and
some type of grief in our lives. It's called being human,
and loss hurts us deeply. Many people deal with tragedy differently,
but overall, the feeling of loss is a universal feeling,
and sometimes people don't give themselves a time to grieve. Well,
I'm here to let you know that it is okay
(02:22):
to allow yourself to have those moments, to have those feelings,
to really be real and get deep down inside of
how you are feeling. It is okay, and it is
always helpful and kind and kind of spiritual to hear
others tell their powerful stories because we are connected by stories.
Stories are a love language. They say that music is
(02:45):
the universal language. Stories are the language that binds us
all together. And how do we deal with the loss
of a loved one or something that hurts us so badly?
So here to help us take a deeper look at
the grieving process and how to navigate through grief while
still loving on ourselves is Marissa reneed Lee. I can't
(03:10):
tell you how excited I am to have her on
the show. And I know I say this every single
week because you guess what, Hello, somebody. We only bring
the most fabulous people. But let me tell you a
little bit about Marissa. She is a called upon advocate,
writer and speaker on coping with grief. Her acclaimed debut,
Grief Is Love, came out in April of unspools the
(03:33):
story of her own grief journey and offers a compass
to others navigating loss. She is a rabbel rouser of
social healing, the former managing director of My Brother's Keeper Alliance,
co founder of the digital platform support O, and founder
of the Pink Agenda, a national organization dedicated to raising
(03:55):
money for breast cancer care research and awareness. She is
a regular contributor to Glamour, Vogue, in SNBC and CNN.
She is a graduate of Harvard and an avid home cook.
She lives with her husband that, their newborn son, bid It,
and their dogs Sadie. Oh my god, Marissa, it's so
(04:18):
good to have you with us today. Thank you here,
Thank you for having me. This is awesome And the
topic that you specialize in is so timely and I
do believe and I can't wait to hear what you
have to say about this, that the pandemic has exacerbated
feelings of suffering and loss and people are just kind
of wandering around even if they haven't physically lost someone
(04:40):
in real time. I talk to people all the time
who do have like just a feeling of loss or
feeling up that they are lost because of all the
pressures of life. So I want to center our conversation
with the quote from Helen Keller, and Helen Keller once said,
we bereaved are out alone. We belong to the largest
(05:03):
company in all the world, the company of those who
have known suffering. Oh I love that, and I just
think that is such a truism. So talk to us
about what led you on this journey and how it
is that you are using your own life experiences to
minister to others. Well, first of all, thank you for
(05:25):
that incredibly generous introduction, and thank you for making time
to talk to me today. I am a huge fan
and followed at your campaign and was cheering you on
from AFAR. So thank you for the work that you
are doing in the world because it is deeply, deeply important.
So you know, as I'm sure, you probably can guess
(05:45):
I became interested in grief and figuring out, you know,
what it really is and what we do with it
because I got stuck in the midst of it. My
mom was sick when I was growing up. She had
multiple scorerosis, and then as I was graduating from college,
she was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, which we
(06:05):
knew immediately was a death sentence. And so I spent
a few years after I graduated trying to help her
and my dad figure out how to manage just a
very complicated health care situation. And at the same time,
you know, I committed myself to doing everything I could
to prepare myself, my family, my mom for her to
(06:29):
make this final transition. You know, I did all of
the research. I had the spreadsheets with the funeral songs
and Bible passages and what she wanted to do with
her things, and I had all sorts of hard conversations
with her, and I felt like I had prepared myself
for my mom to die, and then it happened, and
(06:52):
I very quickly realized there is no adequate preparation for
the loss of someone you love. And I spent a
lot of time kind of stuck in this place of
judgment and shame because I believed that you know, someone dies,
you do the funeral, You're sad for a few weeks,
and then you get over it and life moves on.
(07:16):
And I eventually hit a wall in that thinking a
few months after she died and decided that, you know,
there was nothing wrong with me for still having all
of these feelings, Like where the problem sits is in
how we talk about and define and describe grief and loss.
And so I decided I was going to write a
book in August of two thousand and eight, six months
(07:39):
after my mom died, that would not be just sad
and depressing, and that would be an honest account of grief,
and it would also be a New York Times bestseller.
So far, we've checked two out of the three boxes.
So I need everybody to go out and buy Grief
Is Love. So we can check the third box as well. Yes,
go out about working. Where can people find Target, Amazon,
(08:04):
Barnes and Noble, you know, truly anywhere you buy books,
so to pick it up. But it took a pregnancy
loss and the pandemic for me to actually start to
put pen to paper in late my husband and I
lost a much wanted pregnancy that we spent years trying
to make happen, between money and fertility treatments and all
(08:25):
the doctors visits and egg donors and everything else. And
when we lost that pregnancy, I realized that I really
wasn't over the loss of my mom. As we sat
in our grief, you know, trying to figure out what
was next for us, you know, what we were going
to do to grow our family, and just mourning all
of the hope that we had for this child that
(08:48):
we were not going to have anymore, I realized I
needed to find a way to more concretely redefined grief
for myself, and that actually led to me redefining it
in this book, like I wrote my way through the Pain,
and ultimately concluded that grief is not just about the
(09:11):
specific moment in time when you lose someone you love.
Grief is actually the repeated experience of learning to live
in the midst of a significant loss. And I say repeated,
and I say learning because at this point I'm almost
fifteen years out from my mom's death. There are constantly
things that come up, good things, positive, you know, happy moments,
(09:33):
and sad and difficult moments that connect to the loss
of my mother. You know, I'm not going to forget
that she existed and that we had this unconditional love relationship.
And so what I have committed to do and what
I try my best to describe in grief is love
is continue to have a relationship with her. What does
(09:54):
that look like? And that's what I am hoping to
help others with as well. Yeah, that is a powerful,
powerful thought. I mean, I'm just getting the chills listening
to you share your stories as I did in the
opening intro stories Behind Us Together. It cuts away from
all of the you're different from me kind of thing
(10:17):
that we go through as human beings. We can relate
to each other's stories. And that part about to continue
to have a relationship with her is really bringing tears
to my eyes because I lost my mom. Is have
been over thirty years now. She died in a brain aneurysm,
fully unexpected death. I remember seeing her that morning. I
(10:40):
was in my early twenties, you know, trying to find myself.
The most twenty year olds are the oldest of seven children.
And to be told that my mother was in the
hospital in a coma and then shortly after that the
doctor saying, you know she's not coming back. This machine
is keeping her allied. We need to unplug or do
you want to donate her organs? Oh? My God? And yeah,
(11:01):
I found myself questioning my faith, Yes, relationship with God?
Does God exists? And why would you take my mom
and leave so many other bad people living in the
world or even older when she was forty two years old?
For God's sakes? So just listening to you, I can relate.
I consider what you're doing a ministry and how you
(11:23):
learn helping other people heal through the process because it
is hurtful. And as you said, I'll have moments where
I can handle that my mom is not physically here,
and then I have moments as an orator, I usually
tell you know her story some way it fits into
a speech that I'm giving about hope and about promise.
(11:43):
Because I consider myself very much a psycho breaker. I
was not supposed to achieve what I achieved because my
mom died so young, and I'm the oldest and seven children,
and you know, all of the stereotypes of having a
single mom, you know, custodio parents, seven children, all of
that and then there are days where I can't tell
the story without and that's okay. And that is one
(12:07):
of the most important points in the book. And it's
the first chapter and it's the longest chapter for a reason,
is the chapter on permission, Like you need to not
feel bad about the fact that it's been thirty years
and sometimes it still brings you to your knees. Like
I think the sooner we normalize grief as more like
(12:30):
a wave, you know, I think about it like the ocean,
like the way the tide comes and goes, Like that
is what grief is, as far as you can tell
at thirty years out and as far as I can
tell and almost fifteen years out, like it comes and goes.
And I think we need to culturally normalize that experience
for people, especially in this moment of time where there's
(12:52):
so many people who are newly bereaved, and we need
to shift our framework around acceptance because you and I,
like we will probably never fully accept and be totally
a thousand percent okay with the fact that our moms
aren't here, like there are moms, Like that's it, right,
And I think what acceptance should actually be is acceptance
(13:15):
of grief as a normal part of your life from
here on out. You loved her, I loved my mom,
like we don't forget about them. And the thing that
I want to make sure people know is grief is love. Yes,
it centers my experiences with grief and loss and the
lessons I learned and the mistakes I've made. But everything
in the book is grounded in the leading research on
(13:37):
grief and loss, and specifically this theory that I did
some extra research on, called the continuing bonds theory, which
argues that one of the healthiest ways to live with
loss is to find a way to continue your bond
with the deceased in the present, Like your mom still
loves you, So what does that look like for you today?
(14:01):
That is so beautiful, and I think it really fits
with not a Western tradition, but I would say an
afrocentric tradition, non Western cultures. Ye, tend to commune with
the ends, with the ancestors. Yes, reminds me very much
of Black Panther really drove that point home. The ancestral plane, yeah,
(14:24):
or like Native American traditions even, Yes, Like I think
these ideas that we still tend to have in this
country around grief and loss, for better or worse, just
like everything else in this country. They are ideas that
are connected to whiteness and a Eurocentric framework for how
(14:47):
we do things, and that's just not It's not the
only way to do things, and that framework does not
necessarily work for us. I do believe that there's a
cultural connection, you know, even though many of us have
never been on the continent. There's these carryovers within the spirit.
It's in the stratosphere, is not physical, but they are carryovers.
(15:08):
The whole notion of the porn libations for my home
in that way, that is that carry over. There was
something you put in your book, Grief is Love, you say,
and I quote, I didn't give myself permission to grieve.
I gave myself permission to step up and soldier on.
(15:31):
So too often, you know, end quote, too often we
quickly just dust ourselves off without really taking the time
to settle into really how we're feeling in the moment.
And you did kind of hint at that when you
talked about the process of you and your husband being
pregnant and then having that loss another loss, and through
the loss of that child, you realized I'm not done
(15:54):
grieving for my mom? How did you come to that
point where I said, I'm not going to continue to
only this way. I want to take a different path. Well,
I mean, I will never forget like the day that
it was like physically the worst, because that was the
other thing about the pregnancy loss. I was dealing with
both my emotional pain and like serious physical pain unfortunately.
(16:16):
And I was on the floor of our bathroom, like
trying to fit my five seven fifty pounds self onto
our bath mat, just sick as a dog, you know,
like I could barely lift up my head to look
at my husband, and in that moment, like all I
(16:37):
wanted was my mom. And soon after that moment, the
pandemic started, and suddenly I found myself grieving for not
having my mom there with me to help me figure
this out, help us figure out how to move forward,
like as a couple, as a family, like what were
we going to do next? But then I also had
(16:57):
the grief that like we were all experiencing when all
of a sudden, life as you knew it disappeared right
and I felt like what I am doing? What I
have done to this point, you know, for the twelve
years prior following my mom's death, like it wasn't enough,
Like it just it wasn't. It wasn't working for me anymore.
And so I decided I needed to double down on
(17:20):
my commitment to not getting over it and really give
myself permission to have all of these complicated feelings about
these two separate but very connected losses and that I
was just going to be okay with that, whatever that meant.
And that's what I committed to, and I wrote an
article about it in May. A lot of people agreed
(17:41):
with me, and that then led to where we are today.
Like the book Deal and Grief is Love. That is
so beautiful and just the countless people who are going
to be blessed because you had the courage to use
your life experiences share them, be vulnerable enough to share them,
to turn it into a book. And now millions of
(18:02):
people can read it and they can even though people
grieving in different ways, they don't have to go through
it alone, like you're helping them pars out a ways
to deal with it. I feel another quote coming on
this is sister Taragi p Henson, and she said, first
of all, it is entirely impossible for any human to
(18:23):
always be strong. I was always apprehensive of the term
strong black woman because it dehumanizes us and makes it
seem like we don't hurt. Oh my god, now that's yeah.
Can we talk a little bit about that in the
(18:44):
context of your your book. I mean, this is probably
even beyond the context of your book, but Taragi is
making a really strong point. I mean, on one side,
being called strong, it's supposed to be a compliment, something
revel in. But on the other hand, it does signal
that you don't hurt and that you're not vulnerable, and
(19:05):
that you don't need love and help. Yeah. So one
of the things that I was forced to do as
I worked on grief is love was constantly go back
and ask myself, why, like why did I handle the
loss of my mother so differently from the loss of
this pregnancy, where I was very open about it and
like told everybody and just like did whatever I needed
(19:27):
to do. And you know, why did I feel like
I couldn't do that back in two thou eight And
what are all of the things that impact who I
am and how I show up and what I feel
comfortable doing in the world. And I realized that and
this is so obvious in retrospect, you know, you cannot
(19:47):
separate your identity from your reality. So there were definitely
things that I did and ways in which I responded
that we're very much rooted in this like strong black
woman narrative, and I took it a step further and
also realized we as black women have been forced to
(20:12):
be strong because more often than not, we are not safe.
And when you think about being vulnerable and grieving and
giving yourself a space to kind of like fall apart
a bit emotionally, it is really hard, too near impossible
(20:33):
to have true emotional and like psychological vulnerability if you
lack safety. And so I think it's really important in
conversations about grief and loss and trauma and healing and
really pretty much everything to think about whether or not
people are safe enough to really grieve and to heal,
(20:59):
and do we even give everyone equal access to the
things that facilitate healing, like time off from work, access
to mental health, you know, resources, etcetera. Why you're on
that point or is it too? Is black grief different?
I mean, because you've got the point that everybody doesn't
have access to the same tools. Grieving is universal. Don't
get me. Yes, yes, grief is universal. But I think
(21:24):
grief and healing, which is like a really important part
of this conversation, right because we're talking about living with loss,
not just like experiencing something as one moment in time.
All of those things are harder if you are not safe,
and that it means like emotional safety, physical safety, economic safety, etcetera.
(21:47):
Which I think therefore means that grief and healing it's
harder for black people. I think it can be harder
for women. It's harder for folks from Native American communities,
lgbt Q plus communities, etcetera. And what I have been
thinking about more recently is like, like, what does it
look like to grieve if you are a woman who
(22:10):
has an unwanted pregnancy right now and lives in a
state where abortion is no longer legal? You know, what
does it look like to grieve if you are the
parent of an lgbt Q child in Texas or Florida, Like,
you can't take the time to grieve if you don't
feel safe in doing so. You know, if you're if
(22:32):
you're worried about the well being of that child or
your own well being and the other example. So, yes,
I think grief is harder for for folks who are
more marginalized and who have been made vulnerable by society.
Yeah wow, this is I mean, we could we can
talk about this all day, pilling back the layers, grieving
(22:55):
a process never ending, giving yourself permission, knowing that it
will be with you for the rest of your life.
And that's okay. You're saying, yes, okay, what are some
of the tools some of the ways of tools that
you used and or that you can recommend to others
so that they can deal with, cope with, live with
(23:18):
their grief and know that it's okay to do so. Yeah.
So one of the things that I think we don't
talk about enough within our community is the importance of
accessing quality mental health resources. You know, grief is really hard,
and while it lands differently for everyone, there are things
(23:41):
that studies have shown around like how grief impacts your
body and your brain, and I think having professional help
to work through that is really important. And I personally
have access to it multiple times through my grief journey
and many different therapists, some better than others. But I
think sometimes we we over analyze therapy and view that
(24:02):
relationship like a marriage, when really I think of it
more as like a dating experience. You know, you don't
have to be with this person forever, But if you
go into the relationship with clear expectations and boundaries and
you know, knowing what you'd like to get out of it,
I think it can be incredibly helpful. The other thing
I will say has been really important to me throughout
(24:23):
my process is just accessing other forms of support, whether
it's paid support or family and friends who want to
help you while you're grieving. You know, saying yes when
someone offers to make dinner or watch your children, or
you know, asking for someone to take your dog for
a walk so you can take a break and do
(24:44):
a workout or go to therapy or whatever. Like asking
for and accepting help, I think is a really important
part of living with loss and really dealing with any
of life's significant challenges. Right. The other thing that and
truly this is the thing that has helped me the most,
and this is the primary premise behind grief is love,
(25:07):
and that is finding your own way to continue to
access the love of the person who is no longer
here and making sure that translates into real, tangible things.
So I'll give you an example, because this is one
that I am still working on in my own life.
(25:29):
You know, I'll have these moments where I will just
feel like, oh, I really missed my mom. You know,
I wish my mom were here. And what I have
been trying to make myself do more recently is ask myself,
like what am I really missing? Is it the way
she would encourage me when I would feel disappointed after
(25:53):
something not working out at school? You know? Is it
the way that she would rub my back and like
you know, provide that kind of like physical comfort. Is
it I would really love one of her meals, like
you know, like I try and get it like what
it is, and then I try to find a way
to access it myself. You know, if it's I'm feeling
discouraged because something professionally maybe didn't work out the way
(26:16):
that I had hoped, like I'll text the friend who
always has something nice to say, you know. If it's
I am just feeling exhausted and looking for comfort, try
to go to bed earlier or take a long shower
and like hide from my husband and my kid for
a little bit. You know, like like I try and
think about, like, like, what is it? Is there some
sort of gap that I can fill here or that
(26:39):
I can have filled in some other way, because you know,
at the end of the day, I know my mom
still loves me, just like I know your mom still
loves you, but they're not here. So like, what what
do we do about it? How do we care for
ourselves in a way that keeps us connected to these
people who love us and are no longer living. Yeah,
(27:00):
all of that. How about meditation or oh yes, yes, yes, yes,
I am all about meditation and just so much, whether
I like it or not, I have come to realize
that so much of grieving and healing is just quiet
time by yourself, and I think giving yourself that gift
(27:24):
of space to just be present for yourself and to
be present for whatever feelings come up as a part
of your grief, I think it's really important. Yeah, all
of that, all of that. Listen you all you gotta
run out, don't don't walk run or you know what,
(27:44):
you really don't have to physically go anywhere. You can
just go online and order order this book Marissa reneede
Lee Grief is Love and if you don't need it
for yourself right now, order it for somebody else. This
life's journey, all of us are gonna bump up against
some type of grief, some type of loss of a
loved one or loss of something, something that you wanted.
(28:08):
I believe when we say that what you're talking about
is interchangeable. It's not just about losing a physical People
can lose things. So the book obviously centers my experiences
of loss with my mother and our pregnancy. But I've
had friends reach out and say that they realized as
a kid, you know, they were grieving when their parents
(28:29):
got divorced. Or another friend who has had some significant
health challenges come up in recent years and is partly disabled,
now say that this book helped her think differently about
her loss of identity. So yeah, it's not it's not
just death. Unfortunately, grief is a part of life, and
(28:50):
we need to normalize that is a part of life.
We do need to normalize it and take some pages
of the books of other cultures that handled as much
depletingly do centric world view of ours in the United
States of America. One last quote to close us out,
Lisa Olivera said, just because no one else can heal
(29:12):
or do your inner work for you doesn't mean you
can shoot or need to do it alone. You are
not alone, Marissa, and I want you to know that
you are not alone. So whatever you're going through right now,
you need to know that you are not alone. Please
please go get professional help if you need it, Hug
(29:33):
on a loved one if you need it, and by
all means, go out and get this book. Grief is Love.
Marissa Renee Lee. It has been such an honor to
have you join us today on Hello Somebody. I'm believe
(30:02):
it about somebody, turn universe, about somebody. Time times. Yeah,
change is coming. The pain is nothing trying to shoot
for the stars. If you're gonna, ain't for something. Embrace
the love for your brother and sister. You need these
(30:23):
the mission brush, we need the puzzle. This pictures painted
up and frame it up for the world to see.
Hain't to hatred up. Enough is Enough's enough making changes
enough In turn of a voice of the truth to
wise words inspire the youth to keep their eyes on
the roof. It's the end. Never give up, keep conquering
goals to the eye. Intelligent, silver, wisdom is gold. Back
(30:43):
to the end. Now is your time. Stay firm, don't
fold to the A or you need is the three bones.
That's what Granny said. Now I'm gonna make sure these
words from Grannie Sprague for all the hair, to give
it your air. She can take you to the promised man.
I swear world pieces what they fear from Queen's the Cleveland, Ohio.
We're here, famous fans turning any quality and tell somebody
(31:07):
you don't even turn up, spanning somebody ship. In turn,
tell somebody can even turn up more times points t
one of those our hand well, Hello Somebody is a
(31:37):
production of I Heart Radio and the Black Effect Network.
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