December 25, 2023 • 23 mins
Is acceptance overrated? What happens when you have to face a new year without your person in it (or without the health you used to have!)? In this special two-part episode, we face the new year together - with special guest, historian, author, and queen of awkward conversations, Kate Bowler.
In this episode we cover:
- How do you have hope for the year to come when right now maybe isn’t so great?
- Acceptance, moving forward, and ferocious self-advocacy
- The Math of Suffering: this year, last year, and measuring love
- Why social bonds matter, and what happens when no one sees you
We're re-releasing some of our favorite episodes from the first 3 seasons. This episode was originally recorded in 2021.
Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.
About our guest:
Kate Bowler, PhD, is an associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School. Author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved). Her latest book, No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear), grapples with her diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith as she tries to come to terms with limitations in a culture that says anything is possible.
Find her at katebowler.com and follow her on social media @katecbowler
About Megan:
Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. Get the best-selling book on grief in over a decade, It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, wherever you get books. Find Megan @refugeingrief
Additional resources:
Read Kate Bowler’s memoir Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved)
Read Kate’s latest book No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear)
Want to talk with Megan directly? Join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A grief clinics: your questions, answered. Want to speak to her privately? Apply for a 1:1 grief consultation here.
Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s OK That You're Not OK and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed
Books and resources may contain affiliate links.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Devine. This week on the show, a
re release of one of your all time favorites from
season one. Doctor Kate Bohler on the madness that is
New Year's resolutions, finding hope when life feels impossible, and
the complicated math of suffering. It's a great way to
close one year and enter the next, especially if you
(00:22):
are not that psyched about this holiday. Okay. Part one
of my conversation with special guest, historian, author, and Queen
of Awkward Conversations Kate Bowler right after this break before
we get started. Two quick notes. One, this episode is
(00:44):
an encore performance. I am on break working on a
giant new project, so we're releasing a mix of our
favorite episodes from the first three seasons of the show.
This episode is from season one, in which I answered
listener questions, sometimes on my own, sometimes for the guest.
So if you want more of these Q and A
style episodes, you can find the entire collection from season
(01:05):
one wherever you get your podcasts. Second note, while we
cover a lot of emotional relational territory in our time
here together, this show, is not a substitute for skilled support,
for the license mental health provider, or for professional supervision
related to your work. I really want you to take
what you learn here, take your thoughts and your reflections
out into your own world, and talk about it all. Hey, friends,
(01:31):
So a lot of the questions that we got for
this week's show can be boiled down to one thing.
How do I find hope in the year to come?
Knowing what I know about life right now, these last
few years of hardship upon hardship in our personal lives
and the wider world don't exactly make hope or even
optimism that easy to access. The closing of one year
(01:52):
and the entrance of a new year is just not
that easy to navigate with any kind of excitement about
what's ahead. I always aim to open these shows without
being a downer, but so far I have not succeeded.
There are hundreds of beginnings and endings in any given
twelve month span, both culturally and personally. Beginnings and endings
(02:12):
happen all the time. This whole idea that the year
ends in December and begins a new in January of
the Gregorian calendar is just one of many transition points.
One of my favorite things about today's guest is the
ground she covers with her brain. She's like this amazing
ven diagram of religion, self help, health, kindness, the minutia
of being human, all stitched together with this deep view
(02:34):
of culture and religion. She definitely gets what I just
rambled about, that the new years don't always match the calendar,
and even when they do, the new year isn't always
that fresh start you long for. Doctor Kate Boehler is
an author, historian, and one of my favorite people in
the world these days. She received a master's of religion
(02:55):
from Yale Divinity School and a PhD from Duke University.
She's an associate profess at Duke Divinity School. Her latest book,
No Cure for Being Human, grapples with her diagnosis of
stage four cancer at the age of thirty five and
the intersection of blind optimism and the lack of control
inherent in being a real, live human with limitations. Doctor
(03:15):
Bowler made the whole country get used to speaking frankly
about suffering through her popular podcast Everything Happens, which is
truly awesome and you should listen to that too. In
today's episode, Kate and I talk about all manner of math,
and before you stress out about that, it's the math
of human suffering. Don't stress out about that either. It's
(03:36):
going to be great, all right, everybody. I am so
glad to have my friend Kate in the studio well
studio zoom with me today. So Kate, thank you so
much for being here.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Hello, my dear thanks for having me. Absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
You are the one person that I wanted to talk
to you for this end of the year. New Year's
not really a special but the New Year episode because
there's there's so much in all of your work, your
whole body of work, all of your books about trying
to live into the future when the present is so crappy,
(04:12):
when you know what you know about things so right, right, Like,
how how do you have any sort of optimism or
hope in the future. Now we're going to get to that.
I want to jump right into some listener questions because
I think that's going to be the best, the best
way to access the brilliance of your mind and your
expertise here. So you okay with that? If I jump
(04:33):
right into a question, all right, let's go. So listener
question number one, how do you accept that you're leaving
the last year that you shared with your person.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, that's right. Second anyone uses the word new, there's
immediately the knowledge that we have to then move on
without maybe the life we thought we'd be here, the
person we thought we would have. I I think that's
such a such a gorgeous, honest thing to say, because
with all the folks on New Year's resolutions and like twenty,
(05:03):
you know, it's always like it's kind of next year,
it's gonna be the best year yet. And for many
of us, especially when it comes to love, is like
so for that love, there needs to be a moment
to acknowledge that sometimes the best days of that love
are behind us. It reminds me of some of the
people I've met who create almost like a like a
funeral for the year, for the for the thing that
(05:26):
came before. Sometimes it was the person that they were,
the love that they had, but just something that honors
the immensity of being feeling like you were like filled
to the brim of details of something you're scared about forgetting,
just being honest about those fears, Like maybe I'm scared
of starting something new because I don't want to let go.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I love that idea of having a funeral or having
some sort of ceremony to mark the end of the
form of relatedness that came before.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, maybe it's not just like the countdown to the
new year, but just having a moment to count down
the the one that's just coming to a close. You're right.
I think we have this aggressive futurism that prevents us
from being honest.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Aggressive futurism is a fantastic way of looking at it. Yeah,
there's a word I want to pick up on. In
this listener question, they write, how do you accept that
you're leaving the last year you shared with your person?
And I think this is a really good one because
in your books and on your Instagram you touch on
acceptance a lot. So can you talk to me about
your relationship with acceptance.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Oh, it's horrible, anest I am acceptance. It's truly a nightmare.
I've been living with incurable cancer for a long time,
longer than I wanted to, and I kept thinking that
life was going to be a series of challenges that
I would overcome and then I could put things behind me.
But part of trying to figure out how to live
(06:49):
it seems is figuring out what maybe just to have
a thicker category for acceptance, to have almost like a
higher tolerance for the uncertain of having things that I
love that I can't get back to and not ever
going back to that like durable and destructible vision of
myself I thought I would have. So I was diagnosed
(07:10):
on US thirty five and I am forty one, and
I feel so grateful every time I hit a new year.
But at the same time, I need a minute to think,
what are the things I cannot change? It's like gorgeous
serenity prayer. But then how can I find like a
little bit of traction, a little bit of like change
wiggle ability to move because gosh, I'm not fully built
(07:33):
for acceptance. I need a little bit of something that
I can like totally kick the dust off of and
move around. Man.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I think in a lot of ways we weaponize acceptance,
right It's supplied from the outside as this end goal
that you need to get to in order to be
palatable to the others around you, Like you just need
to accept that there are some things that your body
can't do anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, screw that, really, No, I've spent no You're right,
I spend most of my energory trying to not accept
most things, because I mean, I think that living at
least for me when I think about the context of
like I'm a professor, so I figure out how to
keep changing and moving forward. I've got complicated medical care
(08:16):
in which I very frequently have to yell at people
what I'd rather use my nice hid or voice than like,
if I don't constantly push against acceptance, it goes into
stagnation and despair, and so sometimes not accepting things It's
been a really important part of me staying alive and
also just learning how to evolve and change because I'll
never get to be the person I was before.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, some things are unacceptable, right I Yes, I love
how you cared that though, Kate, that like acceptance in
some ways is giving up and being passive, like sort
of pitting it against self advocacy, right, just as you
said right there, Like with my medical needs, I can't
just accept that this is my condition and this is
(08:58):
what needs to happen. That I need to ferociously advocate
for myself, and sometimes that feels the opposite of acceptance.
I'm a bigger fan of allowing rather than accept us,
because I think acceptance comes with this connotation that you're
cool with it. Right, we go back to if we
go back to our question, our listener question here, how
do I accept that I'm leaving the last year I
(09:19):
shared with my person? So the understory there is that
their person died in twenty twenty one, and we're facing
a new year without this person. How do I accept
that I'm leaving that year? Well, some things are unacceptable.
It's not okay. Yes, you don't have to be quote
unquote good with that in order to be healthy and human.
And you're greety, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
It's like so much of the experiment, right, is just
living with unacceptable truths. Yeah, what a strange thing. I
always love it when people say that. There's that lovely
quote from it's the mayor of East Town, it's the
Kate Winslet character, and she says, you know at some point,
like you don't I don't know if she said you
don't accept it, but it's like, but it's some point
you just have to put groceries in the fridge. It
(10:02):
didn't have that sort of like shiny neo Buddhist Everything's fine.
With me. I am the ocean h quality about it.
It's a stubbornness to that that I really I really respect.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, stay tuned for more coming up right after this break. Hey,
before we get back to this week's guest, I want
to talk with you about exploring your losses through writing.
There are lots of grief writing workshops out there with
(10:35):
prompts like tell us about the funeral, that sort of thing.
My thirty day Writing your Grief course is not like that.
Them prompts are deeper, they're more nuanced. They're designed to
get you into your heart and into your own actual story. Now,
writing isn't going to cure anything, but it can help
you hear your own voice, and that is incredibly powerful.
(10:55):
You can read all about the Writing your Grief Course
at Refuge in Grief dot com backslash WYG that is
WYG for Writing your Grief. You can see a sample
prompt from the course and get writing your own words
in minutes. My thirty day Writing your Grief Course is
still one of the best things I've ever made for you.
Come join more than ten thousand people who have taken
(11:17):
the Writing your Grief Course refugegrief dot Com backslash WYG
or you can find the link in the show notes.
So there's a related question that kind of goes back
to what you were talking about with marking the end
of one period before you enter the next period. And
so the next question ready, Okay, it's going to sound
almost like the first question, but there's a slight angle
(11:40):
change here. So question two, how do you go into
a new year knowing that your person won't be there
for it? If my person died this year, now I
have to start saying they died last year, and it
makes them feel so far away from me. So something
kind of inherent in that question is the passage of
time that gets sort of crystallized once we switch from
(12:04):
December thirty first to January first, Like, now I have
to say my person died last year, or if your
person died in twenty twenty, you can't say they died
last year anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
M Yeah. It kind of gets to the the math
of suffering that gets applied to all those of us
who suffer, which is that there's the kind of a
rough calculation in the listener. It's like when someone says
how when you know someone died, They're like, well, how
old were they like immediately there's a sense that our
grief is rendered invalid with the passage of time, or
our love doesn't sometimes even increase and our grief increase
(12:36):
over the course of so that I do feel like
there's with the passage of time comes the feeling of
leaning to justify either moving on or whatever that means,
or not moving on and whatever that means to an audience,
And there's like a there's a jury out there who
gets to decide. And I have not found that there
is a really easy way to describe what suffering has
(12:58):
meant over time, like I you know, I, for instance,
even if I just said, oh, I was diagnosed six
years ago, truth is, it was three years after that
that was probably the worst moment of my life. You know.
It wasn't the diagnosis. It was the facing a different
life for deth surgery and trying to still have problems
that made sense to anyone after they thought that it
was all over by them. And so I'm like a
(13:20):
big fan of bad math, like where we just assume
we can't add up other people's lives because I know
I can't.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I love that I remember that was actually a line
in your new book that stood out to me when
I was reading it rereading it again yesterday, The Mass
of Suffering. Right, It's such a beautiful way of looking
at it, because you're right, like, the inherent in this
question that this listener sent in was I'm going to
have to start defending the fact that I missed them
or that I am quote unquote still grieving, because I'm
(13:49):
not going to be able to say, oh, it was
just earlier this year that they died, or it was
just last year that they were here. There is this
judgment that enters the chat at the change of the year, Right, Yeah,
And I really love what you just said there about
I'm going to commit myself to bad math. I just
paraphrase what you said, but as a person who has
(14:10):
a hard time with math in general, I love I
kept thinking like, oh, we need a new applied mathematics,
the mathematics of suffering. That only the person at the
center of that equation is the one that gets to
say what time means or or what suffering means, and
how we judge that because there is so much judgment
(14:31):
about how you're suffering, how much you should be suffering,
what the worst times were for you. It's really interesting
that you brought that part up, that you know, when
you tell your story diagnosed six years ago with cancer
and people are like, oh, that must have been such
a terrible time for you, And what you just shared
was that actually that sucked, and my equation of suffering
(14:52):
actually had a different high point.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I think too, the part of the fear, at least
for me, of having someone here has how to chronically terrible, terrible,
wonderful but pretty terrible, chronically terrible life is just sorry.
It's just that the more things happen, you know, the
more that there's this kind of creeping fear that if
(15:18):
people don't understand, then I'll be left alone. If people
don't understand, I won't have the community and the support
and the friendship. Like if I can't make other people
understand my suffering math, then I'm no longer translatable as lovable, carriable, intelligible.
Then you get untranslated in a way. And it's been
hard to manage the fear that persistent suffering creates, and
(15:43):
that that's something I recognize in other people, is the
feeling untranslatable anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
It makes me think of survival as mammals I know
that you can hang with my tangents here.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'm really into it already, right.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, dun, dun, duh. So while you're describing like this,
this fear of being untranslatable, that I'm going to have
to explain what it's like to be me clearly enough
so that people stay with me. That drive for connection
and being seen, it is so fundamental to our existence
(16:19):
as human animals. This is why excommunication is such a
powerful tool. If you look at you're going to know
this one better than I do. With your history and
your background, which ones, Kate, are the tradition on the
East Coast where you where the whole community gathers around you.
And if you're done saying about about shunning, yeah, yeah,
(16:41):
can you describe shunning for folks who don't know what
I'm rambling about here? Describe shunning for me, Kate.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Well, it is a powerful tool of social cohesion and
lack thereof, where if someone violates like a sacred or
a special tenant of the community, that they will be
kind of exiled by no one acknowledging or speak to them.
And so like I have a family member who was
shunned for having an organ at or wedding that within
(17:08):
a in a service that prohibited musical instruments, which is
very funny now but was very sad at a time.
But it's it's the it's the ability to render somebody
invalid by not socially seeing them.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And it's really really powerful because we need each other
so and that that shunning that we're talking about, it
belongs to specific spiritual and religious traditions, but you can
also find it showing up in pop culture. Totally outing
my nerd here, but I believe on one of the
one of the Star Trek shows. Gosh, I'm going to
(17:41):
get so many messages about this for not knowing which
part of the Star Trek right, which Star Trek trivia
I'm quoting here? Apologies, my brain is full, everybody, But
there is an episode where I believe it's a it's
a klingon shunning excommunication thing, where like the person who
did the socially unacceptable thing stands in the middle and
everybody makes a circle, looks the person in the eye,
(18:03):
and then crosses their arms in front of their chest
and turns their back.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
That's what I think of when I think about shunning
used as communal operational force, right, like this is how
we keep people performing the way that we want them
to perform. And what you described in talking about like
I want my suffering to be translatable. I need people
to hear me and understand me and see me, because
(18:29):
if you can't understand me, then I lose connection and community.
And if I can't be translated, I can't be seen. Yeah,
and that is its own form of sort of communal shunning.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
I think that's why as a historian, I got so
excited about sort of studying religious and cultural cliches, because
I think that's exactly the reason why I found them
so interesting. Was it felt like if I can study
the cultural scripts, like the stories people tell about suffering,
like you know, everything happens for a reason, God never
gives you more than you can handle, that kind of thing.
(19:02):
If I understand the script, then at least I understand
when I'm off script. Because I have felt i've just
you know, having a chronic problem. I have found that
so little of it actually creates the kind of social
understanding that I'm looking for. If I say something like,
oh yeah, it's pretty terrible and it's stayed, really, it's
pretty much stayed pretty awful. There's really no. It doesn't
(19:25):
suit the American culture of optimism. It doesn't give anyone
the exit, the cultural exit ramp that they're looking for.
I think social cohesion and cultural scripts tell us a
lot about when we're in and when we're out, yeah,
because we certainly feel it when we're out. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And I think the temptation is to bend yourself to
fit the social construct so that you don't get shown,
so that you don't feel alone. If you've lost your person,
or you have a really impossible diagnosis or a chronic
illness or injury, you know, you need your community. And
the temptation I think is like, maybe I'm the wrong one. Well,
part of the way that I see a lot of
(19:59):
my work, Kate, is that like, you're not the one
that's wrong. The culture is wrong. And you and I,
you know, work at different angles or different starting points
for this same challenge, which is it's the culture that
misunderstands suffering. It is our entertainment and the stories that
we tell ourselves and what we believe is the most
helpful thing to do for somebody when they're suffering. That's
(20:21):
where the problem is. It's not in this person who
asked this question about you know, how do I go
into a note a new year knowing that this is
a year my person will never see the implications or
the connotations inside that is like, I'm going to have
to justify this. And I think this also what we
were just discussing also points to why it feels so
important for people to justify their right to suffer, or
(20:44):
their right to be in pain, or their right to
be having a hard time that doesn't match the Disney
stereotype or the you know you got through the like
that transformation narrative, right, You and I have yacked about
this before, that transformation narrative, for like, if you do
your suffering correctly, then you come back a bigger, stronger,
wiser person and the bluebirds fly from your brain and
(21:06):
everything works out exactly as it should. And I think
we know that that's not true, and that need to
explain our suffering, translate our suffering. I love that phrase
that you used to talk about that we feel like
we're failing a cultural script and we're going to be
left even more alone, but we also know that we
need to tell the truth about our own experience.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Right, So that's an interesting point of discomfort culturally and
personally and professionally, right, Yes, trying to rewrite those scripts.
And it really does take more people willing to tell
the truth about their math, suffering, their suffering of I mean,
you said it so much better and I can't remember
what it was, but it was awesome. It really does
(21:47):
take people talking about the reality of suffering. Yeah, to
start changing those bigger conversations so that we don't feel
like our math is getting questioned every time we turn
around and every time there's a year change.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
This is just the first half of my conversation with
Kate Boehler. We had so much fun talking together, and yes,
we had fun talking about this really serious stuff. That's
what we do together. This conversation was so much fun
and so interesting and had so much useful stuff in it,
we decided to split it into two parts. This is
part one. Part two is coming your way next week.
(22:22):
Don't miss it, friends. You know how most people are
going to scan through the show description here and think,
I do not want to talk about all that pain stuff. Well,
here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know
it really isn't all that bad. In here, we talk
about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making
things better for everyone, So everyone should listen. Spread the
word in your workplace, in your social world on social
(22:45):
media and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to
the show, download episodes, and send in your questions. Want
more Hereafter? Grief education doesn't just belong to end of
life issues. Life is full of losses, from everyday disappointments
to events that clearly divide life into before and after.
Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or
(23:07):
platitudes or simplistic think positive workplace posters. That's an important
skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for
every human trying to make their way in the world
after something goes horribly wrong at Megandivine dot Co. Hereafter
with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine.
Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio,
(23:32):
edited by Houston Tilley, and music provided by Wave Crush.
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Devine. This week on the show, a
re release of one of your all time favorites from
season one. Doctor Kate Bohler on the madness that is
New Year's resolutions, finding hope when life feels impossible, and
the complicated math of suffering. It's a great way to
close one year and enter the next, especially if you
(00:22):
are not that psyched about this holiday. Okay. Part one
of my conversation with special guest, historian, author, and Queen
of Awkward Conversations Kate Bowler right after this break before
we get started. Two quick notes. One, this episode is
(00:44):
an encore performance. I am on break working on a
giant new project, so we're releasing a mix of our
favorite episodes from the first three seasons of the show.
This episode is from season one, in which I answered
listener questions, sometimes on my own, sometimes for the guest.
So if you want more of these Q and A
style episodes, you can find the entire collection from season
(01:05):
one wherever you get your podcasts. Second note, while we
cover a lot of emotional relational territory in our time
here together, this show, is not a substitute for skilled support,
for the license mental health provider, or for professional supervision
related to your work. I really want you to take
what you learn here, take your thoughts and your reflections
out into your own world, and talk about it all. Hey, friends,
(01:31):
So a lot of the questions that we got for
this week's show can be boiled down to one thing.
How do I find hope in the year to come?
Knowing what I know about life right now, these last
few years of hardship upon hardship in our personal lives
and the wider world don't exactly make hope or even
optimism that easy to access. The closing of one year
(01:52):
and the entrance of a new year is just not
that easy to navigate with any kind of excitement about
what's ahead. I always aim to open these shows without
being a downer, but so far I have not succeeded.
There are hundreds of beginnings and endings in any given
twelve month span, both culturally and personally. Beginnings and endings
(02:12):
happen all the time. This whole idea that the year
ends in December and begins a new in January of
the Gregorian calendar is just one of many transition points.
One of my favorite things about today's guest is the
ground she covers with her brain. She's like this amazing
ven diagram of religion, self help, health, kindness, the minutia
of being human, all stitched together with this deep view
(02:34):
of culture and religion. She definitely gets what I just
rambled about, that the new years don't always match the calendar,
and even when they do, the new year isn't always
that fresh start you long for. Doctor Kate Boehler is
an author, historian, and one of my favorite people in
the world these days. She received a master's of religion
(02:55):
from Yale Divinity School and a PhD from Duke University.
She's an associate profess at Duke Divinity School. Her latest book,
No Cure for Being Human, grapples with her diagnosis of
stage four cancer at the age of thirty five and
the intersection of blind optimism and the lack of control
inherent in being a real, live human with limitations. Doctor
(03:15):
Bowler made the whole country get used to speaking frankly
about suffering through her popular podcast Everything Happens, which is
truly awesome and you should listen to that too. In
today's episode, Kate and I talk about all manner of math,
and before you stress out about that, it's the math
of human suffering. Don't stress out about that either. It's
(03:36):
going to be great, all right, everybody. I am so
glad to have my friend Kate in the studio well
studio zoom with me today. So Kate, thank you so
much for being here.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Hello, my dear thanks for having me. Absolutely so.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
You are the one person that I wanted to talk
to you for this end of the year. New Year's
not really a special but the New Year episode because
there's there's so much in all of your work, your
whole body of work, all of your books about trying
to live into the future when the present is so crappy,
(04:12):
when you know what you know about things so right, right, Like,
how how do you have any sort of optimism or
hope in the future. Now we're going to get to that.
I want to jump right into some listener questions because
I think that's going to be the best, the best
way to access the brilliance of your mind and your
expertise here. So you okay with that? If I jump
(04:33):
right into a question, all right, let's go. So listener
question number one, how do you accept that you're leaving
the last year that you shared with your person.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, that's right. Second anyone uses the word new, there's
immediately the knowledge that we have to then move on
without maybe the life we thought we'd be here, the
person we thought we would have. I I think that's
such a such a gorgeous, honest thing to say, because
with all the folks on New Year's resolutions and like twenty,
(05:03):
you know, it's always like it's kind of next year,
it's gonna be the best year yet. And for many
of us, especially when it comes to love, is like
so for that love, there needs to be a moment
to acknowledge that sometimes the best days of that love
are behind us. It reminds me of some of the
people I've met who create almost like a like a
funeral for the year, for the for the thing that
(05:26):
came before. Sometimes it was the person that they were,
the love that they had, but just something that honors
the immensity of being feeling like you were like filled
to the brim of details of something you're scared about forgetting,
just being honest about those fears, Like maybe I'm scared
of starting something new because I don't want to let go.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
I love that idea of having a funeral or having
some sort of ceremony to mark the end of the
form of relatedness that came before.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, maybe it's not just like the countdown to the
new year, but just having a moment to count down
the the one that's just coming to a close. You're right.
I think we have this aggressive futurism that prevents us
from being honest.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Aggressive futurism is a fantastic way of looking at it. Yeah,
there's a word I want to pick up on. In
this listener question, they write, how do you accept that
you're leaving the last year you shared with your person?
And I think this is a really good one because
in your books and on your Instagram you touch on
acceptance a lot. So can you talk to me about
your relationship with acceptance.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Oh, it's horrible, anest I am acceptance. It's truly a nightmare.
I've been living with incurable cancer for a long time,
longer than I wanted to, and I kept thinking that
life was going to be a series of challenges that
I would overcome and then I could put things behind me.
But part of trying to figure out how to live
(06:49):
it seems is figuring out what maybe just to have
a thicker category for acceptance, to have almost like a
higher tolerance for the uncertain of having things that I
love that I can't get back to and not ever
going back to that like durable and destructible vision of
myself I thought I would have. So I was diagnosed
(07:10):
on US thirty five and I am forty one, and
I feel so grateful every time I hit a new year.
But at the same time, I need a minute to think,
what are the things I cannot change? It's like gorgeous
serenity prayer. But then how can I find like a
little bit of traction, a little bit of like change
wiggle ability to move because gosh, I'm not fully built
(07:33):
for acceptance. I need a little bit of something that
I can like totally kick the dust off of and
move around. Man.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I think in a lot of ways we weaponize acceptance,
right It's supplied from the outside as this end goal
that you need to get to in order to be
palatable to the others around you, Like you just need
to accept that there are some things that your body
can't do anymore.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, screw that, really, No, I've spent no You're right,
I spend most of my energory trying to not accept
most things, because I mean, I think that living at
least for me when I think about the context of
like I'm a professor, so I figure out how to
keep changing and moving forward. I've got complicated medical care
(08:16):
in which I very frequently have to yell at people
what I'd rather use my nice hid or voice than like,
if I don't constantly push against acceptance, it goes into
stagnation and despair, and so sometimes not accepting things It's
been a really important part of me staying alive and
also just learning how to evolve and change because I'll
never get to be the person I was before.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah, some things are unacceptable, right I Yes, I love
how you cared that though, Kate, that like acceptance in
some ways is giving up and being passive, like sort
of pitting it against self advocacy, right, just as you
said right there, Like with my medical needs, I can't
just accept that this is my condition and this is
(08:58):
what needs to happen. That I need to ferociously advocate
for myself, and sometimes that feels the opposite of acceptance.
I'm a bigger fan of allowing rather than accept us,
because I think acceptance comes with this connotation that you're
cool with it. Right, we go back to if we
go back to our question, our listener question here, how
do I accept that I'm leaving the last year I
(09:19):
shared with my person? So the understory there is that
their person died in twenty twenty one, and we're facing
a new year without this person. How do I accept
that I'm leaving that year? Well, some things are unacceptable.
It's not okay. Yes, you don't have to be quote
unquote good with that in order to be healthy and human.
And you're greety, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
It's like so much of the experiment, right, is just
living with unacceptable truths. Yeah, what a strange thing. I
always love it when people say that. There's that lovely
quote from it's the mayor of East Town, it's the
Kate Winslet character, and she says, you know at some point,
like you don't I don't know if she said you
don't accept it, but it's like, but it's some point
you just have to put groceries in the fridge. It
(10:02):
didn't have that sort of like shiny neo Buddhist Everything's fine.
With me. I am the ocean h quality about it.
It's a stubbornness to that that I really I really respect.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Yeah, stay tuned for more coming up right after this break. Hey,
before we get back to this week's guest, I want
to talk with you about exploring your losses through writing.
There are lots of grief writing workshops out there with
(10:35):
prompts like tell us about the funeral, that sort of thing.
My thirty day Writing your Grief course is not like that.
Them prompts are deeper, they're more nuanced. They're designed to
get you into your heart and into your own actual story. Now,
writing isn't going to cure anything, but it can help
you hear your own voice, and that is incredibly powerful.
(10:55):
You can read all about the Writing your Grief Course
at Refuge in Grief dot com backslash WYG that is
WYG for Writing your Grief. You can see a sample
prompt from the course and get writing your own words
in minutes. My thirty day Writing your Grief Course is
still one of the best things I've ever made for you.
Come join more than ten thousand people who have taken
(11:17):
the Writing your Grief Course refugegrief dot Com backslash WYG
or you can find the link in the show notes.
So there's a related question that kind of goes back
to what you were talking about with marking the end
of one period before you enter the next period. And
so the next question ready, Okay, it's going to sound
almost like the first question, but there's a slight angle
(11:40):
change here. So question two, how do you go into
a new year knowing that your person won't be there
for it? If my person died this year, now I
have to start saying they died last year, and it
makes them feel so far away from me. So something
kind of inherent in that question is the passage of
time that gets sort of crystallized once we switch from
(12:04):
December thirty first to January first, Like, now I have
to say my person died last year, or if your
person died in twenty twenty, you can't say they died
last year anymore.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
M Yeah. It kind of gets to the the math
of suffering that gets applied to all those of us
who suffer, which is that there's the kind of a
rough calculation in the listener. It's like when someone says
how when you know someone died, They're like, well, how
old were they like immediately there's a sense that our
grief is rendered invalid with the passage of time, or
our love doesn't sometimes even increase and our grief increase
(12:36):
over the course of so that I do feel like
there's with the passage of time comes the feeling of
leaning to justify either moving on or whatever that means,
or not moving on and whatever that means to an audience,
And there's like a there's a jury out there who
gets to decide. And I have not found that there
is a really easy way to describe what suffering has
(12:58):
meant over time, like I you know, I, for instance,
even if I just said, oh, I was diagnosed six
years ago, truth is, it was three years after that
that was probably the worst moment of my life. You know.
It wasn't the diagnosis. It was the facing a different
life for deth surgery and trying to still have problems
that made sense to anyone after they thought that it
was all over by them. And so I'm like a
(13:20):
big fan of bad math, like where we just assume
we can't add up other people's lives because I know
I can't.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
I love that I remember that was actually a line
in your new book that stood out to me when
I was reading it rereading it again yesterday, The Mass
of Suffering. Right, It's such a beautiful way of looking
at it, because you're right, like, the inherent in this
question that this listener sent in was I'm going to
have to start defending the fact that I missed them
or that I am quote unquote still grieving, because I'm
(13:49):
not going to be able to say, oh, it was
just earlier this year that they died, or it was
just last year that they were here. There is this
judgment that enters the chat at the change of the year, Right, Yeah,
And I really love what you just said there about
I'm going to commit myself to bad math. I just
paraphrase what you said, but as a person who has
(14:10):
a hard time with math in general, I love I
kept thinking like, oh, we need a new applied mathematics,
the mathematics of suffering. That only the person at the
center of that equation is the one that gets to
say what time means or or what suffering means, and
how we judge that because there is so much judgment
(14:31):
about how you're suffering, how much you should be suffering,
what the worst times were for you. It's really interesting
that you brought that part up, that you know, when
you tell your story diagnosed six years ago with cancer
and people are like, oh, that must have been such
a terrible time for you, And what you just shared
was that actually that sucked, and my equation of suffering
(14:52):
actually had a different high point.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I think too, the part of the fear, at least
for me, of having someone here has how to chronically terrible, terrible,
wonderful but pretty terrible, chronically terrible life is just sorry.
It's just that the more things happen, you know, the
more that there's this kind of creeping fear that if
(15:18):
people don't understand, then I'll be left alone. If people
don't understand, I won't have the community and the support
and the friendship. Like if I can't make other people
understand my suffering math, then I'm no longer translatable as lovable, carriable, intelligible.
Then you get untranslated in a way. And it's been
hard to manage the fear that persistent suffering creates, and
(15:43):
that that's something I recognize in other people, is the
feeling untranslatable anymore.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
It makes me think of survival as mammals I know
that you can hang with my tangents here.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I'm really into it already, right.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, dun, dun, duh. So while you're describing like this,
this fear of being untranslatable, that I'm going to have
to explain what it's like to be me clearly enough
so that people stay with me. That drive for connection
and being seen, it is so fundamental to our existence
(16:19):
as human animals. This is why excommunication is such a
powerful tool. If you look at you're going to know
this one better than I do. With your history and
your background, which ones, Kate, are the tradition on the
East Coast where you where the whole community gathers around you.
And if you're done saying about about shunning, yeah, yeah,
(16:41):
can you describe shunning for folks who don't know what
I'm rambling about here? Describe shunning for me, Kate.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Well, it is a powerful tool of social cohesion and
lack thereof, where if someone violates like a sacred or
a special tenant of the community, that they will be
kind of exiled by no one acknowledging or speak to them.
And so like I have a family member who was
shunned for having an organ at or wedding that within
(17:08):
a in a service that prohibited musical instruments, which is
very funny now but was very sad at a time.
But it's it's the it's the ability to render somebody
invalid by not socially seeing them.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And it's really really powerful because we need each other
so and that that shunning that we're talking about, it
belongs to specific spiritual and religious traditions, but you can
also find it showing up in pop culture. Totally outing
my nerd here, but I believe on one of the
one of the Star Trek shows. Gosh, I'm going to
(17:41):
get so many messages about this for not knowing which
part of the Star Trek right, which Star Trek trivia
I'm quoting here? Apologies, my brain is full, everybody, But
there is an episode where I believe it's a it's
a klingon shunning excommunication thing, where like the person who
did the socially unacceptable thing stands in the middle and
everybody makes a circle, looks the person in the eye,
(18:03):
and then crosses their arms in front of their chest
and turns their back.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
That's what I think of when I think about shunning
used as communal operational force, right, like this is how
we keep people performing the way that we want them
to perform. And what you described in talking about like
I want my suffering to be translatable. I need people
to hear me and understand me and see me, because
(18:29):
if you can't understand me, then I lose connection and community.
And if I can't be translated, I can't be seen. Yeah,
and that is its own form of sort of communal shunning.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
I think that's why as a historian, I got so
excited about sort of studying religious and cultural cliches, because
I think that's exactly the reason why I found them
so interesting. Was it felt like if I can study
the cultural scripts, like the stories people tell about suffering,
like you know, everything happens for a reason, God never
gives you more than you can handle, that kind of thing.
(19:02):
If I understand the script, then at least I understand
when I'm off script. Because I have felt i've just
you know, having a chronic problem. I have found that
so little of it actually creates the kind of social
understanding that I'm looking for. If I say something like,
oh yeah, it's pretty terrible and it's stayed, really, it's
pretty much stayed pretty awful. There's really no. It doesn't
(19:25):
suit the American culture of optimism. It doesn't give anyone
the exit, the cultural exit ramp that they're looking for.
I think social cohesion and cultural scripts tell us a
lot about when we're in and when we're out, yeah,
because we certainly feel it when we're out. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
And I think the temptation is to bend yourself to
fit the social construct so that you don't get shown,
so that you don't feel alone. If you've lost your person,
or you have a really impossible diagnosis or a chronic
illness or injury, you know, you need your community. And
the temptation I think is like, maybe I'm the wrong one. Well,
part of the way that I see a lot of
(19:59):
my work, Kate, is that like, you're not the one
that's wrong. The culture is wrong. And you and I,
you know, work at different angles or different starting points
for this same challenge, which is it's the culture that
misunderstands suffering. It is our entertainment and the stories that
we tell ourselves and what we believe is the most
helpful thing to do for somebody when they're suffering. That's
(20:21):
where the problem is. It's not in this person who
asked this question about you know, how do I go
into a note a new year knowing that this is
a year my person will never see the implications or
the connotations inside that is like, I'm going to have
to justify this. And I think this also what we
were just discussing also points to why it feels so
important for people to justify their right to suffer, or
(20:44):
their right to be in pain, or their right to
be having a hard time that doesn't match the Disney
stereotype or the you know you got through the like
that transformation narrative, right, You and I have yacked about
this before, that transformation narrative, for like, if you do
your suffering correctly, then you come back a bigger, stronger,
wiser person and the bluebirds fly from your brain and
(21:06):
everything works out exactly as it should. And I think
we know that that's not true, and that need to
explain our suffering, translate our suffering. I love that phrase
that you used to talk about that we feel like
we're failing a cultural script and we're going to be
left even more alone, but we also know that we
need to tell the truth about our own experience.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Right, So that's an interesting point of discomfort culturally and
personally and professionally, right, Yes, trying to rewrite those scripts.
And it really does take more people willing to tell
the truth about their math, suffering, their suffering of I mean,
you said it so much better and I can't remember
what it was, but it was awesome. It really does
(21:47):
take people talking about the reality of suffering. Yeah, to
start changing those bigger conversations so that we don't feel
like our math is getting questioned every time we turn
around and every time there's a year change.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
This is just the first half of my conversation with
Kate Boehler. We had so much fun talking together, and yes,
we had fun talking about this really serious stuff. That's
what we do together. This conversation was so much fun
and so interesting and had so much useful stuff in it,
we decided to split it into two parts. This is
part one. Part two is coming your way next week.
(22:22):
Don't miss it, friends. You know how most people are
going to scan through the show description here and think,
I do not want to talk about all that pain stuff. Well,
here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know
it really isn't all that bad. In here, we talk
about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making
things better for everyone, So everyone should listen. Spread the
word in your workplace, in your social world on social
(22:45):
media and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to
the show, download episodes, and send in your questions. Want
more Hereafter? Grief education doesn't just belong to end of
life issues. Life is full of losses, from everyday disappointments
to events that clearly divide life into before and after.
Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or
(23:07):
platitudes or simplistic think positive workplace posters. That's an important
skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for
every human trying to make their way in the world
after something goes horribly wrong at Megandivine dot Co. Hereafter
with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine.
Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio,
(23:32):
edited by Houston Tilley, and music provided by Wave Crush.
Host
Megan Devine
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