Tembi Locke: From Scratch

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Life and art and the professional and the personal and
the way they intertwine and they dance together. And I
see that I used to ask questions like why, how?
I don't even ask questions anymore. I'm just like, this
is a gift. I am supposed to learn something in
all of these sectors and in reality and life. There
is no separation.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm
your host, Megan Divine. This week on the show, tembay Luck,
author of the memoir From Scratch and the hit Netflix
series of the same name, Temby joins me to talk
about love and Hollywood and time and meaning, all the
little things settle in everybody, all of that coming up

(00:42):
right after this first break. Before we get started, one
quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional, relational
territory and our time here together, this show is not
a substitute for skilled so I work with a licensemental
health provider or for professional supervision related to your work. Hi, Frans, So,

(01:09):
as has happened a lot of times on the season,
I've known about today's guest four years. We just never
actually met until this conversation. I first found Timbaylock's work
years before she wrote her best selling book From Scratch,
back before the hit Netflix series From Scratch, back when
she had her very first blog called The Kitchen Widow.

(01:32):
We talk about that first creative vehicle of hers in
the show today and how flinging yourself out into the
world creatively speaking, can open pathways to a life you
couldn't have dreamed of in those early days when you
started out. You may have seen the hit Netflix show
From Scratch, based on Tembe's New York Times bestselling memoir
From Scratch. The book and the show centers on her

(01:55):
life with her late husband Sato, from Italy to Los
Angeles and back again. They mix love and food and
in laws and illness. Both the book and the show
have been immensely popular, and to me, that really speaks
to our collective need for love stories that aren't that usual,
like everything worked out for the best Hollywood happy ending thing.

(02:18):
This need that we have for stories that aren't all
gloom and doom either. Tembay manages to convey the truth
about grief without slipping into either one of those outdated tropes,
and you're going to hear all about that in our
conversation Tambay Locke is a writer, executive producer, and an
accomplished actor. You will hear in our conversation that I

(02:39):
was thrilled to learn that Tembay was in one of
my very favorite shows of all time that most of
you have probably not seen, Eureka from the Sci Fi Channel.
She's also on the hit show Never Have I Ever,
among other credits, and there's this really neat section in
the conversation you're about to hear where Tembey talks about
those roles and what was going on in her life

(03:00):
when she recorded those shows, and then what it's like
seeing herself in them now. It's like this emotional archaeological
dig via television. Fascinating. We also get into the challenges
of creating a show based on deeply personal and emotional
parts of your life, trying to stay true to that

(03:21):
story while also protecting the tender parts of yourself, all
while trying to make a show that other people will
want to watch, something that will genuinely move people. As
you'd imagine, juggling all of that stuff isn't always easy. Honestly,
in every show, there's so much going on behind the scenes.
All your favorite shows, oh, your favorite movies, friends, real

(03:43):
humans are doing real life just offstage. Anyway, you're going
to hear all about it in my conversation with actor, writer,
executive producer and all around amazing human Tembilack. I am

(04:03):
so happy to have you here and to actually be
able to see you and talk with you. And no
one will be surprised that we've actually been chatting forever
and could have been doing this hit record a long
time ago. But here we are, here, we are.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Here, we are.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
I have been talking with a lot of people who
who carry a loss with them into the conversation, and
I started asking people to introduce us to their person
and I really love this, So before we get rolling
with all of my questions, would you introduce that to us?

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Oh my gosh, that's a pleasure and an honor. Thank
you first of all for opening that space to do that, right.
It's rare that someone even asks that question of you,
and I always find it's a privilege to be able
to bring Saddle forward. I mean, he's always here in
my sense, and I know we can get into that later,

(04:56):
but I know for me, his light is all ways
within and when I get to sort of shine it outward,
I'm happy to do that. So Sado, my late husband,
his resume would say Italian born chef and you know,
lover of literature and amateur guitar player, lover of newspapers,

(05:18):
all of those things. He was a gentle, beautiful soul
and he was a soulmate and a best friend, someone
who made me look at the world in new ways
and often through the prism of tiny, small moments. He
was a tiny, small moments person and I can be

(05:41):
a big picture person, and that ability for him to
sort of synthesize down a moment or an experience or
the meeting of a new person was a gift in
my life. And he was the father of my of
our daughter. Yeah, he was cool. It was cool. He
could also be complete. You know, he's Sicilian born. So

(06:06):
he had a streak of like a kind of like
incomparable pessimism that could like run through everything. It was
just like everything had those to it, and that I
found that like both hilarious and dramatic in the ways
that you know we sometimes see on TV. But he
could hold it lightly, so that was also nice. I

(06:27):
love this.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
There's like so many directions I want to go with
bringing him here into this space. One thing that I
want to say. It's like I think sometimes we sort
of lionize the dead, like you don't speak all of
the dead, you only say the good things. And it's
like when you get to have a real conversation, when
you get to introduce your person as the totality of
who they are. You know, after my partner died, I

(06:48):
always felt like when I got to talk about him
or heard somebody else talk about him, it made them
become three dimensional again.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
Oh sure, right, absolutely, I hated. I'm laughing at it
before I can even get it out of my mouth.
Here he is in his three dimensionality. You know how
you call a number, a one eight hundred number to
get something done, and then they've got all the prompts
and you have to wait. That vexed him to know end.

(07:19):
He just wanted to get to a human and he
was so impatient, so ridiculously impatient, that I, you know,
it slammed on the phone and he'd be like, I can't.
And I was always like, who are you? You were
a grown man five minutes ago and you got on
a phone and they asked you to push two, three

(07:40):
or four and you lose your freaking mind. So anyway,
that's him in the three D Hi everyone, I think
he's last. Sure.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
I love this. It's a really good lead into one
of my questions here, Like the Hollywood way is to
sort of two dimension and allize complex stories, right, And
so much of Hollywood, especially around grief stories, is like
this transformation narrative of these terrible things happened to you
that we only pan on for a second, and then

(08:13):
we come into this great transformation where heroin learned hard
lessons that only this tragedy could help them learn, Like
what all of this terrible stuff? So I wonder, having
started with the realness and the three dimension, what was
that like for you coming into what can be like
a two dimensional transformation narrative Hollywood arc.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
I don't think any writer really comes to the table
thinking I want to bring this to the two D
like like you know, yeah, yeah, but there is something
in the predominant sort of narrative of what's going to
be easily consumptible for people, right. You know, Hollywood's very

(09:00):
fascinated with like having a sense of optimism at the end.
That's what makes it different than French film. Right, Maybe
I need to make friends.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Maybe that's my problem.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
French film can hang out in the existential and like
leave you on a note, like the whole film can end,
and you're like, way huh, like what you know? It's
the sense of closure and wrapping up and like the
need to have someone sort of finished that ninety minute
two hour experience with a sense of optimism. That core

(09:32):
drive runs deep in Hollywood and there's times when that
is necessary and it actually is helpful. But around grief narratives,
I don't know that it's always so helpful, and I
think it's done us a big, big, big disservice collectively,
and it's very reductive. So when we when I our
team but really certainly me as the person who had

(09:54):
lived my own grief and who'd written about it in
a book and was now a part of a team
adapting it, I was very like, we can't do that thing.
And yet, as will happen, you're going to get notes
along the way, and I mean notes from you're producing
and studio partners who are trying to sort of guide

(10:15):
the ship in a different way because they're thinking of
their bigger audience. People are also tapping into their own
unprocessed stuff, and the idea of going near it on
the page scares them and they're like, ooh, how is
that going to come off? And we don't know is
that tonally right? Oh that could be a little too mess.
That could turn people off. Maybe they'll So they're always trying.

(10:36):
So there's this tug and pull right between the creators
and the writers. What are the needs and interests and
demands of the people who are paying for the product
that you're making. To say it very bluntly, somewhere in there,
there's a struggle. So for us, I always came back

(10:57):
to the thing I'm making. If someone were to watch
this who had never grieved someone, I mean in a
profound way, like they hadn't hit through that profound loss, right,
and we all know when we've had that first, deeply
profound loss. I wanted the show to be some sort

(11:17):
of really honest guide to that, And I said, let
the magic, if you will, the Hollywood magic, the tensil,
the light. They all let that live in the surroundings,
but that the core people, the people themselves, Let the
sort of quote unquote aspirational qualities because of television and film,
Let that live in the set design, let it live

(11:40):
in the music, right, but let the actual human experiences
be as raw as possible. And in so doing, I
would hope that who that the viewer would be like
oh oh oh, that oh okay, and be kind of
stopped in their tracks, not in a way that makes
them run and turn it off, but actually makes them

(12:00):
lean in. That's what we attempted to do. That's what
I was hoping to do. That was that I felt like,
if I could just if that becomes my north star,
I'm just going to keep reaching for that, and if
I can get as close to it as possible, then
I will have done the best. Our team would have
done the best that we could do. That's a very
long answer, but it's my way of saying that there

(12:22):
is a disservice that we have done in Hollywood by
the way we've done this, and stories around people of color,
we've done it, in stories around women, We've done it
many many stories. Grief is just one of the ways.
And I think we are in an era now of
a desire for more honest and real storytelling and that
includes grief.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
Yeah, that's a perfect answer because to me, a lot
of the speaking and teaching and occasionally ranting that I
do is like, we've only got two options in our storytelling, right,
We've got like, no matter what happened to you, everything
works out for the best, and everything is glorious and
sunshine and puppy dogs and the widowed person finds love

(13:04):
again and that makes everything better. Or we've got this
depressing stuck in a corner. Nobody wants to see this like,
and if those are your only two options, you're gonna
choose optimism, even if it's fake.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Absolutely listen, I am someone who dear Lord, I hang
out in the gray so much I'm like, can I
see the color board, because I know there is something.
The gray is kind of where I live. So though
that sort of binary look at it's either full optimism

(13:37):
or you're you know, crumpled under a table and you
can't come out. That just doesn't resonate with me, because,
for one thing, I can touch on both of those
moments in a.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
Single day and a half an hour.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Yeah, right, in a whole spectrum of things in the middle.
So let's see all of those colors, and let's make
space for the full totality of the human experience, even
if there is not a sense of resolution. This this
like addiction to resolution that we have. I'm like, oh,

(14:13):
that a lot gets resolved in a lifetime.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
It's so weird that addiction to resolution and that all
so many of our stories show us that resolution is possible,
and so many of us insist that other people find
resolution in their stuff, But like, who actually lives in
that things? Like, there are some things that can get resolved,
but there are some things that don't. And those stories
are the stories that we need. How do you live

(14:38):
inside things that don't get resolved, that don't get a
Hollywood ending?

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Yeah, or they get resolved and get And by the way,
there's something called spiral learning. You circle back to that
moment again in a new place in your life and
suddenly you're like, oh, I'm working on that again. Oh
that showed up again. So resolution is an quote unquote
it's an ongoing experience. You resolve it for that moment,
and then a new moment and a new set of
circumstances and a new you appears, and suddenly you're doing

(15:06):
the work all over again. And that is called.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yes, it is, And I really do like as a
you know, as a writer, as a storyteller. Like I
come back to this too, Like the power of telling
the truth is compelling theater. Right, Telling the truth is
compelling theater. And I mean theater in the broad sense
of like Hollywood and television and books and be like, oh,

(15:31):
all of the theatrical things, but like that those are
the stories we need because we really take we take
our stories and we learn how to do life from them. Right.
I love what you said. You said something about like
the layers in the answers to this question, Like I
know that a lot of people when we're trying to

(15:52):
figure out how to be supportive for somebody going through
any kind of hard time, whether that's grief or illness
or lost my job or whatever, like we think about
what have I seen in movies? In the movies, my
job is to cheer you up in the movies, we're
going for you coming back to normal and not being
so sad anymore. So like when we lie in the media,

(16:13):
when we lie in our storytelling, we train people the
wrong way to love each other.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Absolutely, And I knew that for whatever reason, in this lifetime,
things lined up in a way that I had this
opportunity with making from Scratch on a global platform, and
I thought, well, dog Gottet, I'm going to take my shot,
and I'm going to try to get as close to
truth as possible, because I don't want to be a
part of the canon that is constantly putting out just

(16:44):
this sort of middling. You know, I don't know, the
word schlock comes to mind, but like it's like I'm
just like I just can't. I can't and I know
because I and I'm going to truly date myself. But
many of our listeners, I'm sure your listeners will know,

(17:04):
I was a child who when the film Terms of
Endearment came out. I can't tell you how many times
I saw that film as a child. Now you one
would think that's not a film for children, and yet
there was something about the honesty in that movie. And
when we were breaking the story for From Scratch, when

(17:26):
we were trying to take a book, crack it open,
and make it into eight episodes, we talked about certain
key moments in film and television that we had seen
collectively as writers, that each of us responded to as
if that was truth. Okay, what element of that could
live in our show? Right? Terms of germ is one
of those shows that became in films that came up.

(17:49):
So you're right, insofar as the things we see, they
leave an imprint on us. Right, So my young psyche
saw particularly, I'm going to just break it down the
scene with Shirley McLean and Deborah Way or when she's
in the hospital then she's dying and the mother is
like sha. So you know, like I was like, oh,
a lioness fighting the system, asking for good care, a

(18:12):
mother and a daughter, the kind of breaking a part
of a relationship to open up a new chapter for
both of them. Know, it was like all of it
I got as a child. That's the power of storytelling.
And I cannot stress the importance of that now at
a time when there is so much loss and death

(18:35):
in the world. I mean that post pandemic, if there
is such a thing. Because COVID is still very ongoing
and unfolding experience, We've just normalized a certain level of
death now in the world right to the virus. There's
the death around climate change, and I could go on.
There's the whole systems that don't sort of support and work,

(18:58):
so we're all experiencing these deep griefs and need to
be able to talk openly and honestly.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
This is the thing is that like this stuff isn't siloed.
As much as the medical industry or the psychiatry industry
or the media industry want to silo these things. They
are all the same cloth, like the ways that we
portray any kind of hardship in books or on the screen,
like this trickles out into life, right Like we don't

(19:26):
know how to talk about the cascading and multifaceted grief
of the last several years. We don't know how to
talk about the grief that is unspooling because of the
political batshitness in the world and the rise of fascism.
We don't know how to talk about grief in communities
of color. We don't know how to talk We don't

(19:47):
know how to talk about any of this stuff. And
there are many many reasons for that. Like I could
talk about that forever, but this is not about me.
But like there there is such a void in our
or understanding of how to talk about these complex issues
without reducing them or bypassing them again, Like we come

(20:07):
back to that binary option. If we can either reduce
it to something that has a resolution and a happy ending,
or we can just not look at it, and unfortunately
we are just not looking at it.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Oh, I completely completely agree, and it's hard to look
at but it's necessary and those of us who have
the ability to do that work. And by the way,
it doesn't have to even be in media. I have
dear friends who even even people who are not close

(20:40):
to me, but people as strangers I would meet who
you know, and I'm thinking specifically in hospital settings when
Sada was very ill, who just would like cut through
it at the soda machine, just could see like I
was that caregiver who was stressed, beyond stressed, and they
would just drop a nugget of knowledge that was just truth, right,

(21:03):
and then they'd go back into their world, and I
could carry that truth with me. I had the privilege
of dear friends who had walked similar paths, who were,
you know, decades ahead of me, who would take me
by the hand and say, let me give you an
insight into the truth. So I think it's this combination
of people we meet in the three D every day
in our quotidian lives and what's happening in media. And

(21:28):
I hope that we and by the way, I will say.
You know, I'm not a TikTok person, but I will
say that even if somebody for a nanosecond, and I
think the sort of medium there is short format if
you get thirty seconds of truth, even through a format
like TikTok, and perhaps it opens up a portal for

(21:51):
you to ask more questions and then you go to
more substantive sources for help. Okay, great TikTok. You had
just did something nice, right, You brought a little kernel
of truth into someone's day that might open up something else.
So we, I think, have to be excavators in our
lives for truth, right, and if we can offer that

(22:14):
to someone at a grocery store, at the post office
or pumping gas, and we're just like, you know, do that.
I try to do it when I'm in situations where
I can I kind of sense someone's a caregiver and
there's some signs around that. Sure I can recognize the signs,
and I'm like, oh, here's here's this little bit and
it may be useful or maybe not. They can only decide, right,

(22:36):
But I was given that gift, and so I try
to offer it again. And I certainly try to do
it in my work when, when and where I can.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
It's that power of acknowledgment. Right, I'm telling the truth,
and we think that that tool of a small nugget
of acknowledgment of the truth of somebody's situation like that
can't possibly be enough, and it is everything, right.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Oh my gosh, it's little. You follow the bread crumbs.
That's when I say, I mean, you're following your breath
the bread crumbs. And and for me, I know, I
had the privilege of like being in uh I write
about this in the book. It's like being with my
mother in law, who had a whole different understanding of grief. Right,
first of all, her age, her culture, So she was

(23:22):
a teacher for me around grief and that was really
really valuable in a way that no one else in
my life could teach me.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
There's a lot in there also about sovereignty and agency
and boundaries. Right. I love that you said I'm going
to drop this nugget here, but you only pick it
up if it feels good to you.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Oh, absolutely absolutely, Because there is a lot of unsolicited
quote unquot and I don't need that any So it's
a very fine line, Like I kind of like sometimes
if I because I'm like, oh do I really do
I say this? Is? This? Is this? You know? I
have to try to check myself a little bit, right.
But I also often say I just feel my heart.

(24:03):
It's called to say this if it resonates, if not,
like go with God?

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah, yeah right.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
And there were times when people would say stuff to
me that in the moment I was like, and lo
and behold. Four years later something would I'd be like,
oh that's what that person was talking about. Oh now
I get it. Now I'm ready to take that in.
But you know, and so you never know. You just

(24:34):
never never never never know. You never know. But it
is it's true that we have to have the agency
to select what is useful for us now, what is additive,
what is expansive in our lives, what is uplifting? And
we take that and we take the next step. I
don't even waste time anymore. And people give me crazy,

(24:55):
but I'm just like, Okay, thank you on moving on living.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
That's your heart right, we love this. I want to
go with. So much of what we've been talking about
is like that that mix of the personal and the
professional and how those intertwined so if it's okay with you,
I want to dive into that a little bit. So
one of the things that I learned about you that

(25:20):
I did not know is that, oh goodness, you were
in one of my favorite series of all time. I
was Eureka, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah, okay. So here's the thing, Well, thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
The way that I screeched when I saw that kind
I just say, Okay, continue.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
I loved being on the show, and that show was
a savior for me in many many ways. I'm going
to tell you in the practical professional way, and then
I'll tell you like the emotional way. Practically. It arrived
in my life at a time when I was in
the crux of caregiving SAD. I was for super sick,
going through lots of chemo therape I had a child

(26:01):
who was under the age of five at home, and
I had not been working. And as we know currently
as we're recording this, we're in the middle of an
industry wide writer an actors strike for exactly these reasons, right,
And I remember when the audition material came in for
Eureka to play the role of Grace, I was like,

(26:22):
I cannot do this, and I don't know. I just
had it was like my system was like I can't
do it. And I remember talking to my acting coach
because I quotched on it, and she was like, you
know what, go in and dedicate this performance to somebody
you love. Forget about whether you get it or not.
Just dedicated to someone you love. I go in and
do the thing. I get a callback, I do another one,
I get the call back. Before you know it, I'm

(26:42):
on set and I have the job. It filmed in Vancouver,
I lived in LA and it required that I was
away for periods of time, so I had to create. Suddenly,
this job made me so I was earning money now,
which is great, earning my healthcare great, needed all those things.
But it made me have to build a community at

(27:03):
home because I had to be a way to work.
So suddenly I had to instantly call upon friends and
I had people who'd come over to do my daughter's
hair and I couldn't do it. People who were bringing
food because my husband could drive, people who And so
this TV series gifted me in two ways. I was
carrying so much by myself alone, and suddenly working forced

(27:25):
me to shift into a new gear and a community emerged.
I mean I emerged because I had to seek them out,
you know, actively seek them out, and that ultimately became
a gift because it was a teaching tool for me.
I think I had become so conditioned that I had
to carry everything on my back. So suddenly I was like,

(27:48):
oh my god, my artist gets to sort of sore
and explore it. Me with these amazing other actors and
creators on set, my family isn't actually falling apart. Maybe
it's actually good for them to have to have other energies.
And so the show was very additive in my life.
Plus them, the writing is so good on that show.

(28:11):
And I'm playing the role of a woman who loses
her husband and then he lives in these multiple timelines,
which I was like, I didn't even get the full
wisdom of that until years later when my own husband
died and I was watching the series with my daughter,
and suddenly the role that I played had a whole
new meaning because she was asking these deeper questions of herself,

(28:36):
which is, where does he live in time and space?
And that's a big, big question. I mean, that's so
it's sci fi for those listeners who don't know Eureka
is clearly a sci fi show. It's it is a
really good show. I don't know that I love that
you love it. I loved doing it, I loved beginning
to play opposite shoe, and that show lives in a

(28:58):
very it lived. It came at a very particular time
in my life and taught me a lot.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Of lessons that continue to unfold in the true sense
of sci fi work.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
Yes, yes, right, And it.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Reminds me of what you know, echoes what you just
said a minute ago, that something that happened, when it happened,
you understood it in one way, and then it continued
to unfold and have a different something else about it
gets revealed, and it's not like I think sometimes we
apply that reductive model here to like, oh, you weren't

(29:31):
ready back then, Like no, I was a different person
back then, and this hits different now.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
You know, good pieces of literature, they're great books. And
you know, take a favorite book that you had as
a teen or as in your in college, let's say,
and return to it every ten years of your life. Yeah,
we read that book every ten years, it will mean
something different. You will meet the text in a different way.

(29:59):
And I say, you know that that was my experience
with with Eureka. I mean, I'm if I watched it
again in ten years, it'll mean something.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, that reminds me.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
So.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
I loved Sallenger when I was in high school and
Franny and Zoe was my favorite book. Loved that book.
And I remember that I read it shortly before Matt
died and it was a completely different book from me.
But one of the things that it gave me was
a window to that teenage self. Oh, I know, it

(30:31):
told me things about her that I'd forgotten.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Mm hmm. Right.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
And I hear that in what you're saying that when
you come back and you watch Eureka and you see
yourself playing the role of a widow, what it tells
you about who you were then and who you might
be now and makes you curious about what's next.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah. And it's so deep for me because I'm watching
the younger version of myself who is pre widowed. Yeah,
And I'm like, oh, so I'm not just watching the character.
I'm watching the person playing the character knowing that she
is about to have a major turning point in her life,
you know. And I'm thinking about like, you know, there's

(31:12):
certain scenes I'm watching and I'm like, oh, I remember
that scene when we shot that and I just called
home because you know, Satoh was coming back from chemo,
and like, oh, you know, I remember having to bring
a little bit of that into the scene because it
was such a big thing happening in my personal life
that I couldn't separate it from my work that day.
And I thought, you know, all I can do is

(31:33):
integrate it. Yeah, So anyway, blah blah blahah. You may
not use any of that stuff, but it's there.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
I have used in all of it because I love
that show. But there's a theme here, right. One of
the things that I do when I'm getting ready to
talk with somebody is look for a theme. That's what
my brain does. And you've got You've got Grace and Eureka,
and then you've got Never Have I Ever, which is
also a show centered around I think a lot more

(32:01):
so in the first season, sure, but it's everywhere in
that show. So you were a different person when you
started Never Have I Ever?

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Yes, So here's the crazy thing about Never Have I Ever?
Is again, it was one of those things where like
and maybe this says more about me. It's like, you know,
an actress, but like the part came through, the audition
material came through, and I'm like, Okay, what what am
I going to do with this? How am I going
to make this special for me? Right? And the thing

(32:31):
about doing a Mindy Kaling project, and this is not
uncommon with high what are expected to be high profile
shows or shows where you don't want the information to
get out too quickly in sort of like in the
Internet world of it all, so they don't release the
whole scripts. I got just my material with a little

(32:53):
bit of context around the storyline. That was it. So
what that means is it was until in the middle
of the pandemic, which is when the show dropped on
Netflix because I filmed it prepten. Then suddenly the world
changed and we're all in lockdown. I'm sitting on the
couch with my daughter, who is the same age as
the daughter that I have on screen in the show,

(33:17):
And that's what I realized. The show is about grief.
So I'm watching it in real time. Wow. Because I
didn't know, I didn't have the privilege of having read
all the scripts. I read the scripts that I was
in so I didn't know the larger storyline because it
had been sort of underlocky true. And so then I'm like, holy,

(33:38):
I am losing it on the couch with my daughter,
and my daughter's watching it like cringing because the mom
that I play on screen is absurd. I mean, let's
face it, elisism. She's an absurd mother. I love playing
her because I get to dial up all of that stuff.
But again, life and art and the profession and the

(34:00):
personal and the way they intertwine and they dance together,
and I see that I used to ask questions like
why how? I don't even ask questions anymore. I'm just like,
this is a gift. I am supposed to learn something
in all of these sectors. And in reality and life,
there is no separation. There's no separation between you know.
If I go as big as between this world and

(34:23):
the other world, this vein, you know, this side of
the veil and the other there's just no separation. It's
all this experience that we are all living through and having.
And I find that in life. I find it in
my art, and I try to integrate them consciously when
and where I can. And I'm grateful when I have
the awareness of, oh, let me try to integrate these

(34:46):
two things. Whenever I feel like a sense of separation,
now i'd say I got to find a way to enter.
I don't like this, I don't I need to integrate
these experiences and I'm not. Always takes me sometime a
minute before I I am ready to do that, or
I give myself permission. But it's really valuable when I can,

(35:08):
you know, it's really valuable. And I think grief taught
me that. I think I really felt like for the
longest time, my work was one thing, my personal life,
and my grief was something else. And then I realized,
you know what, it's all my life.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
That's right, as I read several times in things about
from Scratch, you are living the source material, right, like
we're always living the source materials always.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Always, always, always always, And you know, yeah, so that again,
never have I ever was a true, true gift. And
the other gift in it is to be a part
of again a show, something that's in the zeitgeist, in
this case the globalitgeist, which is pointing an error to

(35:53):
say it's okay to grieve and it can look like this,
and you know, I just feel honored that, like some
part of you get to be a part of that.
That's the ministry.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
I love it. I love it. I love it. I
love it. And you know I when I was widowed,
so two thousand and nine, the landscape of grief both
in like the way that the medical and the psychological
profession talked about it, but specifically how media culture talked
about it like it was a wasteland. So I've been

(36:24):
able to see the developmental arc, right, the narrative cultural
arc of what is changing and how are our portrayals changing?
And I think this is true not just in grief,
it's across the board that we're starting to see our
storylines reflect the truth of existence in a lot more ways.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
And you're a part of that work. I mean absolutely, yeah, ye, yeah,
You've been laying You've been laying the track for years
and it is a part of the collective change and
that is so important. I remember first discovering and be like,
holy moly, there's a just a there's just a cut
through it, honest to hear, right, and that kind of

(37:09):
to be truly brazen in that way and to sort of,
you know, keep that drum beat of honesty going. It's
really really valuable, and it's not easy to do. But
I think collectively and culturally, humans need someone who's keeping
the drum beat of truth even while people are doing

(37:32):
other percussive instruments and they're doing wind instruments and you
know whatever. But someone's going to be beating the drum
of truth or it doesn't work. I mean, I don't
know the drums and a symphony. Clearly, I'm not a
musical person.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
You get I'm going with the drum beat because it's true.
I love that. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Hey.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Before we get back to my conversation with Tembe, I
want to talk with you about creative approaches to grief.
I'm both Tembay and I have written about grief, turning
our experiences into books and television shows and podcasts. But
even before any of those things happened, writing was how
we survived grief itself. Actually I should just speak for myself.

(38:22):
Writing was how I survived.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Now.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
Writing isn't going to cure anything, but it can help
you hear your own voice inside whatever's going on in
your life, and that's incredibly powerful. My thirty day writing
your Grief course is still one of the best things
I've ever made for you. With all of the things
that I've created, it's still one of the best things
I've ever made. There are a lot of grief writing

(38:46):
workshops out there with prompts like tell us about the funeral.
Writing your Grief is not like that. The prompts are deeper,
they are more nuanced. They're designed to get you into
your own actual story, really into your heart and out
of your brain. You can read all about the Writing
your Grief course at refuginggrief dot com backslash w y g.

(39:06):
That's WYG for Writing your Grief. You can see a
sample prompt from the course and get writing your own
story in minutes. The course is self guided, so you
can start right now refuginggrief dot com backslash w y
g or final the link in the show notes. Okay,
back to the fabulous Tambay Luck. You've mentioned a few

(39:28):
times here, and it certainly intersects with me. But like
this service, especially in the wider context of all of
the things that we've been talking about. You've said about
from scratch that making this show was the hardest and
highest form of creativity in service to love that you
ever could have imagined.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, you said it, right, I mean that's it. It was. Yeah.
I mean I get emotional just thinking about it because
I think I'm still processing the experience, and quite frankly,
it might be for the rest of my life. But
I did the the depths to which it was difficult.
And I mean that in the sense of what it

(40:07):
required professionally. To me, it was a hard show to make,
just on the purely production level of like what does
it mean to make shows in Hollywood? It was a
hard show. It was a hard show. We made it
in the middle of a pandemic. It had three languages,
it was in two countries, in five cities. It required
a lot. It was not an easy shoot. Ok. Then
there's the emotional piece that I am processing because I

(40:30):
am I was a doula, a sharp you know, to
two hundred people trying to tell the story that was
essentially my story, but it had to be anchored in
my truth but be universal enough to resonate with everyone.
So then there's this whole sort of creative and intellectual

(40:51):
piece and emotional piece that's happening. And I showed up
every day to step into my past, my very immediate
visceral past. Sometimes with my own you know, the set
dressing would have artifacts from my own home right inside
of the set dressing. Okay, it's not easy thing what's doing,
but I felt like it had to have a visceral

(41:12):
truth to it that I The only way I knew
to capture that was to put as much reality in
the frame as possible, and that meant offering up literally pieces,
tangible pieces of the lived experience into this on screen.
So there was that that was happening. There was the

(41:32):
work with my sister, where I'm working intimately with a
family member and we're navigating what does it mean to
work together as siblings, which was beautiful by the way
it was deepening, but it was also there were so many, multiple, many,
many layers that were unfolding daily and every day when
it was hard, and I mean hard, go back to

(41:53):
my home or sometimes if we were shooting on location
a hotel, and I would just go, why am I
doing this again? What was the original purpose of this?
What's the north star? And I thought this was in
service to some kind of love and that would give
me enough juice, enough clarity, enough grace to show up

(42:13):
the next day and do it again, and then do
it again, and then do it again. And I think
when we do things in service of love, And I
am not talking about romantic love, although I canning part
of it, sure it's part of it. I am talking
about the bigger loves right, that is incredibly clarifying as

(42:35):
a purity of purpose. That's what I said, what is?
And I did? I asked myself a lot, Why am
I here? I asked that so many days on set. Literally,
I was like, why am I here?

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Exactly? Why did I sign up for this?

Speaker 1 (42:51):
You know, why did I sign up for this? What
do I have to offer everyone here? Let this happen
without me here? Because if I don't need to be here,
why am I putting myself through this? So there always
had to be some real reason for me to be
on set in a particular day. And by the way,
there were a couple of days where I don't need
to be here and I wasn't I excuse myself, but

(43:12):
I was there, gosh, ninety five percent of the time
because I always found that there was some element that
I could add that no one else had, some piece
of the truth that if it just had a little
sprinkle of this, it might make the show better. And
I hear now from viewers people will say little things

(43:34):
back to me, things that the moments that they enjoyed,
and I'm like, oh, so glad we got that in.
I'm so glad we were able to do that.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
Yeah, it's such a unique position to be in where
you have created something beautiful and useful from something truly devastating,
and that dissonance is a thing, a real thing.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
It's a real thing, and I don't you know, there
are people perhaps better suited to discuss this in more
clinical terms of what is you know, And I'm not
a psychologist. I have not studied it, so I can't
speak to that. There's a term for it where people
talk about sort of like resilience post trauma or something
like that.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
There's a close traumatic growth.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
There, you go, that's what it's called. That's that's the
clinical term. Point right, Like, Okay, I don't I can't
speak to any of that. Don't know about all that.
I'm still try to figure my own life out. But
you have articulated that when we can honor and name

(44:47):
the moments where we've been able to take something difficult,
a loss and transmute it in some way. I remember
talking to a minister once who said, I have a
parishioner who works on cars every weekend. And he doesn't
just work on his car, he works on his neighbor's cars,

(45:08):
and it is his grief work. He and his father
had worked on cars when he was growing up. His
father had passed, and what he chose to do with
that pain was to work on neighbors cars. Like if
somebody is car broke down, he'd be like, can I
change I'll change your oil? To me, that is an
active beauty, right, It's not Yeah, it's not a TV show,

(45:29):
but it's the same damn thing. It's like I am using,
I guess as the verb that comes to mind, or
I am stepping into my lived experience, my hurt and
doing something of service with it. And that can be
changing someone's the oil in their car. And it's beautiful the.

Speaker 2 (45:49):
Image that comes up for me as you as you
talk about that. You know, we started out saying, how like,
you know, Hollywood loves the transformation narrative. Bad things happen
to help you grow and become your deepest and best self,
and it's easy to reduce everything you just said to
that transaction, But that's not what I heard you say.
What I heard you say is can we tell ourselves

(46:10):
the truth that something big and deep just happened? And
how does the truth of that intersect with who we are,
who we've been, who this person? If you're grieving a
loss of a person, who this, what this relationship is?
And is there a way that I can make a
life that serves that in a way that feels aligned

(46:34):
with everything I am and everything I know. That is
a very different way of describing that. Then Hey, you
used this terrible thing to become your true self, right,
Like that's or or that martyrdom matrix of Like I
remember the night of Matt's funeral, people coming up to
me and saying, you're going to be such a good

(46:54):
therapist because of this, You're going to help so many people.
I'm like, Okay, first of all, really bad timing, But
second of all, like what you're saying there is that
I wasn't a good enough therapist before and somebody had
to die in order for me to be of use,
and also that that sort of deeply entrenched you are
only valuable if you are of service to others. Which

(47:15):
is just I mean, there's so much wrong with that.
But this is again like one of those one of
those gray areas, like does stop applying binary shit to humans?
It doesn't work. But that whole area of like what
does living with this whatever? This is? What does living
with this in the most true way for you and
who you are? Look like?

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Absolutely? Because thank you first of all you said that
way better than I did. And I will add to
this that this service piece. You know, sometimes in the
reductive way of looking at things, people think, oh, you know,
you did this service and now you're better. I can
tell you right now, I would do the act of service.
I would show up on set and service of love,

(47:59):
and then I'd go home and be a hot Christmas mess.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Right.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
It wasn't like I was somehow newly evolved. I was
just like in the moment and I was in my
own unfolding. And what I shared earlier about the person
who you know changes the oil on the neighbor's car,
I often when I think of that story, think about
and what was the walk back to his house like

(48:22):
after he changed they and getting back into bed and
opening the fridge in his house because he's still sitting
then with the grief for a moment he was able
to show up in service of it, and yet he
still carries it. Servicing it doesn't mean you've alleviated yourself
of grief. The grief doesn't sort of got into vapor

(48:44):
and disappear because you've now employed it as an act
of servant. I still grieve that of every day, even
though I made at this TV show, right, and I
you know, there are whole scenes that I don't ever
have to watch again ever, right, So yeah, we are
just in the moments we're in. And just because you

(49:06):
quote unquote use your grief or you serve others doesn't
mean that you still don't feel crazy and still feel
profound losses, a sense of profound loss that you feel
in the gray.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
I love the spectrum of being human in this right
and the permission giving and I go back to that
sort of like the transactional analysis thing of like you
did this thing and now you should feel better, which
loops back to what we were talking about with like
the old way of telling stories reinforced that, right, I remember.

(49:43):
I think it's in the beginning of my book, or
maybe it's not. Maybe it's just in something that I
was saying, and I remember saying pretty early on in
my own grieve I'm like, if I ever get married again,
no one will ever know about it, because I don't
want them to think I'm all better. And also as
a grieving person, I remember when I was reading grief
books as a newly widowed person. I was thirty eight

(50:04):
when that died, and I remember I would flip to
the back of the book and see if the author
was married, and if they had remarried. I wouldn't read
their book because I was like, you don't understand me, right.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
I have so much to say on this. Well, I
don't know. If you hear the bird that's warbling outside,
he's literally communing with us because he must be feeling
this too, or she I don't know there's a bird
outside on this it's a mockingbird.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
Because mockingbirds always have a lot to say.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
Anyway, maybe yeah, I too. So similarly, like was so,
I don't need to be with you and your story
of remarriage. I was a whatever that is, good, God speed,
good for you, not my path, not my reality. I
don't need that teaching, and I don't need any teaching
that's pointing to this is the thing where you go

(50:57):
because I don't know what I need that in my life,
So I don't know that I'm going to have that.
I don't even know if I want that. And oh
there's so much. It's like, it's not about replacing this
other person. It's not like I know how special any
kind of intense human connection is. It's the goal isn't
to just sort of go out and replicate that. I

(51:18):
couldn't even understand that, right, But so many books were
like about that, and it was a selling tool in
many grief books. It's a big publishing selling tool of like, well,
see what they've done, so you can follow whatever they
did and you'll get there. Yeah, Like that's insane, that's
not a thing. So I was very clear in writing

(51:39):
from Scratch and when I wrote From Scratch full disclosure,
I am remarried now. I was not when I wrote
From Scratch. In fact, I just started dating when I
started to write the book. So I thought that was
going to be fun. I'm like, Hi, I'm dating you
and I'll see you on the weekend after I spent
all week writing about my dead husband. Good luck to you.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
It's such a good sorting metric.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
So I wrote the book Robert, who I was dating
then who with whom I'm now partner married. It was
a very particular path to walk, and at a certain
point I said, here's the thing. You're stepping into a
full story. That is, you're marrying not only me in

(52:23):
seventh grade and me you know, as a toddler and
me you know in high school, you're you're partnered with
me who married Sado when I was twenty five years old,
who became a mother with this man. Like, you're marrying
all of that, just like I'm marrying every part of
you from and so let's just get to know all

(52:46):
of that and see what happens. And if we can't
get to know all of that, then this doesn't have
to happen, because I don't know any other way to
do it. So really, the goal after loss cannot be
we just all have to be partner. That is the
most absurd, so absurd thing I have ever heard in

(53:10):
my life. It should that happen if you want that
to happen, and if you meet up in time and
space with a partner who has the desire and capacity
and curiosity to want to do that with you, and
you want to do that with them, then perhaps let's

(53:30):
see what happens. Right. But dear Lord, this this thing
of you know, putting that on people, I am not
here for it. And get I recognize that people look
to me now as someone who's reported to be like, hey,
temep be, did it? Let me see it. I'm like,
good luck with that because I'm still figuring it out,

(53:50):
Like I'm okay, yes. All I can say is that
it is possible. Love after loss is possible. That's all
I can say it, because it actually is. I am
living proof of that. But the how to or like that,
that's the goal because by the way that love can
show up in so many ways. It doesn't have to

(54:11):
show up in partnership. That's one way. The love that
you got that you can show up in the world.
It can show up in so many different ways. It's
not about you need to be remarry.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Right, it's such a weird requirement too, Like it like
the holding up of heteronormativity and that partnership is the
only valid form of adults existence, like all, there's so
much in that, and then we get into the like
human beings are replaceable and just like plug a different
person in and then we're all good again. There's just
there's so much in there. And I love the transparency

(54:49):
and the honesty with which you live this additional love story.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
And by the way, and also keeping you know, being
in contract with with my husband to say, you are
not some new chapter like you were, not just some
like hey, and now the next character comes into this play.
You have your own and we have our own unfolding

(55:16):
and story. That is, there's connective tissue there, but it's
not just like a book into some other story, you know. Yeah,
and giving us ourselves the grace and space to find
our path.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah. Human beings are so complicated and so complex, and
that's actually where the good stuff.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Is, I think.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
So it's basically what we're saying. So it was actually
pretty recently on social media you wrote that for a
while your ability to imagine felt dulled and that you
are stepping into or inviting yourself into a season of
radical imagination. So can you tell me what that looks
like or what you're talking about? Like, I didn't like

(55:57):
I took it completely out of context, So I'm going
to say it again here. You recently wrote that for
a while, your ability to imagine had felt dulled, and
one of the next posts, or even later in that post,
you said, I can see now that the very act
of being willing to imagine was its own kind of salvation.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah, in terms of grief, there were so many days
when it was subsistence living. What do I need to
get through today? I am not trying to imagine next Thursday,
let alone my life in five years, not even a
thing or what I want to do or wherever it's

(56:41):
I need to just be and I need the grace
to be And that was exactly what I needed at
the time. Other stages of my grief, I'd get a
glimpse of, like huh, what if, an opening, an aperture around,
or a desire and imagining of some thing else that

(57:01):
I might want to add new into my life that
had never been there before. And I call that the
gift of imagination, right, being able to imagine. You know,
I'll be very literal and saying there was times, especially
as a grieving mother, where I could not imagine beyond
the moment I was in with my child. And then

(57:21):
sometimes I would allow myself to imagine me. Let's say,
at her college graduation, and it just would like a
little bit of sunshine would like flow into my heart
at just the possibility of that, right, And it got
me through the day. So that's where imagination was a salvation.
I think what I met in the post and what

(57:43):
I mean about the season of my life that I'm
in now, is that I understand the power of imagination.
That to be able to imagine and to give over
to imagining is a radical act of salvation because it
is saying I want more from life, Oh what might

(58:07):
that look like? Oh who might be a part of that?
Oh it becomes away through doesn't change your today, but
it's holding what is rute, what is true and happening
right now, and also and yet being able to imagine

(58:29):
what could be. And there was a time before when
I thought, well, I just this just is what it is.
I'm not even going to think about imagining something else.
So it's something I'm experiencing, it's something that I'm unfolding,
it's something I'm putting language around it. But the best
way I can say it is that to be able
to give myself the permission to imagine, and the fact
that I we're talking now was because I created this

(58:51):
thing called the Kitchen Widow, which was an imagining of
something that I might that what if I did create
something that could speak to my particular corner of my
own lived experience of grief using media, filming recipes, food.

(59:12):
It was like this little concoction of my little corner
of the Internet that spoke to sort of my understanding
of me processing th That was an that was an
act of imagination. It was pure imagination, and it ultimately
saved me the fact that I gave allowed myself to
imagine this corner of the universe that was unlike anything
I'd seen, but that was right for me, and it

(59:35):
opened up many doors. And so I'm hoping now to
step into a season or I am stepping into a
season of my life that wherein I am allowing my imagination.
I'm inviting it, I'm welcoming it. I'm getting curious about, well,
what's hanging, what's what's over in the imagination space? What

(59:56):
does she want to do over there? That could be interesting?
And who knows what the hell it'll open up? Maybe
some good shit will come out of it. I don't know,
but it didn't hurt me. It's free to imagine. Imagining
is fucking free, and that's powerful. And I think about
my ancestors. They had to radically imagine a state of

(01:00:18):
freedom beyond that in that they knew that radical act
of freedom is why I'm here, That radical act of
imagination is why I'm here. They could see something that
they knew they might never actually live themselves, but they
could seed it forward in their acts of generosity, in

(01:00:42):
seeding things for the future that would become. I mean,
I could really like, I could unpack this a lot,
but imagination matters. It does matter, and it can be
an act of salvation and transformation in small and in
big ways.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
I'm so glad I asked that question.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
I'm so glad. No, I'm like thrilled do you ask it?
Because it's also making me think about it more deeply.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Right, Yeah, so I normally end with a question on hope,
but I think you did it, oh, right, because like
the question is knowing what you know and living what
you've lived. What does hope look like for you? Now?
Does it figure into anything? And maybe you have a
different answer to that question, but I definitely heard the
answer in there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of where I am now is
I know things are going to happen. Life is going,
as I like to say, now, life is going to
keep lifing. Life is just going to keep doing what
it does. Things are going to unfold, Surprises are going
to happen, Losses are going to roll in pains, and
joy will sit side by side. What I have a

(01:01:53):
kind of say in is giving myself permission to still
hang out in the dream state even while everything is
a shit show, and there's power in that. There's power
in hanging out in the dream state while everything is
a shit show. Is that the way we want to
end this?

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
I mean, I think that's a mic drop in my opinion, right,
It is everything that we've been talking about for the
last hour, that the both and of things, right, that
the additive principle of life is really the thing, It's
not the replacement. Yeah, I love this. We really could

(01:02:33):
talk for like hours and hours and hours and hours,
but I want to wrap us up for the listeners here,
and I just like, I'm I'm so glad that you're
in the world and that we actually got to meet.
So obviously I'm going to link to both the book
and the Netflix show from scratch. We'll stick in a
link to Eureka, because if you haven't seen it, you
really should. Everybody, is there anything else that you want

(01:02:54):
people to know about where to find you?

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Yeah, so you can find me in. My website is
tenblock dot com. I have a newsletter. I could certainly
sign up for that, and I have a podcast. Now, Megan,
I'm following you. I like these long form conversations. It's
called Lifted. You can get it anywhere you get podcasts.
I'm working on season two now, and this has been

(01:03:19):
an absolute delight. I'm honored to speak with you. I
feel so moved and uplifted by your questions.

Speaker 2 (01:03:27):
Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Incredibly thoughtful and you're a powerful, powerful voice in this world,
and so thank you. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
All Right, everybody, stay tuned for your questions to carry
with you coming up right after this break. Each week
I leave you with some questions to carry with you
until we meet again. The biggest thing that stuck with

(01:03:57):
me this week was longevity. Sort of maybe it's like
starting before you know what you're doing or why you're
doing it. Ten May and I talked for a long
time before we got rolling, and we talked for a
long time after we wrapped the actual show, we both
started this work of publicly talking about grief, trying to

(01:04:18):
find ways to tell a truer, truer word, a more
accurate story of grief in these fourmats that we weren't
quite sure of right in blogs in the early days,
in videos in the early days. We both knew we
needed to say something, to do something, and we both
started with just the next few steps we could see
in front of us. And what we've each created in

(01:04:41):
the years since is light years away from those early projects,
completely different from what we first envisioned. But those initial
steps made it possible to do everything we've done since.
So I guess my message here for me and for
you is do the thing thing right. You don't have

(01:05:02):
to know how it all works out. You don't have
to see nineteen thousand steps in advance. You don't have
to wait until you're sure everything is in its very
final form for all time. You just need to start,
take the seed of the story, that first spark of desire,
and try it out, play with it, see where it leads.

(01:05:23):
I think that approach applies to so much of life.
If there is something in you that's pulling you forward
even a little bit. Try it out, see what happens next.
How about you? What's stuck with you from this conversation.
Everybody's going to take something different from today's show, but

(01:05:46):
I do hope you found something to hold on too.
If you want to tell me how today's show felt
for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered,
let me know. Tag at Refuge and Grief on all
the social platforms so I can hear how this conversation affected.
To remember to leave a review of this episode or
the show in general on the pod platforms that allow reviews.

(01:06:07):
I know they don't all allow reviews, at least I
haven't figured out how to leave review on every single
podcast platform, but they are out there, and I love
your reviews. Follow the show on It's Okay Pod on
TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else to see video
clips from the show, and use the hashtag It's Okay
pod on all the platforms, so not only I can

(01:06:28):
find you, others can too. None of us are entirely okay,
and it's time we start talking about that together. Yeah,
it's okay that you're not okay. You're in good company.
That is it for this week? Friends, Remember to subscribe
to the show. Get your own conversations going by sharing

(01:06:51):
this episode with friends, therapists and community groups, and random
strangers and coffee shops with consent. Of course, episodes are
really good conversation starters, especially if it's a topic that
feels interesting to you but you're not really sure how
to start talking about it. Use the episode as your foot.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
In the door.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
Coming up next week, Elise Lunan, author of the New
York Times bestselling book On Our Best Behavior. Follow the
show on your favorite platforms so you don't miss an episode.
It's okay that You're not okay. The podcast is written
and produced by me Megan Devine. Executive producer is Amy Brown,
co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support

(01:07:33):
from Micah, Post production and editing by Houston Tilly. Music
provided by Wave Crush, and today's background noise provided by
the very faint background verbal of the water fountain. I
set up outside to keep the pollinators hydrated in the
heat wave.

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Megan Devine

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