August 29, 2022 • 15 mins
There’s a lot going on lately - which is a massive understatement. In our personal lives and as a wider community - everything is a lot. It’s a really human thing to hope things will get better (even when you’re not sure how they possibly could). In this season of Here After, we’re going to find out if there’s any hope for us - like real, functional, tangible hope - in conversations with interesting people about difficult things.
In this episode we cover:
- Why season two took so long to arrive
- How to talk about the pain of the world without collapsing into despair or pretending everything is fine
- Real world hope versus “vending machine” hope
- What to expect in the season ahead
Click here for the episode webpage
Notable quotes:
“I want my hope back. And it has to be a real hope, not some airy, useless hope. It has to be functional. It has to be LOGICAL. It has to be real, and rooted in actual reality. I think we only get that kind of hope if we’re willing to tell the whole truth about how hard it is to be here sometimes.” - Megan Devine
About our guest:
Megan Devine is the host of Here After, and author of the best selling book, It’s OK that You’re Not OK. Her writings on re-humanizing grief can be found in publications such as Psychology Today, The New York Times, Harvard Business review, and The Washington Post. She serves as a grief expert for major media outlets including NPR, iHeartRadio, and the PBS documentary, Speaking Grief.
Additional resources
Get in touch:
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, send in your questions, and share the show with everyone you know. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right.
Follow the show on TikTok @hereafterpod
Have a question, comment, or a topic you’d like us to cover? call us at (323) 643-3768 or visit megandevine.co
For more information, including clinical training and consulting, visit us at www.Megandevine.co
For grief support & education, follow us at @refugeingrief on IG, FB, TW, & TT
Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s Okay That You're Not Okay and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And this season, I'm like, what, what is a question
that I'm either wrestling with or I don't know the
answer to. And for me like, I'm trying to end
all of these conversations or stitch all of these conversations
with questions about hope. And I love that you just
brought up beauty because to me, those things are intertwined.
(00:20):
You can tell I don't know the answer because I
get very choked knowing what you know and living what
you live, the whole story of it, not just what
the headlines want us to believe, not just what the
sound bites want us to believe, not just not just
this shallow end of this pool. What does hope look
(00:41):
like for you? This is here After, and I'm your host,
Megan Divine, author of the best selling book It's Okay
that You're Not Okay, And I'm a person completely enamored
with interesting conversations about difficult things. Here After is the
show where everyone is a out to talk about what's
real in the service of a more connected and supportive world.
(01:05):
This week on Hereafter, Hi Friends, it's been a bit,
hasn't it. I've missed you. The very first full episode
of Here After Season two is coming up right after
this first break. Don't miss it before we get started.
(01:31):
One quick note. While I hope you find a lot
of useful information in our time here together, this show
is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed
mental health provider or for professionals supervision related to your work.
We're back. Welcome to the awkward party. Everybody hereafter the
(01:53):
podcast where every conversation centers on difficult things like love
and loss and illness and the state of the world,
among other things. Doesn't that sound like fun? Okay? If
you were here with me for season one, you know
it is actually fun in here, even if it doesn't
sound like it. But if you're new, welcome. I'm glad
(02:14):
you're here. You're gonna love it. I'm Megan Divine. I
spent the last ten plus years writing, speaking, pretty much
living and breathing grief, the kind of grief that makes
the whole world dissolve around you. My book, It's Okay
that You're Not Okay, got hundreds of thousands of people
(02:36):
talking about that kind of grief and what it really
takes to survive and care for each other when life
goes horribly wrong. So when I say that I'm really
into conversations with interesting people about difficult things. I mean it,
The tough stuff is my happy place, as weird as
it is to say, but it's not just me anymore.
(03:01):
In a culture that's often afraid of big emotions, a
lot more people are letting things hurt when they actually hurt,
and a lot more people are willing to listen to
somebody else's pain without jumping in to fix it for them.
And yes, we do have a long way to go.
I mean, just ask a grieving person how many times
(03:23):
they've heard they're in a better place just this week.
But the cultural conversation is starting to change. This podcast
is part of that conversation. And again, I am really
glad you're here now. Last season on Here After we
focused on grief, specifically grief on the job and because
(03:43):
of a job, with a special look at the health
care industry. My guests were doctors and therapists and social workers.
We had some nurses and some rad meditation teachers. We
dove into listener questions about grief and boundaries and burnout.
If you haven't heard season one yet, friends, that back
catalog is just they're waiting for you. But this season
(04:07):
is different. At the end of season one, I said
we would be back in just a few weeks now.
Obviously that turned out to be inaccurate. One of the
reasons we took such a long break between season one
and season two well, I mean, first, I'm tired and
(04:27):
I'm busy, So yes, that is a reason for the
long break. But the bigger reason for such a long
break between season one and season two as I lost
my hope. I lost hope. Friends. There's so much grief
in everyday life, not just in our personal lives. But
(04:51):
have you looked outside? Have you listened to the news?
Every day is a new disaster, some new form of suffering,
or some old suffering dressed up in crappier, more obnoxious clothing.
It's been a lot just being aware and alive in
the world. Almost everyone I know is overwhelmed with grief
(05:13):
and illness and change in their own lives. But it's
not just our personal lives that feel hard. It seems
like the big theme for everybody right now is grief
and despair for the world too. I don't think I'm
the only one who's lost hope. I mean, just as
an example here, this past June, my dad said he
(05:37):
no longer felt hope for the world people. My father
never gives up hope for anything, and if he's feeling hopeless,
we've got a problem. I bet there's a lot of
overwhelmed hopelessness going around. It can't possibly just be me. Now.
(05:58):
If you've known for a while, if you've listened to
me for a while, you would know that I have
an issue with the word hope, like the actual word hope.
I even wrote about it in my book It's okay
that you're not okay. The word hope needs an object right,
like the way we use it. You're supposed to have
hope in something or hope for something, like I hope
I get this job, or I hope the scams come out.
(06:20):
Clear that kind of like transactional hope gets squished all
the time because things don't always work out, do they.
There's also an element of wishful thinking inside that kind
of hope, and wishful thinking doesn't change anything so clearly.
Even before I lost hope recently, hope and I have
(06:42):
had longstanding issues, but losing hope, feeling the absence of
it these last few months, that's been a lot harder
than I would have thought. So as I sat at
thought and reflected and felt my own really big feelings
(07:03):
around this, I asked myself what I needed from this
season of the show. I want to talk to interesting people, yes,
about difficult things, but also I want to feel hopeful
about something, about anything. I want to feel hopeful about
(07:29):
survival and goodness and beauty and joy. And I want
to feel like that hope isn't just wishful thinking or
me being naive about the state of the world. I
want my hope back. It has to be real hope
to y'all, not like airy, useless hope. It has to
be functional, it has to be logical, it has to
(07:52):
be real and rooted in actual reality. I think we
only get that kind of hope if we're willing to
tell the whole truth about how hard it is to
be here. Sometimes, I think we only get that kind
of hope if we connect inside the things that hurt,
inside the things that overwhelm us. I think we get
(08:15):
that kind of hope if we really see each other
and wonder about what's next together. Now, my working thesis
here is that true connection is probably where hope lives.
Hope lives in community, and I hope it lives in
conversations with interesting people about difficult things. This season on
(08:40):
Hereafter with Me Megan Divine, we go looking for hope.
We have got amazing guests this season. Friends, from child
welfare advocates to trauma survivors, to community educators to some
very cool artists and writers. You're going to hear from
people doing the work of looking directly at what hurts
(09:01):
and making a home there, finding their own kind of
hope there. I'm not gonna lie, friends, I really needed
these conversations. I've been learning a whole lot about hope.
My own hope circuits are beginning to come back online. Actually,
And of course this isn't just about me or my guess.
(09:24):
My hope is that you find things to sustain you
in each episode, that you find things that feed you,
ideas and perspectives that light you up, things that leave
you feeling supported wherever you find yourself. I hope that
the conversations in season two inspire you to have your
(09:44):
own conversations about difficult things, conversations that help you find
hope too, And I hope those conversations help you deepen
your connections with the people in your life and the
world around you. Maybe it's a big hope, but maybe
we can find it now. This season focuses more on
(10:09):
guests and less on the Q and A that we
did last season, But I might pop on with a
few solo shows to answer questions and explore issues that
you all bring up in your comments and messages. So
be sure to share, comment, send me messages, leave us voicemails.
You'll hear the number for voicemails in a minute. We're
all in this community together, friends, building the world we
(10:35):
want conversation by conversation, Hope lives in our connections, and
I'm sure it lives in a lot of other places too. Personally,
I can't wait to discover all the different kinds of
hope and all the different I don't know, homesteads of hope. Gosh,
that sounds a little twee okay, but anyway, I can't
(10:56):
wait to discover all the different kinds of hope. With
this season's gas right alongside you Hereafter with Megan, Divine
is the show where everyone's allowed to talk about what's real.
This season, if you haven't guessed, it focuses on hope,
finding it, losing it, redefining it. In these weird personal
(11:21):
and collective times, new shows come out each and every Monday.
Everybody's going to take something different from each show. But
I do hope you find something to hold onto. Stay
tuned to hear how you can tell me all about
your kind of hope right after this break. It's good
(11:43):
to be back, friends. Hope really is a crowd sourced thing.
There are lots of ways to open these conversations on
how we survived the hard parts of being human, and
I definitely want to hear from you on all this.
(12:05):
What are you holding onto right now? Check out Refuge
in Grief on Instagram or here after Pod on TikTok
to see video clips from the show and leave your
thoughts in the comments on those posts. Also have a
little patience with us on the whole TikTok thing. It's
a learning curve. We'll get there anyway. Be sure to
(12:26):
tag us in your conversation starting posts on your own
social accounts. Use the hashtag here after pod on all
of the platforms so we can find you. We love
to see where the show takes you. Everybody, If you
want to tell us how today's show felt for you,
or you have a request or a question for upcoming
explorations of difficult things, give us a call at three
(12:50):
to three six three three six eight and leave a voicemail.
If you missed it, you can find the number in
the show notes or visit I can divine dot ceo.
If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too.
Write on the website Megan Divine dot ceo. We want
to hear from you. I want to hear from you.
(13:13):
This show, this world needs your voice. Together, we can
make things better even when they can't be made right.
You know how most people are going to scan through
their podcast Apple looking for a new thing, and they're
(13:34):
going to see the show description for hereafter and think,
I don't want to listen to difficult things, even if
cool people are talking about them. While that's where you
come in your reviews for the show, let people know
it really isn't all that bad in here. We talk
about heavy things, yes, but it's in the service of
making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen.
(13:54):
Spread the word in your workplace, in your social world
on social media, and click through to leave a review.
You subscribe to the show, follow the show download episodes
and keep on listening. I want more Hereafter. Grief education
doesn't just belong to end of life issues. As my
dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief that
(14:17):
we just don't call grief. Learning how to talk about
all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements
is an important skill for everyone, especially if you're in
any of the helping professions fine trainings, tip sheets, professional resources,
and my best selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay,
(14:37):
plus the Guided journal Fork Grief at Megan Divine dot
c O Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced
by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co
produced by Elizabeth Fossio, Edited by Houston Tilly and Logistical
(14:58):
and Social Media and honestly moral support from Micah. Music
provided by Wave Crush, and occasional background noise provided by Luna,
The Neighbors and The Leafblowers
And this season, I'm like, what, what is a question
that I'm either wrestling with or I don't know the
answer to. And for me like, I'm trying to end
all of these conversations or stitch all of these conversations
with questions about hope. And I love that you just
brought up beauty because to me, those things are intertwined.
(00:20):
You can tell I don't know the answer because I
get very choked knowing what you know and living what
you live, the whole story of it, not just what
the headlines want us to believe, not just what the
sound bites want us to believe, not just not just
this shallow end of this pool. What does hope look
(00:41):
like for you? This is here After, and I'm your host,
Megan Divine, author of the best selling book It's Okay
that You're Not Okay, And I'm a person completely enamored
with interesting conversations about difficult things. Here After is the
show where everyone is a out to talk about what's
real in the service of a more connected and supportive world.
(01:05):
This week on Hereafter, Hi Friends, it's been a bit,
hasn't it. I've missed you. The very first full episode
of Here After Season two is coming up right after
this first break. Don't miss it before we get started.
(01:31):
One quick note. While I hope you find a lot
of useful information in our time here together, this show
is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed
mental health provider or for professionals supervision related to your work.
We're back. Welcome to the awkward party. Everybody hereafter the
(01:53):
podcast where every conversation centers on difficult things like love
and loss and illness and the state of the world,
among other things. Doesn't that sound like fun? Okay? If
you were here with me for season one, you know
it is actually fun in here, even if it doesn't
sound like it. But if you're new, welcome. I'm glad
(02:14):
you're here. You're gonna love it. I'm Megan Divine. I
spent the last ten plus years writing, speaking, pretty much
living and breathing grief, the kind of grief that makes
the whole world dissolve around you. My book, It's Okay
that You're Not Okay, got hundreds of thousands of people
(02:36):
talking about that kind of grief and what it really
takes to survive and care for each other when life
goes horribly wrong. So when I say that I'm really
into conversations with interesting people about difficult things. I mean it,
The tough stuff is my happy place, as weird as
it is to say, but it's not just me anymore.
(03:01):
In a culture that's often afraid of big emotions, a
lot more people are letting things hurt when they actually hurt,
and a lot more people are willing to listen to
somebody else's pain without jumping in to fix it for them.
And yes, we do have a long way to go.
I mean, just ask a grieving person how many times
(03:23):
they've heard they're in a better place just this week.
But the cultural conversation is starting to change. This podcast
is part of that conversation. And again, I am really
glad you're here now. Last season on Here After we
focused on grief, specifically grief on the job and because
(03:43):
of a job, with a special look at the health
care industry. My guests were doctors and therapists and social workers.
We had some nurses and some rad meditation teachers. We
dove into listener questions about grief and boundaries and burnout.
If you haven't heard season one yet, friends, that back
catalog is just they're waiting for you. But this season
(04:07):
is different. At the end of season one, I said
we would be back in just a few weeks now.
Obviously that turned out to be inaccurate. One of the
reasons we took such a long break between season one
and season two well, I mean, first, I'm tired and
(04:27):
I'm busy, So yes, that is a reason for the
long break. But the bigger reason for such a long
break between season one and season two as I lost
my hope. I lost hope. Friends. There's so much grief
in everyday life, not just in our personal lives. But
(04:51):
have you looked outside? Have you listened to the news?
Every day is a new disaster, some new form of suffering,
or some old suffering dressed up in crappier, more obnoxious clothing.
It's been a lot just being aware and alive in
the world. Almost everyone I know is overwhelmed with grief
(05:13):
and illness and change in their own lives. But it's
not just our personal lives that feel hard. It seems
like the big theme for everybody right now is grief
and despair for the world too. I don't think I'm
the only one who's lost hope. I mean, just as
an example here, this past June, my dad said he
(05:37):
no longer felt hope for the world people. My father
never gives up hope for anything, and if he's feeling hopeless,
we've got a problem. I bet there's a lot of
overwhelmed hopelessness going around. It can't possibly just be me. Now.
(05:58):
If you've known for a while, if you've listened to
me for a while, you would know that I have
an issue with the word hope, like the actual word hope.
I even wrote about it in my book It's okay
that you're not okay. The word hope needs an object right,
like the way we use it. You're supposed to have
hope in something or hope for something, like I hope
I get this job, or I hope the scams come out.
(06:20):
Clear that kind of like transactional hope gets squished all
the time because things don't always work out, do they.
There's also an element of wishful thinking inside that kind
of hope, and wishful thinking doesn't change anything so clearly.
Even before I lost hope recently, hope and I have
(06:42):
had longstanding issues, but losing hope, feeling the absence of
it these last few months, that's been a lot harder
than I would have thought. So as I sat at
thought and reflected and felt my own really big feelings
(07:03):
around this, I asked myself what I needed from this
season of the show. I want to talk to interesting people, yes,
about difficult things, but also I want to feel hopeful
about something, about anything. I want to feel hopeful about
(07:29):
survival and goodness and beauty and joy. And I want
to feel like that hope isn't just wishful thinking or
me being naive about the state of the world. I
want my hope back. It has to be real hope
to y'all, not like airy, useless hope. It has to
be functional, it has to be logical, it has to
(07:52):
be real and rooted in actual reality. I think we
only get that kind of hope if we're willing to
tell the whole truth about how hard it is to
be here. Sometimes, I think we only get that kind
of hope if we connect inside the things that hurt,
inside the things that overwhelm us. I think we get
(08:15):
that kind of hope if we really see each other
and wonder about what's next together. Now, my working thesis
here is that true connection is probably where hope lives.
Hope lives in community, and I hope it lives in
conversations with interesting people about difficult things. This season on
(08:40):
Hereafter with Me Megan Divine, we go looking for hope.
We have got amazing guests this season. Friends, from child
welfare advocates to trauma survivors, to community educators to some
very cool artists and writers. You're going to hear from
people doing the work of looking directly at what hurts
(09:01):
and making a home there, finding their own kind of
hope there. I'm not gonna lie, friends, I really needed
these conversations. I've been learning a whole lot about hope.
My own hope circuits are beginning to come back online. Actually,
And of course this isn't just about me or my guess.
(09:24):
My hope is that you find things to sustain you
in each episode, that you find things that feed you,
ideas and perspectives that light you up, things that leave
you feeling supported wherever you find yourself. I hope that
the conversations in season two inspire you to have your
(09:44):
own conversations about difficult things, conversations that help you find
hope too, And I hope those conversations help you deepen
your connections with the people in your life and the
world around you. Maybe it's a big hope, but maybe
we can find it now. This season focuses more on
(10:09):
guests and less on the Q and A that we
did last season, But I might pop on with a
few solo shows to answer questions and explore issues that
you all bring up in your comments and messages. So
be sure to share, comment, send me messages, leave us voicemails.
You'll hear the number for voicemails in a minute. We're
all in this community together, friends, building the world we
(10:35):
want conversation by conversation, Hope lives in our connections, and
I'm sure it lives in a lot of other places too. Personally,
I can't wait to discover all the different kinds of
hope and all the different I don't know, homesteads of hope. Gosh,
that sounds a little twee okay, but anyway, I can't
(10:56):
wait to discover all the different kinds of hope. With
this season's gas right alongside you Hereafter with Megan, Divine
is the show where everyone's allowed to talk about what's real.
This season, if you haven't guessed, it focuses on hope,
finding it, losing it, redefining it. In these weird personal
(11:21):
and collective times, new shows come out each and every Monday.
Everybody's going to take something different from each show. But
I do hope you find something to hold onto. Stay
tuned to hear how you can tell me all about
your kind of hope right after this break. It's good
(11:43):
to be back, friends. Hope really is a crowd sourced thing.
There are lots of ways to open these conversations on
how we survived the hard parts of being human, and
I definitely want to hear from you on all this.
(12:05):
What are you holding onto right now? Check out Refuge
in Grief on Instagram or here after Pod on TikTok
to see video clips from the show and leave your
thoughts in the comments on those posts. Also have a
little patience with us on the whole TikTok thing. It's
a learning curve. We'll get there anyway. Be sure to
(12:26):
tag us in your conversation starting posts on your own
social accounts. Use the hashtag here after pod on all
of the platforms so we can find you. We love
to see where the show takes you. Everybody, If you
want to tell us how today's show felt for you,
or you have a request or a question for upcoming
explorations of difficult things, give us a call at three
(12:50):
to three six three three six eight and leave a voicemail.
If you missed it, you can find the number in
the show notes or visit I can divine dot ceo.
If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too.
Write on the website Megan Divine dot ceo. We want
to hear from you. I want to hear from you.
(13:13):
This show, this world needs your voice. Together, we can
make things better even when they can't be made right.
You know how most people are going to scan through
their podcast Apple looking for a new thing, and they're
(13:34):
going to see the show description for hereafter and think,
I don't want to listen to difficult things, even if
cool people are talking about them. While that's where you
come in your reviews for the show, let people know
it really isn't all that bad in here. We talk
about heavy things, yes, but it's in the service of
making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen.
(13:54):
Spread the word in your workplace, in your social world
on social media, and click through to leave a review.
You subscribe to the show, follow the show download episodes
and keep on listening. I want more Hereafter. Grief education
doesn't just belong to end of life issues. As my
dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief that
(14:17):
we just don't call grief. Learning how to talk about
all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements
is an important skill for everyone, especially if you're in
any of the helping professions fine trainings, tip sheets, professional resources,
and my best selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay,
(14:37):
plus the Guided journal Fork Grief at Megan Divine dot
c O Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced
by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co
produced by Elizabeth Fossio, Edited by Houston Tilly and Logistical
(14:58):
and Social Media and honestly moral support from Micah. Music
provided by Wave Crush, and occasional background noise provided by Luna,
The Neighbors and The Leafblowers
Host
Megan Devine
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.