October 20, 2020 • 45 mins
Nearly all of us have experienced grief this year – whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, or the loss of normalcy. In this episode, Hillary talks with stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt and Sybrina Fulton, advocate and mother of Trayvon Martin, about finding purpose after a terrible loss.
Patton Oswalt is an award-winning stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. After the tragic death of his wife Michelle McNamara, he finished the book she was working on: I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: The Search for the Golden State Killer. The book was recently turned into an HBO documentary series of the same name. His newest stand-up special, I Love Everything, is out on Netflix.
Sybrina Fulton is an advocate and the mother of Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed in 2012. Along with Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, Sybrina co-founded The Trayvon Martin Foundation to empower families who have lost children to gun violence. Sybrina recently campaigned for a seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission, ultimately losing by less than one percent.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio.
The stand up was just another extension of that of Hey, Grief,
I'm gonna go on stage tonight and tell jokes for
seven minutes in the world that you trapped me, and
I'm still gonna go up and do it like out
of sheer defiance. I'm Hillary Clinton and this is You
and Me Both, where I get into some of today's
(00:23):
biggest questions with people I admire. On today's episode, we're
talking about finding a path forward after a terrible loss,
moving from grief to action. You know, when I think
about the times I've gone through grieving, losing my parents
(00:43):
and in particular, last year was really hard on me.
I lost one of my very close friends, my best
friend from literally sixth grade, and my younger brother. It
happened in the space of, you know, less than six months.
It was painful missing them and wishing I could talk
(01:04):
to them practically every day, and I often find myself
trying to figure out how do other people confront feelings
of sadness and anger, disbelief, outrage, How do we all
summon the strength to keep going. So I'm talking to
two people who have really endured very tough losses. Later,
(01:29):
I'll be talking with Sabrina Fulton. She's the mother of
Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed on his way
home from a store in twelve. You know, Sabrina has
become a powerful advocate for parents and communities harmed by violence.
She's someone that I've been inspired by over the years.
(01:50):
But first, I will be talking with actor and comedian
Patent Oswald. Now you may have seen him on t
V on one of his stand up Netflix specials, or
on The King of Queens, one of the great titles
for a TV program, Or if you're a grandmother like me,
you might have heard him as the voice of the
(02:13):
rat Remy in the movie Rata Tui. He's known for
being funny, but he's also been outspoken about the grief
he's experienced in Patton's wife, Michelle, died suddenly in her sleep.
She was forty six years old. Her death was attributed
to an undiagnosed heart condition and complications from medications she
(02:36):
was taking. Her sudden death left Patent and their daughter, Alice,
who was then eight years old, totally overcome by loss
and grief. Now, he since has returned to comedy even
remarried and is raising an incredible kid that I got
to say hello to before we started, and that was
(02:59):
great talking with Alice. But he did something else. He
took the project that Michelle had dedicated decades of her
life too and brought it to fruition. Because you see,
Michelle was writing the book on the Golden State Killer
based on months and months of research. Patton worked with
(03:21):
two collaborators to finish this book called I'll Be Gone
in the Dark. It went on to become a New
York Times bestseller, and then he helped produce the HBO
documentary series by the same title. So I wanted to
talk to Patton about how he got over and through
one of the most terrible losses you can experience, and
(03:45):
where he is now. Well, I have to say, Patton,
I am thrilled to meet you through this podcast and
have a chance to talk with you. And I think
I should start by congratulating you because in May, in
the middle of COVID, you released a new stand up
special on Netflix called I Love Everything, and it got
(04:08):
absolute ray reviews add me to the list, um, and
so I'm just so excited to have this chance to
talk to you. About really the ups and the downs
of life and different ways we move from grief to action. Yes,
and you've been very public about your grief. When your
(04:30):
wife Michelle passed away back in it was very sudden,
left you alone a single father, and I have so
appreciated how honest, raw vulnerable you've been talking about that experience. Yeah. Well,
I mean I think that keyed off of me when
(04:51):
it first happened, when Michelle first passed, and I was
so shell shocked and kind of shredded, you know, really
I was. I was all nerve and viscera. That's how
I felt. I turned to people in the past that
had also been very, very upfront about chronicling their grief,
especially as a book called A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis,
(05:14):
where his his wife had just died, probably one of
the best writers of the twentieth century. And this wasn't
a book that was written months or years, and like
he was writing it immediately as he was feeling it.
And it is one of the greatest depictions of grief
I've ever seen, and I it's the slimmest book he's
ever written. And it took me so long to read it.
Because you just need to take a break from it.
(05:35):
It's one of the heaviest things I've ever read, but
I came away from it feeling so much. You know
that feel you get after you've had a really, really
deep cry, and then afterwards you're like, oh, I actually
sort of have some strength right now. I can maybe
like I needed to wrench that stuff out of me.
And so once the book ended, it was almost like,
(05:56):
I need to talk about this in a way to
like I need to recreate that cry constantly, because one
of the scariest moments in grief is you think that
you'll have a specific reaction to stimulize. So thinking about
her being gone, and there will be moments when I
wouldn't cry, But then later on I'm driving along and
I would see a cloud and I would explode into tears.
(06:19):
And what I realized was my body was defending me, going, oh,
wait a minute, we can't deal with the immediate stimuli,
it'll be too much. Let's let this come out against
a random thing so that it's not so he can
actually kind of deal with it. And I remember talking
to a lot of people who had, you know, survived
widowers or people that had survived grief friends of mine
that had also gone to the same thing, like, Yeah,
(06:41):
you're gonna go through that for a while where you
will start the stuff you think is gonna make you cry,
you will have no reaction to, and you'll judge yourself
very harshly, and then later on a day, later, a
week later, you'll explode over nothing. And it was that
was really scary, you know, And the losses that I've experienced,
I know what you're talking about. I mean, you know
(07:03):
when after my father died, or my mother died, or
my best friend died, something will trigger a memory that
is not even conscious, it's so deeply buried, and all
of a sudden, my eyes are welling up and I
have to if I'm in public, you know, I have
to sort of sniff a lot. Which, Yeah, it's so
(07:26):
interesting because you were back on the stage doing comedy
within six months. And was that a way for you
to process what you were going through? And I mean,
how was it part of your healing process? I wish
I could say something as noble and intelligent as oh,
and I decided to attack it was when the first
time I went on stage was in August, and I
(07:48):
basically it has had nothing to do with healing or
regaining myself. It was I don't know what else to do.
And it also was because for a couple of months
after she passed, I was like, I don't know if
I'm alive, Like maybe I'm the one who died. And
I genuinely wasn't sure whether I was alive or not.
There were those days where I would walk around and go, wait,
(08:11):
is this did Michelle die? Maybe I'm the one who
And I had some really scary, like mental health moments
when I didn't know if I so it was like, Okay,
I need to bring and I and I remember I
flashed back to when I told Alice, the principal in
her school, said she whatever she tells you she needs,
you have to you have to let her lead for
a while. And one of the first things she said
(08:33):
was because I told her on a Friday, and she goes,
I want to go to school on Monday, like it
was the first because I want something that feels like normalcy.
And then I realized, oh, I'm doing the same thing
that my daughter did. On a weeknight, I would go
out and do sets because that's what normal life looked like,
So that's what I started doing, right, So it wasn't
a distraction so much. No, it was a way through,
(08:54):
how can I make the world feel like the living
world when I wasn't questioning whether I was a either
or not, And I had to start actively switching the
world back to the way that it was doing stand up.
I remember there were a couple of mornings when I
just couldn't wake up and Alice just didn't go to
school because I wouldn't wake up till noon, and I'd go,
(09:14):
I'm so sorry, or I would I would forget to
like suddenly, oh, you have no clean clothes because I
haven't done any laundry, because I don't know what I'm
you know. So then I had to start really actively going,
I'm getting up every morning. I'm gonna make her breakfast.
She's gonna be right, Like I did that in defiance
of this grief world I was stuck in. So I
did that for a few months, and then the stand
up was just another extension of that of Hey, grief,
(09:37):
I'm gonna go on stage tonight and tell jokes for
seven minutes in the world that you trapped me, and
I'm still gonna go up and do it like out
of sheer defiance. I love that word defiance, because you
were you were defying the tragic reality that you were
now inhabiting, and you were determined that you were going
to do everything you could at least to reshape it,
(09:58):
both for you and Alice. You also did something else
that really mattered, because you know, your late wife was
an extraordinary investigator and researcher, and what she did was
to try to, through her writing, her online interactions, you know,
to try to build a community of people who were
(10:20):
going to help solve crimes, which you know, I find fascinating.
And she was in the middle when Michelle died of
a year's long research project to track down the rapist
and murderer eventually known as the Golden State Killer. Yeah.
Well that was a thing that she had written about
on her blog True Crime Diary, which led to Los
(10:43):
Angeles magazine wanting her to write an article about it,
and the article blew up online and that led to
HarperCollins saying, well, this is a book because it's such
a massive, decades long unsolved case. The Golden State Killer
started off as a burglar and ray pist in the
Sacramento area in the early seventies mid seventies, he went
(11:05):
under the names the Vicelia Ransacker. Then he became the
East Area Rapist or ear E A r. Then he
bumped up to murder. Then he vanished, but then reappeared
down in Irvine and and Goalita and like it was
just this statewide kind of spree. It was the worst
(11:25):
uncaught killer in California history. And he had faded from
memory and it turned out he was an ex police
policeman who was kicked off the force partially for shoplifting,
if I'm not mistaken, a hammer and dog repellent, spray
and rope. So that's getting on the edge of like
(11:45):
dark comedy at that point where it's like how much
more obvious could this guts? But also people keep forgetting
there was an era coming up where you know, that's
what guys did, man, you used to that's of course
you buys a hammer, and some wrote that's what guys do,
so it didn't seem weird or suspicious. So she really
delves into part of what kept him going for so
long was the tone and uh feeling of the era
(12:09):
and how it felt about women and how it felt
about rape victims and stuff like that. So you know,
it's a whole piece. It's it's it's as much a
mood piece as it is an investigative piece. It's it's
just both in its extraordinary. We're taking a quick break.
Stay with us. You decided to finish the book she
was working on, and you know, give us a little
(12:31):
bit of understanding as to how you summon the energy
and commitment to take on what is a huge undertaking. Yeah,
well that was me. You know again, the first there
was not an immediate I'm gonna see her book through.
It was just months of you know, junk food and
crying and rewatching the princess bride um and just doing
(12:55):
like the most embarrassing stuff you wish as yeah as
you wish you exactly um. And then came down to
it wasn't even that. I just I was like, I'm
going to finish book, like I am going to beg
people who knew her who I also know, Billy Jensen
who's a journalist, Paul Haynes, who was her researcher and
data minor, and this guy Paul Holes who was a
homicide investigator, Like please please help me assemble I can't
(13:19):
write at her level. I can't fill in where she
left off sensitives, but we can. We can organize this
so that it has a narrative to it, and please, please,
let's get this out there. And they all stepped up
a lot of times when you're grieving. That's another part
of grieving that people that I think gets misrepresented a lot,
the stoic lone Widower, the you know, lone wolf and
(13:42):
Cub Samurai with his you know baby in the cart
in front of him and walking through the rain. And
I'm gonna do that. No, You're gonna have to ask
for a lot of help and be kind of clumsy
and embarrassed to do it. But I still did it
because I wanted that book finished, especially because one of
the things that Michelle embraced early on. Most crimes are
(14:05):
solved not through card chases and shootouts. It's a cop
sitting there sifting through data. I remember there was a
day she got somehow there was a digital archive of
every year book in Sacramento from the time that he
would have been young, and so a couple of witnesses
described as being athletic. So she went through every track team.
(14:29):
I mean it was just like it took weeks to
go through and cross reference and it led to nothing.
But it was the doing that, and and again it
was every couple days and every couple of weeks, it
was just the how do I, how do I get
up tomorrow and do this again? This is going nowhere.
It's you gotta hammer it every day. It's so brutal
and and I think that's why a lot of the
(14:51):
cops that she talked to trusted her very early on,
because they saw, oh, no, she's doing the grunt work.
She's not trying to do the really cool how Hollywood
c s I sherlock, Oh this cigarette ash. It's like, no,
I just went through like five phone books from five
different years. You know that kind of thing, which is
(15:12):
how you that's how you solve crimes. But you finished
the book I'll Be Gone in the Dark. You had
the investigators and the retired police and everybody helping you.
Then you turned it into an HBO documentary. What did
it feel like, you know, not only finishing the book,
but then turning it into a documentary, getting it over
(15:32):
the finished line, so to speak, without Michelle being right
there by your side. You know, again, the cliche word
would be bitter sweet, especially because the director that I
got to work with, this woman, Liz Garvis, who did
the Nina Simone documentary and the Angola Prison documentary. The
way that she was able to tell the story and
focus on the aspects of the story that Michelle would
(15:58):
have wanted focused on, which is the victims, which is
the survivors, and plays and these women that Michelle was
always like, I hate serial killer narratives that make the
serial killer out to be this dark anti hero. We're
in reality, these guys they're they're just worms, you know,
They're they're just worms. So the fact that that's what
she also focused on, it would have been so good
(16:19):
to have Michelle there to consult and see that process
what she focused on her book also than being expanded,
and also I know that Michelle would have wanted to
have talked to the survivors. You know, if Michelle had
been alive and he had been caught the way he was,
I would be home taking care of Alice while she
was staying in a hotel in Shackman and going to
every court day, and just nothing felt better than when
(16:40):
I met the women that had survived it. And they
were all like, we go to every one of his
arraignments and we look right at him and he can't
raise his head, he can't look at us. And the
smiles on their faces seeing this guy just reduced to
what he was. It was just yes, yeah, well, and
you know, the book was obviously a man us of
(17:01):
best seller. And then on August twenty one, just you know,
this year, this guy, this really terrible guy, horrible human being,
was convicted of murdering I think thirteen people and raping
over fifty in California in the seventies and eighties. And then,
as I understand it from the plea hearing, he admitted
(17:24):
to things that he hadn't even been charged with. Well,
one of the you know, one of the scenes that
I found both powerful and hopeful in the documentary was
in the last episode when many of the rape survivors
came together. They were, in their words, a survivor family.
And you know, once said, even though it was decades
(17:46):
after the attack, she suffered that she was on the
road to becoming herself again. That must have been a
really emotional experience for you Pat too, to meet these women,
the survivor family members you know what did that mean
to you. I met them at a book event up
in Sacramento, and I kept it together when I met
(18:08):
them because out of it just felt it would have felt,
really I thought petty and disrespectful if I had come
apart after what they had gone through. And I just
listened to them. I just listen to them talk about
all that, you know, their lives. And but then when
I got I remember very specifically, when I got back
to my hotel room, I well, I burst into tears
in the car, and then I had to get myself
together because I don't want to walk through the lobby
(18:29):
like bawling, looking nuts. But then I got myself together,
went back in my room, and when I closed it
or I started crying again because it's just so you
feel the decades of their lives just unspooling on you
like that, and and the fact that they are walking
around in the sunshine and going to see friends. There
(18:50):
is a gorgeous defiance in now, you know what, I'm
gonna go live my life and yeah, and I know
what you took from me, and I'm still going to
go live my life like you're just an insect. Because
of course, the ones who survived, and of course the
family members of those who did not from his murders.
They had to go through their own grieving process and
(19:12):
they had to make decisions as you did every single day,
as am I going to be defined by destroyed and
damaged by what this man did to me or did
to my you know, loved one? Or is there a
way that I can be defiant? And I really like
your concept there. You know, sometimes you have to be
(19:32):
defiant in the face of what life throws at you.
You know. I'm also really happy to have had a
chance before we started talking to see your new wife
and your beautiful daughter, Alice. So you have rebuilt a life, Pat,
I mean, you know, it's not that you've you've turned
(19:54):
a page that's a ridiculous, uh you know description, but
you've you've stayed in the river, so to speak, and
it continues to flow and you've got new love and
new life. Talk a little bit about that, because I
want those who are listening who are going through grief
for whatever happened to them, are feeling maybe down and depressed,
(20:17):
maybe they're worried about the world, whatever it is. You know,
there is this potential out there isn't there. Yeah, that's
a really interesting way that you describe the river. You
got back, you stayed in the river. The river flows
whether you go with it or not. It is going
to flow whether you're in it or not. You know
that more than anyone. You that the kind of like
that that river is going to keep going. So I
(20:38):
either decide to get in and see where it goes next,
or I sit and just glare at it from the shore.
You know, you you have to go with it. And
I was, you know, it was February. It was almost
a year after Michelle had passed away, and I was just,
you know, slowly rebuilding things and getting on stage. And
Meredith and I had a lot of friends in common,
(20:59):
but we had ever met. And one of our friends
in common is this actress named Martha Plimpton who likes
to have these big dinner parties where she invites different
people together. So she invited a bunch of people. I
was on the list, so is Meredith. And at the
last minute I couldn't go to the dinner because I
was traveling. And then the next day Meredith sent me
(21:19):
a message going, dude, you missed the best lasagna last night,
just like and I went a story of my life.
And then we just started talking on Facebook. We never
spoke on the phone. We would just right to each other.
And it got to the point where I was just
talking to her because I missed having someone to talk
to in the dark at the end of the day.
You just sit there and go, oh man, what is
(21:40):
going on? And we were talking about the election and
what was what the There was nothing romantic about it. It
It was just like I've met this incredibly agile, multifaceted
mind like Michelle's that I can just talk to at
the end of the day. And we would go all right,
same time tomorrow, yeah, And then every night at nine
o'clock and like, all right, Alice is asleep, what did
you do today? Well? I had this audition and that
(22:01):
went on for three months, just writing, and then we
over that time we fell in love just writing to
each other, and then we it was but it was
so like Victoria, like like like one of those epistolary romances.
It's just the letters back and forth. And then finally
on May we were like, okay we should meet I
(22:22):
go where should we go? And and she just said
really fun. She goes let's pick like a restaurant with
like a beach or something nearby. So in case this
doesn't go well, we can, like one of us can
go for a walk where we can. We'll give each
other a boat hold. We were so worried that it
wasn't gonna work. And then um we we met at
the restaurant at shutters and we just locked eyes and
it was like, oh my god, I just you know,
(22:45):
and then that and then U I propose. In November
four we were married. It was you know, I'm a
sucker for a happy but I mean, as far as
telling the people out there, you know, you have to
be very let yourself get over your grief first, but
don't write off the possibility of love if you're not
(23:05):
completely done with your grief, like I wasn't completely done,
And Meredith was was more open than I was about
because I know you still have stuff to go through
and if you want to wait or postpone, you know,
I'm not trying to rush you into anything. But it
was that attitude of hers made me go, oh, no,
I should be with her. This is amazing. That so great.
And also you get to a certain age, like, look,
(23:27):
if we've been in our twenties, absolutely gone, we should
move in together. And I don't know. I'm still but
once you're in your late forties, you're like, I know
who I am. I know when I've met someone who's
not insane, this person is awesome. Why would I let
this person? You know? So that's that's kind of where
we were. So that's a pretty low bar. I've met
someone who's not insane. Well, living in living in Los Angeles,
(23:48):
that's actually arrest like finding a unicorn that's not insane.
I guess I gotta marry her. It's amazing. She's saying,
sign her roup. Oh my gosh, oh pat Now as
while I have so enjoyed talking to you. Patton's newest
(24:09):
comedy special, I Love Everything, is out on Netflix and
the HBO documentary series I'll Be Gone in the Dark
is based on the best selling book by Michelle McNamara.
Sabrina Fulton is probably best known as Trayvon's mom. Trayvon
(24:30):
Martin was seventeen years old when he was killed while
walking home from a convenience story in the middle of
the day through a neighborhood in Sanford, Florida. Back in
Trayvon had been on his way home after buying skittles
and a bottle of juice. The man, a self styled vigilante,
(24:54):
who shot him, thought Trayvon looked suspicious. Think about it,
a young black man in a hoodie, minding his own
business coming home from a store, being targeted, profiled, and
killed by a neighborhood vigilante makes me just sick and
angry every time I think about it. I got to
(25:17):
know Sabrina starting in her grace, her strength, her character
was so impressive to me. Together with Trayvon's dad, Tracy Martin,
Sabrina created the Trayvon Martin Foundation, which has been trying
to work with families who have lost kids to violence,
(25:40):
sometimes police violence, sometimes random shootings like what happened to Trayvon,
and unfortunately so many others. This past spring, after working
for twenty five years for her county as a public servant,
Sabrina decided to run for office, and when we spoke,
she was in the middle of her campaign for a
seat on the Miami Dade County Commission. I was so
(26:04):
proud of her because she had campaigned with me and
for me in and she really was a natural. It
is always a privilege and delight to talk with Sabrina Fulton. Well,
you know, I want to talk with you about something
(26:24):
that I think will help a lot of people, namely
how you keep going. You know, I have been so
grateful to know you, to be your friend, to see
you in action over the past several years, and I
do marvel at you. You exemplify the kind of grace
(26:45):
that can only come from faith and the kind of
resilience that so many people need but don't know how
to call up and so welcome. Let me start by
asking you how you see you know, the last several years,
ever since twelve when Trayvon was murdered, the process that
(27:09):
you have had to live over these years to be
who you are, so incredibly determined and strong and still
trying to make a difference to help people. But one
of the things I learned early on is it just
felt like it was so much pressure on me. I
(27:29):
was in a space that I had never been in,
and it just felt like everything was just like coming
down on me. Like every time there was a shooting
or killing or something, people would reach out to me
and I didn't know how to handle it. I'm like,
I'm still going through my grief, how do I handle
helping someone else? But that was the key, the key
to my own healing was the fact that I was
(27:52):
able to help somebody else. And so I learned that
early on. I reached out to other mothers all over
the United States, and and that was the key for
helping me. A lot of times we think that, Okay, well,
I'm in this square by myself. Let me just deal
with this by myself and my own way and my
own thing, do my own things. But that's so not it.
(28:14):
It's it's about helping others. And the more I reached
out and helped up the us, the more it took
the pressure off of me and what I was going through.
And so I certainly can tell you that I've I've
been through a lot. I've been through a lot, but
I just thank God that he continued to carry me
and to move forward, because you know, quite frankly, if
(28:37):
I would have just stayed home and did nothing and
just been depressed, people would have understood. But I wasn't
used to being on that street. I wasn't used to
being sad, and just you know, feeling myself being helpless
and hopeless. I can tell you that I live of
my life in an upbeat and happy time, you know.
(28:58):
And then I found myself looking at here and I
could do nothing but cry, just look in just tears,
and I'm like, I didn't want to be there. I
didn't want to be sad and depressed all the time.
And so you do have to make a decision that
that's something that that you want to you want to
come back from. I wanted to be happy again. I
wanted to smile, and I wanted to be around people again,
(29:19):
when in my mind I felt that I would never
get there. I saw you with other mothers, the mothers
of the movement, who had lost children to gun violence,
as you lost your son uh to police actions, as
others lost their children, and I saw how you often
would be the person who would immediately pick up on
(29:43):
a difficult emotional moment for somebody else, and you would
walk over there and stand and be not only in
witness but in support. Were there some specific people who
helped you along the way to begin to make that decision,
because you're right, it is a decision, but boy, it's
a hard decision. It's such a painful decision to turn
(30:06):
the most devastating grief and anger about what happened into
a choice to try to live your life again, to
try to help other people. I tell people that I
came from a long line of strong women. I grew
up with my great grandmother and my grandmother and my mother.
(30:27):
My brother got in a car accident some years ago,
and he's a quadriplegic, and I watched how my mom
was with my brother, and I couldn't understand where did
she get that strength from? You know, we would go
to the hospital, and then when he got a little better,
we would go to rehab, and I was like, oh
my God, Like, if something happened to one of my kids,
like I would probably just be a basket case, and
(30:49):
I just I just would watch her and how strong
she was and how how she would encourage him. That
that's where a lot of it came from. A lot
of it came on. I also had pastors that were
around me that supported me, that pray for me. I
can certainly say that the negative people I kind of
got away from um and until this day, I kind
(31:12):
of stay away from the negativity. That's why I talk
all the time about positive energy and positive people. When
They're surrounding yourself with positive influences because that's the only
way you're gonna move forward. Anybody could tell you, know,
you can't do it. You don't have enough money, you're
not smart enough, you you don't have enough education, you
don't anybody can say that, But it takes a real
(31:34):
person with character to say, yes, you can, you can
do it. I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna inspire you,
I'm gonna encourage you. You also had another son, you know.
Javarus was the older brother. He was nineteen when Trayvon
was murdered. How did you help him? How did you
(31:56):
keep it together so that you could continue to be
the mother that he needed, just like your own mom
when your brother had his accident, had to take care
of him, but also had to continue to take care
of you. Uh. For Javaris, I always knew he was watching,
so I would be very mindful. I was always his
(32:16):
role model. I was always trey Vonn's role model as well.
But I knew that he was watching, and I wanted
to show him an example of how to act during
adverse actions. When bad things happen to good people, how
do you handle those things? How do you justify those things?
How do you come back from those things? And so
(32:38):
one of the things that I tell him now, just
like I tell you know, I speak at a lot
of colleges and universities, and one of the things that
I tell the young people is stay focused. A lot
of times we get distracted by somebody else's agenda. We
have to stay focused on our agenda. I told him
to make sure that he meditates and that he praised.
(33:00):
I told him to make sure that when he feels
his rainy days coming, how to handle those rainy days,
how to embrace those rainy days, how to allow himself
to have a bad day and then know that the
sun will come out again. A lot of times we
just go through our bad days and we don't understand
(33:22):
that the sun will certainly come out again. Recognize your
bad days because you're gonna have them. You're gonna have
them your whole life. I still have my bad days,
there's no getting around them. But I learned how to
maneuver through those bad days because in the back of
my mind, I know that the sun will shine again. Amen. Amen,
(33:44):
We'll be back right after this quick break. You know,
when you formed along with Trayvon's father, Tracy, and your son,
the Trayvon Martin Foundation. You had a vision for how
this foundation could make a difference in the struggle against
gun violence and trying to prevent gun violence, but also
(34:07):
trying to provide a place an opportunity for people who
had such terrible losses to come together, like through the
Circle of Mothers that I was honored to participate in.
Can you tell our listeners about the foundation, what it
does and how you hope it will continue to play
a role in dealing with these injustices and problems we face. Well,
(34:31):
we have things in place to ensure that even after
my life is done and the next generation moves on,
that we have something in place to make sure that
um families understand about what happened with Trayvon and so
many other Trayvon Martins who are killed senselessly and nobody
is being held accountable. And so we have things. Once
(34:54):
a year on February, we celebrate Trayvon's birthday and not
his death. And so every year we do a peace
walk because we believe trayvonn had a right to walk
in peace without being followed. Chase pursued profile and murder.
We also have a sit down dinner which is a fundraiser,
and they sing Happy Birthday to Trayvonne. And every year
(35:15):
I say, I'm not gonna cry, and every year a
little tear forms in my eye, but I guess that's
my mom's side of me um. And we do a
back to school event where we give away five hundred
book bags and school supplies. Tracy does a Circle of
Fathers where he's bringing men together to strengthen the family
(35:36):
circle with the men and make sure that they're better fathers,
better husband's brother sons, better brothers. Those Circle of Mothers
is about healing empowerment, and we bring moms in from
all over the United States and and hopes that they
can heal during a weekend together to let them know
that they're not alone and for them to go through
(35:58):
the process of just knowing you have someone in your corner,
you have someone on your side, because of course you know,
as women, we heal a little differently from me and
and you always believe when you see another woman, if
she can do what I can. We also have a
youth event where we talk about we bring about kids
together and we talk about empowering our young people like
(36:21):
we talk about issues with law enforcement. We talk about
social media and how you present yourself on social media.
We talk about setting goals and themselves. We talk about
gun violence, We talk about all of the subjects that
they don't really talk about in schools. I let them
beat up on me a little bit, because um I
come on as a parent and I let them ask
(36:43):
me questions about why their mom or their dad did whatever,
and so it's it's really interesting to listen to what
they have to say, and I give them my point
of view of why I think that they should not
go to parties with their friends if they're with a
bad group of friends. And so that's usually a busy
(37:03):
schedule for me um on it is, but I would
encourage your listeners to go to um Trayvon Martin Foundation
dot org. You know, they're able to see some of
the things that we do in the community and on
a national level as well. It's so fascinating to me
because the lothers of the movement. Two of you decided
(37:25):
to run for office. Lucy Macbeth, whose son Jordan's was murdered,
ran for Congress, and you decided to run in South
Florida where you grew up. Talk a little bit about
that decision, because you know that's really putting yourself out there.
How did that come about? Well, I'm gonna certainly say
I have two thousand and sixteen when I became a
(37:49):
surrogate for someone named Ms. Clinton. Of course it helped
inspire not only Lucy but myself. I mean, it gave
us like a bird's eye view of what to expect.
But there are a few things that you did not
tell us because you made it look so easy and
(38:11):
it was not. You did not tell me the struggle
with being a woman. That is a struggle that we
need to be aware of, and I wasn't. The other
thing is the schedule, the calendar. Oh my god, I
knew you were busy, but I didn't know you were
that busy, you know, so I can feel every barely
(38:35):
help time to sleep. Oh I apologize, my friend. I apologize,
but I can I can certainly tell you that I
was inspired by you know, you running for office. And
I was inspired by Val Dimmons and and Frederica Wilson
and Maxine Waters, Karen Brown, Shilla Jackson Lee, like they
(38:57):
are so passionate about things that it I feel the
same way. I feel I can't complain about something unless
I give myself a chance to make improvements in that area. Well,
you are a woman after my own heart, my dear,
and uh I so I so connect with what you said.
But I want to just ask before we wrap up,
(39:18):
how are you taking care of yourself? Because you know,
you've always been so determined and so intense about helping
other people, even before you ran for office in your
professional life working for the county, following the tragic murder
of your son, helping others, creating the foundation. How are
(39:40):
you taking care of Sabrina. Well, I was doing a
pretty good job into this pandemic came. So I'm not
only dealing with the COVID virus. Is hurricane season for us,
we have some West Nile virus. Is just a lot
and stuff going on in addition to you know, the uh,
(40:00):
racial inequality that's happening here in the United States, and
so I'm doing a lot of um speaking on those
issues as well. But for the most part, I take
time out every now and then when I can, and
I kind of just be with my family. We have
we try to have a Sunday dinner or we try
to watch a movie together, and that that's my downturn.
(40:22):
That's the time where I can actually relax and let
my hair down. Well, you make people proud every single day, Sabrina,
and whatever the future holds for you, You're gonna keep helping,
You're gonna keep reaching out, You're gonna keep making a
difference in so many lives around you. You've made a
difference in my life. I am so admiring and really
(40:45):
inspired by your example. As we end, how do you
want people to think about Trayvon because you said something
that touched me so much that you celebrate his birthday.
Leave us with some thoughts about how you want us
to remember Kim, or a particular memory that you think
about that helps to ground you. Well, I can tell
(41:08):
you I'm gonna leave on a happy note. How about that.
I'm gonna leave on the fact that Trayvonn was a
mama's boy. Trayvon love, love, love his family, And it
didn't matter where I saw him. I could be at
a park, I could be uh, coming down the street
in my car. He's on the sidewalk jumping up and down,
(41:30):
like you know. He was very affectionate, and so wherever
he saw me, he had to come and give me
a tight hug and give me a kiss. And I
missed that, but I remember it, and so um I
think about that on my rainy days that I mentioned earlier.
I think about the tight squeezes he used to give
me in the in the kisses and the fact that
(41:52):
he used to call me cupcake. Oh my gosh, I
love that. Oh wow, thank you for sharing that that.
Really I will. I will keep that in my heart
and think about it. Thank you so much for everything
that you're doing and continue to inspire us, continue to
show us that even when when things are not going
(42:15):
right and things are not going your way, you just
keep it moving. And so I see that in you,
and that's where I get it from. We're gonna keep
doing it together. Thank you, my friend. Now, Sabrina lost
her race for county commissioner, but you know what, she
only lost by three hundred and thirty one votes, less
(42:38):
than one percent. It was her first time running for office,
but I sure hope it won't be the last. For
more information on the incredible work that she and Trayvon's
dad are doing in memory of their Son, visit Trayvon
Martin Foundation dot org now and in other tough times.
(42:58):
I hope we can all take inspiration from Sabrina and
Patton to turn our grief into action. One action you
can take is vote, Please vote, Make a plan, figure
out when, where, how you'll get there, and then call
up three friends or family members or neighbors and tell
them to do the same. It is much better than
(43:20):
just yelling at the TV. You and Me Both is
brought to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by
Julie Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from Kuma Aberdeen,
Nikki E Tour, Oscar Flores, Rihanna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Lauren Peterson,
Rob Russo, and Lona Valmorro. Our engineer is Zap McNeice.
(43:46):
Original music is by Forest Gray and a big thanks
to Riverside FM. Just imagine we needed a recording platform
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(44:08):
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(44:31):
Come back next week when we're talking about the promise
and the limits of the American Dream with economist Rod Chetty,
long time immigration reform advocate Lorella pray Lee, and the
one and only Tan France from the Netflix series Queer. I.
I wanted to be an American system pretty much my
(44:52):
whole life, and so the moment that it happened, I
was so overcome with emotion. The all I could do
was donuts because that was the most American thing I
could think of. I went to the donuts shop down
the street and eight donuts, and that was my version
of being a true American. Don't miss it, Ye
You and Me Both is a production of I Heart Radio.
The stand up was just another extension of that of Hey, Grief,
I'm gonna go on stage tonight and tell jokes for
seven minutes in the world that you trapped me, and
I'm still gonna go up and do it like out
of sheer defiance. I'm Hillary Clinton and this is You
and Me Both, where I get into some of today's
(00:23):
biggest questions with people I admire. On today's episode, we're
talking about finding a path forward after a terrible loss,
moving from grief to action. You know, when I think
about the times I've gone through grieving, losing my parents
(00:43):
and in particular, last year was really hard on me.
I lost one of my very close friends, my best
friend from literally sixth grade, and my younger brother. It
happened in the space of, you know, less than six months.
It was painful missing them and wishing I could talk
(01:04):
to them practically every day, and I often find myself
trying to figure out how do other people confront feelings
of sadness and anger, disbelief, outrage, How do we all
summon the strength to keep going. So I'm talking to
two people who have really endured very tough losses. Later,
(01:29):
I'll be talking with Sabrina Fulton. She's the mother of
Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed on his way
home from a store in twelve. You know, Sabrina has
become a powerful advocate for parents and communities harmed by violence.
She's someone that I've been inspired by over the years.
(01:50):
But first, I will be talking with actor and comedian
Patent Oswald. Now you may have seen him on t
V on one of his stand up Netflix specials, or
on The King of Queens, one of the great titles
for a TV program, Or if you're a grandmother like me,
you might have heard him as the voice of the
(02:13):
rat Remy in the movie Rata Tui. He's known for
being funny, but he's also been outspoken about the grief
he's experienced in Patton's wife, Michelle, died suddenly in her sleep.
She was forty six years old. Her death was attributed
to an undiagnosed heart condition and complications from medications she
(02:36):
was taking. Her sudden death left Patent and their daughter, Alice,
who was then eight years old, totally overcome by loss
and grief. Now, he since has returned to comedy even
remarried and is raising an incredible kid that I got
to say hello to before we started, and that was
(02:59):
great talking with Alice. But he did something else. He
took the project that Michelle had dedicated decades of her
life too and brought it to fruition. Because you see,
Michelle was writing the book on the Golden State Killer
based on months and months of research. Patton worked with
(03:21):
two collaborators to finish this book called I'll Be Gone
in the Dark. It went on to become a New
York Times bestseller, and then he helped produce the HBO
documentary series by the same title. So I wanted to
talk to Patton about how he got over and through
one of the most terrible losses you can experience, and
(03:45):
where he is now. Well, I have to say, Patton,
I am thrilled to meet you through this podcast and
have a chance to talk with you. And I think
I should start by congratulating you because in May, in
the middle of COVID, you released a new stand up
special on Netflix called I Love Everything, and it got
(04:08):
absolute ray reviews add me to the list, um, and
so I'm just so excited to have this chance to
talk to you. About really the ups and the downs
of life and different ways we move from grief to action. Yes,
and you've been very public about your grief. When your
(04:30):
wife Michelle passed away back in it was very sudden,
left you alone a single father, and I have so
appreciated how honest, raw vulnerable you've been talking about that experience. Yeah. Well,
I mean I think that keyed off of me when
(04:51):
it first happened, when Michelle first passed, and I was
so shell shocked and kind of shredded, you know, really
I was. I was all nerve and viscera. That's how
I felt. I turned to people in the past that
had also been very, very upfront about chronicling their grief,
especially as a book called A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis,
(05:14):
where his his wife had just died, probably one of
the best writers of the twentieth century. And this wasn't
a book that was written months or years, and like
he was writing it immediately as he was feeling it.
And it is one of the greatest depictions of grief
I've ever seen, and I it's the slimmest book he's
ever written. And it took me so long to read it.
Because you just need to take a break from it.
(05:35):
It's one of the heaviest things I've ever read, but
I came away from it feeling so much. You know
that feel you get after you've had a really, really
deep cry, and then afterwards you're like, oh, I actually
sort of have some strength right now. I can maybe
like I needed to wrench that stuff out of me.
And so once the book ended, it was almost like,
(05:56):
I need to talk about this in a way to
like I need to recreate that cry constantly, because one
of the scariest moments in grief is you think that
you'll have a specific reaction to stimulize. So thinking about
her being gone, and there will be moments when I
wouldn't cry, But then later on I'm driving along and
I would see a cloud and I would explode into tears.
(06:19):
And what I realized was my body was defending me, going, oh,
wait a minute, we can't deal with the immediate stimuli,
it'll be too much. Let's let this come out against
a random thing so that it's not so he can
actually kind of deal with it. And I remember talking
to a lot of people who had, you know, survived
widowers or people that had survived grief friends of mine
that had also gone to the same thing, like, Yeah,
(06:41):
you're gonna go through that for a while where you
will start the stuff you think is gonna make you cry,
you will have no reaction to, and you'll judge yourself
very harshly, and then later on a day, later, a
week later, you'll explode over nothing. And it was that
was really scary, you know, And the losses that I've experienced,
I know what you're talking about. I mean, you know
(07:03):
when after my father died, or my mother died, or
my best friend died, something will trigger a memory that
is not even conscious, it's so deeply buried, and all
of a sudden, my eyes are welling up and I
have to if I'm in public, you know, I have
to sort of sniff a lot. Which, Yeah, it's so
(07:26):
interesting because you were back on the stage doing comedy
within six months. And was that a way for you
to process what you were going through? And I mean,
how was it part of your healing process? I wish
I could say something as noble and intelligent as oh,
and I decided to attack it was when the first
time I went on stage was in August, and I
(07:48):
basically it has had nothing to do with healing or
regaining myself. It was I don't know what else to do.
And it also was because for a couple of months
after she passed, I was like, I don't know if
I'm alive, Like maybe I'm the one who died. And
I genuinely wasn't sure whether I was alive or not.
There were those days where I would walk around and go, wait,
(08:11):
is this did Michelle die? Maybe I'm the one who
And I had some really scary, like mental health moments
when I didn't know if I so it was like, Okay,
I need to bring and I and I remember I
flashed back to when I told Alice, the principal in
her school, said she whatever she tells you she needs,
you have to you have to let her lead for
a while. And one of the first things she said
(08:33):
was because I told her on a Friday, and she goes,
I want to go to school on Monday, like it
was the first because I want something that feels like normalcy.
And then I realized, oh, I'm doing the same thing
that my daughter did. On a weeknight, I would go
out and do sets because that's what normal life looked like,
So that's what I started doing, right, So it wasn't
a distraction so much. No, it was a way through,
(08:54):
how can I make the world feel like the living
world when I wasn't questioning whether I was a either
or not, And I had to start actively switching the
world back to the way that it was doing stand up.
I remember there were a couple of mornings when I
just couldn't wake up and Alice just didn't go to
school because I wouldn't wake up till noon, and I'd go,
(09:14):
I'm so sorry, or I would I would forget to
like suddenly, oh, you have no clean clothes because I
haven't done any laundry, because I don't know what I'm
you know. So then I had to start really actively going,
I'm getting up every morning. I'm gonna make her breakfast.
She's gonna be right, Like I did that in defiance
of this grief world I was stuck in. So I
did that for a few months, and then the stand
up was just another extension of that of Hey, grief,
(09:37):
I'm gonna go on stage tonight and tell jokes for
seven minutes in the world that you trapped me, and
I'm still gonna go up and do it like out
of sheer defiance. I love that word defiance, because you
were you were defying the tragic reality that you were
now inhabiting, and you were determined that you were going
to do everything you could at least to reshape it,
(09:58):
both for you and Alice. You also did something else
that really mattered, because you know, your late wife was
an extraordinary investigator and researcher, and what she did was
to try to, through her writing, her online interactions, you know,
to try to build a community of people who were
(10:20):
going to help solve crimes, which you know, I find fascinating.
And she was in the middle when Michelle died of
a year's long research project to track down the rapist
and murderer eventually known as the Golden State Killer. Yeah.
Well that was a thing that she had written about
on her blog True Crime Diary, which led to Los
(10:43):
Angeles magazine wanting her to write an article about it,
and the article blew up online and that led to
HarperCollins saying, well, this is a book because it's such
a massive, decades long unsolved case. The Golden State Killer
started off as a burglar and ray pist in the
Sacramento area in the early seventies mid seventies, he went
(11:05):
under the names the Vicelia Ransacker. Then he became the
East Area Rapist or ear E A r. Then he
bumped up to murder. Then he vanished, but then reappeared
down in Irvine and and Goalita and like it was
just this statewide kind of spree. It was the worst
(11:25):
uncaught killer in California history. And he had faded from
memory and it turned out he was an ex police
policeman who was kicked off the force partially for shoplifting,
if I'm not mistaken, a hammer and dog repellent, spray
and rope. So that's getting on the edge of like
(11:45):
dark comedy at that point where it's like how much
more obvious could this guts? But also people keep forgetting
there was an era coming up where you know, that's
what guys did, man, you used to that's of course
you buys a hammer, and some wrote that's what guys do,
so it didn't seem weird or suspicious. So she really
delves into part of what kept him going for so
long was the tone and uh feeling of the era
(12:09):
and how it felt about women and how it felt
about rape victims and stuff like that. So you know,
it's a whole piece. It's it's it's as much a
mood piece as it is an investigative piece. It's it's
just both in its extraordinary. We're taking a quick break.
Stay with us. You decided to finish the book she
was working on, and you know, give us a little
(12:31):
bit of understanding as to how you summon the energy
and commitment to take on what is a huge undertaking. Yeah,
well that was me. You know again, the first there
was not an immediate I'm gonna see her book through.
It was just months of you know, junk food and
crying and rewatching the princess bride um and just doing
(12:55):
like the most embarrassing stuff you wish as yeah as
you wish you exactly um. And then came down to
it wasn't even that. I just I was like, I'm
going to finish book, like I am going to beg
people who knew her who I also know, Billy Jensen
who's a journalist, Paul Haynes, who was her researcher and
data minor, and this guy Paul Holes who was a
homicide investigator, Like please please help me assemble I can't
(13:19):
write at her level. I can't fill in where she
left off sensitives, but we can. We can organize this
so that it has a narrative to it, and please, please,
let's get this out there. And they all stepped up
a lot of times when you're grieving. That's another part
of grieving that people that I think gets misrepresented a lot,
the stoic lone Widower, the you know, lone wolf and
(13:42):
Cub Samurai with his you know baby in the cart
in front of him and walking through the rain. And
I'm gonna do that. No, You're gonna have to ask
for a lot of help and be kind of clumsy
and embarrassed to do it. But I still did it
because I wanted that book finished, especially because one of
the things that Michelle embraced early on. Most crimes are
(14:05):
solved not through card chases and shootouts. It's a cop
sitting there sifting through data. I remember there was a
day she got somehow there was a digital archive of
every year book in Sacramento from the time that he
would have been young, and so a couple of witnesses
described as being athletic. So she went through every track team.
(14:29):
I mean it was just like it took weeks to
go through and cross reference and it led to nothing.
But it was the doing that, and and again it
was every couple days and every couple of weeks, it
was just the how do I, how do I get
up tomorrow and do this again? This is going nowhere.
It's you gotta hammer it every day. It's so brutal
and and I think that's why a lot of the
(14:51):
cops that she talked to trusted her very early on,
because they saw, oh, no, she's doing the grunt work.
She's not trying to do the really cool how Hollywood
c s I sherlock, Oh this cigarette ash. It's like, no,
I just went through like five phone books from five
different years. You know that kind of thing, which is
(15:12):
how you that's how you solve crimes. But you finished
the book I'll Be Gone in the Dark. You had
the investigators and the retired police and everybody helping you.
Then you turned it into an HBO documentary. What did
it feel like, you know, not only finishing the book,
but then turning it into a documentary, getting it over
(15:32):
the finished line, so to speak, without Michelle being right
there by your side. You know, again, the cliche word
would be bitter sweet, especially because the director that I
got to work with, this woman, Liz Garvis, who did
the Nina Simone documentary and the Angola Prison documentary. The
way that she was able to tell the story and
focus on the aspects of the story that Michelle would
(15:58):
have wanted focused on, which is the victims, which is
the survivors, and plays and these women that Michelle was
always like, I hate serial killer narratives that make the
serial killer out to be this dark anti hero. We're
in reality, these guys they're they're just worms, you know,
They're they're just worms. So the fact that that's what
she also focused on, it would have been so good
(16:19):
to have Michelle there to consult and see that process
what she focused on her book also than being expanded,
and also I know that Michelle would have wanted to
have talked to the survivors. You know, if Michelle had
been alive and he had been caught the way he was,
I would be home taking care of Alice while she
was staying in a hotel in Shackman and going to
every court day, and just nothing felt better than when
(16:40):
I met the women that had survived it. And they
were all like, we go to every one of his
arraignments and we look right at him and he can't
raise his head, he can't look at us. And the
smiles on their faces seeing this guy just reduced to
what he was. It was just yes, yeah, well, and
you know, the book was obviously a man us of
(17:01):
best seller. And then on August twenty one, just you know,
this year, this guy, this really terrible guy, horrible human being,
was convicted of murdering I think thirteen people and raping
over fifty in California in the seventies and eighties. And then,
as I understand it from the plea hearing, he admitted
(17:24):
to things that he hadn't even been charged with. Well,
one of the you know, one of the scenes that
I found both powerful and hopeful in the documentary was
in the last episode when many of the rape survivors
came together. They were, in their words, a survivor family.
And you know, once said, even though it was decades
(17:46):
after the attack, she suffered that she was on the
road to becoming herself again. That must have been a
really emotional experience for you Pat too, to meet these women,
the survivor family members you know what did that mean
to you. I met them at a book event up
in Sacramento, and I kept it together when I met
(18:08):
them because out of it just felt it would have felt,
really I thought petty and disrespectful if I had come
apart after what they had gone through. And I just
listened to them. I just listen to them talk about
all that, you know, their lives. And but then when
I got I remember very specifically, when I got back
to my hotel room, I well, I burst into tears
in the car, and then I had to get myself
together because I don't want to walk through the lobby
(18:29):
like bawling, looking nuts. But then I got myself together,
went back in my room, and when I closed it
or I started crying again because it's just so you
feel the decades of their lives just unspooling on you
like that, and and the fact that they are walking
around in the sunshine and going to see friends. There
(18:50):
is a gorgeous defiance in now, you know what, I'm
gonna go live my life and yeah, and I know
what you took from me, and I'm still going to
go live my life like you're just an insect. Because
of course, the ones who survived, and of course the
family members of those who did not from his murders.
They had to go through their own grieving process and
(19:12):
they had to make decisions as you did every single day,
as am I going to be defined by destroyed and
damaged by what this man did to me or did
to my you know, loved one? Or is there a
way that I can be defiant? And I really like
your concept there. You know, sometimes you have to be
(19:32):
defiant in the face of what life throws at you.
You know. I'm also really happy to have had a
chance before we started talking to see your new wife
and your beautiful daughter, Alice. So you have rebuilt a life, Pat,
I mean, you know, it's not that you've you've turned
(19:54):
a page that's a ridiculous, uh you know description, but
you've you've stayed in the river, so to speak, and
it continues to flow and you've got new love and
new life. Talk a little bit about that, because I
want those who are listening who are going through grief
for whatever happened to them, are feeling maybe down and depressed,
(20:17):
maybe they're worried about the world, whatever it is. You know,
there is this potential out there isn't there. Yeah, that's
a really interesting way that you describe the river. You
got back, you stayed in the river. The river flows
whether you go with it or not. It is going
to flow whether you're in it or not. You know
that more than anyone. You that the kind of like
that that river is going to keep going. So I
(20:38):
either decide to get in and see where it goes next,
or I sit and just glare at it from the shore.
You know, you you have to go with it. And
I was, you know, it was February. It was almost
a year after Michelle had passed away, and I was just,
you know, slowly rebuilding things and getting on stage. And
Meredith and I had a lot of friends in common,
(20:59):
but we had ever met. And one of our friends
in common is this actress named Martha Plimpton who likes
to have these big dinner parties where she invites different
people together. So she invited a bunch of people. I
was on the list, so is Meredith. And at the
last minute I couldn't go to the dinner because I
was traveling. And then the next day Meredith sent me
(21:19):
a message going, dude, you missed the best lasagna last night,
just like and I went a story of my life.
And then we just started talking on Facebook. We never
spoke on the phone. We would just right to each other.
And it got to the point where I was just
talking to her because I missed having someone to talk
to in the dark at the end of the day.
You just sit there and go, oh man, what is
(21:40):
going on? And we were talking about the election and
what was what the There was nothing romantic about it. It
It was just like I've met this incredibly agile, multifaceted
mind like Michelle's that I can just talk to at
the end of the day. And we would go all right,
same time tomorrow, yeah, And then every night at nine
o'clock and like, all right, Alice is asleep, what did
you do today? Well? I had this audition and that
(22:01):
went on for three months, just writing, and then we
over that time we fell in love just writing to
each other, and then we it was but it was
so like Victoria, like like like one of those epistolary romances.
It's just the letters back and forth. And then finally
on May we were like, okay we should meet I
(22:22):
go where should we go? And and she just said
really fun. She goes let's pick like a restaurant with
like a beach or something nearby. So in case this
doesn't go well, we can, like one of us can
go for a walk where we can. We'll give each
other a boat hold. We were so worried that it
wasn't gonna work. And then um we we met at
the restaurant at shutters and we just locked eyes and
it was like, oh my god, I just you know,
(22:45):
and then that and then U I propose. In November
four we were married. It was you know, I'm a
sucker for a happy but I mean, as far as
telling the people out there, you know, you have to
be very let yourself get over your grief first, but
don't write off the possibility of love if you're not
(23:05):
completely done with your grief, like I wasn't completely done,
And Meredith was was more open than I was about
because I know you still have stuff to go through
and if you want to wait or postpone, you know,
I'm not trying to rush you into anything. But it
was that attitude of hers made me go, oh, no,
I should be with her. This is amazing. That so great.
And also you get to a certain age, like, look,
(23:27):
if we've been in our twenties, absolutely gone, we should
move in together. And I don't know. I'm still but
once you're in your late forties, you're like, I know
who I am. I know when I've met someone who's
not insane, this person is awesome. Why would I let
this person? You know? So that's that's kind of where
we were. So that's a pretty low bar. I've met
someone who's not insane. Well, living in living in Los Angeles,
(23:48):
that's actually arrest like finding a unicorn that's not insane.
I guess I gotta marry her. It's amazing. She's saying,
sign her roup. Oh my gosh, oh pat Now as
while I have so enjoyed talking to you. Patton's newest
(24:09):
comedy special, I Love Everything, is out on Netflix and
the HBO documentary series I'll Be Gone in the Dark
is based on the best selling book by Michelle McNamara.
Sabrina Fulton is probably best known as Trayvon's mom. Trayvon
(24:30):
Martin was seventeen years old when he was killed while
walking home from a convenience story in the middle of
the day through a neighborhood in Sanford, Florida. Back in
Trayvon had been on his way home after buying skittles
and a bottle of juice. The man, a self styled vigilante,
(24:54):
who shot him, thought Trayvon looked suspicious. Think about it,
a young black man in a hoodie, minding his own
business coming home from a store, being targeted, profiled, and
killed by a neighborhood vigilante makes me just sick and
angry every time I think about it. I got to
(25:17):
know Sabrina starting in her grace, her strength, her character
was so impressive to me. Together with Trayvon's dad, Tracy Martin,
Sabrina created the Trayvon Martin Foundation, which has been trying
to work with families who have lost kids to violence,
(25:40):
sometimes police violence, sometimes random shootings like what happened to Trayvon,
and unfortunately so many others. This past spring, after working
for twenty five years for her county as a public servant,
Sabrina decided to run for office, and when we spoke,
she was in the middle of her campaign for a
seat on the Miami Dade County Commission. I was so
(26:04):
proud of her because she had campaigned with me and
for me in and she really was a natural. It
is always a privilege and delight to talk with Sabrina Fulton. Well,
you know, I want to talk with you about something
(26:24):
that I think will help a lot of people, namely
how you keep going. You know, I have been so
grateful to know you, to be your friend, to see
you in action over the past several years, and I
do marvel at you. You exemplify the kind of grace
(26:45):
that can only come from faith and the kind of
resilience that so many people need but don't know how
to call up and so welcome. Let me start by
asking you how you see you know, the last several years,
ever since twelve when Trayvon was murdered, the process that
(27:09):
you have had to live over these years to be
who you are, so incredibly determined and strong and still
trying to make a difference to help people. But one
of the things I learned early on is it just
felt like it was so much pressure on me. I
(27:29):
was in a space that I had never been in,
and it just felt like everything was just like coming
down on me. Like every time there was a shooting
or killing or something, people would reach out to me
and I didn't know how to handle it. I'm like,
I'm still going through my grief, how do I handle
helping someone else? But that was the key, the key
to my own healing was the fact that I was
(27:52):
able to help somebody else. And so I learned that
early on. I reached out to other mothers all over
the United States, and and that was the key for
helping me. A lot of times we think that, Okay, well,
I'm in this square by myself. Let me just deal
with this by myself and my own way and my
own thing, do my own things. But that's so not it.
(28:14):
It's it's about helping others. And the more I reached
out and helped up the us, the more it took
the pressure off of me and what I was going through.
And so I certainly can tell you that I've I've
been through a lot. I've been through a lot, but
I just thank God that he continued to carry me
and to move forward, because you know, quite frankly, if
(28:37):
I would have just stayed home and did nothing and
just been depressed, people would have understood. But I wasn't
used to being on that street. I wasn't used to
being sad, and just you know, feeling myself being helpless
and hopeless. I can tell you that I live of
my life in an upbeat and happy time, you know.
(28:58):
And then I found myself looking at here and I
could do nothing but cry, just look in just tears,
and I'm like, I didn't want to be there. I
didn't want to be sad and depressed all the time.
And so you do have to make a decision that
that's something that that you want to you want to
come back from. I wanted to be happy again. I
wanted to smile, and I wanted to be around people again,
(29:19):
when in my mind I felt that I would never
get there. I saw you with other mothers, the mothers
of the movement, who had lost children to gun violence,
as you lost your son uh to police actions, as
others lost their children, and I saw how you often
would be the person who would immediately pick up on
(29:43):
a difficult emotional moment for somebody else, and you would
walk over there and stand and be not only in
witness but in support. Were there some specific people who
helped you along the way to begin to make that decision,
because you're right, it is a decision, but boy, it's
a hard decision. It's such a painful decision to turn
(30:06):
the most devastating grief and anger about what happened into
a choice to try to live your life again, to
try to help other people. I tell people that I
came from a long line of strong women. I grew
up with my great grandmother and my grandmother and my mother.
(30:27):
My brother got in a car accident some years ago,
and he's a quadriplegic, and I watched how my mom
was with my brother, and I couldn't understand where did
she get that strength from? You know, we would go
to the hospital, and then when he got a little better,
we would go to rehab, and I was like, oh
my God, Like, if something happened to one of my kids,
like I would probably just be a basket case, and
(30:49):
I just I just would watch her and how strong
she was and how how she would encourage him. That
that's where a lot of it came from. A lot
of it came on. I also had pastors that were
around me that supported me, that pray for me. I
can certainly say that the negative people I kind of
got away from um and until this day, I kind
(31:12):
of stay away from the negativity. That's why I talk
all the time about positive energy and positive people. When
They're surrounding yourself with positive influences because that's the only
way you're gonna move forward. Anybody could tell you, know,
you can't do it. You don't have enough money, you're
not smart enough, you you don't have enough education, you
don't anybody can say that, But it takes a real
(31:34):
person with character to say, yes, you can, you can
do it. I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna inspire you,
I'm gonna encourage you. You also had another son, you know.
Javarus was the older brother. He was nineteen when Trayvon
was murdered. How did you help him? How did you
(31:56):
keep it together so that you could continue to be
the mother that he needed, just like your own mom
when your brother had his accident, had to take care
of him, but also had to continue to take care
of you. Uh. For Javaris, I always knew he was watching,
so I would be very mindful. I was always his
(32:16):
role model. I was always trey Vonn's role model as well.
But I knew that he was watching, and I wanted
to show him an example of how to act during
adverse actions. When bad things happen to good people, how
do you handle those things? How do you justify those things?
How do you come back from those things? And so
(32:38):
one of the things that I tell him now, just
like I tell you know, I speak at a lot
of colleges and universities, and one of the things that
I tell the young people is stay focused. A lot
of times we get distracted by somebody else's agenda. We
have to stay focused on our agenda. I told him
to make sure that he meditates and that he praised.
(33:00):
I told him to make sure that when he feels
his rainy days coming, how to handle those rainy days,
how to embrace those rainy days, how to allow himself
to have a bad day and then know that the
sun will come out again. A lot of times we
just go through our bad days and we don't understand
(33:22):
that the sun will certainly come out again. Recognize your
bad days because you're gonna have them. You're gonna have
them your whole life. I still have my bad days,
there's no getting around them. But I learned how to
maneuver through those bad days because in the back of
my mind, I know that the sun will shine again. Amen. Amen,
(33:44):
We'll be back right after this quick break. You know,
when you formed along with Trayvon's father, Tracy, and your son,
the Trayvon Martin Foundation. You had a vision for how
this foundation could make a difference in the struggle against
gun violence and trying to prevent gun violence, but also
(34:07):
trying to provide a place an opportunity for people who
had such terrible losses to come together, like through the
Circle of Mothers that I was honored to participate in.
Can you tell our listeners about the foundation, what it
does and how you hope it will continue to play
a role in dealing with these injustices and problems we face. Well,
(34:31):
we have things in place to ensure that even after
my life is done and the next generation moves on,
that we have something in place to make sure that
um families understand about what happened with Trayvon and so
many other Trayvon Martins who are killed senselessly and nobody
is being held accountable. And so we have things. Once
(34:54):
a year on February, we celebrate Trayvon's birthday and not
his death. And so every year we do a peace
walk because we believe trayvonn had a right to walk
in peace without being followed. Chase pursued profile and murder.
We also have a sit down dinner which is a fundraiser,
and they sing Happy Birthday to Trayvonne. And every year
(35:15):
I say, I'm not gonna cry, and every year a
little tear forms in my eye, but I guess that's
my mom's side of me um. And we do a
back to school event where we give away five hundred
book bags and school supplies. Tracy does a Circle of
Fathers where he's bringing men together to strengthen the family
(35:36):
circle with the men and make sure that they're better fathers,
better husband's brother sons, better brothers. Those Circle of Mothers
is about healing empowerment, and we bring moms in from
all over the United States and and hopes that they
can heal during a weekend together to let them know
that they're not alone and for them to go through
(35:58):
the process of just knowing you have someone in your corner,
you have someone on your side, because of course you know,
as women, we heal a little differently from me and
and you always believe when you see another woman, if
she can do what I can. We also have a
youth event where we talk about we bring about kids
together and we talk about empowering our young people like
(36:21):
we talk about issues with law enforcement. We talk about
social media and how you present yourself on social media.
We talk about setting goals and themselves. We talk about
gun violence, We talk about all of the subjects that
they don't really talk about in schools. I let them
beat up on me a little bit, because um I
come on as a parent and I let them ask
(36:43):
me questions about why their mom or their dad did whatever,
and so it's it's really interesting to listen to what
they have to say, and I give them my point
of view of why I think that they should not
go to parties with their friends if they're with a
bad group of friends. And so that's usually a busy
(37:03):
schedule for me um on it is, but I would
encourage your listeners to go to um Trayvon Martin Foundation
dot org. You know, they're able to see some of
the things that we do in the community and on
a national level as well. It's so fascinating to me
because the lothers of the movement. Two of you decided
(37:25):
to run for office. Lucy Macbeth, whose son Jordan's was murdered,
ran for Congress, and you decided to run in South
Florida where you grew up. Talk a little bit about
that decision, because you know that's really putting yourself out there.
How did that come about? Well, I'm gonna certainly say
I have two thousand and sixteen when I became a
(37:49):
surrogate for someone named Ms. Clinton. Of course it helped
inspire not only Lucy but myself. I mean, it gave
us like a bird's eye view of what to expect.
But there are a few things that you did not
tell us because you made it look so easy and
(38:11):
it was not. You did not tell me the struggle
with being a woman. That is a struggle that we
need to be aware of, and I wasn't. The other
thing is the schedule, the calendar. Oh my god, I
knew you were busy, but I didn't know you were
that busy, you know, so I can feel every barely
(38:35):
help time to sleep. Oh I apologize, my friend. I apologize,
but I can I can certainly tell you that I
was inspired by you know, you running for office. And
I was inspired by Val Dimmons and and Frederica Wilson
and Maxine Waters, Karen Brown, Shilla Jackson Lee, like they
(38:57):
are so passionate about things that it I feel the
same way. I feel I can't complain about something unless
I give myself a chance to make improvements in that area. Well,
you are a woman after my own heart, my dear,
and uh I so I so connect with what you said.
But I want to just ask before we wrap up,
(39:18):
how are you taking care of yourself? Because you know,
you've always been so determined and so intense about helping
other people, even before you ran for office in your
professional life working for the county, following the tragic murder
of your son, helping others, creating the foundation. How are
(39:40):
you taking care of Sabrina. Well, I was doing a
pretty good job into this pandemic came. So I'm not
only dealing with the COVID virus. Is hurricane season for us,
we have some West Nile virus. Is just a lot
and stuff going on in addition to you know, the uh,
(40:00):
racial inequality that's happening here in the United States, and
so I'm doing a lot of um speaking on those
issues as well. But for the most part, I take
time out every now and then when I can, and
I kind of just be with my family. We have
we try to have a Sunday dinner or we try
to watch a movie together, and that that's my downturn.
(40:22):
That's the time where I can actually relax and let
my hair down. Well, you make people proud every single day, Sabrina,
and whatever the future holds for you, You're gonna keep helping,
You're gonna keep reaching out, You're gonna keep making a
difference in so many lives around you. You've made a
difference in my life. I am so admiring and really
(40:45):
inspired by your example. As we end, how do you
want people to think about Trayvon because you said something
that touched me so much that you celebrate his birthday.
Leave us with some thoughts about how you want us
to remember Kim, or a particular memory that you think
about that helps to ground you. Well, I can tell
(41:08):
you I'm gonna leave on a happy note. How about that.
I'm gonna leave on the fact that Trayvonn was a
mama's boy. Trayvon love, love, love his family, And it
didn't matter where I saw him. I could be at
a park, I could be uh, coming down the street
in my car. He's on the sidewalk jumping up and down,
(41:30):
like you know. He was very affectionate, and so wherever
he saw me, he had to come and give me
a tight hug and give me a kiss. And I
missed that, but I remember it, and so um I
think about that on my rainy days that I mentioned earlier.
I think about the tight squeezes he used to give
me in the in the kisses and the fact that
(41:52):
he used to call me cupcake. Oh my gosh, I
love that. Oh wow, thank you for sharing that that.
Really I will. I will keep that in my heart
and think about it. Thank you so much for everything
that you're doing and continue to inspire us, continue to
show us that even when when things are not going
(42:15):
right and things are not going your way, you just
keep it moving. And so I see that in you,
and that's where I get it from. We're gonna keep
doing it together. Thank you, my friend. Now, Sabrina lost
her race for county commissioner, but you know what, she
only lost by three hundred and thirty one votes, less
(42:38):
than one percent. It was her first time running for office,
but I sure hope it won't be the last. For
more information on the incredible work that she and Trayvon's
dad are doing in memory of their Son, visit Trayvon
Martin Foundation dot org now and in other tough times.
(42:58):
I hope we can all take inspiration from Sabrina and
Patton to turn our grief into action. One action you
can take is vote, Please vote, Make a plan, figure
out when, where, how you'll get there, and then call
up three friends or family members or neighbors and tell
them to do the same. It is much better than
(43:20):
just yelling at the TV. You and Me Both is
brought to you by I Heart Radio. We're produced by
Julie Subran and Kathleen Russo, with help from Kuma Aberdeen,
Nikki E Tour, Oscar Flores, Rihanna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Lauren Peterson,
Rob Russo, and Lona Valmorro. Our engineer is Zap McNeice.
(43:46):
Original music is by Forest Gray and a big thanks
to Riverside FM. Just imagine we needed a recording platform
that could help us make a podcast during a pandemic
and did they step up. If you like You and
Me Both, spread the word, don't keep it to yourself.
You can subscribe to You and Me Both on the
(44:08):
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. And while you're there, leave us a review.
It's a great way to help other people discover us,
and we'd love to hear from you, So send us
your questions, your comments, your ideas or suggestions for future
shows to you and me, both pod at gmail dot com.
(44:31):
Come back next week when we're talking about the promise
and the limits of the American Dream with economist Rod Chetty,
long time immigration reform advocate Lorella pray Lee, and the
one and only Tan France from the Netflix series Queer. I.
I wanted to be an American system pretty much my
(44:52):
whole life, and so the moment that it happened, I
was so overcome with emotion. The all I could do
was donuts because that was the most American thing I
could think of. I went to the donuts shop down
the street and eight donuts, and that was my version
of being a true American. Don't miss it, Ye
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