You Can’t Keep Everybody Safe with Author Mary Laura Philpott

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I can't change this fact. I can't change whatever fact
it is. I can't change my son's diagnosis. I can't
change the fact that the world is on fire. I
can't change the fact that my parents are getting old.
I can't change any of these things. I cannot fix them.
So how do I get up every morning and keep going?

(00:25):
This is Hereafter, and I'm your host, Megan Divine, author
of the best selling book It's Okay that You're Not Okay?
This week on Hereafter, author Mary Laura Philpott on the
anxiety involved in trying to keep everyone safe even when
you know you can't possibly do that. That conversation coming
up right after this first break. Before we get started,

(00:51):
one quick note. While we cover a lot of emotional
relational territory in our time here together, this show is
not a substitute for skilled support with a license mental
health provider, or for professionals revision related to your work.
My friends, So I spent okay most I was gonna
say a lot, but most of this weekend reading every

(01:13):
book ever written by Today's guest best selling author, Mary
Laura Philipotton. Now, before you say, boy, that is commitment.
The truth is that her books are really good, and
I saw a lot of myself in her books. I
saw a lot of myself in the ways her mind works.
For example, there's a section in her latest book, Bomb Shelter,

(01:33):
where she talks about her morning meditation practice, and that
is pretty much identical to what happens in my brain
when I tried to meditate myself. Anyway, I think a
lot of people are going to relate to this week's guest,
especially if you tend to run anxious, Like if you've
ever worried about bad things happening to the people you love,

(01:54):
You're going to see yourself in this episode. Today. Mary
Laura's latest book, Bomb Shelter, traces her son's epilepsy from
being woken up early one morning to the sounds of
what would turn out to be her son's first seizure,
out into the anxiety that many of us hold for
those we love, the people in our care, to the
wider world, to pretty much everything ever. Anxiety as a

(02:17):
state of being. So let's get right into it. I
am so glad you're here for many, many, many, many,
many reasons. One of them is that as I was
reading through Bomb Shelter, I kept saying out loud like,
oh my god, I think we're twins. Oh my god,
I think we're twins. Fortunately the dog doesn't care when

(02:42):
I yell about being feeling like I'm twins with somebody.
But that the episode. The episode. The chapter that really
got me was the chapter on meditation called Calm your
Calm yourself right right. It's an ongoing struggle of the
meditation for me, although I think maybe it is for everybody,
and that's kind of a point. Yeah, there are two

(03:02):
things I love about that chapter. One is the reality
of what actually happens when a person sits down to
attempt to meditate, but also as a writer, the structure
of it, the thank you cadence of the back and forth.
Here's the calm voice, the disembodied voice telling you to

(03:23):
calm your thoughts. And then there's the actual contents of
your brain, which is very striking resemblance to the contents
of my brain. But there's that alternating cadence that you
introduce in one of those early chapters on meditation. Like
that alternating cadence actually runs through the rest of the book. Yeah,
thank you for noticing. Yeah, it makes me so happy

(03:48):
to have sort of like craft conversations with people. I
enjoyed writing that chapter so much. It was fun. It's
very true to life. You know that none of those
things are made up. It's not like I sat at
my computer and said it's a wacky thing someone would
think during meditation. Like, all of those come from my
actual head, from actual meditating, And I really wanted to

(04:12):
do justice to that contrast between, you know, the voice
of calm and reason that you're trying to impose on
your brain when you meditate, and the voice that's really
in there and the thing, you know, just the absolute
oddball things your brain lobs into your consciousness even when
you're trying to quiet it. And to do that, I

(04:33):
studied dialogue just I grabbed novels off my shelf and
I was studying how does the best dialogue work when
you have two characters who are kind of different and
they're not fighting, but they just cannot find themselves on
the same page. I worked on it really hard, and
I appreciate you saying you loved it, because I love
it too. It was fun, It was really fun to

(04:54):
work on. It was enjoyable, But that contrast, that kind
of bouncing back and forth between two poles mentally, as
you say, that does kind of run through the book,
even the chapters that have nothing to do with meditation,
which is all the other chapters, because I am the
kind of person and maybe maybe you are too, if

(05:14):
indeed we are twins, that I have part of my
brain constantly catastrophizing. Part of my brain is always looking
out for the worst possible thing that's going to happen
and then extrapolating that into the outcomes and how how
am I going to deal with those outcomes? And I'm like,
all the way down some fictional road of stuff that
hasn't even happened, and it has sent me into a

(05:36):
legitimate emotional panic. And then the other half of my
brain is actually pretty happy, go lucky and positive and
uses humor as a coping mechanism and it is cracking
jokes all the time. I have both of those parts
of my mind active all the time, and they really
do sort of play off each other. And when I
find myself in a crisis of any sort, which I

(05:57):
find myself in a few different crises in Bomb Shelter,
those sides tend to kind of get into it with
each other, you know, and so that back and forth
becomes more pronounced. Yeah, there's something in there about also
the story of the story. And I think not only
as a as a craft thing, but as a way
that we try to survive the things that we are

(06:19):
forced to survive. There's that almost like the buffering between
the reality that we're living and the mental life of
the story we're living. Yeah, and the way we kind
of try to give narrative shape to the things we're
going through, almost as if by giving these events narrative shape,
we can predict how they turn out, Like if we

(06:40):
can go, Okay, well that thing just happened was the beginning,
and I'm now in the middle, So what's about to
happen is the twist, and then we're going to get
the happy ending. You know, you are, our little brains
love storytelling. I think it's because we like to pretend
that we can predict the outcomes of things, or control
the outcomes of things even worse. Yeah, And I think
there's also something about finding your footing in the story

(07:04):
you're living that without the story, it's just undifferentiated chaos,
which is truly what it is. But we don't like
to live in undifferentiated chaos. That's that's a bit much.
There's a line in the book where you say, I
want the world to conform to a story that makes sense,
but that desire crashes against the rock of reality again

(07:24):
and again, indeed, which is really what we're talking about. Like, Ah,
there are a lot of listeners to the show who
are either writers currently or want to be writers, want
to tell that story, and I think there's such a

(07:45):
big difference between I mean, this is sort of a
phrase that we've heard before, but like writing from the
fresh wound versus writing from, yes, the scar of that?
Can you how has that shown up in your life?
And a little spoiler, the not really a spoiler is
that bomb Shelter is about learning that your son has epilepsy,

(08:05):
and epilepsy isn't something that goes away, so you are
still living the story, so it's not actually like we
wait for the story to be over before we can
write about it. But yeah, is there anything to that
for you writing from the scar tissue rather than the
open wound? I mean, there's a difference. You know. Generally,
the advice is that if you write with some perspective

(08:26):
and some time on the events of the past. You
can see context better, you can see how events relate
to one another better, and perhaps you can actually craft
a better narrative because you can see threads that you
just can't see when you're in it. My book that
came before this, the one called I Miss You and
I Blink. Most of that book is written from from

(08:49):
time and perspective away from the events in it. And
it's also slightly different structure of a book, similar, but
more of an essay collection versus a memoir. You could
flip to any section of My Missue When I Blink
and start there and it would be fine. You can
read the pieces individually, whereas Bomb shall Drive really feel
like you need to start at the beginning and go
all the way through. But and I Miss You When

(09:10):
I Blink, I was writing about young adulthood, kind of
the first half or maybe first third of adulthood. And
I was writing it when I was well past those events,
so I could see. I could go, oh, look how
this thing I used to do in my twenties was
kind of a precursor to this thing I used to
do in my thirties. Oh, I see that pattern. Bomb
Shelter begins in the past tense, and as you said,

(09:34):
it's it's actually not all about being the mom of
of this kid with epilepsy, but that that event does
give it some scaffolding. It kind of gives it a
little narrative propulsion. It's about a lot of things, but
I used that as the beginning of the book as
a way of going, once upon a time, things were
pretty stable, and then all of a sudden they weren't

(09:55):
because this thing happened. And as you go through the
book and you get clo start to the end, I
catch up in time. So by the final paragraphs of
the book, I'm writing in present tense, and I'm saying
I am now putting my pencil down, you know, I'm
ending the book here. I wanted to do that on purpose,
because what I wanted to do with Bomb Shelter was

(10:17):
really bring to life what it feels like to be
inside this encapsulated bubble of a of an experience where
everything is uncertain. I feel like we go through those
little bubbles multiple times in our lives for various reasons,
but this one it worked well for a book, and

(10:37):
it worked well for a story because it had a beginning.
You know, once upon a time this mom finds her
kid unconscious on the floor, and where I chose to
end it was he's finished high school, He's about to
leave home. Because that two year period from when I
found him on the floor, which was midway through high school,
and when he graduated, I had this taking time clock

(10:58):
in my head where I was like, I have two years.
I have two years to make sure he's safe. I
have two years to make sure everything is okay, not
only in his life but in the entire world, because
I can't set him free into this world unless everything
is safe. And so that was the mental and emotional
experience for me. It was this two year period of
just grappling with uncertainty and then really going through all

(11:22):
the stages of magical thinking of I'm gonna magically make
the world safe by doing these things. Okay, that didn't work.
How am I going to realistically live with uncertainty? I
totally want to get into anxiety and uncertainty and trying
to make the entire world a safe place for everybody
you care about at all costs. But did you ever
have a moment writing inside that bubble where you're like,

(11:44):
I can't believe I'm sitting here doing at its on
our life like this. Like I say this as somebody
who has written and continues to write about some really
really horrific events in my own life. And there's that
we mentioned this a minute ago, This like sort of
doubling that happens, or this this pause that happens, this

(12:05):
blank space between what you've lived and then writing about it.
But there's that like weird moment, at least for me,
And I'm really curious if this is true for you,
this weird moment of like right now, me can't believe
that I'm sitting here calmly editing the horrible turn of events. Yes,
it's weird. It's just it's it's just it's weird, and

(12:27):
it's weird to see. You know. I refer to me
in the book. I call that the me character. There's
me who you're talking to on this podcast, and then
there's the me character in that book. And she is
based on me, who you're talking to right now, a
few years ago. But she looks a little different and
sounds a little different, is a little different in the

(12:48):
mind of each reader, because unlike me, who you're talking
to right now, she only exists within the context of
the information I've given you in that story. So anything
I haven't given you in that story, which is actually
like my life, gets filled in by readers with assumptions

(13:09):
that they make and experiences that they've had, and and
so that meat character is a little bit different for
every reader. And one of the things that helped me
through that weirdness that you just described where you're like,
I am sitting here at my kitchen table typing up
the scene that happened three years ago where me, the

(13:30):
meat character was in this awful scenario, but that actually happened.
One of the things that helps me through that is
just reminding myself on a daily basis that what I
am doing, although I am I'm using events that happened
in real life. Those are kind of my ingredients. The
process I'm doing is the same as the process any

(13:51):
fiction writer goes through. So you know, I just said
like that there's ingredients if you're going to use a
cooking analogy, like all writers as are using an oven
and they're cooking in their trappic. You know, we all
go through the same processes, meaning we're all you know,
writing dialogue and editing and adjusting our pacing and all
this sort of stuff. Fiction writers are pulling from a

(14:12):
pantry of things they've made up. Nonfiction writers are pulling
from a pantry of stuff that actually happened. And if
I can kind of keep myself in that showrunner mode
and in that Okay, i am the creator right now
of this story, and I'm going to take these pieces
of things but really treat them with the reserve and

(14:33):
the distance and the kind of creative and analytical attention
that you would give any kind of story you're creating.
That little bit of distance helps because otherwise you're right,
it's pretty weird. It is really really weird, right, And
it goes back to what we were talking about earlier,
is that idea that you don't write from an open
wound to add even more metaphors into the soup here,

(14:55):
because that's how I create things. I had this image
as you were describing that, as like you're standing in
the hallway looking into the room of that experience. It's
like that you can't write from inside the room, but
you have to be able to see and feel across
that threshold yea, and revisit it into that room in
order to write about it in order to speak about it.

(15:18):
And I think that's true whether you are writing to
tell yourself the story or you're writing to share the
stories with others, Like you have to be able to
be on decently firm footing in the hallway, yes, and
no longer actively living in that room, right, but you've
still got to be able to access it. You've got
to be able to recreate it and and remember how

(15:39):
did it feel, and what did it look like, and
what did it sounds like. And there are all sorts of,
you know, little techniques you can use to do that.
You can play music from that time, or you can
one of the things that's that was really helpful to me,
especially in the parts of Bomb Shelter where I wrote
about semi traumatic events that involve other people, like I

(16:00):
write about my son's first seizure and finding him on
the floor. I write about something that happened to my dad,
you know, events that have been within the last few years,
but that were very emotionally intense at the time where
I was really in survival mode. I can go back
and find in my phone text messages I sent on
those days, and when I see what I was saying

(16:22):
and how I was speaking to you know, loved ones,
and you know, when I was in the hospital with
my son, I was texting my sister in law who
is a pediatric neurologist. I can go back and look
at those texts and see the state I was in
and the words I was using, and that kind of
puts me right back there. So they're little tools you
can use to kind of dive back into those moments
and then you know, of course, the trick at the

(16:43):
end of the day is to get yourself back out
of it so you can actually go to sleep. Yeah, Yeah,
tethered to the current world while making four as into
the world that was. Yeah, And I always think about that, like,
you know, you're you're leaving your future self a trail
of breadcrumbs to come back to that. And I think
are a lot of people they're like, why the hell
would I ever want to go back to those to

(17:04):
those moments, And I mean, there are lots of reasons
why people would do that. Maybe they want to write
about it, maybe they want to look at how far
they come. As a weird phrase because it kind of
suggests that there's progression and whatever, but like to be
able to look back at that self you were those
little portals and entry points there. They're really powerful for

(17:27):
that sort of thing. They are and they're important, and
you know, going back to the craft of what you're doing.
When you're writing memoir, although it is it's memoir and
it's true, it has to do the same job that
fiction does. It has to entertain. It has to you know,
grip someone's attention and make them want to turn the page.
And so you have to be able to give the

(17:50):
sensory details and to make the story come alive. You
can't just use some self protective you know, light touch
with it because you're like, oh, this hurts too much
to look at. If it hurts too much to look at,
maybe you shouldn't be writing about it or like not
for other people. Just write about it in your your
journal and not don't try to turn it into a book.
But if you're going to try to turn it into
a book that people are going to buy and read

(18:11):
and tell their friends about and then their friends are
going to buy, it's got to do the job of
a really good story. So you have to access that's
stuff that makes it feel real. Yeah, I love discussions
about Kraft. I do too. This is here after and

(18:40):
I'm Megan Divine. We've been talking with bestselling author Mary
Laura Philipot. Let's get back to it. So one of
the reasons that reading you and listening to you, I'm like,
where are such twins? The depth of anxiety, it goes real,
It goes real deep, doesn't it. And like the this

(19:03):
desire to make sure that the people we care about
are as safe as we can possibly make them, which
is of course nothing that is actually in our control.
But that thread, that desire to make everybody feel safe
runs through so much of your work and so much
of of how you show up in the world, in

(19:25):
your public self. I want to talk about one particular
passage in Bomb Shelter. You right, And this is gonna
sound weird to people who haven't read the book yet maybe,
And if you haven't read it yet, I wanted to
entice you again to read the book. But you wrote
that seeing your son there on the floor, instead of
feeling surprised, there was a part of you that almost

(19:48):
felt relief. I think relief is my word, and your
word was recognition. Yeah, now there's a weird relief to
it too. Though um and I've discussed this with other
people who have been through bad news and traumas and things.
When something awful happens, if you have the kind of
anxious mind like I do that tends to catastrophize and

(20:08):
tends to think in it's crazy little way, that the
brain's job is to imagine every possible bad thing that
could happen, so that when the bad thing happens, you're ready.
If you have that kind of brain, when something awful happens,
there's a tiny part of your brain that goes a
hot There it is now, I can exhale. I don't

(20:30):
have to keep waiting. The bad thing has happened. I
know what it is now. Now that's nuts. It doesn't
hold up. There are plenty of bad things. There's no
rule that says you only get one. And there's also,
you know, there's also no rule that says if you
can think of every bad thing in the whole wide
world and prepare for it, you can't avoid it. But
when your mind works like that, there, at least for me,

(20:51):
there is sometimes this little beast of my mind that goes, oh, okay,
now I can stop waiting to see what the bad
thing is going to be because it's here there, This
is what this is what I've been waiting for. It's twisted. Yeah,
this is what I've been training for every night as
I lie awake, you know, cat just cataloging awful things.

(21:17):
Here's the awful thing. Now we know what it is.
Now I know what I'm working with. It's weird, but
it's true. Yeah. I think this also intersects with this idea,
that sort of horrible pop psychology idea that you manifest
your own reality, that your thoughts create the reality that
you live in. Does that intersect at all with your
particular flavor of anxiety or not so much for you

(21:37):
with that one a little bit. Although I honestly think
if I think too much about my thoughts manifesting things,
it's kind of dangerous for me because that's exactly what
my little anxious brain thinks it can do. It thinks
it can prevent tragedy by playing out every possible imagined tragedy,

(21:58):
running that imaginary story all the way to its end
where I solve it and I save everyone. And therefore,
if I've run through this imaginary scenario in my head,
if the thing actually happens, it will be fine because
I already know how to save it. That that's a
dangerous line of thinking for me. Yeah, it's really dangerous,
and it's it's nap at night. Yeah, And I mean

(22:19):
this is the message that we get from that pop
psychology idea, right that, like how did your thoughts bring
this into fruition? And just like off man, like this
is you are not that powerful and stop geting like
I don't need to be prompted to think that my
thoughts made things happen. No, I prefer I prefer your

(22:40):
flavor of anxiety of something bad is coming, something bad
is coming. I have to be ready, I have to
be ready. Oh here it is. It has arrived. And
not that that's a comfortable brain space to live in.
But I think if we if we were ever in
some bizarre game where we were forced to choose between
those kinds of anxiety, like, yeah, anyway, that's a weird

(23:02):
line of thinking. It's helpful to me to remind myself
frequently that most things are out of my control, versus
lying away going how can I scheme to control everything?
Because that is impossible. Remind myself that most things are
out of my control. Actually, the more peaceful I am

(23:24):
because I stopped struggling. I stopped doing that struggle of
like I've got to know everything, I've got to be
ready for everything. I've got to think through every possible
angle of anything that could happen. If I remind myself,
actually I don't because most of this is out of
my control, I can go to sleep. Yeah, And I
think there's an element of telling yourself the truth in
that as well, that you don't get a get out

(23:49):
of bad ship free card. Having gone through really difficult things,
you can't prevent more from happening. And I think at
least what helps in feeding in the care and feeding
of the anxious parts of my brain is to say, like,
you do actually have skills to draw from no matter
what shows up in your life. And that's the only

(24:10):
medicine that that seems to help from my brain, is like,
you do actually have skills to draw from, and you
can do what you can do to help people feel
safe and protected where your seatbelt whatever, whatever, But like
the world is an erratic and dangerous and beautiful place
all at the same time, all at the same time.

(24:31):
So we've covered anxiety, and the next big thing to
cover here is grief. Yeah, and how does grief intersect
with this story that we're talking about now or different stories,
like how how does grief intersect with you? A lot
of what Bomb Shelter is about is within this two

(24:53):
year period of my life as I'm looking at what's
happening to my son, and I'm also looking at other
things in my life, like the fact that my parents
are getting older and the roles are kind of reversing there,
and I am getting older, and the earth is kind
of on fire and a lot of things are happening
that me character starts to experience a lot of anticipatory grief.

(25:14):
And and I know people who say, oh, you can't.
You can't have anticipatory grief. That's no way to live.
You can't be sad in advance of things. That's just crazy.
I mean, I know, but I do it. It's how
my brain works. It's it's almost as if if I
can kind of go ahead and get comfortable with the
sadness of some things, maybe they won't hit me quite

(25:37):
so hard. Like if I can just go ahead and
kind of pre process some of my sadness, then when
the thing happens, it's not going to knock me completely over.
I've had for years and years and years anticipatory grief
about my children leaving the nest um. And I'm not
somebody who like orients my whole life and all my

(25:59):
daily activities around my children. I've always sort of prided
myself on that, like we have our individual lives, and
I have my work, and you know, I'm not one
of those people that you know, every minute of every
day has spent serving my children's needs. But when I
think about and of course now it's already happened, but
it used to be that when I would think about
my children not living in my house, it just undid me.

(26:22):
And it undid me so severely that I thought this
might kill me when it happens. I mean, my heart
might just stop. So I need to go ahead and
kind of try to get used to it, kind of
trying to figure out, like, Okay, what is this going
to be, Like, I have to have some anticipatory grief
around it, because if I just let the grief hit
me when it comes, I'm going to explode. I think
that was sort of the way my brain was working

(26:44):
through that. Of course, now I've had one leave the
nest and want to still here getting ready to leave
the nest within the next couple of years. That I
don't know if the anticipatory grief helped or not. It's
it's hard no matter what I think. It's about recognizing
that you have feelings about thing that is going to
happen or that will happen at some point in the future.

(27:04):
Like I have some feelings about that, right. Indeed, have
a lot of feelings about a lot of things exactly. Actually,
one of your one of the other things that I
love about you speaking of I have a lot of
feelings about a lot of things. Was your idea that
we should have crying lounges in the airports. Yes, they
don't need the smoking lounges anyway, we can repurpose. And everybody,

(27:30):
I mean not everybody, that's wrong. A lot of people
passing through airports are going through something. I mean, some
people are just going on vacation and that's great, but
you've got people flying home for funerals. You've got people
going to take care of people. You've got people who
have just left someone they love and now they have
to fly away. You've got people who are just crying

(27:52):
because their flight has been canceled five times. I mean,
there's a lot of opportunity for crying in airports, and
there's no where to do it. No, there isn't. I mean,
you can sit there at your gate and cry, which
you know I've done it. But I really love this
idea of actual physical space for being human. And you're right.

(28:14):
I mean when when my first book came out, I
actually spent a lot of time and made a lot
of phone calls trying to get book launch events in
the bookstores inside airports because I was like, you are
right here, like people are going hoping they make it
home in time before somebody dies, or they just got
news that a family member or a friend is sick
and or they just like are going to your coming

(28:37):
from a funeral, or I just sent my adult children
out into the world, or you know, I think I
know they were the people on the sidewalk like hugging
and crying and exactly. And one of the things that
I think has happened a lot during the these last
couple of years of the pandemic is like, is this

(28:57):
the last time I'm going to see my old her parent? Right?
Like there's there is so much human nous happening in
airports and other transportation centers as well. But we are
talking about airports right now, Like there there is so
much of that, and I would really I mean we
we say this kind of jokingly that there should be
crying lounges. I just would really love to see more

(29:20):
public acknowledgment and public spaces for the realities of being human. Yeah,
that would be rad And we do have those spaces.
I know that they've turned some of those old smoking
lounges into pet bathroom break areas. Yes, I've seen that
relief pet that's right, pet relief centers. Luna and I

(29:40):
had to use those on her on her flight back
from Mexico. But yeah, I just I think I'm surprised
when you said people say that you can't feel sad
in advance. I'm like, good Lord, Like I feel sad
in advance of so many things, like I think, feeling
feeling sad about the nature of life, right, and all
of various apocalypses and catastrophes, And there are just so

(30:03):
many things to feel sad about. And that's not that
there are so many things to have feelings about. Is
not a bad thing. Yeah, And I'm not saying like
I like it fun. I am not like what am
I going to cry about today? But it happens. This
is how it's how my mind works, and you know,
I do try to kind of keep it in check.

(30:23):
And again, that's going on at the same time that
the other side of my mind is doing its thing,
which is joking and laughing and being happy to see
friends and oh, I'm so happy to see a dog
on the sidewalk, and isn't the world wonderful? Both things
are happening at the same time, all at the same time.
And we go back to like the structure and the

(30:46):
craft of Bomb Shelter is all of the things happening
all at once, like we we don't just have one
channel going on at all times. I mean, the link
for me is like, however you are feeling in that
moment is perfectly what you need to be feeling in
that moment. And look at that dog and look at
that like the this is this is the human condition anybody? Yeah,

(31:10):
it is, It really is. And one of the other
notes that I made so frequently as I was reading
through Bomb Shelter, and I'm talking about the really difficult
passages and the really funny passages, and the preemptive grief
for future scenarios, all of these things. I think my

(31:31):
most common note in the margins of Bomb Shelter is
how do we live in a world like this? Yeah?
That's I mean, that's what that me characters is trying
to sort out from start to finish in that book
is okay as it dawns on me that I can't
change this fact. I can't change whatever fact it is.

(31:51):
I can't change my sense diagnosis. I can't change the
fact that the world is on fire. I can't change
the fact that my parents are getting I can't change
any of these things. I can't fix them. So how
do I get up every morning and keep going? And
so what you see me doing the meat character in
this book is finding where to put focus so that

(32:13):
I feel like, well, there are some things actually in
my control, and there are some things that are actually
going really great, and there are some things I can
do that make me feel like I've made a meaningful
difference even if I can't completely obliterate some of the

(32:34):
threats out there. And one of the most helpful things
for me, what kind of where you see me land
at the end of Bomb Shelter. And this is not
like a spoiler or anything, but is the small domestic
is maybe the wrong word, or maybe it's the right word,
but the sort of the small everyday acts of caretaking,
little things, watering my garden, Like, little things like that

(32:56):
bring me great peace and joy. I can't aunt stop
war from happening, you know, I can't end global conflict.
But I can go outside and put a little dish
of water out for the reptiles who live in my backyard.
These two things are so unconnected, but in my brain

(33:18):
that brings me comfort and happiness to be like, look
at the Look at the little lizard having a drink
because I put the plate out there. That's something I
could do. Yeah, some evidence of the good and the
beauty and the agency that we have in the world,
which is everywhere. Really, the good and the and the
beautiful are are everywhere. They're all around us if you're looking.

(33:39):
And sometimes the evidence is very tiny, but putting myself
through the practice of looking for that evidence helps a lot.
There's a review of Bomb Shelter from book Page that
says Bomb Shelter is the perfect book for existential dread,
but make it hopeful. I loove to that. Yeah, And

(34:02):
that's that's really like the encapsulation of what you just
said and also a really good lead into my focus
for season two. And the question that I'm asking everybody
who who comes and spends spends time here with everybody
is what does hope look like for you right now,
in this moment in time? What a good question? What

(34:25):
does hope look like for me? Oh man, I mean,
I think it might go back to what we were
just talking about. I hope always is that I am
making some difference, that my life has meaning, Like I
hope I have not just been a big wayte of oxygen.
I hope that the things I do make a difference
for somebody somewhere. And when I bring my focus close

(34:48):
and small, I can see that that is the case.
When I look too big picture at the world, and
I'm like, the ice caps are melting, there's a war,
starvation is happening. Like when I look at big picture,
I can see big, big tragedies and I can't fix
them all by myself, But I can fix small things

(35:12):
close to me. I can make the world softer and
gentler and happier and sometimes funnier for the people and
creatures that I can There's a lot that I can do.
I think that's what hope books like to me, is
just hoping that the things I do do make a difference.
People have described Bomb Shelter as a hopeful book, which
I love. I think of it as a hopeful book.

(35:34):
I feel like it's a funny book to talk about
because when we talk about the events of Bomb Shelter,
it's a lot of bad stuff that happens. But I
think of it very much as a feel good book.
So I keep saying like it's a feel good book.
It just starts with me feeling very bad. But that's
what what hope is is, you know, trying to find

(35:55):
a way to feel good and and useful and meaningful
in the world, even though there's a bunch of bad
stuff that happens. Yeah, and there's a real difference there
between performative hope and performative feeling good in the face
of difficult things and what you just described, which is

(36:15):
finding a way to live in and live alongside the
difficult things that happen in our own lives and in
the wider world with a sense of agency and hope
and feeling of use in the best possible meaning of
that word. Yeah, I mean the world is complicated, the

(36:38):
world is full of big, heavy, dark stuff. But also
each of us has the ability to do good things
and if you can. I don't know, this sounds so cheesy,
but like live live the most intentionally kind and helpful
and funny. Like be someone who brings joy whenever you can.

(37:00):
That's a way to honor this big, complicated life that
we're all living. That was a complete nonsense sentence. I
didn't even think it was a sentence, But I think
you probably know what I mean. I know exactly what
you mean. I don't think it's a nonsense sentence at all,
because I followed that thread, and I want to bring
it back to something you said right in the beginning
as we were talking about hope. Is that your hope

(37:21):
is hope for yourself and your own orientation and action
to the world. Right, your own orientation to the world
and your own action in the world. That your hope
is not like I hope things work out. No, like
hope is that sort of hope for how I move
in this world? Yeah, yeah, I did that. I think

(37:43):
this is actually a really good place for us to
come to a close leave people with that particular message
of hope. I'm going to link to everything obviously in
the show notes, but where should people find you anything
else you want them to know while you have the stage,
my friend, Oh, that's so nice. You can find my
books in bookstores. You can also find the audio book,
which is narrated by me out there in the world.

(38:07):
Libro FM is a great audiobook platform that supports independent bookstores.
I'm a huge fan of theirs. I have a website
where you can go to subscribe to my mailing list.
It's a little newsletter that I sent like maybe once
a month, and it always has a book recommendation, usually
has a fun link, a song, a picture, and stuff
like that. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter. I still

(38:31):
have a Facebook page. Let use it quite as much.
And that's where I am. Okay, and your name at
all of those places, but we will will link them
and show notes to everybody I can find you. I
am so glad to have had this time with you.
Thank you so much, my friend. I have enjoyed it.
Thank you for having me. Before we get into this

(39:03):
week's questions to carry with you. I want to let
you know that registration just open for an intensive training
for professionals with me that begins this December two, twenty
two in case you're listening later. All of the information
about this training is on the website Megan Divine dot
c O, but a very short summary if you're a therapist,

(39:24):
social worker, nurse, or other provider. During this training, you'll
meet with me every other week for just over four months,
for whole months in live sessions covering everything from the
current state of grief support and how the new diagnosis
codes affect our work, to how you actually deal with
grieving clients or patients in more human centered ways. Now,

(39:47):
this training is limited to only fifty people this time,
so that we have a human way of connecting with
each other. So check out Megan Divine dot c O
to find the registration link, and I will also put
the direct sign up page in the show notes. Each week,
I leave you with some questions to carry with you
until we meet again. You know what really struck me
in today's episode? I mean, other than how much I

(40:09):
really really like Mary Laura, what really struck me is
the commonality of anxiety so often, I think we feel
like we're the only anxious people in the world, Like
there is clearly nobody else that tries to hold the
entire world together with anxious thoughts. Right If that's you,

(40:29):
If you try to hold the world together by worrying
about it, you are not alone. I'm not alone in
being wired that way. I think that's one of the
big things that I took from this conversation today is
that anxiety is really really common, and so many of
us just work really hard to worry people into safety,

(40:50):
even when it's not effective. The other thing that I
really liked in this episode was Mary Laura's reframe about
re centering on small things when the world feels over
whelmingly bad, like in those big bad moments, it's easy
to feel helpless, But it's in the smaller, intimate actions
that we really have access to hope, at least in

(41:14):
Mary Laura's definition of hope. Everybody's going to take something
different from today's show, but I do hope you found
something to hold onto. I'd love to hear what you
think of this week's show, what you learned, what new
conversations might be opening up in your own life. About
anxiety or love or keeping people safe. Whatever you're talking about,
I would love to hear about it. Check out Refuge

(41:36):
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. Be sure to
tag me in your conversation starting posts on your own
social account so I can find you. Use the hashtag
here after pod on any platform so that I can
search for you. The whole team loves to see where
this show takes you. If you want to tell us

(41:58):
how today's show felt free you, or you have a
request or a suggestion for a guest, give us a
call at three to three six four three three seven
six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it,
you can find the number in the show notes or
visit Megan Divine dot c O. If you'd rather send
an email, you can do that too. Write on the
website Megan Divine dot c O. We want to hear

(42:19):
from you. I want to hear from you. This show,
this world needs your voice. Together we can make things
better even when they can't be made right, and you
can help expand the community of people having conversations about
difficult things. By subscribing to this show on your favorite
podcast platform, leaving a review. Reviews let other people know

(42:44):
that it's not so scary and here once you get going,
and please tell your friends about the show too. 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 we 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. Find trainings,

(43:08):
professional resources, and my best selling book, It's Okay that
You're Not Okay 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,
with logistical and social media support from Micah, Edited by
Houston Tilly, and music provided by Wave Crush. Today's background

(43:32):
noise is provided by my very elderly cat yowling for
yet another meal

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Megan Devine

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