032 - Understanding Parental Bonds and the Path to Forgiveness with Courtney Moore - Our Dead Dads

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Happy New Year and welcome back to Our Dead Dads,
the podcast where we normalizetalking about grief, trauma,
loss and moving forward.
I'm your host.
My name is Nick Gaylord.
Thank you so much for listeningand for making this show part
of your day.
Thank you for continuing tosupport the show and if you're
brand new to the show and don'tknow much about us, follow the
podcast on whatever platformyou're listening to us right now
and do that so you don't missany upcoming episodes.

(00:29):
And while you're there, pleaseleave a review and give the show
a five-star rating.
If you don't know how to leavea review, check out our website,
ourdeaddadscom.
Scroll down on the homepage andyou'll see have helped so much
already and your rating willcontinue to help the show grow

(00:49):
and climb the charts.
You can also follow the show onour social media pages on
TikTok, youtube, facebook andInstagram.
Most importantly, please spreadthe word about the show.
Here we dive deep into storiesof grief, trauma and loss, and
this is to give everyone who hasa story the chance to tell it.
And, equally as important,we're looking for everyone who
has a story and either hasn'tbegun processing their grief or
doesn't know how to begin.
It's been a couple of weeks,but I really hope you enjoyed
the family reunion episode twoweeks ago with my brothers, my

(01:12):
friends, my wife and my youngestsister.
We're going to kick off 2025with episode number 32, and
today Courtney Moore joins theshow.
Courtney is going to talk aboutlosing her dad a little more
than a year ago, a relationshipthat was shaped in large part
due to the passing of her motherwhen she was only a year old.
It was a very complicatedrelationship with her dad and
we're going to start back whenshe was a child, eventually

(01:33):
leaving home at only 15, andaccepting that her dad's
perception of how his lifeturned out was very different
than the plan he had laid outfor himself before she was even
born.
We will discuss the end of hislife, ultimately losing his
battle with pancreatic cancer,and what it was like for her to
spend the last nine days of hislife with him as he passed.
Before we get started, I haveone other reminder.
Tomorrow afternoon, wednesday,january 8th, at 3 pm, us Eastern

(01:57):
Time, will be my Before we getstarted.
I'm going to also remind youthat tomorrow, wednesday,
january 8th, at 3 pm, us EasternTime, will be my very first
interview that will be streamedlive on my YouTube channel and
will ultimately be released forreplay on the podcast as well.
My guest will be Justin Shepard, and if you follow him, you
know him better as Justin onTikTok, and more recently he has
updated his account username toJustinTheNickOfCrime to align

(02:21):
with his true crime podcast andall of the real-time work he
does for the community to sharebreaking news, updates, working
with families and authoritiesnationwide to spread information
about adults and children whohave been reported missing and
helping to have them foundsafely, and so much more.
He'll be talking about all ofthat, but he also has a very
personal story that he's goingto be sharing.
If you'd like to see theinterview, I'll be including

(02:41):
instructions on how you canwatch it on my YouTube page and
how you can watch it on Justin'sTikTok page.
He has generously offered tolive stream the interview on his
TikTok page as well, in largepart because my TikTok account
is still relatively new and Idon't have enough followers to
go live on my own yet.
So find my account, follow meand spread the word to others.
As you know, my goal is tonormalize talking about grief,

(03:01):
loss and trauma, which aretopics that are not easy for
most of us to talk about, butthey're also topics that
everybody should be discussingmore, and not only discussing
them but not feeling likethey're taboo topics.
Time may not heal all wounds,but keeping everything bottled
up inside doesn't heal anything.
Together, we are building acommunity for others to have a
safe space to talk about theirstories and their feelings, and
for anyone who may not yet beready to talk, just to listen to

(03:23):
others and know that nobody isalone in this path.
That is why I say we are acommunity and I'm so happy to
have you here.
If you have a story of grief andloss to share and might want to
be considered as a future gueston Our Dead Dads, go to
OurDeadDadscom.
Go to the Contact Us link andselect Be a Guest, fill out the
form, send it in and you justmight be able to tell your own
story and carry on this missionof helping ourselves and so many

(03:45):
others.
And now it's time to getstarted and welcome Courtney to
the show.
Please enjoy the episode andstick around for the end when
I'll tell you about next week'sepisode.
Good afternoon, how are youdoing?

Speaker 2 (04:12):
I'm good.
How are you?

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Good, good to see you again.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah, you too.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Happy Monday.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Happy Monday.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
What better way is there to start off the work week
than with an interview aboutterrible topics?
Nailed it, that's right.
At least we're still laughing.
Hopefully we'll be laughing bythe end of this as well.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Right, you got to keep your sense of humor with
all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Absolutely have to keep your sense of humor.
If you can't laugh through this, then holy crap.
What can you laugh at?
Life's laughing at us.
We might as well laugh back.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Well, hopefully it won't laugh too much at us,
because we are going to try tohave a little bit of fun, even
though we're going to talk aboutsome heavy topics.
So I would like to officiallywelcome you back to our Dead
Dads podcast.
We have spoken before, but thistime it is for real, on the
record for all the world toenjoy our conversation.
So give me one second.

(05:05):
Let me where's the screen thatI had?
I'm glad that we did have thechance to talk initially,
because I know most of whatyou're going to say, even though
maybe you'll pull a couple ofsurprises out.
But you are here to talk aboutyour dad, who you lost, and
you're going to tell the storyabout, well, pretty much

(05:26):
everything that you want to talkabout.
You can talk about your entirelife, but obviously we're going
to put a lot of focus on whatended up being the last nine
days that you spent with him.
But before we get into that,let's jump all the way back to
as far back as you want to go,and this is your chance to tell
your story.
Tell us everything about you,your dad, your family, your

(05:47):
relationship, everything.
It's all fair game.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, well, let me really set the story up by
giving some background about myfamily and my relationship with
my dad.
Okay, my mother died when I wasa year old.
She has breast cancer.
She was diagnosed when she waspregnant with me.
She wanted a baby so badly.
She was 37 when she gotpregnant.
They had been dating for about10 years, I think, on and off,

(06:13):
and he wanted to move to Oregonfrom the Bay area and she said
put a ring on my finger andlet's have a baby and I'll move
with you.
And that's what they did.
So she got pregnant.
She had been diagnosed withcancer when she was 27.
So she waited the appropriateamount of time 10 years before
she tried to conceive.
And you know, I'm sure it wasone of those cancers that are

(06:34):
estrogen receptor positive,because it was during the
pregnancy that the cancer cameback.
So I say all that because youknow my dad loved me and was
thrilled to have me, but theplan was clearly for my mom to
have a baby and my dad to have acareer.
That was the setup and he waspassionate about his career.
He was an architect, he reallyloved solar design and he really

(06:57):
wanted to, just like buildawesome solar houses for his
whole life, and that didn'thappen.
So she died when I was 18months old, and this is kind of
interesting.
She had arranged for herbrother to take me.
I think she knew my dad did notreally have the constitution or
the nervous system to raise adaughter by himself, so she

(07:18):
arranged for her brother to takeme and it's funny they told me
this when I was in my late 20sI'm 40 now.
This came to me kind of later inlife.
They actually waited to havetheir last child and named her
after my mom, which I never puttogether as a kid.
But there's a big gap betweenSam and Karen and that's where
Courtney was supposed to go.
But he couldn't lose both of us.
You know it was so hard.
He loved my mom.

(07:39):
She was on a pedestal.
He couldn't lose both of us atonce.
So he kept me and my grandmahelped a lot when I was really
little and my dad had a prettydifficult personality.
I would always say he didn'tplay well in the sandbox with
others.
He was very rigid about what hewanted.

(08:00):
He did not express himself witha lot of nuance or tact.
He didn't have a lot of empathy.
And so right after mom died hegot a job teaching high school
locally, just so that we couldkind of get our bearings.
We were living in SouthernOregon at the time and he had
been teaching at the Universityof Idaho and kind of commuting.
They got this local high schooljob and that started this

(08:23):
bizarre life where he got adifferent academic job every
year.
So every year in like August,maybe early September, we'd
moved to a new city where he hadthis new teaching contract
architecture usually.
But he didn't have a PhD inarchitecture and so sometimes he
taught grade school, math, highschool, russian.
My dad was brilliant.

(08:44):
He had two masters and twobachelors Stanford, cal, ucsb.
He was very, very educated sohe could teach a lot of things.
So we just kept moving to thesedifferent schools where he
would teach something for theyear and then in the summer we
would move back through theNorthwest, which is where his
mom lived and sort of like wherehis heart was, I think.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Now, was that by design that you guys moved every
year?
Did he want to teach somethingdifferent and somewhere
different every year, or did itjust kind of happen that way?

Speaker 2 (09:10):
I think he wanted the perfect teaching contract where
he would be a tenured professorat a prestigious university.
But in the absence of that, itwas like, okay, I just need
another teaching job, anotherteaching job, another teaching
job.
He always said he didn't likethe field of architecture
because he had to do so muchschmoozing and again, he just
didn't have the personality forthat.
He was not a sales guy.

(09:31):
He really didn't have friends.
I can count on one hand thenumber of friends who came over
to our house in my entire life.
In my entire life he did nothave friends.
He didn't really date.
I can also count on one handthe number of dates he went on
during my childhood which youknow it's hard as a single dad
to date, but he just, yeah, hewas not a very social person,
not a very socially attunedperson.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Moving every year probably doesn't help that
either.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
That's probably right .
It's hard to create strongfriendships and lasting
connections.
It's funny because I doactually remember when I was
very young he was softer and alittle more social.
I remember him laughing more.
Before I was like seven he didwant to have a beer with a
friend every once in a while andI think this lifestyle really

(10:19):
got to him.
I think it's really hard tomove all around the country with
a small child in tow.
Of course, we did eventuallysettle in a pattern between
three cities.
So from the time I was eight tothe time I was 15, we were
going between Yakima, washington, anderson Island, washington
and Corvallis, oregon, and sothere was some stability there.
But it's funny because, eventhough that's how it shook out,

(10:41):
we didn't know year to year ifthat would happen.
So we still packed up theentire apartment, still gave up
the lease, still relocated forthe summer and then just moved
back over and over again.
It was a weird transientlifestyle.
It was just me and him.
He was just really tough.
He was a tough man, he had aviolent temper, he terrified me

(11:02):
and I wonder if a lot of littlegirls just feel scared of their
dads.
I don't know if that's just athing, I know I did.
You know, we think of themasculine.
The paternal is like disciplineand structure and rigidity, and
that was definitely myexperience with my dad, you know
.
Yeah, I was really scared of himand I told him that once.
I remember he could be reallyviolent with me.

(11:24):
He would shake me a lot, hewould slap me when I was late
for pickup he'd like chase mewith a car, he'd throw things at
me.
It was all really frighteningand none of it was like child
abuse.
Like I really struggle withthis and I've talked to other
women who also struggle withsort of I don't know was it
abuse, I and who also strugglewith sort of I don't know was it

(11:46):
abuse.
I didn't have bruises or blackeyes.
Like he never like punched meand I remember actually when I
was in third or fourth grade Ithink it must've been third
Cause I was the new kid at thisschool that I was at for a few
years and I tried to tell somekids about it and you know kids,
kids are hard and they allbanded up and decided that
because I didn't have anybruises, and they all banded up
and decided that because Ididn't have any bruises, I was
lying, I had made the wholething up and so that kind of
taught me.

(12:06):
you just don't talk about it.
You know you keep whatever'sgoing on at home, at home you
don't tell people.
It was like our big secret.
I had a godmother, and I wasvery close to my grandmother,
his mom, who both told me atdifferent points of my childhood

(12:28):
that I could go to the policeif I wanted to, which that's
something I really had toprocess as an adult that an
adult would tell a child whothey saw in a violent situation
that the child should go gethelp instead of the adults
getting help.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, that's a little strange that they wouldn't be
your advocate and go to thepolice for you and or with you.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
It made me feel even more alone in the world, you
know, and it made me feel evenmore that these are just secrets
that we don't talk about.
These are not things that arediscussed, these are not things
that people want to look atRight.
And so, you know, it got worseand worse.
We had like this big fight whenI was nine, and it was a big
ugly fight.
I ended up sleeping in thecloset overnight and the next

(13:06):
day he was silent, took me toschool.
He picked me from school and hesaid if that ever happens again
, I'll go to therapy, which youknow, for the boomers that was
like the worst thing that couldhappen to them.
I'll go to therapy was thecarrot that stopped that
behavior for him.
He was that terrified of therapy, that against therapy and it's

(13:30):
interesting, I have my godmothernow is aging, you know she's in
that same generation.
She very much needs therapy.
She won't do it.
It's like the last ditchresource.
We will do everything we can toavoid talking about it.
Connecting with another humanbeing, about this human
experience we're living.
So in some ways I'm gratefulbecause he stopped hitting me,
but he still.
He was just loud and angry.
He'd yell at me a lot.

(13:50):
He's very strict.
I didn't have my own bedroomever and it was never any sexual
abuse.
It wasn't that sort of thing.
But again, my dad just I'm sosure he was autistic, like all
of this is is me piecingtogether like doesn't read
social cues well, kind ofnonverbal, very shy, doesn't
make a lot of eye contact.
Really brilliant, really rigidin his idea structure.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
And all of those things factored together, even
though he was never diagnosed,make you think that it's a good
possibility that he was.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
I really do, and I didn't as a kid.
You know, as a kid I was justlike, wow, my dad is so
different from the otherfamilies, our family is so
different from the otherfamilies and I'd go to friends'
houses and just you know,because we live this transient
lifestyle, there were entireyears we slept in a mattress on
the floor, we used a cardboardbox as a kitchen table.
We sat in plastic kitchenchairs for my whole life like

(14:45):
deck chairs.
Those were our furniture.
And again there's this sense ofshame of like we hide what
happens in our family so no oneelse knows.
No one should see what's goingon in our household.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Well, unfortunately, that's how we were basically
raised.
I mean, you said you're 40, I'm48.
So we're not all that far apart, but that was definitely a
large part of childhood.
It was anything that was goingon.
That was a little out of theordinary and we don't have to
elaborate.
Everybody knows exactly whatwe're talking about.
It was not discussed and infact it was usually encouraged

(15:19):
to specifically not be discussedwith anyone ever.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Yeah, yeah, and you know a lot of that too for the,
for the boomer generation, ourparents, it's that whole keeping
up with the Joneses mindset,right Of course, and I think
that was maybe playing into itagain.
My dad also just didn'tsocialize with other people.
He had sort of this weirdsuperiority, inferiority complex
where he kind of thought he wasbetter than everyone.
Like everyone else is kind of aslob in his mind, but also then

(15:46):
in a social situation hecouldn't connect with anyone.
Like there was a way I think hefelt really intimidated
socially at the same time.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
When you say he thought everybody was a slob,
meaning the way they dressed,the way that they kept their
house or their car, all of it.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
I mean he had a whole commentary about Americans.
You know he hated people whoate in their cars.
He hated anyone who was vaguelyoverweight.
He hated people who woreT-shirts and jeans.
He was just sort of like thisbohemian artist kid in high
school.
I didn't know him in highschool, but that's how I

(16:30):
imagined him.
He's just this bohemian artistand it's funny because I
actually know he was like apopular jock in high school,
which I can't imagine at all,but that was his vibe as an
adult.
He was this cultured Europeanartiste.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
What sports did he play in high school?
He was this cultured Europeanartiste.
What sports?

Speaker 2 (16:46):
did he play in high school?
He was a basketball player.
He actually played at Samfordtoo.
Wow, yeah, he was six foot five.
He loved basketball.
He coached basketball for acouple of teams when I was a kid
.
It was rough being an athletewith my dad because it was just
all criticism.
And I'm trying to understand ifthat's part of how males
express care for people, becauseI've seen that pattern of

(17:10):
criticism as a way to show hey,I care about you, you can do
better, let me help you dobetter.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
I think there might be a fine line between
encouragement and criticism.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
I think that's probably right.
It's something I'm reallycurious about.
So it's interesting to talk toanother male about this, because
I have witnessed that pattern.
It was really hard for me as alittle girl with no mom.
You know, like I think, if youhave that critical dad,
hopefully you also have a momwho can be nurturing and
compassionate and plainencouraging.

(17:40):
You know, no criticalencouragement, just straight up
encouragement.
But I didn't have that.
So I had this very, verycritical force who I shared a
bedroom with, and you know wealways had two bedroom
apartments.
He just wanted one to be hisoffice and so I had to like
sleep in a bunk bed or sleep ina trundle or something like that
.
All of this is to say when I gotto high school which is a

(18:03):
difficult time for dads anddaughters to begin with, it got
really rough and we would have alot of.
I mean I wouldn't yell at himbecause I was too scared, but he
would just scream at me and I,just to be clear, I was a great
kid.
I was the lead of the schoolplay, I was the president of the
student council, I was thecaptain of the tennis team, I

(18:23):
played volleyball and basketballand swimming and track.
I was the top of my classgrade-wise.
I was ahead a couple grades indifferent subjects.
Like I was a good kid, I wasn'tlike some rebel, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
You were the typical screw up.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, right, exactly.
And because I was, you know, asingle dad household, I learned
to cook and clean and groceryshop and balance a checkbook
when I was like 10 years old, soI was super on top of it and he
would just lose it with me.
And so, finally, when I was 15,I had enough of that and I
packed a bag and I left and Ilived with friends for a month

(18:59):
and I looked into becoming anemancipated minor.
For a lot of reasons, thatdidn't work out.
He made me come home.
I was devastated, but we agreedI should go to boarding school,
and for him it was because Iwasn't being challenged
academically, which was true,and for me it was because I
wanted to get the hell out ofDodge.
I did not want to be in thathouse anymore.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
I mean you were a couple of grades ahead.
How unchallenged were you?
Maybe the school, maybe itwasn't a good school, Maybe the
education system was differentat every school that you were at
, because if you were movingcities and he's teaching at a
different school, that meansyou're going to a different
school.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Yeah, that was part of it, and I also.
He wanted me to go to thisbrand new high school, and so
they they were not equipped tochallenge me appropriately.
You know, like I started takingsome college classes and that
was helpful.
But I remember, you know, Ibreezed through my first high
school A's and all the classeswithout even studying really,
and I went to boarding schooland I was like, oh shit, I got

(19:55):
to work now and I did.
I worked my butt off atboarding school to keep up with
some very intelligent youngwomen who were around me and I'm
so grateful for that experience.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
How did you do there?

Speaker 2 (20:06):
I did well.
I wasn't at the top of my classanymore.
I wasn't the lead in the playsanymore.
You know it was definitely alittle bit humbling, but you
know I did well.
I was on the honor rolls andfeeling successful, getting a
better education.
My mind was definitelyexpanding a lot more there.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
I'm curious if you expanding a lot more there.
I'm curious if you now thatyou're not at the top of the
class in a different school.
Was that a disappointment?

Speaker 2 (20:27):
to your dad.
It's such a good question.
I don't know.
I think he was just reallyproud of me academically period
School didn't always come reallyeasy.
He didn't give me shit aboutacademics, he gave me shit about
sports and he gave me shitabout just sort of like it's
like social things, like I'dwant to hang out with my friends
and he'd call me a lemming, orI'd be really sad about

(20:48):
something, he'd call me acrybaby, like he just couldn't
handle the emotional things.
But academically we were sonerdy we used to do math
problems together.
In our free time we used tolike learn languages together.
That was a place we met was theacademic side of things.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Okay, so he knew that there was nothing to worry
about there and there's noreason to give you any grief.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Totally.
Yeah, I was on top of that one.
He didn't have to help withthat.
Part of why I'm setting allthat up, though, is if we fast
forward to my late twenties,early thirties.
I just forget how I got aninkling.
Maybe my dad had Asperger's.
Maybe my dad had Asperger's.
Maybe my dad was all autisticspectrum.
I think I was dating someone atthe time and they just noticed

(21:30):
how bizarre his behaviors were.
You know.
Again, he had a lot of troublemaking eye contact with people.
I remember once my my godmotherthrew a dinner party because he
was in town and she had thislovely patio, and we're on the
patio listening to music, eatingfood, grilling, and my dad went
inside into the dining room andturned all the lights off, and
he was just overstimulated.

(21:50):
He just.
That was too much for him.
He needed some quiet space, andI think that was one of the
first times I was like, oh, thisperson is not neurotypical,
this person has a differentnervous system.
That's an interesting way tothink about my dad.
So I tried to do some research.
I took out every book I couldabout autism, and there are a

(22:12):
bazillion books about kids withautism.
Right, that's a hot topic rightnow I'm in the Bay area.
There's a lot of discussionabout this.
They're not very helpfulbecause I don't have a kid with
autism.
I didn't know my dad when hewas a kid.
The way a kid presents withautism is really different than
the way an adult who's livedwith it for 40 or 50 years
presents.
So then there's a handful ofbooks on having a partner with

(22:33):
autism and these were morehelpful, certainly because
they're talking about adultpresentations.
But it was sort of awkwardright, like they talked about
like physical intimacy andaffection and I was like, oh,
this is, this is not the dynamic.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
I struggled with it.
Regardless of how much time youspent with your dad and how
close you were or not, he's nota partner.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Exactly, it's a different dynamic.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Right, it doesn't all line up.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
That's exactly right.
Yeah, so there's one book onparents with autism and it is an
illustrated kids book.
It's called something'sdifferent about dad and I just
wept through the whole thing.
It was so eye opening I wassoon as I finished it.
I read it again.

(23:16):
I wept through it again.
It was like my entire childhoodjust snapped into focus.
It all made sense.
Finally, and for you know again,for years I was just like God.
My family is so fucking weird,like I don't know what's
happening, but we are differentand I have to keep quiet about
that and no one is talking to meabout it.
But there is something weirdgoing on here and I got to get

(23:36):
away from it because this is toomuch for me.
I, I, I really believe my mom'snervous system ended up in my
nervous system, even though Idon't remember her at all.
I'm a lot like her, I look alot like her.
She was a nurse, I'm anacupuncturist.
I definitely got some genesfrom her and my genes with my
dad were just like.
That is not a match.

(23:58):
I got to go somewhere else.
Yes, that's it.
And it's so funny because evenspending time with my dad's
family, he has a brother.
Well, he had two brothers andone of his brothers has three
sons and I love them.
They're my family, they're allsuper smart.
They used to like draw mazesand play magic, the gathering
and do math problems for fun inthe summer.

(24:18):
And I think the autism runsstrong in that family.
I think at least a couple otherfamily members were probably
autistic and I just neverconnected with them.
I loved my cousins, I looked upto them so much but I just oil
and water still and I didn'treally grow up with my mom's
family.
But whenever I spend time withthem I just feel like, oh,

(24:39):
there's my people there, it's soeasy.
Oil and oil, like finally it'smatching, it's making sense.
So I read this book and I don'tremember all of it, but I
remember some highlights.
One is that the little girl isdoing a project for school and
she's so proud of it and theyhave like a parent teacher night
and dad goes in on parentteacher night and just tells her
everything.

(24:59):
That's wrong with the project.
You misspelled this word.
You should have used adifferent color here.
Wrong with the project.
You misspelled this word.
You should have used adifferent color here.
This map isn't drawn correctly,and that was so my experience.
I mean, again, my dad didn'tpush me academically, but he
would be quick to point out myflaws, where I used the wrong
grammar, I didn't spellsomething properly, where I made
a math error.
He was just so quick to show mewhat my mistakes were, which,

(25:22):
again, and with what I know now,I do think that was a way he
was caring for me.
I mean, there's a question markin there.
I'm still trying to understandthat, but that's how this book
portrayed it.
This book was really about dad'strying to help little girl and
little girl doesn't feel helped.
So dad has to figure out adifferent way to express that
help.
Right?
And the other big example inthe book was, I think mom's

(25:46):
sister was having a baby.
So they threw a baby shower forher and there was lights and
music and cake and peopletalking and dad freaked out and
dad had a temper tantrum andstormed off and ruined the party
because dad got overstimulated.
And my dad got overstimulatedall the time, all the time.

(26:06):
That's why we live this weirdhermit lifestyle with no friends
coming over.
You know he just we playedquiet classical music.
I was not allowed to play anyother music in the house.
We had dinner by candlelightevery night.
We would never eat in front ofa television or with like a talk
radio thing happening.
No, no, no, we like, we regulateour nervous system and with
what I know about nervous systemregulation now, I'm pretty

(26:29):
grateful for some of that.
I have a very regulated nervoussystem.
I have a lot of friends andpatients who do not have
regulated nervous systems.
I don't know the first thingabout how to regulate their
nervous system, and that was agift my dad gave to me.
It was a gift that came with aheavy price tag but I I did have
a really calm, quiet space whenhe wasn't freaking out.

(26:52):
You know, that was the hard partfor me and I think I developed
a lot of my sensitivity becauseI had to constantly assess
whether dad was in freak outmode or we're just going to be
quiet mode.
And the hard thing for me wasthere wasn't much in between.
There wasn't a lot of likeconnection time, attunement time
.
Let's ask you questions aboutyour lifetime.

(27:14):
It was either we're going to bequiet and dad's going to go
work over there and I'm going totake care of myself or dad's
freaking out, and I need tofigure out how to make the
situation better.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Which again that book kind of normalized, that book
was kind of like yeah, that'show this kind of nervous system
can present Right, at least atthis point you finally had
almost a roadmap of sorts, whichyou never had before, Because
again all the books were fromthe perspective of children or a
partner.
Yeah, or even you know, for meas a teenager and a woman in my

(27:47):
early 20s, I just didn't knowwhat was going on.
I just did not understand whythis man was so difficult to
interact with.
And you know I'd be embarrassedLike my college had this thing
called a garden party forcollege graduation and everyone
would pick like a really nicerestaurant in downtown
Philadelphia to go out to dinner.
And my best friend and I weretrying to do it together and I

(28:09):
was like I'm so sorry, my dad isgoing to need a really quiet
restaurant on the main line.
We cannot go into the city, itcannot be loud, there cannot be
a bunch of people and a parkinglike he will short circuit.
In the back of my mind Iunderstood all this.
I'd become my father'scaretaker.
That image of the parentifiedchild I matched that perfectly.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Since a very young age.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Totally and I was really good at that.
You know he had very specificfood desires.
I know exactly what to make himfor food.
I know exactly how many icecubes he liked in his water.
He was very particular and Ilearned to match all of those
particularities.
But you know, when I left homeat 15, I kind of didn't go back,
like I had to go back a couplesummers and and at that point

(28:54):
just kind of kept my headphoneson, read books, kept myself, and
then, I don't know, we justdidn't really have a
relationship after that.
It's sort of sad and it's sortof you reap what you sow,
because my dad had not createdthe kind of relationship with me
where I felt loved, I felt seen, I felt important.
I know he loved me, I know Iwas important to him, but I

(29:18):
always felt like he saw me aslike an extension of himself or
a miniature version of my mom.
He was always trying to make meinto my mom.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Is safe, a word that you would throw in there.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Did I feel safe with my dad?
Yeah, I never felt safe with mydad, even as you got older.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Well, I know as a child.
But even as you got older, didthat stay the same?
Did that change at all?

Speaker 2 (29:39):
You know, this really interesting thing happens.
We talk so much about menopausefor women when they have a big
hormonal shift.
We talk less about theandropause for men and I think
some there's even like somecontroversy about whether that
exists.
I have witnessed that inmultiple men in my life and when
that testosterone drops, my dadbecame a teddy bear.

(30:01):
It was crazy.
I almost had to convince myselfthat what I experienced as a
child was real, because hebecame so soft and gentle and
just love dogs and babies andyeah, it was a total personality
change.
And you know, maybe part of allof this is the stress of
raising a child.

(30:22):
Children are very difficult,right, and even though I was a
good kid, even though I was agood kid.
Kids are tough, you know.
We throw tantrums, we won't eatour dinner, we don't go to bed
on time, like oh, that's a lot.
And again, just to go back tohow I've set this up, my mom was
supposed to raise the kid.
My dad never wanted to raise achild.
That was never his ambition inlife, and so I don't know if

(30:46):
also getting me out of the houseand not having to be a solo dad
was his nervous system couldrelax and some of that anger and
rage could fall by the wayside.
I don't know how much of thatis compared to this.
This hormonal shift that I'mhypothesizing was a part of it,
but he was definitely a teddybear in his later years.
I didn't feel unsafe around him, but I definitely felt like I
had to be the adult, the parent,and so you don't feel safe in

(31:07):
the same way if you're like, oh,all the responsibilities on my
shoulders.
I have to really look out forthis person in this situation.
It was just his caretaker.
You know, from an early age Iwas his caretaker and then, once
he got to be older, I wasdefinitely his caretaker.
He continued not to have apartner.
He continued not to really havefriends.
He had interestingrelationships with his brothers

(31:32):
I don't exactly know how todescribe that.
I think they loved each other,but the Moors were just really
distant.
We don't talk about things.
That covenant that was in myintimate family nuclear family
clearly came from the biggerlineage we don't talk about

(31:53):
things and so I can see thatplaying out even now.
One of my dad's brothers hasalso passed, but he has one
brother who is alive and I'msure he has not done therapy.
I'm sure he does not talk aboutthe things.
I'm sure he has seen a lot thatis living in his body and
causing all kinds of aches andpains that he's trying to deal

(32:13):
with in frankly, inappropriateways, because there are emotions
that need to be dealt with andnot some like weird back thing
that a doctor is going to fixfor you.
You know, Right yeah.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
How old were you when your dad died?

Speaker 2 (32:25):
My father died last year.
I was 39.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
It was an interesting moment for me.
My mom died when she was 39.
And so I had always wonderedwhat it was going to be like for
me to turn 39.
You know, that was like a bigmoment.
Will I have had cancer by then?
Will I even be alive?
What happens after a woman's 39?
I have no idea, and I didn'treally get to have my moment

(32:50):
with that, which is my big gift,because I was at my father's
deathbed when I was 39.
That was right in the heart ofhis process.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
The reason why I asked how old you were is
because I'd like to talk alittle bit about between.
When you left your dad's house,basically for good, when you
went to college.
You like to talk a little bitabout between.
When you left your dad's house,basically for good, when you
went to college, you begin tostart a life.
From that point to when youwent back and basically became
your dad's end of life caretaker, how was your relationship
during that time?

Speaker 2 (33:18):
So we would see each other about once a year.
He would usually come to me.
I didn't like to go back to theNorthwest, so you'd come down
to California and visit me,maybe stay with my godmother,
maybe come to the city for acouple of nights, and then we
would talk on the phone forbetween four and 12 minutes
every Sunday at 10 AM.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Very specific amount.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Very specific and if I missed the call, if I didn't
pick up right at 10, we wouldn'treschedule a call, we wouldn't
talk later that day.
I'd get an email from him thatsaid sorry I missed you, let's
talk next Sunday at 10.
That's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
That's a little bizarre.
I mean, I can't understand thebrain enough to know the space
that he was in.
I do understand that that ishow some minds work.
Right From not personallyexperiencing something like that
, it's a little bizarre.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, yeah, not to be critical of him at all.
Right, right no.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
It doesn't make sense to me because I didn't live it.
I'm sure you don't live thatway either, but you lived that
way through your dad, so I'msure that it makes sense to you.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Well, and I learned again to work with his quirks.
So it was just like another oneof his quirks.
This is what dad needs.
Okay, I will accommodate dad'sneeds.
You know that was like so thetheme of my life accommodating
dad's needs.
The conversation was so shortbecause it was really him
talking about himself.
He didn't ask me a lot ofquestions.

(34:51):
He didn't, I don't know.
Again, I just felt so unseen byhim.
I don't even think he knew whatquestions to ask.
And this has plagued mecontinually in my relationships
with men, because you know, thisis a common complaint women
have about men they don't askquestions, right?
Why is it so hard for them toengage me with something?
And then I talked to my malefriends and they're like we want

(35:12):
to hear, just talk, just tellus things, we want to listen,
we're open to it.
And so I think my dad and Iwere caught in that dynamic a
little where I think he happilywould have listened to me if I
wanted to prattle on aboutsomething going on, but without
him proactively showing interestin my life.
I did not want to go there.
So we're at this stalematewhere he would share some things

(35:33):
about himself movies he'd seen,that he likes books, that he
liked what's going on with hishealth, and that would be the
end of our conversation.
We do it again next week.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
All right, and this went on for years.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Years, decades, I mean really.
That was from college, so I'llsay like age 20, 21 to when he
first got sick, when I was 37.
That was what our dynamic was.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
Okay, when he first got sick, how did things change?

Speaker 2 (36:03):
So my dad messaged me spring of 2021 and he said he's
not feeling well.
And it was a new kind of notfeeling well, not just aging not
feeling well.
He was probably 76, 77 at thatpoint, but something like really
didn't feel good.
So I went to the doctor.
Doctor run a bunch of tests,great doctor.

(36:26):
He caught pretty quickly thatmy dad had pancreatic cancer,
which, as many of us know, is avery aggressive cancer.
Most people with pancreaticcancer live months, maybe even
weeks.
It is not the kind of thingwhere you have years, even with
treatment, right, it's just avery aggressive cancer.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, it's more often than not a death sentence.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Absolutely, and so I thought that's what we were
working with and I was sort ofpreparing myself for that.
It turns out my dad was one ofthe 5% of pancreatic cancer
victims were eligible for aWhipple procedure, whereas when
they take out the tumor andpretty much anything it touches
so for my dad they took out thehead of the pancreas, a lobe of
liver, his gallbladder, a coupleof feet of small intestine it's

(37:12):
just like anything that thattumor might've touched gets
scooped out.
It's a pretty miraculoussurgery for pancreatic cancer in
particular, and the surgeonafter the surgery was like I
think I just got your dadanother five years, which is a
big deal with pancreatic cancer.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
The caveat was the surgeon was also recommending
chemotherapy and my dad watchedmy mom do chemo in the 80s for
breast cancer, which was justugly, you know.
I mean that was like the heightof the terrible cancer stories
you would see from like the 80sand 90s.
you know just like losing yourhair and being so sick and

(37:49):
nauseous and so pale and justfeeling sick all the time.
And so he sort of vowed hewould never do chemotherapy
because of that.
He would not even call thefollow up doctor to talk about
options.
He would not even call thefollow-up doctor to talk about
options.
He was just like nope, I'm done.
You did your surgery, I'm goingto go live my five years now.
Thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
So when it came back two years later, I wasn't
surprised, right.
He did not do chemo, he did notkill any straggler pancreatic
cancer cells that were in hisbody and, sure enough, one of
them took hold and by the timewe caught it the second time
around, it was pretty advanced.
And I'm a very spiritual person.
I really believe in anafterlife.

(38:31):
I talked to my dead mom all thetime Now I talk to my dead dad
also and I was meditatingshortly after he got that
diagnosis and my mom came to meand she said it's going to go so
fast, so be ready for this anddon't hold back.
Like this is the time to sayall the things, do all the
things.
Be there Like this.
This is going to go real, realfast.
Noted, okay, thanks, mom, gotit.

(38:52):
Unfortunately, I had planned tospend the whole summer in Costa
Rica with my boyfriend, and so Iwasn't sure what to do and I
talked to the doctor and he waslike you know, you've probably
got three or four months, and soI went up to dad's house and I
got him situated.
You know, I called hospice.
We started talking about whatwe might have to do.
The house is a two-story house.

(39:12):
He lived in a bedroom on thesecond floor.
How's that going to work?
He clearly was in total denialabout the diagnosis
Understandable, I think all ofus might be in a similar
position.
And then I went to Costa Ricasaying, okay, I'll come back in
a few weeks, right, like, doyour thing.
I can't like be by your sidefor every day of these few
months of of dying, but I willcome back soon and be with you.

(39:37):
And as soon as I got to CostaRica, I felt my mom again
tapping me on the shoulder,saying you got to go back.
You got to go back right now.
Like, what are you doing here?
You got to go back.
And so I said, okay, fine, mom,I'll go back.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
You couldn't have told me that before I got on the
plane, mom?

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Yeah, exactly yeah.
So I spent a week in Costa Ricaand then I went back and, god
dang, I'm so glad I did.
What a gift.
For a couple reasons.
First of all, it was the lastlucid week I had with my dad.
It went so quickly that I thinkthis is only.
This was like three weeks afterhis diagnosis, maybe less,
maybe like two and a half weeksafter the diagnosis, but it was

(40:14):
the last time I could have likefull conversations with him.
And I also have witnessed somany people in my life reinvent
their childhoods when they losetheir parent.
It's like the amnesia thathappens, where you forget the
reality of your parent and yousort of paint this hero parent.

(40:36):
Maybe it's the parent youwanted to have, maybe it's the
parent they tried to be, even ifthey didn't get there all the
time.
But I've definitely seen peoplein my life rewrite their
childhood so that like, oh gosh,I was just a bad kid, I didn't
show up enough, I didn't extendthe olive branch enough, I could
have been more loving, I couldhave had a totally different

(40:56):
relationship with my parent, butI didn't.
I missed that chance.
That sucks.
A totally differentrelationship with my parent, but
I didn't.
I missed that chance.
That sucks.
And this week with my dad I gotto remember what an asshole he
was, and I say that with somerespect for the dead.
My dad loved me.
He did so much for me.
There were moments when he wasso loving and sweet.
All of us are complex beingsand also he was critical.

(41:17):
He was rigid, he was demanding,he did not ask people questions
, he was highly judgmental.
All of that showed up this weekthat I was with him.
Right, we got hospice there.
The hospice nurse was sureheavier set, not unhealthy even
by my assessment.
She had a body.
She was taking care of it.

(41:37):
My father practically refusedcare from her because he thought
she was too fat.
And I was just like dad thiswoman is here to help you die.
This kind nurse who transitionspeople out of this world.
Like, can you just be nice toher please?
He had me take him for one lastride in his little car, which he
loved.
He had a little electric Fiatand I shut the door too hard and

(41:57):
he was like Courtney, be niceto this car, it's my baby.
And I was like dad I amliterally your baby.
I am literally your baby.
I am the one who is so precioushere, but he just couldn't see
that.
You know, and you know, thewhole time I was there he would
just sort of boss me around.
He just gave me orders to do Iwant you to plant these flowers
in the yard, I want you to godrop this off at the post office

(42:18):
.
It was totally unimportant stuffand maybe it was his way of
trying to hold on to a normallife in whatever way he could,
and also it just felt awful tome.
You know, it was my birthday,it was my 39th birthday.
While I was there with him thatweek I don't even know if he
said happy birthday to me Itried to engage him about like
what was it like for you whenyour parents died?
Like what was that?

(42:38):
Like trying to get someconversations?
He couldn't go there, he justturned it back to himself and
his experience, which you knowhe was dying.
It's his experience to have.
But that week really reminded memy dad was not accessible for
the kind of dad I want.
It wasn't that I failed, Ididn't drop the ball on this

(42:58):
relationship.
My father was not accessiblefor that kind of relationship
and I think it's reallyimportant for all of us to
remember that as we arenavigating, negotiating,
grieving our relationships withour parents, they are all
obviously human beings withtheir own traumas and woundings
and hangups and if they haven'tdone inner work, they likely are
not available for realconnection, for intimacy and

(43:22):
attunement and love in the waythat we might recognize.
They're not there for it, theydon't have it, they don't have
that capacity.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Tell me, while he was treating you this way, what was
going through your mind duringthat last week and in the time
immediately following hisfuneral.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
I really remembered who he was in that week.
That wasn't the last week I hadwith him.
I ended up going back to CostaRica and then coming back to
spend the final nine days wherehe was dying.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Oh, this wasn't the final nine days.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
This was not the final nine.
This was like me coming back tospend time with him.
I'm so glad I had this likelucid week of conversation with
him and just remembering, oh, hewas really hard.
He was really really hard.
And then I went back to CostaRica and then I was like okay,
again, I'll be back mid July.
This is like end of June.
I told hospice, if you need me,I'll get on a plane.
I think I left there like July25th, maybe 23rd, july 3rd.

(44:20):
Hospice called and said if youwant to see your dad again, you
got to get on a plane and wecannot even guarantee he will be
here when you arrive.
So I did that.
I flew on the 4th of July.
I arrived and he was so sick hewas again.
He was not conversational atthis point, right, and I don't
want to get into too many of thedetails because they are so
graphic.
But watching a body die is veryintense.

(44:44):
It's not something we talkabout in our culture.
You know all the images ofdeath and dying in media are
like someone in a hospital bed.
They're sick and then they code.
You know their heart stops.
Everyone's very sad.
They just sort of like go tosleep in the hospital bed, and
that's the end.
That is not what death lookslike.
Let me just tell you all,especially when you're dying

(45:06):
from cancer, it is a visceralexperience, with a lot of body
breaking down, moments.
And so I was with him for thosefinal nine days.
Hospice kept expecting him todie.
The next day and the next day,and the next day on Friday, they
said we won't see you on Monday.
They didn't come up for theweekend.
Well, I called them every dayon the weekend and said I need

(45:26):
someone out here supporting mebecause now this is happening,
now this is happening.
He kept trying to get out of bed.
It was so interesting, theysaid, when someone is dying,
they have the inkling that theyhave to go somewhere.
But they don't understand theyhave, they have to die, their
spirit has to leave their body.
And so, like he, he wanted togo to the bathroom.
He did not meet.

(45:47):
He hadn't eaten in weeks atthis point, right, but his body
was like I got to get up, and sohe kept trying to get out of
bed, which was awful.
He might've hurt himself.
Putting him back in bed, hewould just go with pain.
It was so awful to experience.
And so, you know, I was askinghospice for more and more help.
We started giving him more andmore morphine and you know, I

(46:11):
just watched my father decomposein front of me.
It was.
It was so terrible.
I'm so honored I could be therefor it.
I would not trade thatexperience for anything.
It was hard.
I was pumped up on adrenaline,so I think I had to process a
lot of that.
After the fact, you know, Iwasn't even particularly

(46:32):
emotional.
You know, I was just in go mode, like this is a crisis.
We have to, like, make dadcomfortable as best I can like.
What can I do to make dadcomfortable?
At one point I was waking upevery four hours to give him a
morphine.
Um, just to make you know, keepthe pain at bay, because
otherwise he would just bemoaning and in so much pain
people say you, you die the wayyou live.

(46:54):
And you know my dad wasstubborn and he had to do things
on his own timeline and he didnot want to let go.
So it was just nine days of himreally, really, really holding
on and I felt I felt at thattime guilty for not being more
sad.
It's like his exit from thisworld was so difficult and,

(47:17):
honestly, that's the thing I'vehad to grieve the most was
watching that nine days and Ididn't have a relationship with
this person.
I'm so grateful for so much ofwhat he did for me when I was a
young person.
You know, I think even those ofus who have like the worst
parents and I don't put myselfin that category, but even with
the worst parents, you know theychanged your diaper, they fed

(47:40):
you, they did these basic thingsso that you could be a little
person who grew up to be a bigperson.
And there's always more thingsthey could have done, right as
far as safety and love andemotional attunement and just
like acceptance and care, right.
Those are the things we need aschildren, and sometimes they
don't do that.
They just do the bare basics.

(48:01):
But you know what the barebasics got me to where I am
alive and and functional?
There's so much I have to begrateful to for my father and
also I just didn't have arelationship with him.
I didn't have a relationshipwith him since I was probably I
don't know 13 or 14, somewherearound there.
We just stopped relating and Idon't know if that's partly

(48:21):
those difficult teenage years.
You know, I think I'll alwayshave to live with like.
I don't know, could I havesomehow bridged my relationship
with my dad in my older years?
Quickly, I wanna share that.
He had a hip replacement acouple of years before his
pancreatic cancer and I wasthere for that.
And they're wheeling him backto surgery and he's so nervous
he's really scared to go under.

(48:43):
They give him an Ativan becausehe's clearly very anxious and
as they're wheeling him back hebecomes that teddy bear again
and he just he holds my hand andhe tells me how much he loves
me and he gives me this gentlesmile and I'm like, oh my God,
there there's my dad that Ialways wanted.
How have I missed it?

(49:03):
Fuck, I missed it.
You know.
Again, there's that sense oflike I had this opportunity.
How did I drop the ball onhaving this parent-child
relationship that I yearned forso much?
And I remember I called my bestfriend, whose father had been
through many surgeries and andshe said, oh no, no, that's what
happens when they getvulnerable.
You wait for him to wake upfrom surgery and then you call
me, let me know how it goes.

(49:24):
And Nick, she was absolutelyright.
It was the most bizarre thing towitness when he was in that
soft, vulnerable, scared spot,there's my sweet, loving dad,
and as soon as he's back to thehouse and recovering, there's my
demanding, critical, impossible, please, dad.
And we contain multitudes.
Both of those were my dad.
Right, that's both part of him.

(49:46):
But I experienced so much moreof the latter that when I came
to grieve my dad, I just didn'thave a relationship with that
person.
I honestly and I feel no smallamount of guilt about this I
grieved for my soulmate cat whodied, so much more than I
grieved for my dad, because mycat gave me unconditional love

(50:07):
and affection and she was therefor me.
I know she's a cat, it soundsridiculous, but she was so
important to me and my daddidn't give me those things.
He didn't make me feel safe andloved and seen.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Not to get too far off topic, but I can completely
relate to the cat.
We have a cat who we adoptedwhen she was six weeks old.
She is now 18 years old.
She turned 18 in May.
We don't have human children.
I tried for years, it didn'thappen.
So she's our baby, she is ourdaughter and luckily she is very

(50:44):
healthy.
We actually just had her mostrecent vet check-in and the vet
said that she is one of the mostactive and healthiest
18-year-old cats she's ever seen.
So hopefully knock on wood thatmeans she's going to be here
for a while.
I can tell you when that daycomes I'm going to be
inconsolable.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Yes, that's the word, that is absolutely the word.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
And I know that I will get past it.
I will move on.
I've had five cats over thecourse of my life and this one
is going to hit the hardest.
Yep, because I have always hadher.
She has been well.
I don't want to say mine, butmine and my wife's.
She's our baby.
We have raised her since shefit in the palm of my hand and

(51:24):
she is an absolute beast and welove her so much.
And, yeah, I completelyunderstand, I can relate to that
.
It's not crazy at all to saythat you were so much more
grieving of a cat than of ahuman who was half responsible
for your existence.
It makes sense.
Let's take a quick break andhave a few words from our

(51:45):
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And now back to the show.
While I didn't go through whatyou specifically went through,

(53:56):
the next question I'd like toask is what is the first feeling
that you felt when?

Speaker 2 (53:58):
he was gone.
I honestly felt such reliefthat he was not suffering
anymore.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Bingo yeah, that was me as well.
That's why I asked that.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yeah, and that feeling lasted for a while.
That wasn't just like a flashof relief, it was like, oh, okay
, it's done, it's done.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
But did you?
When you started feeling therelief you had the funeral, the
feeling stayed there.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
We have not had the funeral yet.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
You haven't had the funeral yet.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
This is on me.
So you know, solo kid dadthought his affairs were in
order.
His affairs were not in order,which is so sad because he
really tried to get on top ofthem.
But PSA, for anyone listening,create a living trust If you
have property you wish to passdown to future generations.
He left a will but not a livingtrust, and so I have been

(54:50):
dealing with his estate since,since he died.
There's still things that I'mwrapping up.
Over a year later, I have hisashes.
He was cremated and he has aplot next to my mother, but he
had a really specific.
There's my dad with hisspecific, particular desires and
a very specific headstonedesign that I had to like,

(55:11):
really outsource, and so I justfound someone who will make it
to his specifications, and theysay it's going to take them
another four to six monthsbecause it's this very specific
design white marble, yellow sunon glass, all these different
elements, and so when theheadstone is ready, we will do
memorial, but we have not donethat yet and I'm not sure what

(55:32):
that's going to be like for me.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
The feeling that you initially had when he first died
the relief.
Is that still the case or hasthat changed?

Speaker 2 (55:40):
I wouldn't say relief is the primary feeling I feel
now.
My dad really wanted his lifeto look different.
He grieved my mother for 40years.
He really he couldn't move onfrom that relationship and in
fact I'll tell you when he wasdying.
You know, people tell you thatthe children should tell the

(56:07):
person dying I'm okay, I've gotthis, you can go like I'm good
here, I release you, you can go.
I told my dad that so many timesand I could tell it was not the
thing.
You know, it was not sinking in.
That was not what he needed tohear and I was like, which kind
of makes sense, because reallymy dad was not concerned that I
was okay.
That wasn't our.
He's driving a force.
You know, what he really wantedfrom me were grandchildren.
He was real pissed that I didn'thave kids on his deathbed and

(56:29):
that week when he was lucid, wehad a conversation about why I
didn't have kids.
I know he like really I.
It's so weird.
He, he didn't see me.
I don't know how to say it moreclearly, but I was not this
whole person who he could get toknow.
I was like an extension of hisgenetics.
It was I was his passing theDNA on and so, yeah, I get lost

(56:54):
with where I was going with that.
But he, um, he wanted a reallydifferent life.
He wanted a lot more careersuccess.
You know, he did not become anarchitect with solar houses all
over the world.
He did not have the amount ofmoney he wanted.
He was raised with a lot ofprivilege and so he wanted this
extravagant lifestyle of traveland beautiful things and art.

(57:15):
And he couldn't have that andso he died a bitter man, and in
my work I think a lot about themetaphors of the body and I
think it's very interesting thatmy bitter father died from
pancreatic cancer.
The pancreas processessweetness in the body and when I
think of him I feel a sadnessand a compassion that he lived

(57:40):
this bitter, unhappy life.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
I kind of hesitate to ask this question, but I feel
like I have to anyway, and thisis not obviously at all an
attack on you.
Do you think he resented youfor not having the life that he
did?
Do you whether you, your mom,maybe your mom for dying you,
for being the one that he nowhad to take care of without her?

Speaker 2 (58:03):
It's a great question .
He wrote his own obituaries.
He had slightly differentobituaries for his college,
Stanford, for his high school inPortland and for the local
newspaper, and in all of them herefers to me as the child.
As in, Moore's wife diedprematurely, leaving him to care

(58:26):
for the child, this changed thecourse of his life.
He would go on to be anacademic rather than having the
architectural career he haddreamed of, and in that moment I
don't know if resentment isexactly the right sentiment, but
I can see some of what you'reasking about.
I do think I was this figurethat kept him from his dreams.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
That's kind of where I was going, obviously not
because he had anything to beresentful for.
You seem like a perfectlyamazing person, but he didn't
get to build solar houses allover the world, he didn't get to
be a professor or have so muchmoney in his bank account and
was filthy rich.
Again, this is not toward you,but he was stuck raising a

(59:12):
one-year-old by himself.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Maybe in his mind he may have thought that.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Right, exactly, and I think a part of him loved
having a child and cherishedthat experience, and a part of
him, I think, he got reallycaught up in like my wife was
supposed to be here doing thiswith me and since she's not,
this is impossible.
I don't get to live the life Iwanted because my wife died.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
That's kind of where I was going.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly what he
experienced.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Based on that.
Did you think about that afterhe died?
Did you ever have any angertoward him after he died?

Speaker 2 (59:56):
I didn't, and I've searched for it because a lot of
people brought this up for me.
I work in healing.
I understand that it's surelyin there, right?
I went through a really roughbreakup shortly after my father
died when I realized how much ofthe dynamic with my dad was at
play in my relationship andthat's not what I wanted, and so

(01:00:17):
there's anger there also, but Icannot find it.
I am searching and searchingstill to this day.
I worked with this woman whodoes this kind of therapy where
you just like yell at the personyou're supposed to be angry at
and see if it kind of like comesup and out of your body.
Nothing, I don't know it's it's.
It's either so deeply in methat it was going to take a lot

(01:00:38):
more excavation, or I will alsosay I worked a lot in my late
twenties, early thirties with aspiritual teacher to forgive my
dad, and I really think I did.
And one of the things shetaught me, which is gold, is
that you have to fully acceptsomeone before you forgive them.

(01:01:00):
If you're trying to forgivesomeone without accepting them,
it's not real forgiveness.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
It's almost like you grieved him before he died.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
I think that's exactly right.
I think that's completelyaccurate.
I spent so much of my 20sgrieving both my parents.
You know I didn't understandwhat it was like to have a dead
mom when I was a kid, you know.
I just it was what I knew.
And then somewhere around mylate teens I was like, oh, this
is terrible.
I feel such heartbreak that Ido not have a mother.
This is a very painfulexperience and I think in my 20s

(01:01:32):
I just did so much grieving andhealing and accepting and
forgiving and at the end of theday, you know, my dad got me
from point A to point B and sortof released me into the wild.
We're very different people.
We're probably really similarin ways that I need to
acknowledge more.
That's probably the next stepof my own healing journey,
because I really want to see himas it's just really different.

(01:01:54):
He's very different from me,but I'm half him, right.
I got those genes in here too,so I've got some Mike Moore
running the show in here runningthe program.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
There's as much your mom as you are your dad, and
it's half him, half her.
But it's also almost like heisn't the one who released you
to the wild, especially sinceyou made the conscious choice to
leave on your own at 15.
So again, I'm not saying forsure, because I'm not at all a
therapist, but maybe you knewwhat was in store and you needed

(01:02:25):
to kind of break free of thatsooner than most of us normally
would.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely accurate.
Most of us normally would.
Yeah, I think that's absolutelyaccurate.
I'm curious for you, Nick doyou see your dad in you at times
and what's that feel like?

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
I absolutely see him in me all the time.
My wife and I joke about this.
We have obviously so manytraits of both of our moms, both
of our dads.
It's weird sometimes there areparts of him that were good.
This is something that I wasn'treally able to realize on my

(01:03:00):
own until within the lastseveral years of his life, and
my wife is the one who pointedit out to me.
He was an asshole for most ofhis life toward most of the
people in his life, but therewere definitely times where he
had the biggest heart and mywife has told me that that's a

(01:03:21):
big part of something that I getfrom that.
I have gotten from him, notthat my mother doesn't my mother
is wonderful as well, but shedefinitely with the time that
she spent around my dad, whichwasn't a ton, I'm sorry.
The time that my wife spentaround my dad, which was not a
ton.
She saw it in him.
My dad was a charmer, he was aschmoozer.
The man got five women to marryhim.

(01:03:44):
So you can't be a schmoozer andbe a ladies' man, be a charmer.
Or you can't get five women tomarry you without being all of
those things a charmer or youcan't get five women to marry
you without being all of thosethings, but not just that part.
There are definitely parts ofhim that I know, that I have,
that I really do like, and thereare parts of him that I have
that I'm not a big fan of.

(01:04:05):
He liked to I don't want to sayhe liked me.
He would frequently get angry,he would yell, he would scream.
He sometimes had a very shortfuse and there are definitely
times over the course of my lifewhere I've been the same way
and I have done a lot of work tokeep that in check.
Never with me, never to thepoint of destroying things and

(01:04:25):
throwing things like heoccasionally did.
My wife and I definitely overthe course of 18 years, we've
had our screaming matches.
Plenty of them were probablybecause I was being an asshole.
I definitely recognize that.
It took me a while to recognizethat, not to say that my wife
is a hundred percent perfect ahundred percent of the time, but

(01:04:45):
she's pretty close.
I know that I definitely neededto change some things and I have
worked toward doing thatbecause there are certain
qualities of him that I didn'twant to be like that I
recognized were kind of comingout.
So it's weird, it's kind ofconflicting, to see things about
a person that you can't standand then you see them in

(01:05:08):
yourself.
And there are qualities of allof my siblings that I see in my
dad and in their respective moms, Because my mom was his second
wife, so it was only myself andmy next brother, Jack, from her.
There were no kids that I knowof from the first marriage, but
then it was one from the third,one from the fourth and the last

(01:05:30):
three from the fifth, one fromthe fourth and three the last
three from the fifth.
And I look at all of my siblingsand see how they are like my
dad and different from my dad.
And in many of the cases it'svery obvious and no matter how
hard you try to change certainthings, no matter how hard you
try to not be like someone, it'sgoing to come out.

(01:05:52):
But everything in life is achoice, so we might have to work
a little bit harder to steerthose choices in a certain
direction.
But it is possible and, like Isaid, I recognized some of those
things earlier on that I reallyjust did not like in him and I
saw at times in myself and Ihave worked to not let those be

(01:06:16):
the case, not let those controlme or define me.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Yeah, I mean, it's all about consciousness right,
being aware of what the patternis and being aware that you have
a choice, that you can work onyourself to do something
different.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Definitely.
Yeah, that's pretty intense.
You have a lot that you wentthrough.
What do you think about nowwhen you think about your dad?

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
When I think about my dad now, I only think about the
sweetness.
It's interesting because I'mtrying to write a book about him
, because I think it would behelpful for folks to have more
resources about parents who areon the autistic spectrum.
I think it was a lot of ourjourney and a lot of it was
difficult and I had this, youknow, distilled experience

(01:07:01):
because I had a solo parent whowas on the autistic spectrum.
And so I got like a very directexperience of all that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
He didn't have another adult to kind of keep
him in check.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
Exactly, yeah, and it was my whole reality.
And so I'm writing this bookand I'm trying to dig out some
of those harder moments, harderdynamics, harder patterns.
And it does take some diggingbecause I largely, when I think
about my dad, I think about howsmart he was, how much he loved

(01:07:33):
art and movies and cats, how,how some of his quirks were so
bizarre.
Like he, he would cut the tagsoff anything he purchased and
just keep them all on a stack byhis bedside table and he would
leave.
You know, furniture comes inlike plastic covering when you
first get it.
He would leave that on fordecades mattresses, couches,

(01:07:57):
chairs.
So I just think of him and sortof like, there's like a
sweetness in the way I thinkabout him.
Now he's like oh Mike, that'swhat a funny, quirky, brilliant
man.
He really was brilliant.
I think about that a lot, howsmart he was and how he tried to
leave his mark on the world.
I also think about howdifferent his life might have

(01:08:19):
been if he were more resourced.
I think that's the biggestresentment I have about my
childhood.
I get that it was a lot to soloparent, a daughter especially,
moving all the time and guesswhat.
We can all ask for help and hedidn't.
He was too proud, too stubborn,maybe too autistic, I don't

(01:08:40):
know, but he couldn't ask forhelp.
He didn't ask for help and thatreally would have changed my
life if we would have had alittle more help.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Now, obviously I didn't grow up in your house.
I didn't know you when you werea kid, or know your dad when he
was raising you as a child, butback in that time period nobody
asked for help.
Yeah, 40 years ago was a verydifferent time, I mean if your
dad was here now and 40 yearsold.
Like you are Right.

(01:09:08):
Maybe he might be more inclinedto ask for help because society
is fucked up, as society is onmany levels.
I think we have improved onsome levels and I think it's a
little bit more acceptablesocially, culturally, to ask for
help where 40 years ago it justwasn't.

(01:09:30):
You're the man, you figure itout.

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
Yeah, that's right.
I mean that's right women.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
I mean my mom was raising two boys as a single mom
because my dad was large.
I mean once they split he wesaw him on weekends but even as
we were growing up, a lot oftimes he was more concerned with
which wife he was married toand which kids he was raising at
that time.

(01:09:54):
And so it was just the way hewas.
I don't know.
I mean, it was a very differenttime.
Maybe he again if he were 40years younger.
Maybe now he could ask inliving in 2024, maybe he would
be able to ask for help.
You and I recognize that if youwere in a situation where you

(01:10:14):
needed someone or something,there are plenty of resources to
get it, but there are more waysto ask for help.
You know, now you have thetools to be able to ask for help
if you need it.
You may also have some of hisstubbornness and you might say,
fuck, I'm going to figure it out.
But you also know that at acertain point there comes a line
where, if you can't figure itout, there are ways to ask for

(01:10:35):
help.
I don't think that our parentsin a lot of ways had the tools
they needed to do certain things, whether as adults or as
parents, and that is a lot thatI have reflected on about my dad
and why I've kind of changedcourse from a lot of the anger

(01:10:57):
that I had for toward him formany years and even after he
died.
When he first died, my initialfeeling also was relief, for
that lasted for probably threeor four months, and then the
anger really started to build in.

Speaker 2 (01:11:10):
And.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
I was.
I was so pissed at him foreverything, for how he treated
us, for how he treated hisex-wives, for just the way he
lived his life and thinking thathe was number one with
everything.
And that was what got me intotherapy and I was able to find a
place for all of those emotionsand realize that I could
release the anger.
I don't need to hold on to allthis anger.
It's not serving anything.

(01:11:32):
But a lot of people don't getto that point.
Your dad, when you were a kid,you guys had that one huge fight
.
He said if this ever happensagain, I'm going to therapy.
Well, I mean, you guys hadplenty more blowups, maybe not
to that level, but he neverended up in therapy.
And maybe if he had I don'tknow, I mean, based on what was

(01:11:52):
probably something, a conditionthat was undiagnosed, maybe he
could have gotten help.
But at the same time, 20, 25years ago, maybe there weren't
the tools nearly as much then togive him the help that he might
have needed.

Speaker 2 (01:12:09):
So, and again, I'm not trying to give you data
Right and I'm not trying to giveyour data pass.

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
I'm not trying to give your dad a pass.
I'm not trying to give my dad apass, but I also recognize that
we lived in a very differenttime and maybe they just didn't
have the tools.
I think that both of my parentsdid the best they could with
the tools they had, andespecially my dad I give a lot
harder time to, because he hadso many natural gifts in life

(01:12:33):
and he just squandered all ofthem.
He wasted them, and some peopledo that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
Yeah, absolutely I felt that way about my dad also.
He was given so, so much andsomehow ended up so bitter and
unhappy and resentful after somuch privilege and blessing.
I remember my dad had a bookcalled Raising a Daughter, had a
pink cover and this thing wasjust earmarked to shit, you know

(01:12:59):
, like he had clearly pouredover this book, highlighted,
circled, underlined, and I keptit when he died, because to me
there's the love that I nevernecessarily felt from him.
The love that I nevernecessarily felt from him, but
God, he wanted to be a good dad.
He wanted and again, I know mydad loved me.

(01:13:22):
He was so proud of me.
He loved to go to, you knowschool plays and games and award
ceremonies and all of that.
I know he loved me.
He was also just so difficult,so difficult, and I wish things
would have been different, wherewe could have had a
relationship holding both ofthose truths, both of those
sides of him.
But we can never quite figureit out.
I don't know why, but we couldnever quite walk that line

(01:13:44):
together.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
Couldn't get on the same page.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
There might've been times where you're within the
same chapter.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
Yeah, I think that's right.
And again, especially academicsis where we connected and later
in life, when we'd have thosephone calls, we figured out we
both liked movies, so that wasthe thing we could talk about.
Have you seen any movies lately?
You know we'd had to find.
We had to really search for thepages, but when we found them
we could coexist nicely.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
I'm curious, since you say you, as he got older,
toward the end of his life, youdid find things that you
connected on.
Did that mean that those fourto 12 minute conversations ever
became longer conversations,more in depth?

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Definitely not Four to 12.
Wow, yeah, I know, and alwaysagain I felt so unseen.
I think that would be theprimary experience being with my
dad and maybe that's theprimary experience with an
autistic person.
I'm still doing a lot ofresearch about that.
It was just so much about himand you know, now people talk so
much about narcissism.

(01:14:43):
I think too much.
I think there's too much sortof like armchair diagnosis of
narcissism.
But I do really like how peopletalk about the narcissist
wounding of being a young childand realizing your parents are
not going to take care of you,so you got to take care of
yourself.
Everything's got to be aboutyou, and I see that in my dad.
I see this tendency to be likeMike takes care of Mike and it

(01:15:05):
was hard to be Mike's kidbecause Mike took care of Mike
usually before he took care ofCourtney.
You know that's not what a goodparent does.
A good parent put their kidsfirst, at least most of the time
.
You know there's exceptions tothat, I'm sure.
Oh, of course.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
But Mike took care of .

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Mike and that was um.
That was one of the hardestthings about being in that
household.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
Well, I mean, I hate to say it, but look how you were
identified in the obituary youwere the child Exactly, you
weren't.
Courtney, you were the childthat upended his life.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Exactly.
Yeah, what's been hard for meis that then go try to date men
and form a partnership with aman, and I'm so drawn to that
familial neural groove in mynervous system of find a man who
says you're not a priority.
Find a man who wants you totake care of him.
Find a man who expects you totake on all the responsibility.
Find a man who's critical and Ihave done that, I haven't done

(01:16:09):
that a few times over, andnothing against the men I found.
I don't want to be fingerpointing here.
This is really about mechoosing something that feels
familiar and not knowing how toget out of that trap.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
I can understand the familiarity part of it.
Do you think that that's allyou deserve?
Do you think that you deserveConsciously?

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
no right, Like consciously, I can sit here and
say no, I deserve more.
But I think you know I've beengetting really into parts, work,
internal family systems and theidea that there's all these
different fragments of ourselvesinside of us and some of them
are running the show.
Maybe you don't want thatfragment running the show, right
?
Maybe that fragments makinganother really important
fragment not come out to theextent that it could.

(01:16:49):
And I definitely think thereare some inner child fragments
who are probably running mydating life, who do think that's
what they deserve, who do thinkthat is the maximum that they
are allowed, and so my workright now is to have some
conversations with them and makesure they're not the ones with
the reins, that this moreconscious part of me that wants
a fuller connection is the onemaking the choices.

Speaker 1 (01:17:11):
Courtney needs to be in control, not the inner child.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
Exactly.
Yeah, it's hard, it's a it's ahard shift.

Speaker 1 (01:17:17):
I think, yeah, it is.
It's a complete mind shift.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
And the thing that feels familiar feels so good.
So the thing that's actuallygood for you might not feel good
at first is what people tell me.
You know that you're thefamiliar thing that you're so
drawn to and you want to make adifferent choice.
When something else presentsyour nervous system Like what is
that?
I don't recognize that.
I do not know how to interactwith that.

(01:17:41):
I don't know where I stand inrelation to that.
There's nothing here for me,nevermind Go away.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Not trying to play therapist here, because I'm not
one.
You've already talked about theway that you felt as a child
when your dad would treat youthat way, even though that's
familiar.
Is thinking back to thatfeeling, the way that you were
treated, the way that you feltas a 10-year-old, as a
12-year-old, as a 15-year-old,when you left his house.

(01:18:08):
Is that enough to maybe swayyou to say you know what?
This isn't what I need.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
Absolutely, and I really think we do so much of
the healing of our parent woundsin relationship and this last
relationship I had that endedshortly after my father died.
It was kind of eerie timing.
That was the one where I said,oh, we're done.
I do not want to be in thisdynamic ever again.
I do not want to choose aperson who thinks about me and

(01:18:36):
relationships in this way everagain.
I'm done with that.
I would rather be single.
So either we're going to changethis up and I'm going to figure
out a way to meet a verydifferent kind of man, or I'm
going to get a whole bunch ofcats.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
You're going to be the cat lady Totally.
I'm going to be the cat lady,totally.
You're going to have the bumperstickers and the window decals
and all of the big scratchingposts and the cat jungle gym.
Yep, yeah, it is okay to need aminute to figure all that out.
Sometimes it takes a minute,sometimes it takes a lot more
than a minute.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
You know.
Thanks for saying that.
That's exactly where I am.
It's been a year since dad died.
It's been a year since mybreakup and I thought I'd be
dating more by now, and I amstill not there.
I am still really processingall of this.
I'm still being with myself,I'm still trying to understand a
lot of these patterns.
I've tried to go on dates and Ifeel nothing, and so it's just

(01:19:29):
my body saying you know what?
Let's just stay home againtonight.
We got more work to do.

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Are you okay with that?
Do you feel comfortable?
I am, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:19:37):
I'm 40 years old and I would like to find a partner
sooner rather than later.
You know I don't want childrenof my own, so luckily I don't
have that motivation driving me.
But yeah, I'd really like tofind a partner and I do worry
about just you know, just theshallow things.
Will I still be attractive infive years?
Will I still have access topeople I find attractive in five

(01:19:58):
years?
It's hard to date.
When you get older it's a newplayground.
I'm getting used to that rightnow, for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Yeah, I completely get that.
I hated dating when I met mywife.
I was 30 at that point datingwhen I was.
When I met my wife I was 30 atthat point I was in a lot of the
wrong relationships and I wasstarting to get convinced that I
wasn't going to find anybody.
So was she, and then we foundeach other on matchcom and uh,
that's great yeah, we, we met in2006.

(01:20:29):
We just instantly clicked and wewere both in a place, kind of
mentally, that if we had foundwho we knew to be the right
person, we were ready to settledown, get married.
This is before we met, but Ireally didn't.
At a certain point, I reallydidn't think that it was ever
going to happen.
When I turned 30, on my 30thbirthday, I hated the job that I

(01:20:50):
was at, I hated the fact that Iwas single, I hated a lot of
things about my life and,luckily, when I turned 40, it
was the exact opposite.
But I can understand the feelinglike you're stuck and you're
never going to get out of it.
What you ultimately shouldprobably I don't want to say

(01:21:11):
should, but maybe something foryou to focus on or continue to
focus on at 40 or whatever ageyou end up being is what makes
Courtney happy, because thereare a lot of things that you
know, that you have ingrained inyou that do make you happy,
that do not make you happy andkind of like.

(01:21:32):
We were talking when I wastalking before about making the
choice.
Actually, what we were bothtalking about, about making the
choice to not react in certainways like my dad did, because I
knew how he reacted and I alsoknew enough to know that I
didn't want to be like that.
Relationships are about choicesas well, and not just a
relationship with the nextperson that you're going to date

(01:21:54):
, but the relationship that youhave with yourself, because
whether you start datingsomebody tomorrow or in a week,
or in a month or in a year, oryou don't, you're always going
to be stuck with you.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
Absolutely Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:22:09):
So, no matter what happens with whoever you do or
do not end up with, you have tobe happy with who you're stuck
with in the mirror.

Speaker 2 (01:22:17):
Yeah, absolutely Wise words.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
Jeez, who would have thought?
I don't know where that camefrom.
I'll tell anybody about it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
I do have a completely non-interview related
question.

Speaker 1 (01:22:30):
Sure, the phone that's on the shelf behind you,
was that your dad's?

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
No, and I'll tell you .
When my father died and I wentthrough this terrible breakup we
won't go into the details, butit was dramatically terrible
Okay, I realized I needed tolive a different life Because I
thought this was my person,right, I thought I was going to
spend my life with this person.
I thought we were going to livetogether.
I had a condo, but I barelylived in it because I was with

(01:22:56):
him all the time.
So I was renting it out and Ikind of took to the road.
I don't know if it was a part ofmy transient childhood coming
back, but I started doing catsitting through trusted house
sitters, which I highlyrecommend, and I was in a new
house every week or two and Iwas just on the move all the

(01:23:18):
time.
I did it for October, november,like four months of this, like
transient life.
It was.
Maybe that was my grievingprocess, right, and at the end
of that time I was like you knowwhat I hate my condo.
I never want to move back inthere and so I found a furnished
sublet for a year, which iswhere I am living now.
So I have no idea the storybehind that phone, because that

(01:23:39):
is the original owner's, it'snot mine.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
Yeah, so I'm in this house for a year, maybe a year
and a half.
I feel so fortunate to be here,and who knows what happens
after that.
We're still in the throw, lifeup in the air and see where the
pieces land after that we'restill in the throw, life, up in
the air and see where the piecesland.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
I was curious about the phone to see if it was your
dad's, because I have one thatis very, very similar to that,
one that was actually mygrandparents, belong to my dad's
parents and then, after theydied, he got it and many years
ago he gave it to me and I hadactually bought a.
It's one of those old four prongadapters that nobody can plug
in any more at this point.
But I bought an adapter I don'tknow probably 10 years ago on

(01:24:19):
eBay that I was actually able toconnect it to a standard phone
jack and it still works, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:24:25):
I don't use it currently.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
Yeah, I mean I don't use it currently because we
don't have a house phone at thispoint, but if there was a, a
phone jack, I could plug it inand use it and I did a you know
dial that has a little rotarydial oh my gosh, it was great
that's amazing that phone isprobably 70, 80 years old wow,
that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:24:45):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
That's one piece of history yeah, definitely, that's
one thing that I will never getrid of.
Uh, no matter what, that thingwill come everywhere.
Uh, yeah, all right.
Well, uh, all right, not yourdad's phone, but uh, definitely
it came with a great story I betit does, yeah, yeah yeah, well,
I mean, I meant your that phone, yeah yeah, um, yeah yeah, even

(01:25:08):
though it's not yours it's it'snice to have there.
Yeah, it looks pretty cool upon the shelf too.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
It's a good background.
Yeah, definitely is.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
Well, this has been quite a story, thanks.
How are you feeling after allthat?

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
You know I feel good when I share my story.
The voice that comes up in theback of my head is always your
story isn't that interesting.
You didn't have it that badPeople are going to think.
Why did he even botherinterviewing her?

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
It's always the thing that comes up.

Speaker 2 (01:25:32):
Yeah, it's not funny.
Our heads, our voices.

Speaker 1 (01:25:35):
Not even close with this story.
Nobody is going to say why didhe interview her.

Speaker 2 (01:25:40):
Well, I hope it is interesting, informative, maybe
useful to whoever hears it.
I personally think it is.

Speaker 1 (01:25:52):
If there was any piece of advice you could give
to anyone who either is or wasin a less than ideal
relationship with their dad,whether it is something similar
to yours, if it's just somebodywho didn't have a great
relationship, maybe has losttheir dad and is figuring out
how to process, how to grieve,what advice would you give?

Speaker 2 (01:26:11):
You have to accept them for who they were.
You have to accept them for whothey were.
You have to.
As long as you are wanting orexpecting them to be something
different, you're only causingyourself suffering, and I really
think forgiveness is the onlyway to heal from these
relationships.
And, like I said, you cannotforgive someone if you don't
accept them.
And it's hard, but it's sort ofwhat you and I were talking

(01:26:33):
about earlier.
Our dads come from their owntraumas, their own family
lineage, lineages with secretsand shame and wounding and not a
lot of inner work, and so wehave to have some modicum of
compassion for what they wereborn into whether that's a
family or a time period andaccept that some people just do

(01:26:53):
not have the capacity for loving, parenting, relating that we
need it.
It doesn't mean you didn't needit.
That can still be real, butthat person couldn't, didn't
give it to you, and you have toaccept that about them If you
really want to move on and findpeace.
You know what they sayResentment is like a poison that

(01:27:15):
you take.
You expect it to hurt the otherperson, but it hurts yourself.
So if you're feeling thatresentment, if you're working
with that resentment, really tryto explore this angle of
acceptance.
It's hard, it is hard.
I'm not going to sugarcoat it.
And I also think it isabsolutely worth it because that
is the way to liberation it,and I also think it is
absolutely worth it, becausethat is the way to liberation.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
It is hard, it's yucky, it's messy, it's all of
the things.
If it wasn't, everybody woulddo it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:40):
That's right yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
Well, thank you for that.
I really appreciate that.
Yeah, and now I love that youjust took a nice deep breath.
You've got a smile on your face, would?

Speaker 2 (01:27:51):
you say we have a little bit of fun to end this?

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
Sure, all right, this is what I do with every
interview.
We always end with some randomquestions, nothing that had
anything to do with what we justtalked about.
We're going to get to learnsome fun useless nuggets of
knowledge about you.
Maybe not so useless, who knows.
We'll see what comes up.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:28:10):
All right, here we go .
Scale of one to 10.
How good are you at wiffle ball?

Speaker 2 (01:28:14):
Two, two.
It's been a while.

Speaker 1 (01:28:19):
Okay, you think there's some room for
improvement.
Maybe get back into wiffle ballsomeday.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):
Maybe someday We'll leave it on the table.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
There might be a league out there.
You never know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:29):
Actually, I think there probably are wiffle ball
leagues.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
Yeah, I've seen the videos on Facebook where guys
are throwing weird curve ballsthat make no sense, how they
make it from their hand to thelittle plastic plate that's set
up behind them.

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
I don't understand it .
Maybe that's where I meet mysoulmate, who knows?

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Maybe it is.
If you get into a wiffle ballleague and you meet your
soulmate, you need to invite usto the wedding.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
Absolutely.
You got a deal.

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
It will be an Our Dead Dads feature.
What is your favorite dessert?

Speaker 2 (01:28:58):
Anything chocolate the darker the better.

Speaker 1 (01:29:00):
Oh, I love that you said that too.
The darker the better.
That's absolutely the way to go.
All right, Fresh food or friedfood?

Speaker 2 (01:29:07):
Fresh food Definitely .

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
Do you have a favorite fresh food?

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
When you say that, I think about fresh spring rolls
versus fried egg rolls, and I dolove myself a fresh spring roll
.
That is very delicious.

Speaker 1 (01:29:21):
Very nice Sticking with the food.
What is your favorite ice creamflavor?

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
I love good coffee, ice cream.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
You and my wife would get along so well.
You and me with the chocolateand you and her with the coffee.

Speaker 2 (01:29:33):
We're going to have a good dessert party.

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
And she's a chef, so oh yeah, it's on.

Speaker 2 (01:29:38):
Better go on a crash diet now, because you're going
to gain about 10 pounds.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):
Oh, all right, I apologize because this one does
have a little bit to do with theinterview.
Do you correct other people'sgrammar?

Speaker 2 (01:29:51):
I do yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):
You mentioned how that was something that your dad
was a stickler for.

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
You know, in my last relationship was actually a very
sweet moment in our courtshipbecause he texted me something
about oh gosh, I wish I couldremember the word.
It's a word that's commonlymisused.
People think it means negative,but it actually means neutral.
And so I corrected him on thatover text and like we'd only
been on like three dates, and hewas like, did you just correct
my grammar?
And I was like, oh, this iseither.

(01:30:22):
This is like a make or breakmoment.
Either he was into that andwe're gonna play with it and
it's good, or he's horrified andwants something to do with me,
and luckily he was so into it Ithink it was a feature.
He was wow, this chick reallylike knows her grammar and isn't
afraid to call me on it.
So it totally worked out.
But yes, I do correct people ontheir grammar.

Speaker 1 (01:30:39):
He may not have said it at the time, but he was
probably thinking that's kind ofhot.

Speaker 2 (01:30:43):
I think so.
I think that's what was goingon.
He was totally into it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:47):
As he should have been.
What?
What do you think peoplemisunderstand about you?

Speaker 2 (01:30:52):
Well, I'm very shy and quiet when I don't know
people and I always think thatpeople project a lot onto shy
people and also maybe assumethat we don't have much to say.
And so I think some peopleassume I don't have much to say
because I'm not bringing like afull extroverted stream of
consciousness moment to theconversations.

(01:31:13):
But I do have a lot to say.
I just need the right contextto feel good about bringing it
to the table.
Okay, that's fair.

Speaker 1 (01:31:21):
Do you believe in love at first sight?

Speaker 2 (01:31:22):
I don't.
I believe in a universal lovethat we feel for all beings and
all creatures, and I believe inlust at first sight, but I think
that kind of romantic love thatyou're talking about is
something that's built with areal intimate knowing of someone
.

Speaker 1 (01:31:38):
Agreed.
Is it wrong for a vegetarian toeat animal crackers?

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
I was a vegetarian for 15 years and I loved animal
crackers, so I'm going to gowith no, not wrong, absolutely
not wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:31:52):
Do you prefer the morning or the evening?

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
I love both.
I'm such a morning person andfrom 6am to 10am I am at my best
.
That's when I'm reallyproductive and clear headed.

Speaker 1 (01:32:01):
Okay, scale of one to 10.
How good are you at keepingsecrets?

Speaker 2 (01:32:05):
Nine.

Speaker 1 (01:32:07):
What would it take to ?

Speaker 2 (01:32:08):
what's that little line that's every now and then
there's something so juicy youjust got to tell your best
friend, and my best friend is avault, so I feel like I can just
drop stuff in there as needed.

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
Does anybody ever tell you a secret that they'll
say you can't tell anybody,you've got to keep a secret.
But you tell somebody else thatwill never find out, that
they'll never find out about it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:32):
My best friend.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
That has been known to happen, yes, okay so that's
why I can understand the nine asopposed to the ten exactly um.
Have you ever won a bet?

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
I'm sure I have.
Couldn't name it for you, but Idefinitely have where do you
live?

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
san francisco what is your favorite work memory?
Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:32:50):
Oh gosh, that's a tough one.
I'll just go with the first onethat came to mind, which is
that a patient who had sort ofbecome a friend came to me in
really extreme back pain andreally thought he'd have to like
go to the hospital Like hecould barely walk, and I did one
treatment on him and he wastotally cured, just like mobile,

(01:33:11):
feeling good in his body, nottaking painkillers.
I felt really good about thatmoment, nice.

Speaker 1 (01:33:16):
Do you have any tattoos?

Speaker 2 (01:33:18):
No tattoos.

Speaker 1 (01:33:19):
What was your favorite subject in school?

Speaker 2 (01:33:21):
In grade school was a tie between math and English,
and I ended up majoring inphilosophy in college, so that's
what I loved as I got older.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
Nice, okay.
What makes you hopeful?

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
Being in nature makes me hopeful, recognizing that
this planet has a lot of wisdomand a kind of a spirit of its
own, despite whatever ishappening politically with
people.

Speaker 1 (01:33:43):
How tall are you?

Speaker 2 (01:33:45):
Five foot 10.

Speaker 1 (01:33:46):
What is the best non-cursing one word insult.
The word that came to mind wasimbecile.

Speaker 2 (01:33:50):
I don't know if that's the best, but that's what
I got.
I like that one.
You don't get a lot wasimbecile.
I don't know if that's the best, but that's what I got.

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):
I like that one.
You don't get a lot of imbecilethese days.

Speaker 2 (01:33:57):
You don't.
You know, it's kind of outdated.

Speaker 1 (01:34:00):
Definitely.
What is your favorite month?
June?
Why June?

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
Well, my birthday's in June, but I also just love
the weather.
That time of year.
It's like we're between springand summer.
It's warm, you can be outside,there's a light breeze, long,
long days, lots of light, goodstone fruit, good berries.
I love June.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
Fill in the blank.
Taylor Swift is.

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
Successful.

Speaker 1 (01:34:25):
Good word.
Do you think you would make agood spy?

Speaker 2 (01:34:28):
No, I don't think my poker face is good enough.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):
Okay, do you know how to?

Speaker 2 (01:34:33):
salsa dance.
You know, after a breakup I hadyears ago, someone said you
should do something brand new toget over the breakup, which I
think is good breakup advice,and so I decided to learn how to
salsa dance.
What I learned is that I'm notvery good at salsa dancing.
So the real answer is no, but Ihave in fact taken lessons and
tried to learn how to salsadance.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
You did give it the old college try.

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
Exactly, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:34:55):
That's wonderful.
You got two steps further thanI would have.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
I wouldn't have even thought.
Who is your favorite Disneycharacter Favorite?
You know I always loved Bambi.
I identified with Bambi.
We'll go with that.
What motivates you the most.
You know, having two deadparents is very motivating in
that they did not get to liveany longer, and that reminds me

(01:35:21):
that every day really is a giftand it will be taken from us
sooner than we want it to, nomatter what our life
circumstances are.
So remembering that my deadparents would probably love to
be alive right now is verymotivating.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):
What is your guilty pleasure?

Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
I'll go back to the chocolate.
Darker the better.

Speaker 1 (01:35:39):
Chocolate never fails you.

Speaker 2 (01:35:40):
It's all good.

Speaker 1 (01:35:41):
Have you ever seen a kangaroo in person?
What the hell.

Speaker 2 (01:35:44):
These are great.
Yes, indeed, I went to massageschool in New, zealand, so I
spent some time in Australia andNew Zealand when I was in my
20s.

Speaker 1 (01:35:59):
Did you ever get close enough to one to have to
fight it?
Thankfully no, those thingsaren't mean and big and strong.
That's what I've heard.
Anytime anybody mentions akangaroo there.
There's one particular video onyoutube and probably by this
point all the platforms, andyou've probably seen it where I
think the kangaroo was goingafter like a dog or something
and the guy I think the owner ofthe dog went up to it and just
kind of like got like a boxingstance and punched the kangaroo.

Speaker 2 (01:36:16):
They're like people.
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:36:19):
It is crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:36:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:36:21):
I would never want to mess with a kangaroo.
I don't care how cute they seem.
Yeah, they do seem cute but no,do you enjoy running?

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
I used to enjoy running.
These days not so much.
What do you think changed?
I had an injury in college thatkind of stopped me from really
seriously running.
I was training for a marathonand I had to stop.
Yeah, I don't know.
You know, I think a lot ofrunners have a kind of
masochistic relationship withthemselves.

(01:36:50):
Running really is all aboutpain.
Really is about like feelingpain, pushing through pain,
running away from the pain, andI guess I just got to a point in
my life where I didn't.
I wanted to go towardssensation instead of running
away from sensation.

Speaker 1 (01:37:04):
That's fair.
Do you know what the acronymSCUBA stands for?

Speaker 2 (01:37:09):
No, I do not.

Speaker 1 (01:37:11):
Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
Excellent.
Last question what word do youhate hearing?

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
Literally, it was literally so good.
Oh my God, over it.

Speaker 1 (01:37:29):
Courtney, thank you so much for this.
This has been really great.
I'm grateful for your time andfor your willingness to share
everything.
I always feel bad that I haveto have these kind of
conversations about terriblethings, but at the same time
I've gotten to meet a lot ofreally wonderful people through
this process.
I think that it just continuesthe healing process, or at least

(01:37:50):
I hope it does.
I hope that some of what I'mtrying to do is helpful for
somebody.

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):
I think it's beautiful.
It's a beautiful intention.
I think it absolutely prolongsthe healing process and you know
we talked so much today aboutthe secrets we feel like we have
to carry and hold, and whatyou're doing really lets people
be transparent with how they'refeeling and what their
experience was, and I thinkthat's priceless.
What a gift.

Speaker 1 (01:38:18):
I really appreciate that.
That means a lot and that'sexactly what I'm trying for.
I'm trying to give people theopportunity to talk, to heal, to
be transparent, which isprobably a big part of why I'm
doing this the way that I am,because I think transparency is
everything.
I think authenticity iseverything.
I think authenticity iseverything.
I realized that very early onthat this has to be done in an

(01:38:41):
authentic way.
That's exactly why episode onewas me telling my story, not
because I needed to make thisall about me, because, quite
honestly, I didn't want to dothat.
I hate being in the spotlight,which, of course, I had to get
over pretty quickly if I'm goingto do a podcast, because I'm
going to be part of everyepisode.
But I kind of felt from thebeginning that if I'm going to
ask people to tell me some ofthe most vulnerable things that

(01:39:06):
happened in their lives, maybe Ishould do the same Kind of a
lead by example, rather than ado as I say, not as I do.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
Yeah right.

Speaker 1 (01:39:20):
But it really does mean a lot that everybody so far
has really enjoyed this, thatyou and everyone else are so
willing to share this, because Ido think that it promotes the
healing process.
I think it continues thehealing process for all of us,
because we all have been throughour share of shit of us,
because we all have been throughour share of shit.
I've never tried to make this acomparison to anyone else or
for any other guests to eachother.
It's not a comparison, it's nota pissing contest.

(01:39:42):
Grief is real.
Grief is not linear.
We all deal with it, whether wewant to admit it or not,
because, unfortunately, too manypeople try to run away from it
and it's not healthy, and that'sthe thing that means the most
is everybody that has beenwilling to come on the show is
not running away from it.
Everybody is running, ifanything, right toward it, and

(01:40:03):
thank you so much for your timeand for sharing everything
tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:40:08):
So my pleasure.
Thank you, nick.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
Nick Courtney learned a long time ago that her father
was a hard man to live with,which was a big reason why she
left home at only 15 years old.
She was able to see theglimpses of the loving father
that she wished he could havebeen more often, but she also
saw that there were onlyglimpses.
This was a truly heartfeltconversation and I'm so thankful
that she was willing to shareher story with me and with all
of you, and we both hope thatanyone who may have gone through

(01:40:36):
or is currently going throughsomething similar with your
father or with another familymember that you're caring for
can both find peace and a way tocoexist.
While there is still time, andif you have a story similar to
Courtney's and would like todiscuss it on the podcast, or if
you have any story that you'dlike to share, please go to
OurDeadDadscom, go to theContact Us tab and click the
first item on the drop-downcalled Be a Guest.

(01:40:56):
Fill out the form and you justmight be able to be a guest on
the show and carry on thismission of helping ourselves and
helping so many others.
Again, there are no rules tonavigating grief and there is no
timeline for doing it either.
Everybody needs to go at theirown pace, but the most important
part is taking the very firststep.
Whether you want to tell yourown story or you just want to
listen to others tell theirstories, the most important

(01:41:17):
thing is to understand thatnobody is alone in their grief
or should ever feel like theydon't have someone who will talk
or listen to them here at OurDead.
Dads, within the safe space ofthis community, you always have
both.
Thank you for joining me andtune in next week when I am
joined by my friend and fellowpodcast host and best-selling
author, tony Lynch.

(01:41:38):
His show is called Grief let'sTalk About it.
I've also appeared on his showand now he's here to have a very
in-depth conversation about hislife, his loss, his grief and
how he has taken everything thatlife has thrown his way and
built it into being a top figureand role model in the grief
community.
It's going to be an incredibleconversation, though a bit long,
so bring a snack and get readyfor another emotional ride.
Also, don't forget abouttomorrow, january 8th, at 3 pm,
us Eastern, as I go live onYouTube to interview Justin

(01:42:01):
Shepard, better known to so manyas Justin on TikTok.
Make sure you're following OurDead Dads on your favorite
podcast streaming platform,because you will not want to
miss this episode or any otherupcoming episode.
This is Our Dead Dads, where weare changing the world one
damage, soul at a time.
See you next time.

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032 - Understanding Parental Bonds and the Path to Forgiveness with Courtney Moore

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}032 - Understanding Parental Bonds and the Path to Forgiveness with Courtney Moore