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the gift of grief: how loss and healing can help you grow

When you lose someone or something you love, it feels like the world as you knew it has ended—because it has. And while things may never be the same, by viewing grief as a teacher and taking care of ourselves during the healing process, we can gain a deeper understanding of how we are truly meant to live our lives. 

One of my closest friends, Kris Carr, is an incredible example of how you can transform grief into something that heals not only yourself, but others, too. From being a cancer thriver to writing her new book, I’m Not a Mourning Person, after losing her father, Kris shows us the way.

If you’re struggling with grief right now, know that healing is possible and that you’re not alone. 

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grief can be a teacher

It has been said that the pain of grief is the price we pay for love. It is a true and beautiful sentiment, but that doesn’t mean that experiencing grief is not scary and isolating. 

But what if we reframed grief as a teacher? In other words, what if we saw our pain as an opportunity to learn something about ourselves and the world around us? When we approach grief from this perspective, we open ourselves up to new insights. You may discover strengths you never knew you had, You might gain a deeper appreciation for the supportive, comforting people in your life. You could very well develop a greater capacity for empathy for those who will suffer similar pain, thereby becoming a guide. 

healing grief with self-care

Healing looks different for everyone. But one thing that’s essential for anyone who is confronting deep loss is self-care. Here are just a few methods to try.

tapping

The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is one of the most-used tools in my self-care toolkit. It works for anxiety, negative thought patterns and many kinds of other emotional distress. Learn how to tap here.

spending time in nature

Natural settings provide a quieter space where you can better process emotions. They also offer a sense of connection to something greater than yourself … the interconnectedness of all things.

grounding bodywork

Grief can make you feel disconnected from the present moment or your surroundings. Safe touch through bodywork can help you reconnect with your body and stimulate the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers and mood elevators.

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Again, it is understandably tempting to withdraw when you’re stricken with grief. But taking care of your physical, emotional and spiritual needs is critical for transmuting a painful experience into something you can bear to carry—and maybe even grow from. 

You also need to practice self-compassion—treat yourself with kindness and understanding, rather than judging yourself for feeling sad or struggling to move on “quickly enough.”

in this episode I’ll share:

  • How to better prepare yourself for inevitable grief 
  • The need to regulate your nervous system and get back into your body 
  • Ways grief can help us show up for others
  • Why it’s important to recognize that the golden years are now
  • How healing our emotional ruptures can begin to end generational trauma

Loss is the roughest part of life, but it can also be a powerful catalyst for healing and self-growth.

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weekly card reading

The moment I realign with love, clear direction is presented to me.

The moment I realign with love, clear direction is presented to me.

Fear is the energy of stagnation—it holds us in place because we’re too scared to move forward, afraid of failure or unsure of what awaits us in the future. Love energy is the opposite—it has movement and momentum and propels us to see more clearly what steps we’re meant to take … and allows us to take them with faith. This week, whatever situations you find yourself in, use your power to choose love.

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free meditation for connecting with your spirit guides

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  • Kris Carr is a multiple New York Times-bestselling author, wellness activist and cancer thriver. She’s been called a “force of nature” by O magazine and was named a “new role model” by the New York Times. Kris is also a member of Oprah’s SuperSoul100, a group of the most influential thought leaders today. Other media appearances include Good Morning America, the Today Show, and the Oprah Winfrey Show. She and her work have been featured in Glamour, Prevention, Scientific American, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal and other national publications. Kris has helped millions of people take charge of their health and live like they mean it through her award-winning blog, books, online courses and membership communities. You can learn more about Kris and her work at kriscarr.com.
disclaimer

This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #163 Sep 18, 2023 emotional wellbeing

healing through grief: big talk with kris carr

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The following podcast is a Dear Media production.

GABBY: Hi there, Gabby here. This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I'm not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from a psychological or medical condition, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

Big day, guys. Listen up, my friends. Oh, I have such a special message for you today. The Gabby Coaching app is here. Yes, my friends, we start the conversation here on Dear Gabby and we carry it out with deep dive coaching inside the Gabby Coaching app. And I'm going to tell you, my friends, it is out in the world.

This is the real deal. My app is officially here, the Gabby Coaching app. There's early member pricing. And these rates are going to go up. So if you are like, yeah, maybe I want Gabby to be my coach in my pocket. Yes. Maybe I want 200 of Gabby's best meditations and manifesting practices. And I want access to her quarterly challenges and journal prompts.

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Go to deargabby.com/app. You can try the seven-day free trial.

When you try it now, that locks you in for the early member pricing. It's gonna go up, so don't mess around. And when you're in the app and you have access to it, you get all of my challenges, like my manifesting challenge that's coming up, and my relationship challenge, and all the challenges throughout the year are yours.

So, if you're feeling anxious, if you can't sleep, if you need a miracle, if you want to manifest your dreams, if you are just struggling with any area of your life, I can help you. It's going to be like having me on speed dial. So if you want to go check out the Google play or the app store, search for the Gabby coaching app.

Go to your 7-day free trial and lock in the exclusive member pricing. You can also go to deargabby.com/app. People, this is major news. I'm really excited to share it with you.

Hey there. Welcome to Dear Gabby. I'm your host, Gabby Bernstein, and if you landed here, it is absolutely no accident. It means that you're ready to feel good and manifest a life beyond your wildest dreams. Let's get started.

GABBY: Welcome back, my friends. This is a really deeply important episode of Dear Gabby. I get to sit down with one of my best friends, someone who I have loved for many, many years. She's a sister, she's a mentor, she's a friend. We are really, we go deep. My friend, Kris Carr.

And you may know Kris. She is an author, a documentary filmmaker. She was called a force of nature by O Magazine. She has been thriving in her life. with a stage four cancer diagnosis, which she's lived with for 20 years. She is a champion for those going through their cancer journey. And for really anyone who's struggling with any form of grief.

She is one of my heroes, one of my besties. And today on the episode, she's sharing her journey of grief and the loss of her father and how she beautifully, spiritually and elegantly moved through the journey of grief. This is an episode you absolutely must listen to. Do not miss this. Listen all the way through. Take in every word. Kris is our guide today.

Enjoy the show.

GABBY: This is a big moment for me, for you, for the world. I'm sitting here recording with one of my dearest friends. Truly. You're in like the top eight. You're like top eight, Kris.

KRIS: That's huge. You're, you're in my top five.

GABBY: Maybe you're in my top five, too. I mean, I'm telling you, like, we're top freaking five.

This is one of my really, really, really long -ime friends. What, have we been friends for like 15 years or something crazy like this?

KRIS: Actually, at least.

GABBY: At least, right? Yeah. At least 15. Oh, my God. And, Kris, you are a sister. You are, my spiritual running buddy, you are a fellow author. We're both published by Hay House, and so we have had many a stage that we have shared.

And it's just such a gift to have friends, close friends, like intimate friends, that you also share the same career path because we just can get into it. We support each other. It's a big deal for me. It really is.

KRIS: Same.

GABBY: And I love you, and you are just an extremely talented woman, and if you've been living under a rock and you don't know who Kris is, she has pioneered a movement in the world of thriving, thriving with cancer and other issues that arise in our lives.

It's kind of crazy because you take on the most difficult topics, but they're also the topics that have been gifted to you by God so that you can be the powerful transformer of these stories and that we all show up for.

And now you've taken it on grief. And I really love what God did with you. God was like, let's take this really happy, bubbly, brilliant, gorgeous human and throw her some obstacles that she can survive and then thrive and then give her a chance to be the voice for it.

And so thank you for raising your hand and saying, yes, I'll take on the assignment. And even the choice that you made to come into this body at this time in this way. To take on these huge assignments. I'm going to cry. It's so good for me to just say this to you and from helping people through their cancer journey to helping people change their lives through diet and through mental health and now through guiding us through grief.

And I'm just so proud of you. So proud to be your friend. So cool.

KRIS: Thank you for that, thank you, honey. Thank you. Yeah, so good to be with you. We have been on the tiniest stages at the beginning of our career, at the beginning of our friendship in the back of health food stores to the biggest stages on the planet.

And I have to say, I don't think I would have the courage to do this kind of work. If I didn't have a friend like you who also had the courage to do your work. So the thanks goes right back to you.

GABBY: Yeah. It's big. It's really big and it's a lifelong friendship and I'm so excited. So now that we've gushed about each other for the last five minutes, major, what we're here to talk about today is something humongous.

So how many years has it been since you wrote your last book?

KRIS: Seven years. It was a gap. It was a big gap, Gabs.

GABBY: Yeah. You were putting out a book a year for a while.

KRIS: I was.

GABBY: And then you were like, let me take a break. And we're here now today talking about your new book that has been brewing for seven years, another gift from God, difficult experiences that have been transformed into greatness.

And this is called I'm Not a Mourning Person and Mourning, meaning M O U R N I N G. It's just, it's a brilliant title. It's a brilliant book, and I'm so excited to dive into it. And the book really began when your journey of your own personal grief and through a experience of your father being diagnosed with cancer and also all that that brings up inside of you as a woman who lives with stage four cancer and thrives with stage four cancer.

And so I just would like to begin this conversation with the why. Why did this book come through you and how has it transformed your experience of grief?

KRIS: That's a beautiful question. You know, I love that you started by asking me how long it has been since I've written a book, because I was feeling that pressure. And I think in our industry, there's this belief sometimes that we get that gets validated and reinforced by publishers. Like if you're not churning out content and books all the time that you'll be forgotten or you'll become irrelevant and all these types of things.

And there was a part of me that felt like, gosh, I really have to put another book out there, but the timing wasn't right. And I really didn't know what I wanted to write about. I knew that I wanted to move more into personal development because even as my with my own journey as a cancer thriver, somebody who lives with cancer, I started my journey really addressing what I was eating and how I was caring for myself with an anti-inflammatory plant-based diet and lifestyle and then teaching other people about that.

And then, you know, 10 years in, 20 years in, it became so clear to me that that's just only one piece of the puzzle. It's also about really addressing and befriending or getting familiar with what's eating you.

GABBY: Oh my. I just got full body chills. Yes. Mm hmm.

KRIS: And so I knew that that was the direction I was going to start to go in and then I'm approaching my 20 year anniversary of living with stage 4 cancer, I was originally given 10 years to live.

So, I'm approaching the 20 year mark. We're in the middle of a, well, my dad is newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that quickly becomes stage 4. My business is going through a rough time, partly because I decided to intentionally step away from certain things, so that I could be more present for the time that I had with him.

But there was other issues. It's like when one thing happens, like when the rug gets pulled out from under us, sometimes I find in my own life, there's a domino effect of things that weren't working that are coming up. Like here's the time. Let's go. And then we're in the middle of a global pandemic. And so, I thought, even though there was a part of me that felt like I had to write a very motivational, aspirational book, I can't do that.

And in the beginning, I thought there's no way that this topic is motivational. There's no way this is aspirational. This is a deep book. This is a difficult topic. Publishers would say to me, that's a hard one to sell. And on the other end of this experience. Because this was the only book that I could write because there's no way that I could move through that time without doing this deep work.

I realized which is something I so appreciate especially about your last book Gabby is that this work sets you up for more of the life that you want to create.

GABBY: 100 percent.

KRIS: More of the love you want to attract and more of the healing so many of us so want to experience, so it was a radical shift for me and I think that this book grew me up. It grew me deeper.

I remember setting an intention for the book and that was to help normalize the conversation around grief and loss. So that was for the reader. And then the intention for me was to not only grow, grow deeper, but also flex more of my writing muscles.

GABBY: Yes. And you did, you know, oh my God, didn't I, I texted you.

I texted Kris. Well, first and foremost, this is absolutely a motivational, aspirational book without a shadow of a doubt. The second thing I want to echo about what you just said is that when we do the deeper work, that is when we become super attractors. So to think, oh, I don't want to do that grief work, or I don't want to show up for the traumas.

That's a mistake. It's the scary stuff, it's the tough stuff, but I, I, I even said, and I'll say this for you too, Happy Days is my greatest manifesting book. This is your greatest spiritual book and manifesting book because when we heal, we reemerge as a new vibration. We come out as a new human and new energy.

KRIS: And I love that you shared that. I just want to hop on that. I, I think I intellectually understood what you were saying before reading this book, but now I actually feel it at a cellular level. Do you know what I mean? I understood how to teach the principles of what you just talked about, but I hadn't fully lived it.

GABBY: Yep. And we have to live it to write it, and oftentimes we're living it while we're writing it, which was the case for you. Sure as hell was. But to, back to the writing, I just want to acknowledge the writing.

I'm in my bedroom looking at, reading the galley, and I, within the first three pages of this book, I'm like.

This is the best memoir I've ever read. I mean, it's not even a memoir, it's like a guidebook, but I'm like, this is the best storytelling, the most beautiful writing. Your voice is really strong in your writing and it always has been. But seven years later, it's really grounded and it's really, it's beautiful.

It's not just funny, fun, and direct and, you know, you, it's beautiful and it's mature. And I really weighed in on the cover of this book, guys. I forced her to do it. I pretty much am the reason that this is the cover of the book.

KRIS: 100%.

GABBY: I am, right? Like, I'm taking full credit. And the cover really defines that gravitas and that strength and power that's coming through this.

This is a very mature piece of work that I'm really proud to share with everybody.

[AD BREAK]

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[END AD BREAK]

GABBY: All right, Kris. So the book's out tomorrow as we carry on talking about this book. I want everybody to pull up your Amazon account and order the book immediately. It'll be to your house in the next few days. It's here. And there's so much that comes up in this book about life lessons and experiences that you had even in your father's final days.

And I want to just know which, which really meant the most to you. If there is anything that you want to personally share, there's such incredible stories in here about the journey that you went on with your father and the grief journey.

So, these lessons and stories, is there something in particular that you can share with us that really might leave everybody with an open heart and a, and a greater understanding of what they can expect here?

KRIS: Oh yeah, absolutely. And so, taking a big step back, the subtitle is Braving Loss and Grief and the Big Messy Emotions that Happen When Life Falls Apart. And like or not, none of us are immune from what I call ruptures. It's that moment where life changes. It's the moment where you are diagnosed. It's the moment that you lose your job.

It's the moment your partner says, I'm leaving you. It's the miscarriage. It's the things that happen in our life that create these ruptures. And sometimes those ruptures are completely unexpected. And they take us out and we think maybe we will never survive this. And what I have come to understand is that it's really about cultivating the tools and some of the skills needed to surf those storms.

Because we, these storms are so big in magnitude and maybe for the first time you've never experienced something like that. And Gabs for me. I'll tell you how the book is structured, but I'd say the biggest message that I want to leave people with is that we can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole.

Our emotions are information. And for me, grief was the one feeling I ran from my entire life. I ran from it long before I was diagnosed. I ran from it. Due to my own traumas in history, especially around my adoption and not knowing my biological father and then meeting my biological father later in life and that relationship falling apart yet again, right?

And so, this is the place I just wouldn't touch. And I love how you opened this interview because I realized that there was such fertile ground in this place. It's almost as if I feel like grief is a master healer because one of the wonderful things that my therapist said to me and it's a section of the book, she says when the grief train pulls into the station it brings all the cars.

GABBY: Yeah, yeah.

KRIS: It brings the past griefs that we think we've dealt with and that we're over or the ones that were so terrified of even touching because we think will be taken out; it brings anger, it brings jealousy.

It brings shame. It brings all these big messy emotions and from my own perspective I think it's because we spend so much of our time pushing those things down that when we're willing to feel even a little bit of discomfort, I feel like those other emotions are like little kids inside of you that are basically like, Oh my gosh, she's being brave! Let's go!

GABBY: Yeah. Yeah.

KRIS: And so no wonder it can feel very overwhelming. But I love how you talk about through all of your work with internal family systems, you talk about how there's no bad parts. And what I would say is there's no bad feelings. And that is the, probably the biggest thing that I've learned is we can't amputate these emotions, but that there's so much healing available to us when we're willing to feel them, especially the difficult ones.

And going back to the book, it's, so it starts with rupture, which is my dad's diagnosis and approaching my 20 year cancerversary and some of the stuff that's coming up that I don't want to deal with. And then each chapter in the book goes through maybe a different emotion or a different experience or a different situation that you may find yourself in when the rug has been pulled out from under you.

And in this case, the story that we're following, even though the teachings apply to some of the other scenarios in life, the story that we're following is the loss of a loved one. And just to set that up, I'd say towards the end of the book is when I tart to weave in well throughout the book. I weave in some of my dad's teachings and life lessons.

And you and I have been graced with the opportunity, we've spoke on so many big stages with titans of transformation and for me my dad is and always will be my mentor. He's my number one mentor. And I think one of the things that he said that I always want to bring up in interviews is as his time was coming to an end, he was talking about how important it is for us to make our golden years now.

Right. So to answer your question, I think we have this opportunity and we think, oh, later in the life when I get that, when I do this, when I check this off, when I accomplish this thing, when I retire, then I'll really enjoy my golden years. And, and that's certainly the path that he was on. And then when he was diagnosed and he knew that his life was coming to an end, it was amazing to see him make those golden years now.

Now, they were only four years, but boy, did he make the most of them, including healing the parts of himself, releasing the anxiety, dealing with the trauma. And I think the greatest thing that he showed me was that he set this intention to get to know himself more before he died. And Gabby, that's exactly what he did.

And it was beautiful to watch.

GABBY: I mean, make the golden years now. I'm going to really take that in personally right now. I also really appreciated that you started the book with ruptures because one, this book was a rupture, a, one of many ruptures in your life. This was a rupture that was huge for you.

But it allows the reader to recognize that it doesn't have to, it can be any type of rupture. What you said so beautifully was that when these ruptures occur, it awakens the parts within us. And it triggers them at times, and activates them, or gives courage to one, and then that opens up and wakes up all the other protection mechanisms and parts of us that are children.

And so, it's, one rupture can lead to a healing of a rupture that was either, never dealt with or never even looked at, and that's very much what happened to you through this journey, through this healing journey with your father, you healed your, I believe you truly had a transformational healing with your biological father.

KRIS: Yeah, I would agree with you on that. And it took all of the intention to actually allow that to happen. So it was guided by my intention first and foremost.

And I want to go back to rupture for a second because throughout the book, I really do try my best to weave in tips and practical things for people to hold on to as we're talking about these very big concepts that can be overwhelming and certainly when it comes to rupture, just one thing that I shared in this chapter, I think oftentimes we can get caught in why did this happen to me?

And why, why, why? I know in the early days of my diagnosis, it was like, why did this happen to me? Was it something that I did? Was it the food that I ate? Was it because I sent a adult sex catalog to the school principal because I was the wise guy? Like, why did this happen to me? And sometimes we can have an answer to that question.

Sometimes that's a valuable question to answer, but what I talk about in this chapter is at some point, that question keeps us stuck in the unchangeable past. And the better question to ask is what can I do now? What can I do to support my body? What can I do to support my mental health? What can I do to support my spirit?

And if you are listening to this interview and you're in that place of rupture, or maybe feeling stuck, even that simple shift of moving from why to what can create more flow in your life.

GABBY: Absolutely. And when you move from the why to what through your guidance in this book, my belief is that you may unveil deeper wounds that need to be healed.

And so I always say, like, if you don't show up for what’s up, it's going to keep showing up. And so ruptures is like hitting a bottom is kind of another way of putting it in 12 step language, you know, deciding you're going to get sober, having a, a diagnosis or a family member. These really difficult moments in our life are actually the moments that we're reborn.

And so we can really redefine how we want to do it. What I think is so excellent about this book is that, yes, through the storytelling, through the beautiful language, through your humor, you've woven in these extraordinary lessons so that we can have that level of resilience, and I don't want to say purpose in the pain, but healing from that pain.

That we can experience healing from that pain. And major. It's major.

KRIS: I so appreciate that. You know, going back to the intention that I set for myself and just talking a little bit more about the tone of the book, I needed it to be a very creative project for me. I needed it to have a lot of fire, a lot of heat, a lot of humor, a lot of, Oh my gosh, are you really going to say that?

Or a lot of delighting myself because it was hard. And even with Crazy, Sexy Cancer Tips, which was my first book, it was like, how are you going to approach this differently? And I, in my own way, you know, set that intention for this book, like how are you going to approach grief differently? Right? There's many common themes.

They're all universal. So I knew that how I was going to handle this differently was to bring my full creative power and creative inspiration to this. I love writers. I love the process of writing. I love creatives. I think there's so much that can happen through the creative process, meaning like so much healing that can happen.

It's how we get to know ourselves more. It's how we get to fully embody ourselves, or to what my dad was doing, become more ourselves. And there's nothing, I think, just from my perspective, that will help you do that, like the blank page and then giving yourself full permission to unleash and, and that's what made it fun.

And then hopefully that's also what makes this book something that people really enjoy reading.

GABBY: I just had a book idea for you.

KRIS: I'm ready.

GABBY: I feel like you need to write a book about, or maybe not need, but it could be cool. The writing process, healing grief through the writing process. I remember years ago we were launching courses and we were giving talks and you're like, I do all these other things, but really I'm a writer.

And so there's something in you writing a book about writing for grief.

KRIS: I love you. I actually have been thinking about doing more of like a retreat or a workshop.

GABBY: Yeah. Oh yeah. I want to come to that. Oh yeah. Girlfriend. Hmm. Hmm. Bring it in. Bring it in. That is a beautiful idea. So there's something else that you bring up in the book that is something I'm very passionate about as my grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, I have trauma in my lineage.

And you talk about the epigenetics of trauma and Rachel Yehuda and the work around what happens when carry the traumas of our parents and our ancestors. And one of the most interesting and fascinating things I found in the book is that your trauma with your biological father is the same trauma that he had?

KRIS: Yes.

GABBY: Abandonment. It's just, it's like, mind blowing to me, you know, how this stuff is passed on, right? And so, maybe we could speak about that just for a minute in terms of what happens in our body and our cells and our nervous system even before we're born.

KRIS: Yeah. So, you know, I think a big part of the healing with my biological father. And so just for the people who are listening, one of the stories that I talk about, there's stories that are woven throughout the book was my biological father leaving when I was conceived, meeting my biological father when I was 18, never really having the kind of relationship that I wanted to have with him writing my first book and there's something I wrote in the book that basically, he was very upset about, and then he leaves again and then he passes, right? So there's that father figure in my life and that father figure is around mystery and abandonment and for me, lack of self worth, right?

So all of the stories that I told myself, like if I was good enough, he would have stayed. If I was good enough, he would have been here and we wouldn't have struggled so much and all of the things that we do when we're traumatized. Yeah. And then enter my, as I call Ken, my chosen father. So my chosen father versus my biological father.

My chosen father was a big part. He was a big part and still continues to be a big part of healing that wound. But what's interesting from what you just talked about, Gabby, and this is what I think is such an opportunity for each and every one of us is when we talk about generational trauma, and I am by no means an expert, I just have my own experience, which is, I met my biological father at 18, he met his biological father at 16.

GABBY: Yeah.

KRIS: And I didn't know anything about him. He didn't know much about his own. It's just something that I feel like was passed down. So these behaviors were passed down. That's the epigenetic quality of it, right?

These behaviors that are passed down and that we each and every one of us who do this work, we have the opportunity to not only make a transformation for ourselves, but we make a transformation way down the line for the people we don't even know who are going to come as a result of us, right?

And so that's why, another reason it's so powerful, like for me it stops with me. And I don't even have children and yet that imprint of neglect, of abandonment, of lack of self worth stops with me.

GABBY: Mm hmm. That's right. You've ended the cycle.

KRIS: Yeah.

GABBY: You've ended the cycle. That is such a huge, I think for anyone that's doing this work, just recognizing the fact that you could end the cycle of generational trauma. I mean, come on now.

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KRIS: One of the things that I found so fascinating when I was researching this and that's the other thing that's fun about the creative process is like, okay, these are my stories. These are my experiences. This is my belief. Now I get to research and research.

GABBY: The research is so good with a trauma in particular because it's so… you get nerdy about it.

KRIS: You do get nerdy. And what, but this one quote that really had an impact on me was. we spend our lives orbiting basically, and it's, I'm not going to get it exactly, but we orbit around the same themes and with each passing orbit, we reach a new layer of meaning. And what I have found in this process is that orbiting is the mechanism of our healing.

So it's never done, but each time we can come around and say, Oh, hello, I know you, this is what my brain does. This is what my body does.

GABBY: Yeah.

KRIS: And now I have some tools that I can use to pass through this cycle.

GABBY: New layer of experience of it as well, because it's like, there that is again, and now I'm not afraid of it.

Or there that is again, and now I can be grateful that it's being revealed or whatever that may be as we continue on the journey. And grief is not a sexy topic, even though I love you and your crazy sexy cancer tips, right? Your whole brand is crazy sexy, right? And so even this book. You're bringing in the brand of we can have humor here.

We can be light about this. This can be a beautiful experience. This doesn't have to be hard. And what I think that's gonna happen from this book is you're redefining the stigmas around grief and because you've brought your personality and your lightheartedness and your sort of jovial energy and storytelling into this book, it just softens it. And even just through your tone what you're offering the reader is a shame shifter, right?

Because it's like, oh wait, I can face this and I can still have fun along the way. Thank you, Kris. That's nice.

KRIS: Yeah, thank you for that reflection. The thing about this is I feel like there's something I talked about in the end of the book called ‘both and.’ So I can have stage four cancer and be healthy—both and. I can be a life loving human and have a lot of anxiety—both and. I can be grateful and grieving.

And one of the things that is also true is I can be in grief or I can have difficult conversations or talk about very deep topics that may or may not be sexy to a lot of people and bring an enormous amount of joy to that process.

And so the more we're working with the medicine of joy in our lives, especially through difficult times. I think the easier it is for us to survive those storms. And so it's almost like the harder time you're going through, I would say the prescription is the more joy we need to prioritize.

GABBY: Yes. Amen. Amen.

KRIS: Right. I know you talk about that a lot when it comes to fun. And I know for me that if I didn't bring joy into the creative process and also joy into the experience of being with my dad through from the diagnosis through it to the very end and beyond, then I don't know if I would have had the fortitude to really show up the way I wanted to show up for him and for myself and for my mother.

GABBY: Yeah. And you feel a connection and completion. in that commitment and time and fun, right? So it's while his body has taken a different form, you really lived in those golden years with him in those four years. And what a beautiful thing to look back and say, wow, we did that and now we're doing it in a different way.

Now we have a spiritual relationship. I want to talk about the spiritual relationship, but before that, as we wrap up, I want to hear a little bit about the pillars of wellness that you write about in the book. And if you can just share a little bit about that, because I think that it's a different perspective that we need to have.

KRIS: Yeah, absolutely. So there's a chapter that's called self-care in the storm, and so many people out there listening are probably caregivers in some way, shape, or form. So again, this book is about. Here are the different things that you may or may not experience. There's a chapter on rage, Gabby. I had no idea how much was in me until a few things happened.

And then I candidly, vulnerably, fearfully write about those things. And then exploring, okay, what is anger? What is it here to teach me? And all of that. And so, as we round out, we talk about self-care. And so going back to caregivers, this idea is we've heard a million times where you have to put your mask on first. La la la.

When I talk about the pillars, and this is what I teach in my wellness community, I think that couldn't be more important than when we're really going through this and the pillars are being mindful about what you're eating, drinking, thinking, and how you're resting and renewing. So we're just really handling our mental and physical wellbeing.

And specifically for caregivers, we are the ones who are almost the canaries in the coal mine. Sometimes we're the ones who have a really hard time with people pleasing, with boundaries, with even feeling guilty about giving ourselves a glass of water. I'm not talking about really big things. This is not time for a total makeover.

You're not going to hack anything. This is literally about saying, I need to fill my well because so much is required of me right now so much is required of me, and if I don't take care of myself, I cannot show up for that other person. But beyond that, if I don't take care of myself, it's almost like a piece of me dies.

A piece of me starts to fall apart. A piece of me gets sick, a piece of me takes that hit, and it has such a big impact. And it's not to frighten people, and it's not to make anybody feel guilty. But it's the truth. And so no matter what happens, when things get tough, that's when you really have to lean into your self-care practices.

And, but to make this something that doesn't feel overwhelming, I have found that even like a thimble size amount of self-care starts to fill that well. It's those little tiny steps that we take on the regular. So if it's saying I might not be able to eat well right now, but I, damn it, I'm going to prioritize sleep.

I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulder and it's really hard for me, but damn it. I'm going to reach out and ask for help because this is not something I can take on a hundred percent and survive. Right. It's, it's saying I don't have an appetite. There's no way I could eat right now, or I have a ravenous appetite.

Right. What am I going to eat right now? And saying, I need vegetables. What's the easiest thing to do? I'm going to make a smoothie. Be done with it. It's just like, I have to get some real nourishment in my body right now because I have very important decisions to make and I need my brain firing.

GABBY: Yeah. And it's a moment of getting back in your body, because when you're in that caretaker place, you're in a fight flight response, you're out of your body, and look, it's a healthy response. It's a great distraction in a period of time, right? Whether you're like, I'm in work mode, I'm going to feel everything mode or I'm in dissociation mode.

Thank you to that part for protecting us in those moments. But the moments that you do those self-care practices, the molecule of self-care, you get back in your body, you regulate your nervous system. And so, it's just beautiful that you have woven in your own wellness practices that you've used and recommended for decades now, inside of this process, because it's not just one without the other.

KRIS: I love that you shared that. I wrote one thing in the book, it's basically we can't always solve the problems of the mind with the mind. We have to get into the body.

GABBY: That's right, baby. That's right. As we wrap up, I want to hear what's your spiritual relationship with dad now, Ken.

KRIS: It's beautiful. I, I have to say that there's a part of this book that I think I really wanted to be true to me, which is I'd say at the beginning of this book, I was a lot more agnostic and there's a chapter in the book called Awkward Times, Awkward People. And there's a lot of the things that we hear when we're going through a difficult time that may not be useful.

We say when we're going through a difficult time or someone else is going through a difficult time that may not be useful.

And it's because we are grief and loss and big, messy emotions, illiterate. Right? It's no shame on us. It's literally like, these are not the things I learned algebra. I don't know if I need algebra, but I kind of need this stuff. Right? And so at the start of this experience, I was definitely like, I'm not so sure about this.

And I, you know, I've gone in and out. I've got a very fickle, fluid, feral faith. And I'm like, if there's more, more is totally cool with me. And I'm very excited about the mystery, but I don't have very firm beliefs about what that mystery is. And what I learned in this process about writing about grief is there's almost like a shame that comes with that because a lot of the grief literature just assumes that you've got that on the lockdown.

And anyway, I love that I'm hearing a little kitty in the background.

GABBY: I was actually just going to say that I was going to kick her out, but then I was like, of course. While I'm recording, the corner of the door is open and the cat comes to Kris because you're a fur mama and you suck them in. You bring the cats.

KRIS: I, I'm a, I'm a whisperer.

GABBY: She's just like purring at my feet right now, so we'll let her keep talking to us.

KRIS: So when there was some moments that happened as my dad was passing that, I just was like, Oh my gosh, I don't know if I've ever, if this is what God is, I'm in a hundred percent. I've never seen a look on somebody's face.

I've never seen the kind of transition that I saw with him literally as he's transitioning out of his body, there's just massive smile on his face as if, and these are my assumptions. Yeah, this is my story. He's being greeted. And, and since that time I have seen and experienced so many beautiful signs.

And what I realize is, is that we have a choice and my, I choose comfort and I choose to believe and trust in the ever-present loving energy of the universe and that we are all connected and that he and I are still connected in a different form.

And I talk about making your life a treasure hunt. So as somebody who might have been closed off to signs right after he passed, so it was my 20 year cancerversary.

He died on February 11th. My 20 year cancerversary was on Valentine's Day, February 14th. My mother and I, I said, Hey, do you want to go for a walk on the beach? That morning, Brian, my husband got me red roses and he was like, I don't know. Should I get your mom red roses? Is that weird? Your dad always got her red roses.

I don't know what to do. I feel so uncomfortable. And I said, and if you feel this bad, these are not yours to give. You're okay. And so we're walking and I'm thinking about him and I'm literally like, Dad, I need a sign. I miss you. It's fresh. Like, I'm not okay with this. And as we're walking farther and farther out where there's nobody on the beach, there's these two red roses standing at attention on the beach.

GABBY: I can’t handle that.

KRIS: Two red roses. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And I say to my mom, I'm like, mom, mom, mom, mom. And so then, it's amazing. We're standing over them and like my heart is swelling and thawing and I'm like feeling it all. And then we walk back to the car, Gab, and I look up, I see this like a little apartment complex where our car is parked.

And I see this man getting into his lazy boy chair and he's about to start watching a movie on his big screen television. And the title card comes on and it says surviving death.

GABBY: Wow. Wow. Okay.

KRIS: And so I write about in the book how many signs I started to get as I started to open to those signs, ask for those signs, stay connected to the signs and the synchronicity that is just you write about so beautifully.

But for me, I was a little bit new to that conversation, but it didn't matter. It didn't matter that I wasn't fully on board. It didn't matter that I was a newbie to it, even though, like, I'm not, because we know every medium on the planet.

GABBY: You're clearly, you're really not a newbie to it, but, but like, a newbie to the, believing and feeling.

KRIS: Believing. Like a deep sense of belief. Right. And then it was just like, ugh, I got it.

GABBY: You win, dad. Yeah. You win.

KRIS: You win. And I'm so glad you did.

GABBY: I'm so glad he did too. I'm so glad that, that not only was this a healing opportunity in every form, but it's transforming you so you can transform others and I just want to one last time acknowledge you for the bravery and the courage that you have made not only in this lifetime, but even the choice to choose this life and to say, Yeah, I'm going to raise my hand.

I'm going to show up for that so I can give that. And through giving that, heal yourself. And I'm just, ah, it's just, this is an epic book for people. This is a must read. I'm Not a Mourning Person - Braving loss, grief, and the big, messy emotions that happen when life falls apart. I can't recommend it enough.

I am so proud to be your friend and I'm so proud to, I love when people are like, have you read Kris Carr? I'm like, oh yeah, she's like one of my best friends.

KRIS: Same.

GABBY: So this is my big brag. I'm going big for this book. I want everyone out there to get this for yourself, get this for a friend, get this for a loved one, drop it on somebody's nightstand, leave it at someone's door that you think might need it, just drop it somewhere.

That, to me, is how we carry the message and how we support each other. I'm proud of you. I'm really proud of you.

KRIS: I love you. I'm so thankful for this time with you. It's very special to me.

GABBY: Yeah, and for some reason I just, you know, I'm learning Spanish, and for some reason I just heard the word la ala, and la ala is the wings.

And I... I don't know why that came through, so just, just let it be, la ala.

KRIS: I receive.

GABBY: So, everyone listening, whether you're experiencing grief in this moment, or you have unresolved grief from the past, this is your book. And I also cannot emphasize enough how important it is to read a book like this, because it also prepares us for grief.

So it's like a life lesson that we have to show up for at some point when we're ready. I love you. Thank you.

KRIS: Thank you, baby.

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