EP#41- Don't Sweat The Small Stuff: On Grief and Loss with Kristine Carlson, NY Times Bestselling Author

(gentle music) The one thing you have to choose, a missed difficult circumstances that present change, is you have to say I am not going to live at the affect of this circumstance. I'm going to do what I can to move forward in a positive way or even just move forward. I'm not gonna get stuck in this place of O, or me this happened to my life. Welcome back to another episode of Everyday in Dorfens. This week I have a very special guest. She has such an incredible story to share. Christine suffered the very traumatic loss of her husband about 15 years ago. And in this episode, we talk all about what that experience was like, how she was able to make peace with the trauma that happened to her and what it's like going through really tough changes in life. Christine is also a New York Times best-selling author and renowned speaker recognized worldwide for the global success of the don't sweat the small stuff book series that she co-authored with her late husband, Dr. Richard Carlson. Her latest book, Heartbroken Open, is a life-changing memoir based upon the true events, the trauma that she suffered when her late husband passed, and it's now becoming a lifetime television biopic, starring Heather Locklear, premiering on the network on October 16th. You guys will definitely have to check it out, definitely pick up a copy of her book as well. She is such an inspiration and I had such a wonderful time having her on the podcast. Before we get into it, I have a brief message from my sponsor, Inker. Hi, Christine, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. It's wonderful having you here. Hi, Stella. It's great to be here with you. Congratulations, first of all, on your recent book, Heartbroken Open, and a super congratulations to having this book now become adapted into a lifetime movie. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's quite a shocker. When you realize that Hollywood and TV and all that, it's kind of a very fickle medium, where you just kind of think, you sell the rights and you think, oh, this is never going to happen. And then I kept saying, oh my gosh, well, we're getting closer. We're getting closer. I worked with the writer, the screenwriter, Shannon Coliri, who's a wonderful writer for a couple of years, actually, on the screenplay. And then we kept kind of saying, oh, we're getting closer. We're making it through the ranks. Maybe this is going to happen. And then finally, they went into production. And I'm like, wow, this is really going to happen. I better tell my daughters. You don't want to set any expectations. Not that they-- I can't say my daughters are super-- they're kind of on the fence about it, understandably. It's like they're like, well, mom, it was the worst year of our lives. Why would we want everyone to watch a movie about that? Right. It's hard to publicize those things, for sure. It's hard to publicize those things. But I think they're excited now. And I think they think it's pretty cool in a lot of ways. So with your story, there's so much that people can learn from. And even though it may feel uncomfortable at first, you're painful to, in a way, maybe relive that experience. You're still doing so much positive work. People can really take away such a big learning experience from hearing your story. And from your life experience, suffering grief and trauma and loss, you have a lot to share. And I'd love to start off by talking a little bit about how your life story ultimately has now become-- and is becoming a lifetime movie. Yeah, so my life story, to me, doesn't seem that unusual or different. But there are some elements of it that are quite unusual. One is that Richard and I-- we have a really incredible love story. Richard Carlson is the author of Don'ts What the Small Stuff. And he and I were college suite hearts and got married right out of college. And I think I fell in love with him the first two hours I ever met him. I knew I would marry him. That's a very special experience. It really was. Maybe in my generation, there's not a lot of college suite hearts. It feels not as popular. But I guess it just doesn't happen as much as it used to. So that's such a beautiful experience. Well, and I didn't think that it would ever happen to me that way either, because I had this very strong idea of this man that I wanted to marry. And he was a much more mature man than most college men that were in their 20s. I saw him as a very mature individual. But when I met Richard, Richard was always like 20, going on 40 in all the good ways. Not like he was boring at 20. He really wasn't. He was very energetic always. But it was just that he was very mature, a very old soul. And when I met him, I just knew because he just made me feel so much myself. I was 18 years old. He was 20 and I'd never felt so grounded in myself before as when I met him. So I recognized that. And then our love just really just-- we were so on the same page from the very beginning. It was just like, we just were like, wow. This is so crazy. We feel like we have known each other forever. It was so comfortable. It was just high energy. It's everything loves. It was everything that love should be. And then it grew into just an amazing partnership and an amazing soul connection. I say, Richard was likely my twin flame. Just very much-- we were very much similar but different. But we shared very much the same values of life. And just a real compatibility, high, high level compatibility. We're very, very blessed in our marriage. And we used to say we had a lot of issues but not with each other. [LAUGHS] Probably the best situation you could ask for as long as happy marriage, like happy relationship, to think that you had such a strong relationship and such a loving and special relationship and then to have this traumatic event happen in your life in 2006 when Richard suffered a pulmonary embolism and passed away. I can't imagine what that year and the following few years after that and how you've been able to continue your life and produce a meaningful life without your partner. That's a really, really hard thing to experience. And if you could talk a little bit more about how that experience shaped your book and how everything's kind of unfolded from there. Yeah, so one of the really unique things about Richard and I was that we had really gone on a journey of a spiritual journey very young together. Right during college, we both at Pepperdine University, we really started on a very deep dive personal growth spiritual quest together. And while we were getting our education in political science, business, and marketing, and business, we were really getting a different kind of education. And we're very blessed that his dad was willing to fund that. We used to laugh because I think he just thought the more therapy, the better. So we kind of just decided to take that and run with it and being young and being in Southern California, we had access to every kind of modality of healing that ever was. And we did all of that. [LAUGHTER] We're both the eastern types of spiritual practices of healing all of that. Yeah, like, like, flotation tanks. I mean, we did-- this was like 30 years ago. So you know, this was very progressive. We did this thing called the grand potentializer. We did flotation tanks. We did rebirthing. We did riky and breath work. We did hallowed tropic breath work. Our unique part of our journey kind of led us on this very deep spiritual work. We started meditating at a very young age. And then Richard became like our role for which is a bodywork therapy. And he started out his career that way. And really just used that as a stepping stool to getting as masters in PhD in psychology. It was like what he did to pay the bills while he was still getting his education. But during that time, we studied a form of psychology together, which was called psychology of mind. And that was a real pivot for us, because it gave Richard kind of like a forum to work with that he really resonated with deep and his heart and soul about happiness. And he was one of the very first authors to ever talk about happiness in his book, You Can Be Happy No Matter What. And I tell you all this, because we were really on the same wavelength. And we were in this kind of in this game of life together, on this soul searching level together. And we had our children about four years into our marriage. And Richard was starting to really make it as an author. But it took 10 years and 10 books. So it wasn't like this overnight success story. But he finally did and hit a cord around the world with Don'ts What the Small Stuff. And that book became a really internationally recognized bestseller sitting on the number one spot in the New York Times for 100 weeks consecutively. So you guys, listening might be young listeners. And you might-- you've seen that book in your parents' bathroom. or you may have come across that book in your library, but it's been around a long time now about 25 years. Our story is that Richard invited me to write in the series with him. And so I was fine with that. I get sounded great and it worked out great 'cause he wrote most of the book. I wrote 10 chapters. I was raising our kids for the most part. He was being a great partner with the kids, but traveling a lot. So that worked out really well for me. Then he invited me, actually the publisher, wanted me to write, don't sweat the small stuff for women in the series. And I was like, what? Brakes on. That definitely needs a own separate book for sure. There's a lot of struggles that women face. So I think that's an incredible book to write. It was, but I didn't want to write it. I wasn't really sure that I felt so great about doing that. Just being, I wasn't a psychologist. And then Richard assured me that I knew everything I needed to know to write that book and he'd be by my side. And so I did agree to write that book and it did become a New York Times bestseller. And then fast forward 10 years, the books did amazingly well all around the world. It was like a life and a ride like no other. We just, it was just an incredible experience to have that happen to his books and to his career. And to our lives. And then 10 years in, Richard started having some pretty serious back pain. And this was from his tennis days. He was a really college, well actually, nationally ranked tennis player. So he was a very accomplished tennis player. And he started to have some really serious back pain. And you know, you just don't like in your early 40s in mid 40s, you just don't think like we weren't thinking, oh, you know, he's going to die anytime soon. So, but because there were some complications, I believe from, you know, his back pain and the different medications he was on and all sorts of stuff that he had to do to navigate that journey of back pain. When he got on that flight that day, it was 10th anniversary, literally, of Don'ts with the small stuff. He got on that flight and on the descent of that flight, he had a pulmonary embolism. And that is a result of him having this disease called deep vein thrombosis that came as the result of his inactivity being a very highly active person and going into an inactive period because of his back pain. So in there might have been other reasons, I don't know what those might have been. I never investigated further than that. But he died suddenly. And, you know, we basically just got this phone call when he was land, he was, it happened on the descent of a flight, which is very lethal. If you have an embolism blood clot on the descent of the flight, it's, you really most people'd never survived that. And he didn't, and he died instantly, but they didn't even know until after, you know, a few minutes after they landed and he didn't get up. So he'd been gone for like 10 minutes by the time anybody even knew. So it was a very silent death because he had somebody saying next to him. So it wasn't like there wasn't anything audible or anything, it just died. And so I, this is almost 15 years ago, which is why I can talk about it without just bawling my eyes out, you know. It's been a long time. And my journey really began the moment that I got that phone call. It literally shattered my whole world. And the movie, for lifetime, actually starts there with that phone call. So it's very, very powerful movie. You don't have to worry about being too sad in it at all. It is so inspirational. And it has so much love in it and so much heart that you're gonna leave that movie feeling so wow. Like you'll feel like wow. If she can do that and it can be like that, then I can do anything and it can be like that too. And, you know, I think what I wanna, what I really realized in grief was that I thought that grief was just like this ugly time of darkness, like pure darkness. And what I discovered is that not that I invite grief into my world on an ongoing basis. But what I discovered is that grief is very alive. And grief shows up to really help you heal. And it's a time period of really, if you're open, if you're really broken open from your experience, it's a very magical time period. And you, you know, like there's that book by Joan Didian, The Year of Magical Thinking. And the reason she calls it that is because your mind is so weird in a good way. Like you are so in post-traumatic growth, which is a scientific thing that, you know, says, like you're just so broken open and you're just primed for growth. But it takes a certain mindset. And this is what I really wanna share is that the mindset that we'll never get there is the one that says, I've been victimized by my circumstances. If you play the victim and we all do, I mean, I'm not saying like everybody emerges clearly as the victor in every moment of their journey. Because I believe we kind of traverse this land of feeling sorry for ourselves and picking ourselves up by our bootstraps and jumping back into life and saying, I can do this, I can do this some more, you know, and having these pep talks that we have to have with ourselves just to keep ourselves going sometimes. I don't feel like it's always, it's not one or the other, but you have to realize there's a choice. And a lot of times we have these really difficult time periods like we've all been in one. Let's face it, we've all been in a horrible time period. It's difficult this last, you know, year and a half now and continues in so many ways to be difficult for people. And people are showing signs of stress and trauma from it because they don't know how to handle change. And they feel victimized, you know, people, some people even feel victimized by wearing a mask, you know, it's like crazy what we can become a victim of. But the one thing you have to choose, amidst difficult circumstances that present change is you have to say, I am not going to live at the affect of this circumstance, I'm going to do what I can to move forward in a positive way or even just move forward. I'm not going to get stuck in this place of, oh, poor me, this happened to my life. And I, you know, it's hard to tell somebody that when they've just lost somebody that they love or when they've just lost their house in a fire or when they've been told they have cancer, you know, or they're dealing with a chronic pain issue, you know, it's really difficult to save that to somebody, you know, you kind of have to give people some slack, cut them a break, let them come to this conclusion. But when we stay in that place, nothing happens. Yeah, I think if you stay in that place, you're just making it worse for yourself. And something that I learned this past summer, someone told me that everything in this life happens for us. It's funny, like these sayings more or less represent the same overarching idea, but I really believe that it's a matter of how the message is sent to you, when it's sent to you and who sends it to you for it really to resonate. And in that moment, I thought about that. And I realized that is directly connected to not having that victim mindset that we always fall into because when a situation is not desirable or way less than desirable, like something you really, like our traumatized by or you're so upset that it's happened in your life and it's changed your life circumstance. It's so easy to feel like, why me? Why did this happen to me to ruminate in it? And it's the cyclical pattern of thinking, negative thought pattern. And when you have these thoughts, it can create also physical illness in you. And then it just perpetuates. And I really love that you bring up this mindset shift into getting out of the victim mentality. But it is hard, as you mentioned, to transition away from that at the onset of a traumatic event happening. So when you had gotten that phone call, how long did it take you to have that understanding to take yourself away from that mentality and view life as something that's happening for you? Because obviously, it's hard to, maybe you wouldn't coin it as my husband passing away as for me, but it doesn't feel right to say. Not unless you're looking back, like, actually, you can say that when you look back. Because you've already seen the journey, you've seen the trajectory that you've traveled. Would I have wished for it to be this way? Never. I would wish for my husband to be by my side informed with me in human life every day. But did I transcend my circumstances and do I have an amazing life today? Absolutely. And do I see how I've become a woman of incredible strength and character and a woman who is totally. and tune with humanity and my compassion for other people and my understanding and the wisdom that I've gained from this experience. I believe now that my husband's death served me like a thousand years of education that I could never have had had it not happen like this. My consciousness grew. I became who I meant to be. I became who I'm fully like I fully realized my potential in this life and I'm not even 60 yet and I feel like if I died tomorrow I would have fulfilled my potential in this life and and I did that because I rose from the ashes of my sorrow and it was sorrow like like no other I can't even begin to tell you how much pain and sorrow I had at this loss but I refused to let myself be a victim of it because I had been so blessed and that was how I did it and you asked how long did it take it didn't take me long because of all of the spiritual work I had done because of my understandings and because of the kind of we'd already been teaching don't sweat the small stuff for 10 years you know in that book series. I I put to really took every tool I had in my emotional tool belt and I had a lot of them and boy I used all of them and I was really really lucky because I had some of the great leaders in psychology to talk to and in grief and I had great friends and I had a community of support. I mean I had a lot of support and this is one of the things I really share with people is that when you're going through a crisis it's really easy to want to isolate you have to fight that you have you you can't isolate because you're not going to be able to do it on your own you know you need support you need people to help you and to help you rally and to support you through a true crisis. Now I'm not talking about like some sort of you know necessarily a small emotional crisis. I'm talking about a big crisis something that's really changed your life and tipped it upside down when those things happen you need to look towards your community for support and people want to help you they want to help you it makes them feel good to support you. You're giving them a gift by allowing them to do that and those people will will step forward they always do. Yeah I think people naturally do want to help and I think that's really great advice to give especially if you're going through a really challenging time it's easy to forget that and back to your earlier point about it not taking too long to pull yourself you know out of that ditch out of that emotional ditch and just really keep fighting forward and fulfilling your life's potential. You already had the educational background and the interest in building your emotional toolkit and I think that provided a really amazing foundation for you to kind of have that that leg up into acclimating a bit faster a bit more a bit easier than you would have if you hadn't had all that you know under your belt. The other thing what was interesting is it's coming to me now and I remember this sort of rebelliousness I felt at this happening to my life and I remember I remember being really just pissed that I was going to you know like I had this great life and I had this great love and this amazing marriage and now I'm like this is just wrong like like I really just said this is just wrong and you know I knew I had to go through grief and I did but I wasn't really wired to have a non joyful life I'm just not wired like that and so it was it was almost hard to stay sad for a long time because I'm not wired that way so I found that grief really wasn't all sadness like I had laughter amidst grief and I had all the emotional ups and downs of grief I had days where I was just climbing off the floor from crying and I had other days where I was actually doing fine if I could just stay in the present moment and I wouldn't go you know into like my painful thoughts of a future without Richard or my regrets of my past and I just stayed present I was actually pretty good in the present moment and when I had feelings that came in the present moment I'd just be with them you know if I I really I learned to love to cry because crying releases endorphins and then you feel good and then you feel like the sense of peace and bliss this past summer I was in Bali and I did a yoga teacher training program and I remembered during one of the lessons our instructor said that the way we interact with people who we see are really sad or about to cry or crying if we tend to shy away from that whereas if someone's smiling and very joyful it's like we know how to interact we're not made to be feel uncomfortable and she challenged us to see you know if we saw someone that was crying it just not really shy away from it like we think she challenged us to learn how to be comfortable with people expressing their sadness and I think it it allows us to kind of reframe that experience of crying and actually what it's doing to your to your body and to your mind to just let that go and you earlier you mentioned that when you were able to stay in the present things actually felt a bit better were there any specific practices that you did that helped you learn how to stay a bit more in the present every day and every moment well I'd say grief is a great practice I was just say Richard taught the taught Oprah like gobrews to say Richard taught her how to be present and he taught me in a totally different way I wasn't very present while he was alive but he sure was but I learned it I learned it from grief because of that whole I just I was very I'm very aware of my body and what my how my body responds to things and so I would notice that when I well first of all I noticed when I cried I felt better but I'd also notice that my thinking if my thinking took me toward the future that would cause me a lot of pain and if my thinking took me to the past that would cause me a lot of pain but when I would be still and just in my body and in the present moment and I wasn't doing that kind of thinking but I might be just really engaged in what was happening in my world in that moment even if I was just engaged with a bird or a breeze or my cat or my dog or whatever you know I would feel fine and so I just started to learn that crying was good releasing emotion was really good it felt really good it made my body feel better if I didn't cry enough my stomach would hurt as soon as I cried my stomach would feel better and of course I knew from all of our work that thinking and thought when it's generated which it's all generated from our own experience and from ourselves that we don't you know it's not like as if you can change a thought once you've had it but you can certainly change the next thought that you have so you know that's where you have to go is you're like look at your thinking if you're thinking is causing you pain bring yourself back to the present moment breathe put yourself in the moment by your breath in your body it's why yoga is so valuable and meditation so valuable teaches us to embody our breath in the present moment and it's an easy it's an easy you know way to remember oh I just have to breathe and focus on my breath gives you something to think about exactly it's the most direct access to your nervous system to regulating your heart rate which will in turn help calm you down and just help you feel a bit more at ease in the moment and it also relates to your book series don't sweat the small stuff I mean that's a phrase that I think everyone has grown up with like don't sweat the small stuff just gonna be okay can you talk a little bit more about the concept behind don't sweat the small stuff and the teachings that you and in Richard discuss in those books they come from that form of psychology I told you about earlier there's five principles and if you look really closely at the series you'll notice that this kind of what any of these principles could be in any one of these chapters he we don't always come out and say oh we're gonna talk about the principle of thought you know but you can you can start to understand the threads that we pull on in the in these series of books the first one is the principle of thought and then there's moods that we have moods and our moods affect our thinking and then we have feelings and you know our feelings are direct result of our moods and our thinking and then we live in this these things called separate realities like we don't necessarily live in the same reality as somebody else because we see the world through our own unique lens so that's so important in understanding psychology and understanding like conflict even with another person because you cannot see the world through their eyes you can try to understand the world through their words and through the way they describe it or try to be compassionate to understand that you do. don't necessarily understand how somebody's seeing something. But that's a very important principle in our books and then present moment living. So present moment living is throughout the entire series. It's like being present is such the key to living a truly fulfilled life. Because, it's hard because we're like, I mean, I'm on my phone just as much as everyone else, looking at my Instagram, creating comments, just doing all that stuff. But that's not very present. And we're not like living in a time where we're practicing very strong, present skills, unless we're practicing meditation to kind of counterbalance that. And we're putting our phones away during meal time and we're leaving our phone at home sometimes and just getting away from it for a couple of hours. These are kinds of practices that will really help you not be so attached and to your phone and take your attention away from being in your life, because that's what the phone and that's what all of those things do. So those are some of the principles. I have a couple of happiness training courses on Don'tsWet.com that teach these in detail and in depth. And when we were talking about this 30 years ago, it was quite revolutionary. Now it's kind of part of the vernacular, but a lot of that's because of my early husband's work. (laughs) So set it on the map. And especially now I think we're in a wellness age for a lot of a better word or description. And I think it's now, especially obviously with COVID, health is on everyone's mind. And I think that alongside the mental health epidemic that we're facing, especially amongst people my age, millennials, Gen Z social media, we're torn between becoming increasingly focused on health and preserving our health and wellbeing, while also buying in and like every single day, submitting to social media and knowing that certain things that we do every day are just wrecking our own mental health and our self-esteem and our self-image. So it's a very weird place to be in right now. - It is, yeah, and I don't know what the answer to that is, except that to realize that anytime you're on a thought pattern where you're comparing yourself to somebody else, you're gonna steal your joy. And let's face it, I mean, we're all kind of, we want gratification and we want enjoyment. That's sort of how we're wired. We're looking for those things for, and everything we do. And so if you just know that and you realize that that comparison is really truly the thief of joy, then you can start to like do things and relate to social media slightly differently and really catch yourself. Because again, these are all patterns of thinking that are wired in your brain. And it's because of the repetitive nature of the way we are as humans and how we repeat our patterns and our thinking patterns over and over again. It's like a highway. And it's like as soon as you get one thought, you're on that highway, whatever that highway, wherever that highway goes, it's always gonna take you into the same place. So if you can start to realize that the only way to disrupt, you know, to put like a, you know, have a mudslide over the highway is to get off while you're in it. And so the very act of just stopping yourself and saying, oh, there I go again, that is what gets you off that disrupts the wiring in your brain and it helps you to create a new track, a much more positive, much more healthier track for your mind to be on. So then you've created a whole new neuropath way. And the cool thing about this, and you probably already know this and probably so to your listeners, is that this neuroplasticity thing is also new to the last like five years, like 10 years. Like they've used to think that our brains were just the way they were and that's, this is the way it is. There's no changing it. But now even somebody like me who's almost 60 years old, you can say I can even have, you know, I can make changes in my brain that are positive. It's not a set and stone thing. I hate it when somebody says, oh, I'm just that way. No, you're not. (laughs) Cop out. Like you said, no, it's, things can always change. And I think the research around neuroplasticity is so fascinating because it really is empowering at the end of the day. I think it gives us agency into knowing that we have the power to choose differently, to act differently. And these things may feel very overwhelming because it's not like you can just jump from point A to point B. In an instant, it takes a lot of work in a lot of micro steps to get there. And it's just about I think knowing where to start and how to tack on a new habit onto a pre-existing one to get you going in that rhythm. And something I also wanted to ask about that quote, comparison is the thief of joy. Did you ever think about that? When you were in your intense grieving process, like objectively at that time, life was like, it was not where you wanted it to be. And of course, I'm sure maybe you compared your situation to how your life was the day before he was on the plane. And how maybe your friends or family, like how did you get out of maybe that comparison cycle or just remove yourself from that narrative? You know, I mean, that's probably part of the way we do vacillate. I do remember having these thoughts. I remember one specific moment where I was on a soccer, my daughter's soccer game, and I'm watching from the stands. And I was standing way up high, and I could see down on everyone. And I remember thinking, this is just days after my husband died. And I remember thinking, my life has totally changed. These people are in their lives, and they're just in the same life. My life is totally different now. And I remember feeling like, wow, just it was overwhelming. And then you start to think, well, how come that person's still alive? They don't even look like they take care of themselves. And how come that person's alive? That's the way you start to think, because you're just like, it takes a while to get your bearings in this new life. And of course, your mind is going to do all sorts of things in the process of healing. Part of healing is to acknowledge that you're wounded. And trauma wounds us. It instantly wounds us. There's no way around that. You can be a courageous person wounded, though. And there are a lot of people that are. And that's kind of how you have to look at it. Like, you have to muster enough courage just to face the day. And that's enough, though. You don't-- for me, I was like, well, I'm going to get up every day. I'm going to put my feet over the edge of the bed, and I'm going to walk to the coffee maker. In some days, I might accidentally put two cups on the counter and cry over that, because that's my habit. But I'm going to make it to the coffee maker. I'm going to have my coffee, and to get my kids off to school. And then I could fall apart. I'd give myself permission, you know? And I mean, it's especially hard, because not only did you lose your husband, but your children lost their father. And that's way painful. Let me tell you. That is way more painful to know your children are going through that loss. I mean, honestly, that caused me such great distress knowing my kids were in grief, too. And so you're simultaneously experiencing your own grief experience while you're also trying to be there as a mom for two children who now are going through an incredibly tough time. Yeah, in high school, you know how high school is. It's not a picnic, anyway. So I mean, it's like, go through grief in high school. Like, oh my gosh, I fell. So my daughters were 14 and 17. So I had one going in as a freshman, and one coming out as a senior. And it was equally hard for both of them, because, you know, I mean, your senior year is so important. And he died right at December before her senior year. He had all of the envelopes for her college applications, like, addressed and ready, or her acceptance envelopes, or whatever they were. I can't even remember now. But it was all ready to go. And, you know, and it was just-- and she was getting her acceptance notices back, and right when he dies, you know. And it took all of the-- it was so hard to celebrate those amazing accomplishments at that senior year for her. And then I had my youngest daughter. She wasn't even driving yet. And here her dad-- he had taken her out for the first time just in a parking lot, you know, to go driving just to, you know, just to be-- he wanted to do that with her. And I was so grateful that he had done that. And because she had that experience with him, whereas, like, he wasn't there for the rest of that. And, you know, and then her high school was just really full of a lot of just not so nice kids. Like, you'd think that people would be nice to you when you go through something like that. But it's like, sometimes people will kick you when you're down. And that's just really, really sad. I mean-- Yeah, high school is hard enough. And simply to have a traumatic experience like this happen during transition periods. Like freshman year of high school is very much a transition period. Senior year of high school is too, because now you're going off to college, taking a gap year, whatever's next. Those are very pivotal times in your adolescence, in your young adulthood, and so it's just even more of a challenge. But I think they're so lucky to have a mom like you to be able to guide them through such a devastating time. You've really accomplished so much in these past 15 years, and your story is inspiring, and I do believe that when people get to watch your lifetime movie, they will have a sense of feeling uplifted and empowered by all the experiences that you've been through, and I think trauma exists on a spectrum. And sadly, you experience one of the most traumatic events that could ever happen in your own life, and you offer so much amazing wisdom and advice around just navigating trauma and grief in whatever form that may take shape. And so I think it's just really amazing to hear you speak about all of this and to share everything that you've gained through this incredible loss. Thank you. So yeah, I feel very grateful and very blessed that I had. I don't know what it is, but I have friends that have gone through tremendous trauma. They're very wired very similarly. But again, it goes back to the roots of that idea that life does happen for us. I definitely understood that when my loss happened. And that you can't be a victim of whatever happens to you, have to just go through a healing process and have a lot of faith that you're going to come out the other side if you just allow yourself to go through it. You know, a lot of people resist grief and resist their feelings. I mean, even I just got news yesterday that one of my closest girlfriends on the planet has lost her battle to cancer. And it took me, you know, I mean, I kind of felt numb when I first heard it because I think I was just terrified of what it was going to feel like when I really dropped in. And my daughter, Jazz, just kept saying, "Well, I think you're just relieved for her right now because she was in a lot of pain, but it's going to hit you. And when it hits you, you know, you're going to be really sad." And it did. It hit me about 3 a.m. in the morning and I was bawling. I mean, I woke up just bawling and thinking about her and all of the times we shared and the way that she loved me as a friend. And, you know, just how hard it was to even say goodbye to her, you know. And I think about how much we isolate from those feelings. And it's -- but we can't. You know, those feelings are really a part of life and they're there to remind us what it means to be alive, you know. Like, we can only have as much joy in our lives as we're willing to experience our sorrow. And, you know, if we're not willing to experience our sorrow, then we're not going to experience true joy either. And I really learned that in brief. And, you know, the book is interesting because the movie is called "Don'ts Put The Small Stuff, The Christine Carlson Story," because it's told through my lens. And we're kind of one day she was like, "Wow, it's called The Christine Carlson Story." You know, like, that's your kids, you know. They're like, "Well, I'm like, what's the movie?" Because they bought the book "Harbroken Open." You know, that's why it's called that. So, the "Harbroken Open" book is a really beautiful memoir of this time period. And it's really a lovely book. Like, it's very deep. It's very raw. Because it was the first two years. But it's full of a lot of -- The Lifetime Movie took out a lot of my role, "Deep, Spiritual, Mystical Experiences." So, if you like "spiritual mysticism," you're going to love this. And I definitely will love the book. Because I've always been interested in these things. And I did my yoga teacher training in Bali, which is like the most spiritual. It was all of that. It adds a depth to the story when you have that, I think. Yeah, I mean, they just didn't feel like it was going to be apropos to their conservative audience. But the book has a lot -- It just shares my journey as a woman, what it was like to become single woman after 25 years of marriage, how much -- I was only 43, so I was kind of in the sexual prime of my life when my husband died. I mean, it shares a lot more than the movie does. But mostly it shares really how I healed. And I think that's what women especially love about it is. It's very raw. You know, I talk about how I bought my first vibrator. I had never bought a vibrator before. I mean, you know, I mean, I never had to. So, it talks a lot about a lot of stuff. And so, I'm sure my daughters are so embarrassed. Like, when they read it, they're like, "Oh, my God, my mother." I mean, even with this podcast, I mean, I haven't written a book yet. I would like to at some point in my life. But even just publicly speaking and having it be recorded and uploaded on Spotify and Apple, my parents listen to this. I have family, friends. It can be embarrassing sometimes. And you know people -- And they know you really well and they can hear you. Like, through their phone, it can be kind of disorienting. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, but then again, you have to just put that aside. As, you know, when you're an author or a public speaker or, you know, you're here to inspire others to, you know, to serve. You just kind of have to put aside your ego and just say, "I'm going to be honest and transparent." And that's really what people want anyways. You know, we all are kind of wired the same way. We all go through a lot of things very similarly. And the worst thing you can do is hide something from somebody that is really common because it just makes them feel shameful. And, you know, the truth is, like, when you lose your beloved, I mean, your spouse, especially spouse that you love, you're pretty much dying. And you know it and you know that you've died of death with them, but you have to find a way to live. You have to create a bridge back to life. So, we all do, we do all sorts of crazy things to do that. It's a journey. You know, it's not a, it's a messy journey. It's not a clean, clean thing. You know, you just go with, you know, I just knew to go with it. I just knew to go with whatever came for my healing and what inspired me and what made me feel alive. Well, I'm so excited to have the opportunity to read the book and watch the movie once it airs on October 16th. So, very soon it's been absolutely a pleasure having you on the podcast. One question that I ask everyone that comes on to the podcast is, what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins? Well, I've always been a runner and an exercise person and a yoga person and a meditator. So, I would have to say get a surplus of endorphins. So, I do all of those things. I mean, I, you know, I definitely feel that being a nature exercise, just getting that heart rate going, sweating, you know, really taking in a lot of oxygen, you know, all of those things bring me a lot of endorphins. Me too, absolutely. And it's nice to have a bit of a routine around it as well. Something you can like look forward to in your day, whether it be a yoga practice or a walk or running sprints, which is not my cup of tea. But for some people it is. What we like to say and don't put the small stuff how you start your day is how you live your day. That's really, that's a really good point and I'm going to remember that because I've been trying to create a really nice morning routine for myself as I've now transitioning into working and working from home and having kind of like a hybrid situation with work. And it's very important to start your day on the right note to feel like you're empowered to like take the reins and just do as great of a job as you can. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you are doing great Stella. I am so excited to be on your podcast. This was so much fun. Thank you so, so much. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening and remember to like, rate and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. Don't forget to keep spreading in Dorfins and find things that bring you in Dorfins every day. See you next time.