Fearless Deep Dives: Loss

[MUSIC PLAYING] This week's Deep Dive is talking about loss. It might be the loss of someone in your life through death or through an end in a relationship. It might be the loss of one career, the loss of a sense of self. We've had so many people talk about loss in different ways on this podcast. And so we've decided to put them together and bring to you now something that I hope will inspire you from some very powerful voices around how to navigate any sense of loss in your life. Today, my guest is Bozomer St. John. Now, this is a effing, fearless woman. She's been one of the most formidable chief marketing officers in the US and got the Forbes number one CMO award. She has really driven herself. And she's been through tremendous tragedy so the juggle of having those things in your life and burning apart forward for other women behind you to come and realize this is possible to do because she did it. That's the kind of woman she is. I'm going to go straight actually to post-traumatic stress disorder. Whenever I am on the top of a building, and whenever I even hear that expression, I think of my daughter's father's suicide. And when you've talked about this and living with, could we have done enough in something? And I know with your boyfriend, when he committed suicide, which you talk about really eloquently in the book, of how much time you spend still thinking, could I have done more? Yes. And how much you've healed from it, because you've obviously done a lot of work on it. Do I still think of that? Yeah. I do. All the time. And I think of it in present relationships as well. That is part of the healing for me. You know, I don't believe in the thought that you're ever over something. Or like that expression, time heals all wounds. I don't believe in those expressions. I think you just learn to live a side of it or you learn to live with it. And so my healing, both in therapy, shout out to my therapist. But also in the present day action, which that event changed me forever, right, is that I am more aware of my friends. And not saying that friends haven't also gone through some terrible things, which have ended in the same way. But I am more aware of whether or not I am doing what I think I should do. You know, and that doesn't mean I'm sacrificing myself. It's just that like I ask the extra questions. And I feel like, okay, if somebody is going to decide to make a decision about their own life, that I would have done what I could have done to help them in this life. Yeah. And that is the piece that I have. I've done a lot of therapy on it too, with it, with you. And what I found interesting is I moved, I came out of a relationship in March and I moved to my own place as my daughter. And it's nine years since my husband killed himself. And I only grieved in March. Yeah, because there was so much shit before, you know, there was a fine natural fallout. There was a lot of stuff, you know. Gosh. And then not that long ago, and like you, I have had people who have maybe reached out and there's also a charity that raises money. It's the highest form of death for men under the age of 50 of suicide. And it's a place called James's Place in England. It's a really good charity. But they say this expression, which I find so deadly, which is it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Yeah. Which is really hard to hear, you know, because then you kind of brings back that feeling of temporary problem, what more could I've done? You know, there is that thing. Yes, what more could I've done? Yes. You know, you cannot ever, I don't think, you can prevent somebody committing suicide, but I think you can, you know, they can buy your actions, maybe occasionally, they stop and think, and maybe it, or it becomes a temporary situation without a permanent solution. But I just, I felt very connected to you when you talked about it. And I just wanted to share that with you, I think, because you know, it's, it's, Oh, thank you. I really appreciate that. When you said I think about Peter every day, I'm, yeah. You know, I just, I thought maybe there's a lot of headspace taking that up, that is, it's like, there's an acknowledgement. Well, you know what? Yeah. So here's the thing. I'm so glad you said that because I think of Peter in the present time. I don't think of Peter in the past. Okay. So for instance, for Halloween, my daughter dressed up as Deon Sanders, who is, you know, a pretty well-known ex-fopal player who's now a coach and he's doing amazing things with University of Colorado at Boulder. And, you know, he's in pop culture and so that's who she wants to drop in. Yeah. Dress up as Peter loved football, American football, and just, you know, tried to indoctrinate our daughter in his team, which are the patriots, which Deon never played for. You know, I'm sure that at the time we were birthing Layelle, he was thinking, I'm going to be the one, meaning him, to teach Layelle about American football. And now here she is dressing up as this football player, you know, turned coach. And it gave me such joy to think about the fact that, like, oh, Peter, you would have loved this. That is a present thought. And so it's not necessarily thinking of him in the past as in like, oh, he did this, he did that, or I wish we had done this, or we should have done that. I have put that to bed. What I think about is him in the present time and the things I wish he could be participating, or the chuckles I have when she does something or says something, or I see something, or there's a sign that comes across it. I'm like, oh my god, that's Peter. You know, that's the kind of thing that I consider. - My guest today is Mo Godat. You will know him as the Chief Business Officer at Google of having been evolved in 20 tech businesses. Mo has a unique way of breaking down the notions of worry, panic, anxiety, and of course fear. - So you worked on the philosophy of this concept of happiness. - For years. - Before Ali died. - Before your son died. - Yeah, Ali is the one that taught me about the philosophy, right? So he would be the one that reminds me that all that pops up in my head, all of those complex algorithms, all of the logical processes that are so accurate in their description are also felt in the heart. And of course, you can never find happiness unless you have that balance. - How do you feel when you think of Ali now? - Losing someone you're often, the pain never goes away. I don't know if you agree, but anytime Ali would come to my heart, I'd miss him. But there is a big difference between pain and suffering. Pain is what comes from outside you or what comes from your circumstances. And pain is useful, believe it or not. Pain is, you know, you cut your finger, you pull your hand back to keep it safe, right? The thing interestingly is if you take that example, you realize that once your finger heals a little, your body stops making you feel the pain. It might not be fully healed yet, but as long as it's safe now, your body will stop the pain. That's not the case with emotional pain. With emotional pain, we choose to regenerate it on the mind. I call it the Netflix of unappiness, right? We choose to take the moment where Ali was in the intensive care unit and we take that photograph and put it up in our memory and say how can that happen to my son? It feels involuntary, but it isn't. You have a choice. I never actually shared this ever in my life. When Ali was in the intensive care unit, I took a photograph of him. Basically after the doctor said Ali's gonna die, so the doctor basically said, "Most of his organs have failed. "If he comes back to life, he's going to be a vegetable." So we don't know what to do, but we don't think he's gonna make it. So I took one final photo of him. And in my mind, I was like, "I don't know if I want this or I don't, "but this is the very last physical image of my son." The next morning for some strange reason, my phone shows up a very weird message. And I have to switch off and go back to factory settings and whatever. Knowing for a fact that my photographs are backed up, I switch the phone back on after the restoration of my photos, that one photo's not there. It's almost as if life's telling me, "Why? "Why would you want to remember the moment where Ali was dying?" I have to tell you. Which I haven't talked about. When Johnny was dead, and his coffin was open, and I didn't know it was done the end of my red, whether I should go, I went and everyone had gone and I took a picture. And I didn't know whether I should take that picture. And the picture was not on my phone. Yeah. So I took the picture and I thought, "I won't look." And I could never find the picture. I know. Why would you want that to be the last memory of him? Why? Well, a power-grace-neil self is not letting you have that as a last memory of Ali. Correct. Or Johnny. 100%? This is almost the kindness of the universe. Because I'll tell you very often, when ever I know that for a fact is your case. Almost four times a week, almost three times when I wake up or when I'm with a conversation with someone or whatever, my brain brings almost an autonomous thought. It says Ali died. Right? This is the most painful thought a father could ever have. It's confusing on so many levels, it's painful on so many levels, but it's true. I learned around five days in when my brain told me this, to respond and say, "Yeah, yeah, brain, Ali died. Thanks for hurting me." But Ali also lived. Ali lived is the same exact fabric. If you really want to look deep at the reality of life, Ali lived is the core thought. Ali lived is all the games we played together, all the jokes we said, all the music we played together, all the topics we conjured together, where he taught me enormous things, all the love that I felt. That is the story. This is the story. The loss of Ali is pain. The suffering is for me to keep telling myself, "A Ali died instead of Ali lived." The suffering is for me to ignore all of the blessings that came on Ali lived. My guest today is fashion guru and style expert, Tan France. Many of you will know him as one of the five hosts on Query Eye, of which they have done many seasons for Netflix, and it's internationally seen around the world. My daughter experienced trauma. It's Tan 11 when she lost her dad. And so I always overthink how she might feel in the situation. I actually do understand that. I lost my father when I was 13. I know that. That's why I pray for my son that he doesn't have to go through what I went through. What do you think impact had on you that you lost your dad at that age? Do you have brothers? I do, I have two brothers. Yeah, I love my brothers. Younger older. I'm the youngest of my siblings. The impact, you know, it just made me really determined my dad. It was an immigrant. And he wanted to create a success for himself to be able to take care of his family. And all he wanted was to have children who were happy, got married, to Asians, to Muslims, and had children. He wanted to see his grandchildren. And he desperately wanted to see success in his businesses because his family came to England with nothing. And they come after partition. They did, yeah. And he wanted to show that even though he was living in a country that was predominantly white, he could achieve success and he wasn't beholden to the people who thought that he was, that we were pieces of shit. And did he succeed? He died at 47. He really wanted, he did. He created a life for us that was comfortable for us. We were poor by everyone else's standards, but we were comfortable. We hadn't moved on the table. We had clean clothes on our backs. But his dream was to always retire by 50. So he could just focus on his kids because my mom and dad worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. And so he just wanted to be able to cut back from work and just focus on his family. But he died before then. He died at 47. And so he died. He died of a heart attack in our home. He had diabetes. He had diabetes for a long time. He used to go for dialysis. And it's interesting. I don't feel a lot of emotion about it at this point. It's been so long and quite frankly, I don't remember my dad very well. It's insane because I wasn't a child child when he passed, but it's amazing how you forget so much. So I remember lovely memories, but that's all really. And then when he passed away, I just thought, I want to do something where if I don't live to my dad's age, I want to know that I could be with my son. And take care of my kids. And so I want to try and retire at 40. And so that was always my goal. So what impacted you have? It made me really ambitious and really, really driven. And I spoke to my mom when I was right in my book and I said, what did you notice about me that was different from your other kids? And she said, your dad dying affected you in a very hard way in your siblings went through the normal teen angst, little shit rebellious. You were so determined. You turned into a different person. You were, I was a flighty kid. I was always away with the fairies because I was a fairy, but I was always away with the fairies. I always wanted to play dress up. I always wanted to do this shit that shit. And I just wanted to play and have fun. And she said, once your dad died, you turn into the most serious kid I'd ever known. But before that, I really did think if I sell my businesses and semi-retire, it was more semi-retire than fully because I wanted to consult, I wanted to manage these properties. So it wasn't like I wasn't going to do anything, but I wanted my life to be about raising my kids. Like truly, truly, I wanted to be a stay-at-home dad. I wanted to homeschool them. I wanted to be the person that they saw every day without a dad. I wanted kids and so was a kid. And so my greatest ambition was to just be able to provide for them and see them all day every day. I'm so inspired by the people we've listened to who have shared their vulnerabilities, their challenges, so that we might all listen and feel empowered to fear less. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.