What If Your Greatest Adversity Has a Purpose?

This book is so truthful and resonates so powerful, this is going to be one of those books you keep by your bedside forever. He has helped me understand our greatest devastations, can become our greatest strengths. Right now I'm kind of in the "it's not fair" phase, why me? Everything that happens to you, especially the worst things that happen to you, are there for a reason. And then you can use those things to help you transform yourself. Hi there and a warm welcome to you all. Thanks for being here with me on the Oprah Podcast. While I was getting ready for this episode, I read this statistic that dementia is right up there with cancer as the most feared medical condition. And I have to say that doesn't surprise me and I'm sure it doesn't surprise many of you who are listening or watching because there's no cure. And many of us see the devastation that patients endure, the loss of independence, of course the loss of memories and the loss of. This is the thing I think most people fear is the loss of your very self. And when my next guest was diagnosed with Louis Body Dementia, he was told that it will ravage his brain, he will lose his mobility, he may display bizarre behavior, he may even endure terrifying hallucinations. He suffered through many dark nights at the soul because can you imagine being told that? And he suffered before he began to see his fate as a blessing. And so when I first heard that I was like, I just just the worst diagnosis you could possibly receive. I don't know how anybody could see that as a blessing. And of course I wanted to talk to anybody who could see that as blessing as a blessing and that anybody is here today. I know that maybe hard for you all to believe so I wanted to learn too how he got to this place. He's a renowned psychotherapist and bestselling author Barry Michaels is here to share with all of us how he became fully alive in the face of dire adversity. He says that we all can, you can, I can, and it doesn't take us a crisis to get there. And his new book Chronicling, his path from diagnosis to acceptance is just extraordinary. When I tell you, this is a book you're going to want for yourself and you absolutely want to gift it to anybody who loves life, is going through a trial, has been through a trial, or just appreciates being human. It's extraordinary. It's called a head of all parting. Barry, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for having me. That's just the worst diagnosis I think anybody could ever receive. I think a lot of people fear cancer, but even in fearing cancer, you know there may be a cure or there may be even after you've tried all the things, I have a family member going through it now. There's a clinical trial, you know, so there's some glimmer of hope, but a diagnosis like that. And also with cancer, your consciousness remains intact, you are still yourself. The thing about Louis Buddy Dimension, any other form of dementia, is you begin to lose what defines you as you. Or at least what you thought defines you. So let's begin with how are you today? When I was reading this, I was like, well, will I even be able to talk to you because, you know, had it progressed to a point where you wouldn't even be able to have a conversation. So how are you? I'm all right. You know, I have good days and bad days. This is about a sort of a medium day. And what does that mean? What it means is that my brain isn't as sharp as I'm used to it being. I may fumble a little bit with answers. I might not remember parts of the book that I should remember, but I'm not completely fogged out or completely disoriented or anything like that. So a bad day would have you completely fogged out? I, you know, that's a bit of an exaggeration. I wouldn't say that I ever get to that point, but I do have days where I feel like I really shouldn't do psychotherapy today because I'm not really going to be helpful to the person. Brian Michaels is a Los Angeles-based psychotherapist. He and his longtime collaborator Phil Stutz co-wrote The New York Times Best Seller, The Tools. Their work uses mental exercises with names like active love, grateful flow, and loss processing. These tools help people confront psychological obstacles and transform them into growth opportunities. So you're still working with patients. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's still going well. I mean, I'm still doing a good job. I can tell that I'm being effective. You know, it's just so, it's so strange because there are times when I wake up in the morning and feel like my brain is literally filled with fog. And then I'll take a run or I'll get some exercise and I'll write some poetry and I'll get back to my office and I'll see my first person. And the moment I see them on the Zoom screen or they're in person, I'm there. I'm right back. So it's it's very variable. And I think one of the reasons I'm still practicing is that I recognize that when I'm forced to, I show up and I show up really well. Which is good for me and it's good for them. So do you think then that had you not had the opportunity or the challenge of being forced to show up? That this could have progressed even more because you wouldn't have had a reason to show up. Exactly. I think if people had coddled me or if I had coddled myself, I would have deteriorated a lot more quickly. Well, I have to tell you in my ignorance, I had not heard of Louis body dementia and only after reading ahead of all partying, did I recognize as I know many of you will that apparently this is what Robin Williams also had suffered from. Yes, he didn't know he was undiagnosed, which is we don't know for sure, but probably why he committed suicide because the symptoms are so distressing. You just don't know what's happening to you. I can only imagine how horrified he must have felt. Okay, so you were diagnosed with the brain disease called Louis body dementia. For those of us who don't know, and I was one of the many who didn't, as I say, can you explain to us what it is? Not really. I mean, it's a brain disease. My father had it and it's what he died of. But did you all know that at the time was it called it was diagnosed as it was diagnosed as Louis body dementia. And it's what it involves is a gradual wasting away of the personality. So the person really loses themselves. They lose their sense of. So is it like Alzheimer's? It's a form of dementia because it's called Louis body dementia. The symptoms are a lot like Alzheimer's. There's something called mixed dementia, which is a combination of Alzheimer's and Louis body dementia. What do you have that? That's what I have. I heard you were on the book that you were on the phone and overheard something about your condition. What happened? I was on the phone with my wife. She was actually having a procedure done at the hospital and I was at the hospital cafeteria. And we were on the phone because she called me to say, "I'm done. You can come pick me up." And then she accidentally didn't hang up when we were done talking. And I overheard her talking to her nurse saying, "You know, he doesn't know it, but he also has Alzheimer's." And at that moment, it's like my blood just ran cold. I just couldn't believe what I was hearing. I held it together until we got out of the hospital and she was driving us back. And I said, "Judy, I heard what you said. Do I have Alzheimer's?" And she started to cry and she said, "Yes. And I'm so sorry I would held it from you." Our doctor had thought that it would be wise to withhold it from me just for my emotional health, but I needed to know. This is what you write on page 49 of "A Head of All Parting." You say, "Greeth came like a tsunami. My body shook with sobs that made my ribs feel like they were splintering under the weight of loss. My brain, the instrument that had given me every gift was no longer on my team. It was slipping away." How do you begin to process a loss like that? It's shattering. It's truly, truly shattering because it's not the same as just being sick. You know, when you're sick, you can feel it in your body. What your mind is still intact, your identity is still preserved. This promises to destroy your identity, your sense of yourself, which is, I want to call it my most precious possession, my sense of myself. So contemplating losing that was just unimaginably painful. On page 62, you talk about cosmic rage, can you tell us what that is? That is a tool that was devised by my mentor Phil Stutz and it's a brilliant tool. It's used when you feel like you're under attack, usually harsh self-criticism or self-abuse or the voices in your head telling you you're worthless, that kind of thing. What you do is imagine that those messages are coming from demons, if you don't want to use the word demons, you use whatever you want, but they're enemies from outside of you. You imagine that they are attacking your sense of yourself, your sense of well-being, your sense of self-esteem, etc. What you do is you gather up all of the rage that you can muster inside of you. It's the kind of rage that says, can I swear? Yes, swear. It says, I'm not going to listen to this. You get the way from me and you project that rage at the demons and you push them away. You can't get rid of them. They're just a part of human existence. But you push them away and you can feel this space opening up in front of you where you can breathe. You're not going to let yourself be consumed by that thing. Exactly. No way. I'm not going to let you do this. It's like in the Bible, Jesus says, get the behind me Satan. Yes. Exactly. Get the behind me Satan. Except in this instances, in front of you. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Exactly. And I feel that really powerfully when I use that tool, I feel the freedom of expelling those demons. So before this all happened, you and you were working with all of your patients and developing the tools for people to live a better life for themselves. So what started to happen at first that you noticed something was off? Well, I think my wife knew it more quickly than I did. She just noticed that my memory was bad, much worse than it had ever been before. I don't know that I really noticed it that much. I mean, I. Like you couldn't remember names. Couldn't remember. Exactly. But would you get confused when you were out? Sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We would order at a restaurant and the waiter would leave and then five minutes later I'd say, so when are we going to order, you know, just like ridiculous, you know, memory problems? I'm the kind of person who, with my own medical problems, I just tend to say, ah, whatever, I'll be fine, you know, kind of thing. So I probably would not have paid attention to it, and I'm grateful to my wife for paying attention to it, bringing it to our doctor's attention, and finally getting me diagnosed. Yeah. And when you heard the diagnosis, I don't know that I've ever felt that way before in my life. I mean, it was just shattering. Remember, I knew exactly what this was because I watched my life. Well, would you have started to suspect, too, with your memory when your wife brings it to your attention? Am I going to repeat who my father became? I was so in denial of any medical problems that you didn't even occur to you. No. Wow. No. No. No. No. I just bold forward. I just sort of push forward through things like that. And I'm in and away. I'm glad I did. It gave me a little bit more time. But no, this, when I was finally given a diagnosis, that shattered the denial. You know what? I think when anybody gets a diagnosis or a crisis shows up in our lives, the first thing we ask is, why, why, why, why is this happening to me now? And you write that this disease was invited into your life for a reason. And I just think on page 61, where you say, I was beginning to sense that the suffering had direction that there was something to be forged in it. More courage. You write more depth, more love. The prize wasn't relief. It was transformation. This was adversity with purpose. And it was the road I was meant to walk. Wow. I mean, and this, this has only been in process for three years. So you came to this pretty quickly. Yeah, my life philosophy is everything that happens to you, even, and in fact, especially the worst things that happen to you are there for a reason. It doesn't mean that they aren't incredibly painful. I don't mean to minimize that, but they happen for a reason. And if you can look at life that way, then you can use those things to help you transform yourself. You know, I've often said things are happening for you, not just to you, but I've been able to determine that after I've gotten through the thing, you know, it's really, it's easier after you've gotten through the thing to be able to say, Oh, I now see what that was for. It's really hard when you're in the middle of the diagnosis that is telling you, you're going to lose your ability to be mobile, to speak. And most importantly, who's, who you were, how you know yourself to be on, on, on the planet. Why do you believe that this was the road that you were meant to walk? I believe it philosophically, because I just, that's my belief about life, adversity has a purpose. Yeah. Doesn't mean it isn't painful and empathic with people who are facing adversity, but it has a purpose, it is supposed to transform. It doesn't mean the reason is, is that you're responsible for the reason or that you brought the reason on yourself or that it's a punishment or that it's a punishment. I love that line from Eckhart Toley in a new earth where he says, life will give you exactly the experience you need for the evolution of your consciousness. And how do you know that's the experience you need, because that's the experience you are having. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. It's a wonderful way to live, because then you can embrace every event, regardless of how adverse it is or how painful it is, it, it still has a positive purpose. It's showing up for you. Yes. And your journey here on this planet at this time, because that's the path you were meant to walk. Exactly. Not what you wanted to do. It was the path that you were meant to walk, and it evokes strengths that you were meant to develop. When you started to look at it that way, what shifted for you in this process, because, you remember this long time ago, I think I was somebody named Rollins wrote a book called First You Cry when she was diagnosed with cancer, First You Cry. So first you cried. Yeah. You did cry. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Did you allow others to see you cry, to share your crying with others? Just what I was going to talk about, I grew up in a very, very troubled family, and it was impossible to open up in my family, because whatever you said would be used against you. So I learned to be very closed, very protective, and in a certain way selfish, although I didn't think of it as selfish, I thought of it as self-protective, when LBD hit that shifted, and it shifted dramatically two days after the diagnosis. In fact, I remember sitting in my office on the couch, and I called, I must have called 25 people, and you got to understand, I wouldn't call 25 people in a single day ever, ever, maybe over six months, but not in one day, and I called them to tell them about the diagnosis and to elicit their support, which also was completely strange for me, and as I was making the calls, I realized, oh, I'm not just telling people to give them information, I'm changing the trajectory of my life, from one of extreme secrecy and self-protectiveness, and to one that is open and connected, I want my life to be connected to other people, and that was one of the most startling and dramatic shifts that I've ever experienced in my life. So I think the decision to choose not to hide, to choose not to hide is just huge. For me, it was huge, because I would have hidden it in the past. Yeah, and the energy that it takes then to hide, to cover up, to pretend, to not show up for things but giving no explanation or excuses or falsies. excuses and not to mention that to mention the fact that you just you forego all of that love and support that you could have gotten from people that was dangerous for me for for whatever reason growing up in my family so I just walled that off. Every story we share on the upper podcast comes from a place of intention each guest has their own journey and my hope is that sharing it with us here can help light the way for somebody else and as the official insurance partner of this podcast Geico understands that every journey feels a little easier when you know you have support along the way. It's the time of year when the weather changes, days get shorter, calendars fill up and you find yourself back in motion again, taking the kids to school running errands, heading home after the sunsets. During these busy days it's the people who show up in small, steady ways who make the season feel a little lighter. The friend who stops by with a home cook dinner, the partner who surprises you by filling up your gas tank, these are the everyday moments that remind us we are supported. That kind of support matters on the road and in life. Geico helps you stay covered through the turns, the transitions and the everyday miles because with the right support we keep driving forward and that dear listener is everything. So you all should know that Barry Michaels has had a thriving therapy practice in Los Angeles for many years and one of his clients is Drew Barrymore who joins us now. Hi Drew, great to see you as always. I know you're taping today there in New York so thanks for making time for us. You call Barry one of your greatest influences. Talk about how he has impacted your life and what this moment means. It's so interesting to listen to everything you're saying. I think that Barry has given that directive and that inertia to certainly me as far as not hiding. To embrace what you are going through as not a victim, to look at your choices and see how they are affecting you. And Barry has never been one to tell me at least what I should do or when I should do it or how I should do it or who to do it with. It's in his practice and I think the succinct way that he explains the tools in this book. I have studied certain tools with him for over 15 years and the way he writes them in this book is so light bulb because the tools are so incredible and so effective and I am so glad that he did not hold himself back or close himself off as he would do in his home growing up because that's exactly what he has done for all of his patients. Certainly me, I should stay in my own lane and speak for myself and I think with this book and certainly what I've experienced over the last three years since his diagnosis speaking to him on a weekly basis is that he is opening more. And thanks to this book, as you so perfectly put it, we have this evidence of a choice that we can make when something comes in our path that is either detrimental and the end or the beginning of something. And so it's all in keeping with the berry, I know. Well, I know you went through a difficult divorce in 2016, I think it was. And do you believe as Berry does that challenges crisis difficulties show up to reveal a greater truth? Did you find that? Was he helpful in allowing you to excavate that for yourself? I think it's the perfect balance of accountability. He helped me see what my choices and patterns were because if something keeps presenting itself over and over, what is your part in this? And also that if this is continuing to present itself and it is not of your doing, it is there because you have not mastered it yet and there is tools and a roadmap to get there. And it is looking at yourself and doing this very focused work that has a tangible guidance to it. And I have hit rock bottom, the hardest in my life at that point. And I thought I had hit rock bottom at 13 and this was so much bigger than that. I know you stopped working with Drew for a while because of her drinking during that time. And as a therapist, was that difficult for you as a decision? Oh yeah, yeah, it's always, I mean especially because I loved Drew, it was hard to say, I'm not going to work with it. I can't do this, yeah, but I just felt like, honestly, I felt like I owed it to her and to myself, like we just weren't making progress and I knew we wouldn't until she stopped. Yeah, and you took that seriously? It was the best thing that could have happened to me. I've never respected a human being more because it demonstrated something for me that I could not understand, which is to have a level of self-respect, to know you're not getting somewhere with someone or anywhere and you will not until things change. And it taught me a boundary that I just never knew growing up. My life was boundaryless, my job was boundaryless, my behavior was boundaryless. And it also, in not having parents or siblings, for me, I think it is what I would think of as a familial way to care about someone, which is I recognize this in you and I no longer will stand around and watch it. Yeah. So what have you learned watching Barry move through this devastating illness? I mean, as I was open this conversation, is there anything worse we can hear than you're going to lose yourself? Well, thanks to Barry, being on this journey with him, reading his book, speaking to him about it, it gave me confidence and courage in our sessions to ask how he's doing. And through being with him in the last few years, he has helped me understand that we can make peace with things and our greatest devastations can become our greatest strengths. We lack in control in this world and in this life and it just scares us into paralysis. Yeah. And this is the opposite of that. So I have to say, it's incredible what you've been able to actually learn from each other, right? Yeah. So thank you to Barrymore. Thank you so much for joining us. I know you got to get back to work. Thank you for having me always, anytime, anywhere, could buy it. I love you, Barry. Thank you so much. Bye. Bye, Drew. Bye. Maybe you're feeling it too with so many ways to reach each other. It can be easy to mistake being reachable for being truly connected. But I've learned that what many people are longing for is just to be heard, truly heard, by another person. That's what we're trying to do here on the open podcast. I see you contemplating and I can see that you're seeing yourself a different way after he said that, making space for real connection because every time we stop and actually listen to each other, something shifts, something opens. AT&T believes that too. The right connection at the right moment between the right people can change the course of a day, a relationship, and even a whole life. So the next time you reach for your phone to call someone you love, know that AT&T is with you, keeping that connection strong because AT&T is there when the connection matters. And connecting changes everything. So as we were speaking, or are you still seeing patients, how has this journey changed you as a therapist? You know, I'm much more open than I've ever been before, not just with my patients, but with my friends, with really with everybody. I think it's also strangely, and maybe paradoxically, it's made me trust my instincts more possibly because I can't really rely on my intellect as faithfully as I used to. So in the absence of that, I have to sort of close my eyes and listen and hear what's coming up inside of me and say that. Isn't that a good thing? It's a great thing actually. I mean, I don't always trust that something's going to come up, but sometimes I'm just sitting there waiting like what's going to happen here. But more often than not, something does come up and I love those insights. They're much better than the ones that I come up with. How does it change the way you see every day? Has it changed the way you look at life? It's a really good question. I'm not sure. I'm not sure it's changed the way I look at life. I appreciate life so much more than I so it's changed the way you appreciate life. Yes. Yes. It just feels so precious to me so much more so than it used to. And the diagnosis is what you that says you have how many years before you five to seven and you're in the third? Yeah, although that's Louis Buddy Dimension, mixed dementia, I think might be shorter than that. I'm not sure. And so I honestly try not to like look at that. Not to think about it. So while preparing this episode, we heard from many of you who are dealing with your own health struggles and wanted to ask Barry for his advice. Alicia joins us. Alicia, what's going on? Hello. Hi, thanks for having me. This book, I just think it's one of the most beautiful certainly memoirs I've ever read. And it's so truthful and resonates so powerfully whatever anybody is going through reading this. This is going to be one of those books you keep by your bedside forever. But so welcome and give us your question. Really quick, I'm 43-year-old stay at home. I have four kids and a couple months ago in July, I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. And my question for you is, do you feel guilty for having your diagnosis? It's a good question. I sense that you do. I don't, mostly because in my family, we have a kind of reciprocal care-taking relationship. I take care of my wife with, you know, her medical problems and she takes care of me. And it helps that she doesn't make me feel bad. About it. Are you struggling with that? Yes, I don't feel sorry for myself. I feel more sorry for my husband and my kids because I know that one day I can't be the wife and the mother that I want to be. And right now I'm kind of in the, it's not fair phase, why me. How do you overcome the guilt knowing that you'll never be the same? Look, I can't tell you how to view this, but I can tell you that it will help if you think of it as something that was supposed to happen. I know that that's difficult, but the problem is that if you look at it as something that shouldn't have happened, then you're fighting against something you can't win. You're fighting against reality. And that fight can only lead to resentment and a sense of victimization, which is just an awful place to live in, you know. So what I try to teach my patients to do and what I do myself is to try to imagine that whatever you believe in, whether it's God or fate or the universe, whatever, it wanted me to go through this for a reason. And usually the reason has to do with strength. It has to do with having the fortitude and the courage to overcome something even though you're suffering from it. And to overcome it to the degree that you can put out the best energy that you can, that you can to other people despite the fact that you're suffering from it. So how does that land with you? It's, I think just right now it's just hard to accept. Yeah. Key word right now. Key word is acceptable because all grief, you're grieving the mother you wanted to be, you're grieving the wife you wanted to be, you're grieving. And, you know, part of the stages of grief is getting too acceptance. So you're still angry about it and sad about it, of course, of course. Yeah, more more sad than angry. I try not to hold onto the anger, but definitely substrate it and sad about the future of my family. Yeah. I know this sounds like it wouldn't help, but I think it would, if you do it repeatedly, when you feel that resentment, sadness, feeling of like, I don't want this to be happening. See if you can close your eyes and just accept that whether I want it to be happening or not, it is happening. And there's nothing that I can do to change that. And that might initially make you want to cry because it's sad, but that's the, that's the next stage for you to go through to get to acceptance is an acceptance that this is happening no matter what I think of it, whether I like it or hate it or anything else. Once you can go through that enough times, I think you're actually going to be a lot happier because you'll be an acceptance of what's happening to you and you'll be able to stop feeling guilty about your family, stop feeling bad about the disease, you know, and just live in a greater place of acceptance. Because right now, I appreciate it what you said to her, but you're fighting again something that you can't win. Exactly. Yeah, because you're wanting it to be what it is not going to be ever again. All day, every day I treat people who want their life to be different from what it is, but they can't make it different. It's God's will or it's fate or whatever you want to call it, but it's invariable. It's not in their power to change it. And when that happens, you have to accept a level of powerlessness that's, you know, uncomfortable for most of us to accept. But also, you got to this stage of acceptance. You had your cries, you had your grieving, your sadness, your anger, even denial about it. So we're going to allow you that space, Alicia, and hope and pray that you get to acceptance sooner than where you are right now. And thank you. Can I say one other thing about that? It'll be one of the greatest gifts that you can give to your family. Yeah. Because whether they know it or not consciously, they sense that you're fighting with what you're going through. They feel your resistance. Yeah. Your family feels your resistance. How old are your children? My youngest is 10 and my oldest is 21. Yeah. Well, I was going to say no matter how young or old they are, even if they're young ones in the house, they sense that resistance in some way. Energetically, they will fill the vibration of whatever that is. And so I think because you are such a caring, loving mother, and your question was about feeling guilty about what's going to happen to them, that having the perspective of knowing that you're getting to acceptance sooner, actually is going to help them rather than you resisting as you are. And I know it's your own journey to get there. Nobody's telling you how soon you have to get there. But the sooner you get there, as we're hearing, the better it's going to be for everybody in the family, not just for you, because they can feel where you are. Yeah. And whether you like it or not or have accepted it or not, this is a journey that your family is going to have to take together. So the dream that you had shifts, the dream that you had shifts, and now you have another dream you create another dream is. That's exactly right. Yeah. Exactly right. Thank you, Alicia. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. How has this impacted your relationship with your wife, Judy? You were talking about how you all work in tandem. I think that helps when you have somebody who understands and cares. My wife is a therapist also, and sorry, it has brought us so close together. And it has allowed me to, I'm a very, very self-reliant person. I learned very early on not to depend on anybody. And I have let down and dependent on her in ways that I had never thought were possible. It's astonishing how much closer we are to each other as a result of this. I mean, it's one of those strange paradoxical things where horrible reality has just really brought us. Well, because you cannot help but be vulnerable. and vulnerability is what creates the greatest sense of connection and intimacy, does it not? Beautifully said. Exactly right. Let me say one other thing about that. My wife is an extraordinarily sensitive caretaking person. I mean, she just takes such good care of me as well. So it's not just that I've leaned on her. It's that I've seen a side of her that I sort of knew existed because I saw it with my kids and I saw it with her friends, but to be the recipient of it has been life-changing. Just life-changing. Let's you for one more listener. Alex, what's your question for Barry? Hi, Alex. How are you doing? Thank you for having me, Oprah, and thank you, Barry, for just being vulnerable and sharing your story. A little bit about me. I'm a personal trainer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Three years ago at 37, my life changed completely. I went to the ER thinking I might have kidney stones only to find out my blood pressure was 260 over 150. And after some more testing, I was told I had stage 4 kidney failure and we needed a new kidney. Immediately started dialysis and thankfully received the kidney from my sister later that year. Now all the medications am on, prevent me daily from doing the things I used to do, just a very fit person. And I feel like part of my identity, I built over the years, was taking away from me. So my question to Barry is, how did you learn to let go of the person that you were and embrace the person you're becoming? Also, how did you make peace with that transition? It took time and what I had to do was actively let go of the things that were being taken away from me. You know, my first reaction and I suspected probably yours is, this isn't fair. It shouldn't be happening to me. And unfortunately, that's pretty worthless because it is happening to you whether you like it or not. So I had to overcome that and I had to say to myself what I say to my patients, which is, it doesn't matter what you think should be happening. Your opinions don't matter in this instance. Reality is what matters. And the reality is you have to let go of certain things. What I also used was a tool that my mentor Phil Stutz calls loss processing. It's a way of processing a loss. You take the thing that you're losing and you sort of visualize it in front of you and then you imagine it being taken away from you but instead of resisting it, which we all do, you let go of it. You actively let it go and you watch as it sort of disappears over the horizon. And a lot of times I cry at that point because I don't really want to let go but I am letting go and you let go and then you're left with a feeling of completeness because you're no longer holding on to something that you can't have anyway. Let me explain that for a moment. When you're holding on to something that you can't actually have, you feel incomplete because you don't have the thing that you want to have. Letting go of it actually allows you to feel whole because you're not you're not wishing for something you can't have. It's again like like you were saying earlier, you heard what he was saying to Alicia, fighting against something that you cannot win. And so what is it you fear most having to let go of? I feel just letting go of who I've known myself to be over the past 40 years of my life. And just the unexpected of it getting taken away and you really had no say, you couldn't mentally get yourself ready for that transition. You were forced into that transition. So now you're in the process of reinventing. Yes. Yeah. I think that I'm enjoying the journey but still trying to let go. It is. It may not feel exciting in the initial stages but it is exciting. Yeah. Yeah. So the question isn't the question then doesn't become about who I've had to let go but now who can I be? Yes. Who am I going to become? And if you can try to cultivate some anticipatory excitement about that like who knows? I may be I may be better than I was before for all I know. Do you never know? Yeah. But if your identity has always been in the physical you know your ability to your prowess in physicality then maybe it means you're being opened and expanded to something that you've never even imagined Alex. Yes. That's honestly I'm looking forward to it. I've let go a little bit but I'm still holding on a little to the to the past. Are you still in the why me? Are you still in the why me stage? I was never in that stage actually. Good. I was more okay this is an issue let's fix it and let's start the steps to get back to a normal way of living. Right. You're more for you it's more like I just don't want this to be happening. Yes. Yeah. How long ago was the transplant? How long ago? December 2023 so it'll be three years this December. Okay. Grateful to have had your sister's kidney. Wow. Yes. Yeah. Thank you Alex. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you very much. Okay. You write about too how this experience has revealed God's love for you and I read that you were one time you were an atheist. So tell about how did that happen? Tell us that's the strangest part of this story because I was raised in a household that was not just atheistic but militantly atheistic. I mean my mother used to school me in the refutations of the arguments in favor of God like it was almost like she I don't know what she expected but but just in case I was ever exposed to anyone who believed in God and tried to convince me that God existed I had an argument for every argument that they and didn't that happen younger too? Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know it started almost at birth. I mean she was really really intensely atheistic. Both my parents were I'm sorry. It was. And not even wanting anybody to talk to you about God. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. If somebody mentioned God or a kid mentioned God. No, I slept over at a friend's house and the family was Catholic and when we went to bed they said the Lord's Prayer and I didn't really think anything of it. I thought it was actually kind of sweet. But when I got home and made the mistake of telling my mother she got very upset and she I remember being schooled for about a week every night about how we refute the belief in God you know in case anybody tries to convince you you know that God is real. This is how this is what you have to say. I just love that. Don't you go over there saying the Lord's Prayer while while yeah. And so now you call it the life force which I love I love I have so many names for God. So the life force I remember used to have these conversations with Sidney Portier. He would always say the forces. I would use it use the term God and he would say well the forces and I would say why can't you just call it God. He goes why can't you just call it the the forces. So wherever you are now Sidney well I agree with you and you probably now agree with me. So what what happened? I had an extraordinary experience and I kept having it over and over again which was soon after I was diagnosed. One of the just so you know one of the symptoms of the disease is that you wake up incredibly early. I get up at two or three in the morning every morning which weirdly I have come not to mind because it's kind of a magical time you know it's very dark. It means you just wake up. I wake up. I go to my office and I found myself more and more getting down on my needs to pray even though I wasn't sure I believed in God. I just felt like called to do that and very soon after I was diagnosed I was up there one morning was very dark outside very quiet and I was praying silently there weren't any words or anything. I was just asking for help and I felt this unmistakable presence in the room with me and I couldn't believe it like I was like come on this isn't really happening is it but it was really happening it was a real presence and it was a comforting presence it was something had never really experienced before like a presence that really wanted to reach me and help me and soothe me and that happened every single morning for several years it sort of faded out after a while. I think it had played its purpose which was to give me an immediate experience of a higher power that I then used to soothe myself with and to make me feel so you know it's there. I mean I feel that presence all the time. That's amazing. It abides with me. That's amazing. And it was not the God that I had been used to reading about. It wasn't a transcendent and it was imminent. It was right here right now and loving me with immense force. Life force. Life force. Life force. Yeah, I love that title. Title for it. This is for one of your poems. Do you write all the time? Every day. Every day. And this is called death dance with the divine. You say take it from someone who's dying. God doesn't really care what you choose to do with your life. What God cares about is not what you choose to do, but how you do it. God wants to see you pursuing life with your blood, your guts, your heart and your soul, the all-consuming divine fire you have inside you. So when people ask me, what did you do when you found out you were living under a death sentence? My answer is I gave it all away, all of it, every last drop. And I danced with the divine. That is so beautiful. Thank you. I know writing, especially poetry, has become like a bomb, like a salvation for you. So what does it do for you, the writing? I think more than anything else, it gives me a chance to express myself creatively. I'm kind of a freak for beauty in all sorts, like the beauty of nature, the beauty of language, the beauty of God. And writing is the medium that I'm most familiar and comfortable with. So when I write poetry, and I almost hesitate to say I write poetry because it feels like it writes me, like it comes through me, not from me. But that's my first experience each day with beauty is, oh, these words are spilling out, coming through me. And there, I don't really care whether anyone else likes it or evaluates it or anything. It's just the way my soul needs to create beauty is through poetry. Can you explain the concept of outflow that you talk about? Yeah. And you experience outflow at a batting cage, tell us that story. Yes. So just to start with outflow, outflow is a tool that you use when you're feeling blocked or when you're feeling down or when you're feeling disconnected from people. What you do is it's a very simple tool. You imagine that there's an infinite amount of energy inside of you inside your heart, which I actually believe is real. But you imagine it. So it's sort of like the sun is shining from inside of you. And then what you do is you take that energy and you flow it out to everything and everyone around you. And what that does is it creates a feeling of, I belong here. I belong here. And I am meant to be an avatar of sacred energy. And every human being is. So it helps with lots of different things. It helps with depression. It helps with self-expression problems, expressing yourself. It helps with connecting with people when you can go to a party where you don't know anybody and you can use outflow. You're going to find it easier to talk to people. So it's a multi-purpose tool. But it's a tool that I use a lot because in my childhood, for self-protective reasons, I developed the habit of shutting down and turning inward. And that's terrible for a person. It cuts you off from resources that you have. So outflow redirects my energy and puts me back in the posture where I'm potent and I have something to give. And the batting cage story. And the batting cage story was such a delightful event. A friend was driving me back home and we passed a batting cage and we just sort of looked each other like a batting cage really. You think we should go do this? Yeah, like I'm in my 70s. And we decided, yeah, let's go for it. So we went to the batting cage and we had the craziest good time I've had in so many years. It felt so good to be back in that, to feel my body. Like I used to love playing baseball. And he did too. And we just, we both just marveled at the end of it how delightful it was and how wonderful. Part of it was just the sponge, your sponge. Spontaneity of it. Yeah. It sounds like the spontaneity of it in that moment. Yes. And part of it was just returning to youth and feeling those muscles in your body that you haven't used in such a long time and just the feeling of like, oh my god, I can still hit a baseball. Here's what you write about mortality. You say the life expectancy of someone, you know, with your diagnosis is five to seven years and you were diagnosed three years ago. We were saying earlier, the closer I come to leaving this world, the more vivid everything becomes. The slant of light on the floorboards, the sound of my wife breathing beside me, the taste of water. It all feels saturated with divinity. The world hasn't changed. I have. So how have you come to see your own mortality? I know this sounds strange, but I've come to see it as a blessing because it has awakened those feelings. And look, the truth is I was going to die anyway. We all are. But in my case, the way it happened enabled me to see life with a whole new whole new vision, a whole new way of looking. So look, I cried every single day for the first year, every day. I wept bitterly. But now I'm in a different place. It's like it's strange to say, but this was a good thing. It awakened my soul in ways that I don't think that it ever would have been awakened. So go figure. What's, yeah, go figure. What's the big takeaway, the one lesson you'd like people reading ahead of all parting or listening to us right now to receive? What do you want us to know? I think what I would say is the big lesson, at least for me from all of this, is don't be so sure that the things that you hate, that the things that feel adverse, that you don't be so sure that they're so bad or that they're absolutely bad. There's something good in every single experience that you have in your life and the worst the experience is the more it kind of shatters the things that need to be shattered and awakens the things that need to be awakened. And it's so important for us to be able to accept those lessons and grow from them. I want to talk about the title ahead of all parting. Where did that title come from? It's a poem by Rainer Maria Roca, who's one of my favorite poets, and what Roca is saying in the poem is that we need to get ahead of death in the sense of anticipating that our lives will come to an end, which means that this moment matters. If there's no death, then this moment doesn't matter because you have an infinite number of them to come. So I love that poem because the first line is be ahead of all parting as if it had already happened. Exactly. So he's telling us, grab life, take a hold of it, make each moment meaningful, don't treat it as if you had an infinite number of moments because you don't, you know, kind of thing. So that's what I take from the poem. Well, first of all, I want you to close by reading your poem because at the end of the book you write a final poem for the reader. And before that, I just would like to say, I just think it's just so courageous of you, daring of you. And I'm so grateful to you for making the trip up here today, because first of all, as I said to you, when I first read this, I was wondering, are you going to be okay? And I'm sure you had to think yourself, am I going to be okay for this interview today? Absolutely. And I want you to know you are very much okay. Thank you. Very much okay. Thank you. And now you can read us your point. We're going to close with your point. Empty yourself of knowing, yearn without shame, give without calculation, dance when you can, cry when you must. Every act of surrender is an opening through which God can enter. Thank you, Barry Michaels. A big thank you to the wonderful Jew, Barrymore, and to Alicia and Alex. Thank you, too, for listening and asking your questions. I really, I cannot recommend a book any stronger. I hope you'll pick up a copy of a head of all parting for yourself, or someone you love, who may be in need of it. And if you want to learn more about it, go ahead, or someone you love, who may be in need of Barry's wisdom. And go well, everybody. Barry Michaels extraordinary memoir. A head of all parting is available now. The book is filled with so much insight, perspective, wisdom. I hope you pick up a copy for yourself, and somebody you love, just scan the QR code there on your screen. Our listeners tell us that the podcast is resonating with you, serving as a bright spot in your day. That means a lot to me. So here's the thing. I would really appreciate it if you like and subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube, or wherever you podcast. It's just a quick tap of the subscribe button. And that way you won't miss an episode in your queue. You don't have to pay anything. I know subscribe usually means you're paying something, but this time it means you just are notified when there's something new. There are many more to come that we're excited about, so thank you for watching and listening.