In this special bonus episode, Dani speaks with Stephanie Wittels Wachs, actress, activist, and co-host of the hit podcast Last Day, which shines a light on the real human stories behind epidemics we usually only think about in terms of their staggering — yet seemingly abstract — statistics. Recording from their respective homes, Dani (sitting in her PJs in her son’s old room) and Stephanie (holed up in the closet that serves as her makeshift studio) discuss trauma, the collective grief we’re all feeling in this era of social distancing, and making meaning out of tragedy — which is exactly what Stephanie did after losing her beloved younger brother, the comedian Harris Wittels, to a heroin overdose.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio High
Family Secrets Listeners. It's Dannie. So I've been thinking, as
we've been moving through the many powerful conversations I've had
with my guests during this third season of the podcast,
(00:22):
the world as we know it has been profoundly changed.
I mean the whole world as we know it for
every single one of us. We're sequestered in our homes,
either with other people or alone, and our lives, our
plans have ground to a halt. We're left with our
fears and anxieties about the future and grief for what's
(00:44):
happening all around us. I want to talk about this,
about how we move through this period of time with
as much humanity and caring for ourselves and others as possible,
and so I invited a guest on for a special
bonus episode you're about to hear. Stephanie Whittles Wax is
an actress, activist, author, wife, mom of two little kids,
(01:06):
and she just happens to host one of my favorite
podcasts called Last Day. Her book Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful,
a tragic comic memoir of genius heroine love and loss,
along with her podcast, were born of tragedy. In two
thousand and fifteen, her brother, beloved comedian and actor Harris Whittles,
(01:28):
died of a heroine overdose. Everything in Steph's life changed
as a result of that terrible loss, and she has
done the hard, beautiful, soul bearing work of making meaning
and art out of pain. Since we're all, it's safe
to say, in some pain right now, I thought a
conversation with Steph about her story and navigating this time
(01:50):
we find ourselves in would be a really good thing.
I know it was for me. I hope it is
for you too. In one of the episodes, one of
your later episodes, you UM one of my favorites. Actually,
you have this very powerful conversation with Dr Gabor Matte,
(02:11):
and Dr Matte, who is a world expert on trauma,
talks about trauma in a way that is incredibly revealing
and um and powerful. UM in the sense that we all,
all humans experienced trauma UM, and it's kind of a
(02:36):
hallmark of trauma to think that we don't, or to
compare um, the whole sort of idea of well this
isn't really I mean, there's always someone who has more
trauma in that kind of thinking. What we do is
we disavow our own experience. UM and UM. Dr Matte
(02:57):
actually says at one point it's funny I was writing
it down at a moment where in the episode you
said stop and write this down, and I was literally already.
I was like, stuff, I'm writing it down. And and
the line is, trauma isn't what happens to us, It's
what happens inside us. Yes, exactly. And and so here
(03:18):
we are in this moment where the entire world is
experiencing trauma all together. We're all experiencing it, and it's
unprecedented in our lifetimes. UM. We have no muscle memory
for it. And like, here we are. You're in your closet,
(03:40):
I'm in my son's old playroom. Our whole worlds are
very much divided into before and after this experience that
we're having, and are underscored by the fact that we
don't know what the other side of this experience is
going to be. We're all in grief, and we're in
grief for our former lives, for the world, and for
(04:02):
what's happening to other people all around us. UM and
the stories that are relentlessly coming at us. So the comfort,
I think, or the solace is in connecting. And we
can't connect physically, but we can connect in terms of
these really powerful conversations about um the real stuff. Um So,
(04:24):
I guess where I'd really love to begin with you
is to talk a bit about your story. Where to start?
I had a really terrible traumatic couple of years my
um I met my my husband, was incredible, amazing, love him.
He's downstairs taking care of my kids, um his as well,
(04:47):
our mutual children, and UM met him or met him
like earlier. But we were gonna get married, and like
three days before my wedding, my brother called and told
me that he was addicted to OxyContin and that he
was spending four thousand dollars a month on pills. And
(05:08):
I mean, when I look at this like narratively, that's
the moment where everything kind of like got really wobbly
and I was set on this journey that I never
chose and that I would never have chosen, and that
um I don't know. It's weird when you look back
and you can identify a moment of change, of profound change,
(05:30):
and there have been a few of those since. Um So,
that kind of like set us off on this like
addiction roller coaster that I truly do not wish on anyone. Um,
it's very trite to say my worst enemy, but I don't.
I don't wish that on my worst enemy. There is
no right way to do it. There is only a
(05:52):
way that works for the individual. And it's really hard
when you're in that space to find good advice and
to find sound kind of like textbook this is what
you do, Like you have this type of cancer, this
is what you do. There's nothing like that. And um,
the people who are supposed to be experts, you end
(06:13):
up having to pay a ton of money to go
to their facilities. And so there's sort of a are
you really doing what's best for the person or are
you incentivizing relapse instead of recovery. And so obviously, when
you're in the moment, you're just desperate to help your person.
And my brother was in and out of rehab and
we did what we thought was best. He kept going
(06:33):
to these thirty day programs. I now know that that
is the worst possible thing you could do. I didn't
know it at the time. And in in I had
a baby. So I had my my first child, Iris
and um twenty four hours after she was born, she
had a hearing loss and there was no genetic reasoning
(06:56):
for it. It was like, yeah, we don't know what
A thousand babies, you know, she's she's the one. So
it set us on this course of like testing. And
I remember the day where I had to sign the
thing like you're gonna put your two months old through
an m r I and they might come about brain
dead and is that okay? Initial here? And I just
was thinking like, no, no, none of this is okay.
(07:17):
And my brother went to rehab that first time in
that time period, so within like a month, I had
a new baby. I found out she had a permanent disability.
And my brother went to this thirty day program and
and then like a lot of other trivial things, it's
not super trivial, my house had a mold infestation. We
had to move out. I mean it was like like
(07:38):
a garbage time. It's funny the way that something like
a mold infestation, which would have been number one thing
and somebody else's year, turns into nothing more than a nuisance.
When I sat against the backdrop of of all that,
you know, I thought a lot about this that you know,
(07:59):
the things that up and there's no sort of like
even handed meeting out of difficult things, right, Like some
people just don't have any for a really long time,
and then other others of us have like multiples. It's
one of my least favorite expressions on earth is um.
You know, God doesn't give us more than we can handle,
(08:20):
you know, does he not? Does he not? Really? I
think he does. I think so too. Also, when when
you were talking about UM, when your brother first let
you know right before your wedding that he was addicted
to oxy um, he asked you not to tell your parents. Yeah,
(08:42):
so you know, in like in family Secrets, the the
tagline is um the secrets that are kept from us,
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves. And it's like you were suddenly thrust
into this like sort of impossible situation of keeping his secret. Yeah.
And it's interesting because I got pregnant like very soon
(09:05):
after we got married, UM, and so I was pregnant
and carrying the secret. I felt like I was like
full of both of these things and they were like
at war and my body. I mean, I I'm not
one of these women that is able to have like
very effortless pregnancies, like I suffer in my pregnancies. It's
(09:28):
hard on my body. And so I was, um, just
really not feeling well. And then I felt like my
my soul was like darkening every day with this thing
and this responsibility that if I didn't tell my parents
or anyone else and he died, I'd have to live
with that. But then I didn't want to betray his
(09:50):
trust because I also thought that was an important part
of all of this. So it was really an impossible situation.
And just like the pregnancy hormones as well, um, I
felt like I was thrust into another galaxy of of stress.
I mean I was just like, um, it was eating
(10:10):
me alive. We talked about the the Mate conversation I
had on my show, Like I started that conversation saying
we had a perfect childhood, like we're super happy family.
So your thesis that everyone who is addicted as a
result of drama is wrong, you know. That was like
kind of was like, so what do you have to
say to that, Matte and uh, and he was like, actually,
(10:31):
let me tell you how you're wrong. You know. Yeah,
he was like He's like, do you have a couple
of minutes. It's like, are you ready for a therapy
session about you? Because I'm ready to give it to you.
And you know, all of that is true. Like there's
a lot of layers in complexity in every family, but
I would say, like on a sort of like base level,
we are people who like each other. Um, we are
(10:52):
people who get along. We are a close family. And
at some point, you know, my mom was like, what
is happening with you? You know, like tell me what
is going on? And um, you know, it kind of
came out. I was at the very end of my
first trimester, so I was coming out of that version
of hell. And um, anyone who's been pregnant before understands
(11:15):
what I mean. And and my parents, you know, they
were just joining the party, so so to speak. And
so my dad's a doctor. He was like family medicine,
internal medicine, and you know he was they were sort
of like, yeah, okay, well, well we're going to l
a in a couple of weeks and we'll we'll solve it,
you know, we'll take care of it. And um, looking
(11:39):
back on that, you just see how powerless and naive
we all were at that at that time. UM to
think that we had any control over over this thing. Right, Well,
there's this like basic human impulse, isn't there to just um?
I think that we can I think that we can
saw things, or that we can trace them back to
(12:03):
their origins. UM that there's um you know that there
are steps to follow in some kind of orderly way
that will fix whatever whatever whatever ails us or whatever
ails those that we love, or you know that there's
that there's some kind of like tangible solution. And then
there's certain things in life that are just so impossibly
messy um and impossible to um you know, to grasp um.
(12:29):
And and I think addiction is like definitely falls into
that category. So that exactly what you just said exactly
that that that messiness, that that there are things that
you just cannot possibly contain. Um. They do not fit
inside of any of the boxes that you understand. You
(12:50):
have no roadmap. I have this recurring image like the
last five years, six years of like utter chaos, it feels.
I I always have this image of trying to push
back the ocean, like trying to make it move, or
like taking like a sand toy. You know, like a
shovel and trying to like make it go away, and
(13:12):
it's just such a feudal task. And so all of
these things just like kept happening. That made me realize
I have absolutely no control over anything, you know that,
Like I am sort of like at the mercy of
of of everything. And you know, my brother having this
(13:35):
this addiction on top of this thing we were dealing
with my daughter, and we've covered this on the show
a lot. But every time you you get sober and
then you go back to it, it's like the addiction
has time to like do jumping jacks and push ups
and to get stronger and stronger. And so every time
he would go back to it, it would get stronger,
and you know, Oxy moved to heroin and UM, it
(13:55):
just became something that was really unmanageable in a bunch
of days, and so UM as I was kind of
coming to grips with the acceptance phase of UM, this
is the way that that my daughter is. Like you know,
when when you have a baby, you have all these
expectations for how it's going to be right, and this
(14:18):
certainly was not my expectation, and so I had I
experienced UM the way that it was as a as
a type of grief. Um. And so I was kind
of like coming to acceptance about the fact that, in fact,
her hearing loss has been an incredible gift to her.
(14:39):
I mean she's like, you know, I mean, the kid
is a miracle of miracles. I mean she's just like
she she never stops talking. Her vocabulary is sharper than mine,
Like she's six, you know, and she's like this, she's
definitely going to be a writer, storyteller. Um, you know,
a natural impath. I mean, she has all these amazing
things that I swear our result of her having to
(15:02):
listen a little harder and having to really look at
people when they talk, and having to tune in in
a way that most little kids don't have to. And
I think it has like really sharpened her little brain
in a way that is just incredible. Um. But of course,
when when you first start thrust on onto this new
(15:23):
horizon and and I'm just looking at this little baby
who can't tell me that it's going to be okay,
I just am like worst case everything, you know. And
so I was coming to terms with all of this
and seeing that she was like this true divine miracle,
all of this great stuff. And we were literally at
the place where we go to get her speech therapy
and audiology and the phone ring and it was a
(15:44):
detective telling me that my brother was dead, you know,
and m Um, she was like thirteen months at that point.
And uh. And then it's like onto the next nightmare.
You know, It's like, okay, here we go now into
this place and at in that place, like once my
brother died, it became um, I just was annihilated. There
(16:09):
just was nothing, like there was nothing left. I felt
completely gutted. I felt completely like a bomb had dropped
on my entire everything and I was nothing. I was
nothing anymore, Like who I was was done like this
before and after. Idea that it was like before my
brother died and after, um his rings very very true.
(16:30):
I didn't like experience human feelings and the way like
it's so hard to talk about that kind of profound grief,
but like you are so um like dead inside. I
guess that is how I would describe it. I didn't
want to eat or laugh, or talk or see people
(16:50):
or communicate or be a person. I didn't want to
do anything but like lay in silence, in the dark,
you know, for a really long time. It was just awful.
And to have that kind of crippling pain while you
have like a one year old was also a really
difficult experience. And as I'm like processing that, I started
(17:12):
to to write about it, um, because I truly could
not use words um with my mouth, so I UM,
I just started writing them down and it was really messy.
Talk a little bit about that impulse, because that's something
that UM, many people think about writing um, you know,
(17:34):
from a profoundly difficult traumatic experience as um like therapeutic
or um cathartic. That's a word that comes up a
lot of people say it must have been cathartic too, um.
You know, to sort of like get that out, like
what what was the what? What drew your pen to
paper or your fingers to the keyboard. It's so hard
(17:56):
to articulate because again I was like not a person
at that point, Like I didn't have human like impulses.
It was just like such a mess, you know. I
felt like a pile of mush. And I remember it
was this fascinating thing where like my daughter would only
nap in the car and so I was like stuck
(18:17):
in the car with her for hours because you don't
wake a sleeping baby. And I couldn't be on social
media because it was really painful. Um to see people
being happy, it's like really hard. And so I like,
I couldn't just sit there like I'm a do or
I need to occupy my time with something. I just
(18:38):
didn't know what to do, and so I just had
this impulse to start like pouring all the stuff out
of my brain onto my iPhone notes app. And that's
where I started just pecking, like finger pecking away at
what I was feeling, and um, it felt like exercising
demons or something. It was just like I have so
(19:00):
much pain in my body right now and it's going
to kill me and I have to get it out
of my body. But that was the that's the only
way I could describe it. It was like a compulsion.
And and I had like this massive document that I
had been like just texting essentially, you know. And my
husband was like, why don't you put this into an essay?
(19:24):
You know, why don't you like put this on your
computer from your phone and and you know, put it
on this medium website basically, And I had written something
when my daughter was around five or six months old.
It was the same feeling of like, I feel really
helpless and I need to like describe the feeling because
I can't, Like I want to explain to people who
(19:46):
I know and love, like this is what I'm going through,
but I can't. I don't want to see anyone and
I don't want to talk. And so it felt easier
to just kind of like write it out. And I
had done that, and my husband had given me this
medium account and I had put that essay up and
I remember feeling like really kind of like m relieved
once I had shared it, and he said, why don't
you try it again? You know? And I felt I
(20:10):
think at that point I had literally nothing to lose,
because I again wasn't human anymore, and so I was like, sure, fine.
And once I put that essay up that was just
so raw and so unfiltered and just um pouring my
guts out. Uh, people started responding to it and like
it was crazy what happened, and um, it just sort
(20:34):
of suggested to me that no one really hasn't the
idea of how to navigate this or how to talk
about it, or is given a space to talk about it.
I mean, people were strangers. I'm sure this happens to
you all the time too, is if strangers were emailing
me like this, just the most personal, profoundly private stuff
(20:56):
that I mean that they've never told anybody and felt
like you'll understand what I'm feeling. And that was just
like I did not expect that at all. Yeah, it's
so interesting the way that like what you're describing, really,
I mean, the way that I'm hearing it is you
were you know, you were writing yourself back into a
(21:19):
human state in some way, and and the the only
way to do that is by you know, I mean,
we overuse the word you know, authenticity and vulnerability. We
overuse those words for sure in our culture. But I
think that there's when we tap into something that is
just completely real, um like utterly um like unvarnished, un
(21:44):
you know, we we we live in a world that's
so full of like polish and filters and everybody sort
of putting their best face forward, and of course you
know that's just that's just veneer. And when when when
somebody actually cuts through all that and speaks the truth
(22:05):
um in in all of its you know, I mean,
I want to say ugliness because but it's not ugliness,
it's actually beautiful because ultimately that like ugliness or that
that that rawness is what we all share and and
what it is to be human. I mean, I was,
I was reading some of your work, um in in
thinking about talking to you, and I don't know whether
(22:28):
this is the piece that you were talking about, but
I wrote this down. I just want to read this
to you. This was something you wrote on the two
year anniversary of UM, your brother's death, UM. And and
the quote that I that I wrote down is the
best part about having your heart ripped out of your
body and put back in disfigured is that you give
(22:50):
significantly less fox about pretty much everything you did when
your heart was intact, when everything was fine and you
didn't even know it. And again I want to repeat that,
when everything was fine and you didn't even know it,
because I think listeners listening to this right now, in
this age of COVID nineteen, it's like everything was fine
and we just didn't know it. Like we used purses
(23:11):
and we put on shoes, and we gathered, we you know,
we went to parties, We hugged each other, We you know,
we we we we sneezed and nobody freaked out. And
and then and the last part that I that I
was down here was you don't have the bandwidth to
care about anything that doesn't really matter anymore. It's strangely refreshing.
(23:32):
And I thought about that, and I thought about the
way that you know, like with your daughter's hearing loss
and the gift that's inherent in um, the you know,
the meaning that she's going to make out of that
in her life. And well, yeah, I mean that's the
that's a beautiful way to put all of that. Yeah,
(23:52):
it's um that's why it does feel like with this moment.
I was joking the other day to somebody. I was like, Hey, like,
this is where I live, guys, welcome to my house.
I live in a state of complete mess and chaos
and grief and you know, and now everyone's here, and
how does it feel? You know, like it's this like
(24:14):
this collective thing that we're going through now. I think
grief is so lonely and it's so solitary, and everyone
experiences it so differently. UM, But one of the I
think most sort of like characteristic um or one of
the most universal characteristics of grief is that you feel
very alone in it, that you feel totally isolated, and
(24:37):
that you're on an island. And I think it's really
interesting right now what's happening is that like we're all
on our own little islands, but we're experiencing the same
kind of a thing. And the other thing that I
know about it is that once you, like I said,
you have your heart ripped out of your body or
your life is destroyed and what what was is no longer,
you have to rebuild. And so there is this really
(25:00):
I mean, I am very cynical as as a human being,
and I don't want to sound tripe, but there is
something about destruction leads to rebirth kind of a thing
that I think globally we are going to experience now.
Like I had this very personal pain and I channeled
it into this thing with writing, and then that's turned
(25:22):
into like writing a book and doing a podcast and
all the stuff that then when I talked to Dr
Mate told me that actually is my addiction and we
can get into that. But basically, like you know, like
I ended up reinventing myself um out of a place
of like true tragedy. It was like, yeah, I don't
give a funk about anything in the way that I
used to. I am no longer who I was. My
(25:42):
entire identity has shifted, and now I have to figure
out who the funk am I now that I am
no longer that person? You know. And it's like if
your house is destroyed and and you have to rebuild
it the second the second house, you're gonna go, well,
you know what, I didn't actually like where the stairs were.
I don't think it made a ton of sense. Like
(26:02):
this house, I'm going to make the stairs go over there.
I'm gonna be really intentional about it. And I think
that that what ended up happening in my case is
that there were a lot of things that weren't actually
working for me that I had to like put the
pieces back together in a way that felt more authentic
to who I was as a human being. Uh. And
(26:22):
it's turned into this company, and um, I ended up
connecting with this other woman who had experienced a similar
kind of a pain, and you know, like basically reached
out and was like, Hey, I have your pain. You
want to collaborate? And I was like, no, actually, don't.
My My initial reaction was like, no, that actually sounds terrible.
(26:45):
I'm I'm actually done with my pain. I just had
a baby, my second baby, so I'm going to just
do that. And um, it was really nice to meet you,
and uh, we'll keep in touch, you know, And um,
that just didn't didn't work. I had my baby because
the world is the way that it is. He is also,
(27:06):
he has a profound deafness in one of his ears,
normal hearing and the other, um, totally different hearing loss
than my daughter, you know, like my putature should I think,
was like, yeah, yeah, lightning did struck strike twice, you know,
like that's my explanation for you. And and so I
was sort of like going through that kind of you
(27:27):
know place again off like, oh I thought it was
gonna be this way and it's not. And all the
things that I learned about my daughter actually don't apply
to my son because it's two different things. And um,
in the midst of that, I I read this article
that opioids are killing more people than car accidents and
literally like picked up my phone email Jess and was like, Okay,
(27:47):
let's let's do this because I don't honestly feel like
I have a choice like I don't want to make
my entire life about heroin Like that sucks and that
is not who I am. I I I'm funny and
I like to have fun and I don't want to
(28:08):
be a bummer, you know. But like this is my experience,
and I don't know as an artist, like I've always
been an artist, and I don't know how to like
translate the world in any other way then creatively, And
so this is what I've got right now. I have
a very special brother who was now dead because of
this thing, and I know a lot of people are
(28:28):
in that same boat. And like I'm also like an activist.
So it's like, Okay, well how can we make this better?
Because like what we're doing right now ain't working. And
so a lot of this like fuel of um, like
for me, like pain, there's a lot of fuel around pain.
I think a lot of artists probably feel that way,
like um, tragedy leads to like a lot of stuff,
(28:54):
you know. It's like I I can take that and
process it in a way that I think, I don't know,
like I guess just creatively basically. And so I think
it was like this thing I was like, all right, well,
let's let's just do it. And and so we made
that show, and then now we're on our fifth show,
and we have a six show in the works, and
then we're going to be doing a seventh show. And
so it's like it's just been this and our whole
(29:15):
tagline of our company is Humanity Unfiltered. We'll be back
in a moment with more family secrets. I think, you know,
we we we live or we have certainly been living
in a culture, in a society where, um, we love
our definitions, you know, we love our baskets of like oh,
(29:37):
you know, you're this kind of person or you do
this thing, or you're you know, you can't possibly both
have tragedy and be a funny person or um, you know,
and and and like how about instead of you know,
or you know, sort of switching the conversation to end,
you know, like this is I mean, last day is
there's you know, in just about every episode at some
(29:59):
point you laugh, you know, and you know, there's it's
it's it's very heavy stuff obviously, but there's also I
think just you know, all of these different shades and
colors to every experience, and um, you know, the whole
idea of UM. You know, I mean I think in
my own life, just about everything of import that's ever happened, UM,
(30:23):
or anything that that has sort of shaped my life,
like ultimately in a really um positive way, has been
like a kind of a happy accident. Who knows which
comes first? UM. I mean, you know, I lost my
father when I was twenty three in a car accident,
and like that shaped my life from that moment forward.
(30:47):
I would not be sitting here talking to you. I
wouldn't be living in this house. I wouldn't be in
my basement, you know, making a podcast. I wouldn't have
written ten books. I wouldn't be married to the man
I married to. I wouldn't have the child that I do.
If that tragedy hadn't happened, my my life would have
just spun in a different direction. And we're like we're
chiseled and we're shaped by everything, um that happens to
(31:12):
us and UM, and I just feel that so strongly.
It's just a sense of like what do we what
do we make of it? And so you know now
that we're in this collective place, all of us, you know,
so for those of us who have had you know,
really hard, difficult things happen. Um. It sort of feels
like I look at some of my friends who have
had I don't know, let's just say an easier time
(31:34):
of it. Nobody has an easy time of it. It's
hard to be human, but let's just say an easier
time and I and it's like they almost don't have
the muscles for what's happening in the world right now.
Like it's, um, it's like, wait a minute, this isn't fair,
you know, or you know that this is this is
really disrupted my plans. It's like yeah, because that's what
(31:57):
you know. Life comes along, it disrupts your plans, you know.
And I guess I'm wondering, like what I just want
to leave people today with just a feeling of like,
what's what's helping right now? Like what what are the
things that you know, We're probably in this for a while,
you know, in our in our homes, you know, in
(32:17):
our communities. Um, with this sort of relentless stream of news. Um,
with the great unknown, I would say, of you know,
what is the world going to look like when we
pick up our handbags and put our shoes back on
and venture out into the world. Like um, the feral
creatures that we've become like like. I think one of
(32:39):
the hardest things for many many of us, me included,
is that level of unknown. You know, what what are
things gonna what are things gonna look like and be
like and feel like? And since we can't know that,
how do we, uh, you know, how do we how
do we move through our days? Um? And um? You know,
(33:00):
there's there's a lot of pressure I think too. On Twitter.
There are a lot of people in you know, my world,
the literary world, you know, saying things like, well, you know,
Shakespeare wrote kingly or during a quarantine, no pressure or anything,
or you know, I'm gonna learn how to bake the
perfect cola or I'm gonna, like, you know, learn Italian um.
And I think that puts an awful lot of pressure
on people to feel like we have to do something
(33:24):
with this time that's external, you know, that's sort of
results driven. Do any thoughts about that? I mean, that's
that's certainly how I'm wired, and I think a lot
of people are wired that way, that we need to
do something with our time. We can't just be where
we are. I mean, this was the whole conversation I
had with with Dr Mante. You know, I I I work,
(33:49):
I work, work, work, work, work, work work. I work
my way out of every painful feeling that I have,
you know. So it's like, on one level, I had
this idea that like pouring my heart out was how
I is becoming human again. But I think he would
shape it a little bit differently in terms of like addictions,
whatever they are, you know, whether they be socially acceptable
(34:09):
or not socially acceptable, are things that we do to
feel better in some capacity, right, So to calm yourself,
to find inner peace, to uh feel happy, to feel normal,
quote unquote, Um, we all do our little things that
that fill us up. You know. You don't do an
addiction because it feels bad. You do it because it
feels good. Right. And that was a really interesting shift
(34:32):
that I made with him in that conversation. Um, and
so I think right now, when people are so desperate,
like as a person who who works my way out
of things, I have that sensation like, well I should
be writing king Lear, you know, I should, you know,
And I I mean totally like it's it's a it's
a really um and it's and again it's socially acceptable
(34:53):
to do that. You know. It's like, well then, but
king lear is good. People produce it like that, Why
would that be of that thing? And I was like,
you know, I wrote a book in nine months because
I was grief stricken. You know, here's my book, you know.
And it's like, yes, that is good in a way,
but what are you not addressing by filling that up
with writing a book? You know? And I think that
(35:15):
that that's an interesting thing. Like I think um leaning
into the fact that like it does feel uncomfortable to
live in the unknown, like, but also accepting that that
is just where we all live. I think that's the
other thing that's happening is that actually every single moment
(35:37):
of our lives we are living in the unknown. We
just are able to like schedule ourselves like crazy people
and fill our days up with things and put all
these tasks on the calendar. But ultimately, like you could
walk outside and get hit by a bus. You know,
you don't, you don't, you don't know what's going to happen.
I mean, you just said this thing about your father,
Like your father did not expect to get up that
(35:58):
day and for that to be his last day. You know.
That's I mean, that's what I think about with the show.
It's like the whole last day concept is like exploring
that moment where you woke up that morning and you
were a person on the earth, and then later that
day you were not, and like what led to that?
You know, and we are all so vulnerable to that,
(36:21):
but we don't acknowledge it because it's too hard, it's
too scary to acknowledge it. Well, there's there's right, It's like,
there's this fine line right between if you if you
lived with that at the at the front of your
foreknowledge about everything, you'd never get out of bed in
the morning, you know, exact can't we? We can't we.
You wouldn't have children, you wouldn't write, you wouldn't make anything,
(36:41):
because what's the point. You know? We never know, right,
you know? And and also the sheer paralysis of like
you know, I think of that sometimes it's like standing
on the street corners, like wait a minute, if I
turn left, you know, this might happen. But if I
turn right, then that might happen. Um, oh my god,
I don't know what to do because I know what's
going to happen depending on which direction I walk in,
so there would be this incredible paralysis that sets in.
(37:03):
And we use business right and and like me too,
I mean I literally on this day that you and
I are speaking today is a whatever day of the
week it is no longer matters. So whatever day of
the week it did, I was like I was supposed
to be in Italy directing a writer's conference. In the
week before that, I was supposed to be in Paris
(37:23):
on my French book tour. And the week before that,
literally I supposed to be in Colorado and uh somewhere else,
somewhere in Texas, um and like all of a sudden,
everything San Antonio, everything started being canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled,
and I would white out in my old fashioned pile
of sacks, which I actually use. I just can't bring
(37:44):
myself to use that eye calendar, and I would actually
like white it out because I can't stand looking at
things scribbled out is just way too messy from my
like sort of compulsive, you know, sort of you know
neat nick brain, how you how you exercise control, everything
needs to be So suddenly had all these blank white pages,
(38:06):
and we all do. It's like it's no matter how
busy we can be in our lives, even you and
I are still both people who are able to do
what we do work wise, you know, from our closets
and our basis um And you know, many people are um,
you know, sort of not able to do that, and
(38:28):
they're struggling in different ways, but it's still impossible to
maintain the pace because it's been taken away from us.
I agree. I Actually it's funny because like with Last Day,
we we explore this first season, we're exploring addiction, and
so we've had to really dive deep into this idea
of one day at a time, you know, like this
(38:52):
this recovery mantra of like how do you live in recovery?
You know? And I go through this whole thing in
the podcast, like my mom had this needle pointed thing
that used to hang over my brother's head when we
were growing up at the dinner table, and it was
like the serenity prayer. And I looked at that thing
every single day of my life as a child and
(39:15):
as a teenager, and I never really understood what it
meant until, you know, like my daughter was born, and
my brother went through this and then he died, and
and and like having to sort of like keep going.
And when your world is sort of like thrust upside down,
I think like the only thing that you can do
is to accept, like, hey, you know, this is what
(39:36):
they tell you right in recovery, like I am powerless,
and um, I have to surrender to that. And the
only thing I can do is to look right in
front of me and to live one day at a time,
you know. And we had this guest towards the end
of the season. He was like, if I it's like
if you're driving a car and you look too far ahead,
you know, you'll crash. If you look too far behind,
(39:57):
you'll crash. You have to kind of be right where
you are on the road. And I think that is
truly our only option right now. It's just that when
you are living one day at a time, it is
so unfamiliar to so many of us because we we
do cling to those like future trips and future plans
and what's going on tomorrow, what's happening on our phones,
and and I think like it's a challenge, but I
(40:20):
also think it might be the reset that many of
us need and this in this moment, like I feel,
and it's so slippery because then you start to get
into these like really annoying cliches about like yeah, but
we're just like living in the moment where like with
our families and that's so special and I don't want
to do that because like a lot of this does
truly suck. Like I found out yesterday my kids are
(40:41):
off until like May ten now, and I'm like, what
am I? Like, they're six and two? How do I
I'm like dying here, you know, But like I will
tell you my daughter and I yesterday when and did
this whole like scavenger hunt outside and like we walked
around on together and we found out these objects and
then we came home and we set up like our
(41:02):
blanket in the backyard and we all worked from outside,
and I mean we are together, like that is something
that I I I never would have expected. And I'm
spending more actual quality time with these people that I
love more than anyone, that we say, we say that
they matter more than anyone. And I remember when my
brother died, I was like I would give anything, I
(41:24):
would give my left leg if I could just see
him if I could like see his little like crooked
smile for one second, like if he could be in
front of me, Like that's all I want. And like
here we have these people that we say we feel
that way about, but when we're in life, we're like
tuning them out because we have all this other ship
going on. And so I don't know, like you know
(41:44):
what I'm saying, No, I really do. And I think, Look,
my son is twenty and uh he's a sophomore in college,
and um, you know, we don't we don't spend you
know that kind of I mean the kind of time
like he's he's now, like you know, he's here, he's
like he's living under my roof feet. We're together all
(42:05):
the time. We're watching movies together every night, we're cooking dinner.
And and I believe me, it's also like super challenging.
I have this like you know, big hairy man in
my house all the time now. But just wait, but
there's you know, I turned in the other day and
I said, we are never going to have this kind
of time together ever again in our lives. Like and
(42:29):
and I do think you know we will all we're
all we're all going through something collectively and we'll all
look back at it, you know, on this time, um
that you know, we're just like in this moment in
history that is this time. I mean, I'm someone who thinks,
I you know, I've always thought that if I can
think it, then it won't happen. So I'll think of
(42:50):
all the all the possibilities, all the things that could
possibly go wrong. I never thought pandemic like it just
wasn't on my list. It was not not on my
list of of terrifying things. And now we are living
through it, and I think whether it's you know, a
year from now or a decade from now, um, in
(43:10):
terms of just like any kind of perspective on it,
we'll look back and have have that feeling of like
that that changed us, and that that that brought us together,
that pulled us apart, whatever it did that that changed
this city or this country or this industry, um, whatever
it is. But um, but yeah, I think we do.
We do wish away whatever is right in front of us,
(43:32):
especially especially with little kids. You know, that feeling like
you know, just the what's the expression that the days
are long, the years are short? Yes exactly? I mean, yeah,
like we we're joking like we're trapped with a terrorist.
My my son, my sweet beautiful little boy, has turned
into a full blown toddler during quarantine. Like he is
(43:56):
just leaning right into hair pulling and biting and jumping
on urniture and trying to dive off of things. And
I mean he was just like this little, sweet little cherub.
But now I'm like, what has happened to you? And
it's like, you know, you want to like, Okay, go nap,
go to bed because I need a break, but like
he's never gonna be this little bitty thing. And I
show I'm like, sure you have a big hairy man
(44:16):
in your house. I'm sure you would love to just
like have that little toddler back, you know. So I
think there is this balance we have to strike of
like acknowledging that like, yes, there are parts of this
that really do suck and that are terrible, and there's
also the very real part of like people are going
to die and that is also like horrific. But I
don't think we have even begun to embrace that, you know,
(44:37):
that aspect that like we are in this position because
there is a really deadly disease, you know, and and
so there's that aspect, and then there's this other aspect
of like we have to keep going somehow, and so
maybe the way to do that is to lean into
those relationships, right and like to just like devour them
while we can, you know. And um, however, schmalty that sounds,
(45:00):
I think, and I'm saying it as a glass half
empty kind of gal. I think that that's where I
am trying to put my energy. I think that that
is a beautiful way to wrap this up with that.
Thank you, a perfect, perfect degree of glass half empty schmaltz.
I love it. What a wonderful conversation, and and I'm
(45:24):
going to be listening avidly for uh season two of
Last Day. And I love the work you're doing and
the meaning that you're making of out of your life.
Thank you. I had such a lovely time talking to
you today in my closet. It was truly like a
wonderful way to spend an hour and a half a quarantine.
So um, thank you, thank you, thank you for having
(45:47):
me on, and thank you for all the great work
that you're putting out in the world as well. Thanks
be well, all right byebye m H For more podcasts,
(46:12):
for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio High
Family Secrets Listeners. It's Dannie. So I've been thinking, as
we've been moving through the many powerful conversations I've had
with my guests during this third season of the podcast,
(00:22):
the world as we know it has been profoundly changed.
I mean the whole world as we know it for
every single one of us. We're sequestered in our homes,
either with other people or alone, and our lives, our
plans have ground to a halt. We're left with our
fears and anxieties about the future and grief for what's
(00:44):
happening all around us. I want to talk about this,
about how we move through this period of time with
as much humanity and caring for ourselves and others as possible,
and so I invited a guest on for a special
bonus episode you're about to hear. Stephanie Whittles Wax is
an actress, activist, author, wife, mom of two little kids,
(01:06):
and she just happens to host one of my favorite
podcasts called Last Day. Her book Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful,
a tragic comic memoir of genius heroine love and loss,
along with her podcast, were born of tragedy. In two
thousand and fifteen, her brother, beloved comedian and actor Harris Whittles,
(01:28):
died of a heroine overdose. Everything in Steph's life changed
as a result of that terrible loss, and she has
done the hard, beautiful, soul bearing work of making meaning
and art out of pain. Since we're all, it's safe
to say, in some pain right now, I thought a
conversation with Steph about her story and navigating this time
(01:50):
we find ourselves in would be a really good thing.
I know it was for me. I hope it is
for you too. In one of the episodes, one of
your later episodes, you UM one of my favorites. Actually,
you have this very powerful conversation with Dr Gabor Matte,
(02:11):
and Dr Matte, who is a world expert on trauma,
talks about trauma in a way that is incredibly revealing
and um and powerful. UM in the sense that we all,
all humans experienced trauma UM, and it's kind of a
(02:36):
hallmark of trauma to think that we don't, or to
compare um, the whole sort of idea of well this
isn't really I mean, there's always someone who has more
trauma in that kind of thinking. What we do is
we disavow our own experience. UM and UM. Dr Matte
(02:57):
actually says at one point it's funny I was writing
it down at a moment where in the episode you
said stop and write this down, and I was literally already.
I was like, stuff, I'm writing it down. And and
the line is, trauma isn't what happens to us, It's
what happens inside us. Yes, exactly. And and so here
(03:18):
we are in this moment where the entire world is
experiencing trauma all together. We're all experiencing it, and it's
unprecedented in our lifetimes. UM. We have no muscle memory
for it. And like, here we are. You're in your closet,
(03:40):
I'm in my son's old playroom. Our whole worlds are
very much divided into before and after this experience that
we're having, and are underscored by the fact that we
don't know what the other side of this experience is
going to be. We're all in grief, and we're in
grief for our former lives, for the world, and for
(04:02):
what's happening to other people all around us. UM and
the stories that are relentlessly coming at us. So the comfort,
I think, or the solace is in connecting. And we
can't connect physically, but we can connect in terms of
these really powerful conversations about um the real stuff. Um So,
(04:24):
I guess where I'd really love to begin with you
is to talk a bit about your story. Where to start?
I had a really terrible traumatic couple of years my
um I met my my husband, was incredible, amazing, love him.
He's downstairs taking care of my kids, um his as well,
(04:47):
our mutual children, and UM met him or met him
like earlier. But we were gonna get married, and like
three days before my wedding, my brother called and told
me that he was addicted to OxyContin and that he
was spending four thousand dollars a month on pills. And
(05:08):
I mean, when I look at this like narratively, that's
the moment where everything kind of like got really wobbly
and I was set on this journey that I never
chose and that I would never have chosen, and that
um I don't know. It's weird when you look back
and you can identify a moment of change, of profound change,
(05:30):
and there have been a few of those since. Um So,
that kind of like set us off on this like
addiction roller coaster that I truly do not wish on anyone. Um,
it's very trite to say my worst enemy, but I don't.
I don't wish that on my worst enemy. There is
no right way to do it. There is only a
(05:52):
way that works for the individual. And it's really hard
when you're in that space to find good advice and
to find sound kind of like textbook this is what
you do, Like you have this type of cancer, this
is what you do. There's nothing like that. And um,
the people who are supposed to be experts, you end
(06:13):
up having to pay a ton of money to go
to their facilities. And so there's sort of a are
you really doing what's best for the person or are
you incentivizing relapse instead of recovery. And so obviously, when
you're in the moment, you're just desperate to help your person.
And my brother was in and out of rehab and
we did what we thought was best. He kept going
(06:33):
to these thirty day programs. I now know that that
is the worst possible thing you could do. I didn't
know it at the time. And in in I had
a baby. So I had my my first child, Iris
and um twenty four hours after she was born, she
had a hearing loss and there was no genetic reasoning
(06:56):
for it. It was like, yeah, we don't know what
A thousand babies, you know, she's she's the one. So
it set us on this course of like testing. And
I remember the day where I had to sign the
thing like you're gonna put your two months old through
an m r I and they might come about brain
dead and is that okay? Initial here? And I just
was thinking like, no, no, none of this is okay.
(07:17):
And my brother went to rehab that first time in
that time period, so within like a month, I had
a new baby. I found out she had a permanent disability.
And my brother went to this thirty day program and
and then like a lot of other trivial things, it's
not super trivial, my house had a mold infestation. We
had to move out. I mean it was like like
(07:38):
a garbage time. It's funny the way that something like
a mold infestation, which would have been number one thing
and somebody else's year, turns into nothing more than a nuisance.
When I sat against the backdrop of of all that,
you know, I thought a lot about this that you know,
(07:59):
the things that up and there's no sort of like
even handed meeting out of difficult things, right, Like some
people just don't have any for a really long time,
and then other others of us have like multiples. It's
one of my least favorite expressions on earth is um.
You know, God doesn't give us more than we can handle,
(08:20):
you know, does he not? Does he not? Really? I
think he does. I think so too. Also, when when
you were talking about UM, when your brother first let
you know right before your wedding that he was addicted
to oxy um, he asked you not to tell your parents. Yeah,
(08:42):
so you know, in like in family Secrets, the the
tagline is um the secrets that are kept from us,
the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
keep from ourselves. And it's like you were suddenly thrust
into this like sort of impossible situation of keeping his secret. Yeah.
And it's interesting because I got pregnant like very soon
(09:05):
after we got married, UM, and so I was pregnant
and carrying the secret. I felt like I was like
full of both of these things and they were like
at war and my body. I mean, I I'm not
one of these women that is able to have like
very effortless pregnancies, like I suffer in my pregnancies. It's
(09:28):
hard on my body. And so I was, um, just
really not feeling well. And then I felt like my
my soul was like darkening every day with this thing
and this responsibility that if I didn't tell my parents
or anyone else and he died, I'd have to live
with that. But then I didn't want to betray his
(09:50):
trust because I also thought that was an important part
of all of this. So it was really an impossible situation.
And just like the pregnancy hormones as well, um, I
felt like I was thrust into another galaxy of of stress.
I mean I was just like, um, it was eating
(10:10):
me alive. We talked about the the Mate conversation I
had on my show, Like I started that conversation saying
we had a perfect childhood, like we're super happy family.
So your thesis that everyone who is addicted as a
result of drama is wrong, you know. That was like
kind of was like, so what do you have to
say to that, Matte and uh, and he was like, actually,
(10:31):
let me tell you how you're wrong. You know. Yeah,
he was like He's like, do you have a couple
of minutes. It's like, are you ready for a therapy
session about you? Because I'm ready to give it to you.
And you know, all of that is true. Like there's
a lot of layers in complexity in every family, but
I would say, like on a sort of like base level,
we are people who like each other. Um, we are
(10:52):
people who get along. We are a close family. And
at some point, you know, my mom was like, what
is happening with you? You know, like tell me what
is going on? And um, you know, it kind of
came out. I was at the very end of my
first trimester, so I was coming out of that version
of hell. And um, anyone who's been pregnant before understands
(11:15):
what I mean. And and my parents, you know, they
were just joining the party, so so to speak. And
so my dad's a doctor. He was like family medicine,
internal medicine, and you know he was they were sort
of like, yeah, okay, well, well we're going to l
a in a couple of weeks and we'll we'll solve it,
you know, we'll take care of it. And um, looking
(11:39):
back on that, you just see how powerless and naive
we all were at that at that time. UM to
think that we had any control over over this thing. Right, Well,
there's this like basic human impulse, isn't there to just um?
I think that we can I think that we can
saw things, or that we can trace them back to
(12:03):
their origins. UM that there's um you know that there
are steps to follow in some kind of orderly way
that will fix whatever whatever whatever ails us or whatever
ails those that we love, or you know that there's
that there's some kind of like tangible solution. And then
there's certain things in life that are just so impossibly
messy um and impossible to um you know, to grasp um.
(12:29):
And and I think addiction is like definitely falls into
that category. So that exactly what you just said exactly
that that that messiness, that that there are things that
you just cannot possibly contain. Um. They do not fit
inside of any of the boxes that you understand. You
(12:50):
have no roadmap. I have this recurring image like the
last five years, six years of like utter chaos, it feels.
I I always have this image of trying to push
back the ocean, like trying to make it move, or
like taking like a sand toy. You know, like a
shovel and trying to like make it go away, and
(13:12):
it's just such a feudal task. And so all of
these things just like kept happening. That made me realize
I have absolutely no control over anything, you know that,
Like I am sort of like at the mercy of
of of everything. And you know, my brother having this
(13:35):
this addiction on top of this thing we were dealing
with my daughter, and we've covered this on the show
a lot. But every time you you get sober and
then you go back to it, it's like the addiction
has time to like do jumping jacks and push ups
and to get stronger and stronger. And so every time
he would go back to it, it would get stronger,
and you know, Oxy moved to heroin and UM, it
(13:55):
just became something that was really unmanageable in a bunch
of days, and so UM as I was kind of
coming to grips with the acceptance phase of UM, this
is the way that that my daughter is. Like you know,
when when you have a baby, you have all these
expectations for how it's going to be right, and this
(14:18):
certainly was not my expectation, and so I had I
experienced UM the way that it was as a as
a type of grief. Um. And so I was kind
of like coming to acceptance about the fact that, in fact,
her hearing loss has been an incredible gift to her.
(14:39):
I mean she's like, you know, I mean, the kid
is a miracle of miracles. I mean she's just like
she she never stops talking. Her vocabulary is sharper than mine,
Like she's six, you know, and she's like this, she's
definitely going to be a writer, storyteller. Um, you know,
a natural impath. I mean, she has all these amazing
things that I swear our result of her having to
(15:02):
listen a little harder and having to really look at
people when they talk, and having to tune in in
a way that most little kids don't have to. And
I think it has like really sharpened her little brain
in a way that is just incredible. Um. But of course,
when when you first start thrust on onto this new
(15:23):
horizon and and I'm just looking at this little baby
who can't tell me that it's going to be okay,
I just am like worst case everything, you know. And
so I was coming to terms with all of this
and seeing that she was like this true divine miracle,
all of this great stuff. And we were literally at
the place where we go to get her speech therapy
and audiology and the phone ring and it was a
(15:44):
detective telling me that my brother was dead, you know,
and m Um, she was like thirteen months at that point.
And uh. And then it's like onto the next nightmare.
You know, It's like, okay, here we go now into
this place and at in that place, like once my
brother died, it became um, I just was annihilated. There
(16:09):
just was nothing, like there was nothing left. I felt
completely gutted. I felt completely like a bomb had dropped
on my entire everything and I was nothing. I was
nothing anymore, Like who I was was done like this
before and after. Idea that it was like before my
brother died and after, um his rings very very true.
(16:30):
I didn't like experience human feelings and the way like
it's so hard to talk about that kind of profound grief,
but like you are so um like dead inside. I
guess that is how I would describe it. I didn't
want to eat or laugh, or talk or see people
(16:50):
or communicate or be a person. I didn't want to
do anything but like lay in silence, in the dark,
you know, for a really long time. It was just awful.
And to have that kind of crippling pain while you
have like a one year old was also a really
difficult experience. And as I'm like processing that, I started
(17:12):
to to write about it, um, because I truly could
not use words um with my mouth, so I UM,
I just started writing them down and it was really messy.
Talk a little bit about that impulse, because that's something
that UM, many people think about writing um, you know,
(17:34):
from a profoundly difficult traumatic experience as um like therapeutic
or um cathartic. That's a word that comes up a
lot of people say it must have been cathartic too, um.
You know, to sort of like get that out, like
what what was the what? What drew your pen to
paper or your fingers to the keyboard. It's so hard
(17:56):
to articulate because again I was like not a person
at that point, Like I didn't have human like impulses.
It was just like such a mess, you know. I
felt like a pile of mush. And I remember it
was this fascinating thing where like my daughter would only
nap in the car and so I was like stuck
(18:17):
in the car with her for hours because you don't
wake a sleeping baby. And I couldn't be on social
media because it was really painful. Um to see people
being happy, it's like really hard. And so I like,
I couldn't just sit there like I'm a do or
I need to occupy my time with something. I just
(18:38):
didn't know what to do, and so I just had
this impulse to start like pouring all the stuff out
of my brain onto my iPhone notes app. And that's
where I started just pecking, like finger pecking away at
what I was feeling, and um, it felt like exercising
demons or something. It was just like I have so
(19:00):
much pain in my body right now and it's going
to kill me and I have to get it out
of my body. But that was the that's the only
way I could describe it. It was like a compulsion.
And and I had like this massive document that I
had been like just texting essentially, you know. And my
husband was like, why don't you put this into an essay?
(19:24):
You know, why don't you like put this on your
computer from your phone and and you know, put it
on this medium website basically, And I had written something
when my daughter was around five or six months old.
It was the same feeling of like, I feel really
helpless and I need to like describe the feeling because
I can't, Like I want to explain to people who
(19:46):
I know and love, like this is what I'm going through,
but I can't. I don't want to see anyone and
I don't want to talk. And so it felt easier
to just kind of like write it out. And I
had done that, and my husband had given me this
medium account and I had put that essay up and
I remember feeling like really kind of like m relieved
once I had shared it, and he said, why don't
you try it again? You know? And I felt I
(20:10):
think at that point I had literally nothing to lose,
because I again wasn't human anymore, and so I was like, sure, fine.
And once I put that essay up that was just
so raw and so unfiltered and just um pouring my
guts out. Uh, people started responding to it and like
it was crazy what happened, and um, it just sort
(20:34):
of suggested to me that no one really hasn't the
idea of how to navigate this or how to talk
about it, or is given a space to talk about it.
I mean, people were strangers. I'm sure this happens to
you all the time too, is if strangers were emailing
me like this, just the most personal, profoundly private stuff
(20:56):
that I mean that they've never told anybody and felt
like you'll understand what I'm feeling. And that was just
like I did not expect that at all. Yeah, it's
so interesting the way that like what you're describing, really,
I mean, the way that I'm hearing it is you
were you know, you were writing yourself back into a
(21:19):
human state in some way, and and the the only
way to do that is by you know, I mean,
we overuse the word you know, authenticity and vulnerability. We
overuse those words for sure in our culture. But I
think that there's when we tap into something that is
just completely real, um like utterly um like unvarnished, un
(21:44):
you know, we we we live in a world that's
so full of like polish and filters and everybody sort
of putting their best face forward, and of course you
know that's just that's just veneer. And when when when
somebody actually cuts through all that and speaks the truth
(22:05):
um in in all of its you know, I mean,
I want to say ugliness because but it's not ugliness,
it's actually beautiful because ultimately that like ugliness or that
that that rawness is what we all share and and
what it is to be human. I mean, I was,
I was reading some of your work, um in in
thinking about talking to you, and I don't know whether
(22:28):
this is the piece that you were talking about, but
I wrote this down. I just want to read this
to you. This was something you wrote on the two
year anniversary of UM, your brother's death, UM. And and
the quote that I that I wrote down is the
best part about having your heart ripped out of your
body and put back in disfigured is that you give
(22:50):
significantly less fox about pretty much everything you did when
your heart was intact, when everything was fine and you
didn't even know it. And again I want to repeat that,
when everything was fine and you didn't even know it,
because I think listeners listening to this right now, in
this age of COVID nineteen, it's like everything was fine
and we just didn't know it. Like we used purses
(23:11):
and we put on shoes, and we gathered, we you know,
we went to parties, We hugged each other, We you know,
we we we we sneezed and nobody freaked out. And
and then and the last part that I that I
was down here was you don't have the bandwidth to
care about anything that doesn't really matter anymore. It's strangely refreshing.
(23:32):
And I thought about that, and I thought about the
way that you know, like with your daughter's hearing loss
and the gift that's inherent in um, the you know,
the meaning that she's going to make out of that
in her life. And well, yeah, I mean that's the
that's a beautiful way to put all of that. Yeah,
(23:52):
it's um that's why it does feel like with this moment.
I was joking the other day to somebody. I was like, Hey, like,
this is where I live, guys, welcome to my house.
I live in a state of complete mess and chaos
and grief and you know, and now everyone's here, and
how does it feel? You know, like it's this like
(24:14):
this collective thing that we're going through now. I think
grief is so lonely and it's so solitary, and everyone
experiences it so differently. UM, But one of the I
think most sort of like characteristic um or one of
the most universal characteristics of grief is that you feel
very alone in it, that you feel totally isolated, and
(24:37):
that you're on an island. And I think it's really
interesting right now what's happening is that like we're all
on our own little islands, but we're experiencing the same
kind of a thing. And the other thing that I
know about it is that once you, like I said,
you have your heart ripped out of your body or
your life is destroyed and what what was is no longer,
you have to rebuild. And so there is this really
(25:00):
I mean, I am very cynical as as a human being,
and I don't want to sound tripe, but there is
something about destruction leads to rebirth kind of a thing
that I think globally we are going to experience now.
Like I had this very personal pain and I channeled
it into this thing with writing, and then that's turned
(25:22):
into like writing a book and doing a podcast and
all the stuff that then when I talked to Dr
Mate told me that actually is my addiction and we
can get into that. But basically, like you know, like
I ended up reinventing myself um out of a place
of like true tragedy. It was like, yeah, I don't
give a funk about anything in the way that I
used to. I am no longer who I was. My
(25:42):
entire identity has shifted, and now I have to figure
out who the funk am I now that I am
no longer that person? You know. And it's like if
your house is destroyed and and you have to rebuild
it the second the second house, you're gonna go, well,
you know what, I didn't actually like where the stairs were.
I don't think it made a ton of sense. Like
(26:02):
this house, I'm going to make the stairs go over there.
I'm gonna be really intentional about it. And I think
that that what ended up happening in my case is
that there were a lot of things that weren't actually
working for me that I had to like put the
pieces back together in a way that felt more authentic
to who I was as a human being. Uh. And
(26:22):
it's turned into this company, and um, I ended up
connecting with this other woman who had experienced a similar
kind of a pain, and you know, like basically reached
out and was like, Hey, I have your pain. You
want to collaborate? And I was like, no, actually, don't.
My My initial reaction was like, no, that actually sounds terrible.
(26:45):
I'm I'm actually done with my pain. I just had
a baby, my second baby, so I'm going to just
do that. And um, it was really nice to meet you,
and uh, we'll keep in touch, you know, And um,
that just didn't didn't work. I had my baby because
the world is the way that it is. He is also,
(27:06):
he has a profound deafness in one of his ears,
normal hearing and the other, um, totally different hearing loss
than my daughter, you know, like my putature should I think,
was like, yeah, yeah, lightning did struck strike twice, you know,
like that's my explanation for you. And and so I
was sort of like going through that kind of you
(27:27):
know place again off like, oh I thought it was
gonna be this way and it's not. And all the
things that I learned about my daughter actually don't apply
to my son because it's two different things. And um,
in the midst of that, I I read this article
that opioids are killing more people than car accidents and
literally like picked up my phone email Jess and was like, Okay,
(27:47):
let's let's do this because I don't honestly feel like
I have a choice like I don't want to make
my entire life about heroin Like that sucks and that
is not who I am. I I I'm funny and
I like to have fun and I don't want to
(28:08):
be a bummer, you know. But like this is my experience,
and I don't know as an artist, like I've always
been an artist, and I don't know how to like
translate the world in any other way then creatively, And
so this is what I've got right now. I have
a very special brother who was now dead because of
this thing, and I know a lot of people are
(28:28):
in that same boat. And like I'm also like an activist.
So it's like, Okay, well how can we make this better?
Because like what we're doing right now ain't working. And
so a lot of this like fuel of um, like
for me, like pain, there's a lot of fuel around pain.
I think a lot of artists probably feel that way,
like um, tragedy leads to like a lot of stuff,
(28:54):
you know. It's like I I can take that and
process it in a way that I think, I don't know,
like I guess just creatively basically. And so I think
it was like this thing I was like, all right, well,
let's let's just do it. And and so we made
that show, and then now we're on our fifth show,
and we have a six show in the works, and
then we're going to be doing a seventh show. And
so it's like it's just been this and our whole
(29:15):
tagline of our company is Humanity Unfiltered. We'll be back
in a moment with more family secrets. I think, you know,
we we we live or we have certainly been living
in a culture, in a society where, um, we love
our definitions, you know, we love our baskets of like oh,
(29:37):
you know, you're this kind of person or you do
this thing, or you're you know, you can't possibly both
have tragedy and be a funny person or um, you know,
and and and like how about instead of you know,
or you know, sort of switching the conversation to end,
you know, like this is I mean, last day is
there's you know, in just about every episode at some
(29:59):
point you laugh, you know, and you know, there's it's
it's it's very heavy stuff obviously, but there's also I
think just you know, all of these different shades and
colors to every experience, and um, you know, the whole
idea of UM. You know, I mean I think in
my own life, just about everything of import that's ever happened, UM,
(30:23):
or anything that that has sort of shaped my life,
like ultimately in a really um positive way, has been
like a kind of a happy accident. Who knows which
comes first? UM. I mean, you know, I lost my
father when I was twenty three in a car accident,
and like that shaped my life from that moment forward.
(30:47):
I would not be sitting here talking to you. I
wouldn't be living in this house. I wouldn't be in
my basement, you know, making a podcast. I wouldn't have
written ten books. I wouldn't be married to the man
I married to. I wouldn't have the child that I do.
If that tragedy hadn't happened, my my life would have
just spun in a different direction. And we're like we're
chiseled and we're shaped by everything, um that happens to
(31:12):
us and UM, and I just feel that so strongly.
It's just a sense of like what do we what
do we make of it? And so you know now
that we're in this collective place, all of us, you know,
so for those of us who have had you know,
really hard, difficult things happen. Um. It sort of feels
like I look at some of my friends who have
had I don't know, let's just say an easier time
(31:34):
of it. Nobody has an easy time of it. It's
hard to be human, but let's just say an easier
time and I and it's like they almost don't have
the muscles for what's happening in the world right now.
Like it's, um, it's like, wait a minute, this isn't fair,
you know, or you know that this is this is
really disrupted my plans. It's like yeah, because that's what
(31:57):
you know. Life comes along, it disrupts your plans, you know.
And I guess I'm wondering, like what I just want
to leave people today with just a feeling of like,
what's what's helping right now? Like what what are the
things that you know, We're probably in this for a while,
you know, in our in our homes, you know, in
(32:17):
our communities. Um, with this sort of relentless stream of news. Um,
with the great unknown, I would say, of you know,
what is the world going to look like when we
pick up our handbags and put our shoes back on
and venture out into the world. Like um, the feral
creatures that we've become like like. I think one of
(32:39):
the hardest things for many many of us, me included,
is that level of unknown. You know, what what are
things gonna what are things gonna look like and be
like and feel like? And since we can't know that,
how do we, uh, you know, how do we how
do we move through our days? Um? And um? You know,
(33:00):
there's there's a lot of pressure I think too. On Twitter.
There are a lot of people in you know, my world,
the literary world, you know, saying things like, well, you know,
Shakespeare wrote kingly or during a quarantine, no pressure or anything,
or you know, I'm gonna learn how to bake the
perfect cola or I'm gonna, like, you know, learn Italian um.
And I think that puts an awful lot of pressure
on people to feel like we have to do something
(33:24):
with this time that's external, you know, that's sort of
results driven. Do any thoughts about that? I mean, that's
that's certainly how I'm wired, and I think a lot
of people are wired that way, that we need to
do something with our time. We can't just be where
we are. I mean, this was the whole conversation I
had with with Dr Mante. You know, I I I work,
(33:49):
I work, work, work, work, work, work work. I work
my way out of every painful feeling that I have,
you know. So it's like, on one level, I had
this idea that like pouring my heart out was how
I is becoming human again. But I think he would
shape it a little bit differently in terms of like addictions,
whatever they are, you know, whether they be socially acceptable
(34:09):
or not socially acceptable, are things that we do to
feel better in some capacity, right, So to calm yourself,
to find inner peace, to uh feel happy, to feel normal,
quote unquote, Um, we all do our little things that
that fill us up. You know. You don't do an
addiction because it feels bad. You do it because it
feels good. Right. And that was a really interesting shift
(34:32):
that I made with him in that conversation. Um, and
so I think right now, when people are so desperate,
like as a person who who works my way out
of things, I have that sensation like, well I should
be writing king Lear, you know, I should, you know,
And I I mean totally like it's it's a it's
a really um and it's and again it's socially acceptable
(34:53):
to do that. You know. It's like, well then, but
king lear is good. People produce it like that, Why
would that be of that thing? And I was like,
you know, I wrote a book in nine months because
I was grief stricken. You know, here's my book, you know.
And it's like, yes, that is good in a way,
but what are you not addressing by filling that up
with writing a book? You know? And I think that
(35:15):
that that's an interesting thing. Like I think um leaning
into the fact that like it does feel uncomfortable to
live in the unknown, like, but also accepting that that
is just where we all live. I think that's the
other thing that's happening is that actually every single moment
(35:37):
of our lives we are living in the unknown. We
just are able to like schedule ourselves like crazy people
and fill our days up with things and put all
these tasks on the calendar. But ultimately, like you could
walk outside and get hit by a bus. You know,
you don't, you don't, you don't know what's going to happen.
I mean, you just said this thing about your father,
Like your father did not expect to get up that
(35:58):
day and for that to be his last day. You know.
That's I mean, that's what I think about with the show.
It's like the whole last day concept is like exploring
that moment where you woke up that morning and you
were a person on the earth, and then later that
day you were not, and like what led to that?
You know, and we are all so vulnerable to that,
(36:21):
but we don't acknowledge it because it's too hard, it's
too scary to acknowledge it. Well, there's there's right, It's like,
there's this fine line right between if you if you
lived with that at the at the front of your
foreknowledge about everything, you'd never get out of bed in
the morning, you know, exact can't we? We can't we.
You wouldn't have children, you wouldn't write, you wouldn't make anything,
(36:41):
because what's the point. You know? We never know, right,
you know? And and also the sheer paralysis of like
you know, I think of that sometimes it's like standing
on the street corners, like wait a minute, if I
turn left, you know, this might happen. But if I
turn right, then that might happen. Um, oh my god,
I don't know what to do because I know what's
going to happen depending on which direction I walk in,
so there would be this incredible paralysis that sets in.
(37:03):
And we use business right and and like me too,
I mean I literally on this day that you and
I are speaking today is a whatever day of the
week it is no longer matters. So whatever day of
the week it did, I was like I was supposed
to be in Italy directing a writer's conference. In the
week before that, I was supposed to be in Paris
(37:23):
on my French book tour. And the week before that,
literally I supposed to be in Colorado and uh somewhere else,
somewhere in Texas, um and like all of a sudden,
everything San Antonio, everything started being canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled, canceled,
and I would white out in my old fashioned pile
of sacks, which I actually use. I just can't bring
(37:44):
myself to use that eye calendar, and I would actually
like white it out because I can't stand looking at
things scribbled out is just way too messy from my
like sort of compulsive, you know, sort of you know
neat nick brain, how you how you exercise control, everything
needs to be So suddenly had all these blank white pages,
(38:06):
and we all do. It's like it's no matter how
busy we can be in our lives, even you and
I are still both people who are able to do
what we do work wise, you know, from our closets
and our basis um And you know, many people are um,
you know, sort of not able to do that, and
(38:28):
they're struggling in different ways, but it's still impossible to
maintain the pace because it's been taken away from us.
I agree. I Actually it's funny because like with Last Day,
we we explore this first season, we're exploring addiction, and
so we've had to really dive deep into this idea
of one day at a time, you know, like this
(38:52):
this recovery mantra of like how do you live in recovery?
You know? And I go through this whole thing in
the podcast, like my mom had this needle pointed thing
that used to hang over my brother's head when we
were growing up at the dinner table, and it was
like the serenity prayer. And I looked at that thing
every single day of my life as a child and
(39:15):
as a teenager, and I never really understood what it
meant until, you know, like my daughter was born, and
my brother went through this and then he died, and
and and like having to sort of like keep going.
And when your world is sort of like thrust upside down,
I think like the only thing that you can do
is to accept, like, hey, you know, this is what
(39:36):
they tell you right in recovery, like I am powerless,
and um, I have to surrender to that. And the
only thing I can do is to look right in
front of me and to live one day at a time,
you know. And we had this guest towards the end
of the season. He was like, if I it's like
if you're driving a car and you look too far ahead,
you know, you'll crash. If you look too far behind,
(39:57):
you'll crash. You have to kind of be right where
you are on the road. And I think that is
truly our only option right now. It's just that when
you are living one day at a time, it is
so unfamiliar to so many of us because we we
do cling to those like future trips and future plans
and what's going on tomorrow, what's happening on our phones,
and and I think like it's a challenge, but I
(40:20):
also think it might be the reset that many of
us need and this in this moment, like I feel,
and it's so slippery because then you start to get
into these like really annoying cliches about like yeah, but
we're just like living in the moment where like with
our families and that's so special and I don't want
to do that because like a lot of this does
truly suck. Like I found out yesterday my kids are
(40:41):
off until like May ten now, and I'm like, what
am I? Like, they're six and two? How do I
I'm like dying here, you know, But like I will
tell you my daughter and I yesterday when and did
this whole like scavenger hunt outside and like we walked
around on together and we found out these objects and
then we came home and we set up like our
(41:02):
blanket in the backyard and we all worked from outside,
and I mean we are together, like that is something
that I I I never would have expected. And I'm
spending more actual quality time with these people that I
love more than anyone, that we say, we say that
they matter more than anyone. And I remember when my
brother died, I was like I would give anything, I
(41:24):
would give my left leg if I could just see
him if I could like see his little like crooked
smile for one second, like if he could be in
front of me, Like that's all I want. And like
here we have these people that we say we feel
that way about, but when we're in life, we're like
tuning them out because we have all this other ship
going on. And so I don't know, like you know
(41:44):
what I'm saying, No, I really do. And I think, Look,
my son is twenty and uh he's a sophomore in college,
and um, you know, we don't we don't spend you
know that kind of I mean the kind of time
like he's he's now, like you know, he's here, he's
like he's living under my roof feet. We're together all
(42:05):
the time. We're watching movies together every night, we're cooking dinner.
And and I believe me, it's also like super challenging.
I have this like you know, big hairy man in
my house all the time now. But just wait, but
there's you know, I turned in the other day and
I said, we are never going to have this kind
of time together ever again in our lives. Like and
(42:29):
and I do think you know we will all we're
all we're all going through something collectively and we'll all
look back at it, you know, on this time, um
that you know, we're just like in this moment in
history that is this time. I mean, I'm someone who thinks,
I you know, I've always thought that if I can
think it, then it won't happen. So I'll think of
(42:50):
all the all the possibilities, all the things that could
possibly go wrong. I never thought pandemic like it just
wasn't on my list. It was not not on my
list of of terrifying things. And now we are living
through it, and I think whether it's you know, a
year from now or a decade from now, um, in
(43:10):
terms of just like any kind of perspective on it,
we'll look back and have have that feeling of like
that that changed us, and that that that brought us together,
that pulled us apart, whatever it did that that changed
this city or this country or this industry, um, whatever
it is. But um, but yeah, I think we do.
We do wish away whatever is right in front of us,
(43:32):
especially especially with little kids. You know, that feeling like
you know, just the what's the expression that the days
are long, the years are short? Yes exactly? I mean, yeah,
like we we're joking like we're trapped with a terrorist.
My my son, my sweet beautiful little boy, has turned
into a full blown toddler during quarantine. Like he is
(43:56):
just leaning right into hair pulling and biting and jumping
on urniture and trying to dive off of things. And
I mean he was just like this little, sweet little cherub.
But now I'm like, what has happened to you? And
it's like, you know, you want to like, Okay, go nap,
go to bed because I need a break, but like
he's never gonna be this little bitty thing. And I
show I'm like, sure you have a big hairy man
(44:16):
in your house. I'm sure you would love to just
like have that little toddler back, you know. So I
think there is this balance we have to strike of
like acknowledging that like, yes, there are parts of this
that really do suck and that are terrible, and there's
also the very real part of like people are going
to die and that is also like horrific. But I
don't think we have even begun to embrace that, you know,
(44:37):
that aspect that like we are in this position because
there is a really deadly disease, you know, and and
so there's that aspect, and then there's this other aspect
of like we have to keep going somehow, and so
maybe the way to do that is to lean into
those relationships, right and like to just like devour them
while we can, you know. And um, however, schmalty that sounds,
(45:00):
I think, and I'm saying it as a glass half
empty kind of gal. I think that that's where I
am trying to put my energy. I think that that
is a beautiful way to wrap this up with that.
Thank you, a perfect, perfect degree of glass half empty schmaltz.
I love it. What a wonderful conversation, and and I'm
(45:24):
going to be listening avidly for uh season two of
Last Day. And I love the work you're doing and
the meaning that you're making of out of your life.
Thank you. I had such a lovely time talking to
you today in my closet. It was truly like a
wonderful way to spend an hour and a half a quarantine.
So um, thank you, thank you, thank you for having
(45:47):
me on, and thank you for all the great work
that you're putting out in the world as well. Thanks
be well, all right byebye m H For more podcasts,
(46:12):
for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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