Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart Radio podcast.
This week's Thursday Therapy, We've got Chris Carr. She's a multiple New York Times best selling author, wellness activist, and cancer thriver. She's been called a force of nature by Oh the Oprah Magazine and was named a new role Model by The New York Times. Chris is also a member of Oprah's Super Soul one hundred. She's got a new book that's called I'm Not a Morning Person, Braving Loss, Grief and the big messy emotions that happen when life
falls apart. Thank you so much for coming on to wind Down.
Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
I have Kristen with me because she's kind of been She's had a rough year with some loss, and so when I was reading the breakdown, and I was like, I'm not a morning person and mourning as in like mourning, braving loss, grief and the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart, and I just was like, you know, you've you've had twenty years of living and thriving with incurable stage is for cancer, right, that's correct, and and that you still like, have stage four cancer.
I do.
Wow.
I mean you're so calm, I know. I was just like, well, I have a book, yeah.
So does the morning. Okay, so just tell me this is the morning and the grief go into every part of your life? Like, is the morning and the grief in your health? Do you grieve optimal health or the idea of what your body could do or couldn't do?
I think, you know, just to take a step back. So I've been living with stage four cancer for twenty years now, and when I was newly diagnosed, I was terrified, like anybody would be who goes through what I write about in the book, a rupture. It's that moment where life change. Someone dies, you have a miscarriage, you lose your job, you know, you go through a divorce. And I think in those moments, we think that if I feel any of my feelings, I won't survive them. They'll
somehow take me down. And what I have learned is the way out is through. It's like that cliche saying, but it's true.
And so.
This is my seventh book, and it's called I'm Not a Morning Person. It's about braving brief, grief and loss and the big, messy emotions that happen when life falls apart, those ruptures that will happen to each and every one of us, big and small, And so the point is to learn how to navigate these storms, to become a little bit more emotionally literate, so that we understand what I call our emotional anatomy, and by doing so, we start to realize that these feelings that we have are information,
just like grief is information. But for me, it was the one emotion I didn't want to touch, and so I realized that that was where I want I needed to spend a lot of time. My therapist says something that's so great that I talked about in the book, which is when the grief train pulls into the station, it brings all the cars. It's like the old stuff, stuff you think you're over, and then the emotions that come with it, like why am I raging? Why am I filled with shame? Like this is so screwed up?
Why is all this happening? And I think it's just an opportunity to bring those parts of ourselves back home and be curious about them, to see what's going on under the surface. Grief is a master healer. That's what I've learned. So the thing that I didn't want to experience in touch. When I finally allowed it in, it was like a big relief, and then there was a domino, a domino effective change that started to happen just from that allowing.
This is probably one of the most validating two minutes I've ever had, because as I feel so different on the other side, and not that there is another side, but just in the journey of grief and loss, and it's really hard to participate in like what the world
was before. I feel like the world just kind of kept trudging on and I was stuck in like drying cement for a while, and in a way I was envious of the world moving on, But in so many ways I also knew that I was like deeply inside of each minute that I was living and sorting things out and kind of like what will be left will be left, not because I didn't I'm ignoring it just because I don't need it anymore, but then trying to get yourself into a world, trying to like emerge back
into this world that it's almost I described it the other day as like I've been like cocooned up for so long, and then I take I open my front door and I put a big toe out, and I just feel like everything is noisy and busy and fast, and I'm going, that's just not how I operate anymore. And I kind of and apologetically don't operate that way anymore. But it's very strange to try to describe that to people that haven't experienced that. How like living slow is
just like that's my default. Now, That's just where I'm at, and I'm okay with it. But it's so opposite of what people are used to seeing of me and how much availability they're used to having of me. So do you feel like you experience the like sweet slowness as well coming out of I guess we're never really out of it, but just in the healing of grief.
Yeah. I think that's a beautiful way to describe it. And I love that you said not out of it, because I think one of the things that we get wrong because we come from and we are domesticated in a grief phobic, messy emotions of our society, right, so when we come when we live in that place, then we're taught to push it down and it's physics.
Or get over it from the abuser. Yeah, get over move on. It's been forever totally to.
Say that when you push something down, it's going to come out another way. And to your point about getting over it, right, there isn't an over, there's through. So we oftentimes there's a chapter that I write about called awkward times awkward people, and it's the that we hear or that we say and it and guess what, we're all going to step in it? So why not like
understand the train a little bit more? But I think to your point, I actually have found through this practice or through this experience that I say no to a lot more than I used to say no.
To, so much more interested.
Yeah, I'm not interested in doing things that don't bring me joy because I know that how precious this time is. And I think that there's this a suite to use your word liberation in that it doesn't mean I'm not going to do things that I don't want to do because I run a business.
But more often than not, I'm like, yeah, it's not worth it.
No, And it's so unapologetic the no.
Yeah, it's like standing for your life, I think, and and I think when you touch death, you come close to it, and certainly you've had the opportunity to shepherd a loved one through that chapter. It teaches you more about what matters and how you want to spend your time.
When you got your cancer diagnosis, did they tell you like, okay, this is because I mean, when I hear stage four, that's very Isn't it only to stage five?
No, it's only just stage four, So I'm at the final stage.
So do they they gave you that twenty years ago, that diagnosis, So do they say like, oh, you only have this many years and then have you far passed that?
Or yes, I have.
So I have a very rare, incurable disease and it can be slow growing and it can be aggressive. And so in the beginning, what was paramount for me was to find the right doctor because the first doctor suggested a triple organ transplant, right, and if I had done that,
I wouldn't be here right. So I for the last twenty years have been more of you know, when I found my what I call my second in command, it's when I decided to become the CEO of my health higher fire, build the team I'm in charge, and but not just I'm in charge. Likely you'll do what I say, because obviously these people know a lot more than me.
But I'm in charge.
Of making the core decisions and seeing if you're a fit. And so it took a while to find that fit. And when I did, he said sometimes this can be was I just said, slow, it can be aggressive. We're gonna watch him. Wait, let cancer make the first smoove, and you're gonna go off and watch and live. And I was like, I don't know how to do that, dude, but okay, but that was the inciting incident that put me on this path. Wow.
And then are you are you married? You have kids?
I don't have kids, but I am married.
Yes, So how is that for your husband? Like, how is how is he walking through with this knowing that he doesn't know when he could lose you.
I actually think that I'll probably outlive him, and he agrees. So it's not something that we talk about our stress about. We met before we met while I was making my film and writing my book. He was the editor on my project and I was the director of the project. So we've been doing this together a hell of a long time and He's like, if there's one person that's going to remain, it's her. She's like cockroaches and twinkies. You can't get rid of her.
So I love your calm confidence when you say it. You're like, I'm going to outlive him. So that's just it.
Yeah, Yeah, it's.
More so about like, am I gonna of an impenthouse at the ritz with cats?
Like? Is what are my final years going to look like? Like's that's where I spoke to qut my energy.
For the person that does have a fear of death, what would be your advice to them to overcome that?
I don't think it's overcomeable. If we're to be honest with ourselves, because death is probably the thing that every single one of us, we're in some ways frightened about it or in very valid ways terrified of it, because no matter what we believe to be true, we truly don't know what happens after we die or you will
learn that then. And so I think more often than not, I would say, first and foremost, if you find yourself catastrophizing, to be able to come back to the moment and say, like, this is a story that I'm telling you about this.
I'm not dying currently in this.
Moment, like you know, even if I am not if I am dying, I am still here right now, right And so that's one thing. But I think to understand it a little bit more because because we're frightened of it, oftentimes we are skillless and we have no tools when
it matters. So not just your own death, but the death of a loved one, and then you know, not knowing what it's actually going to happen, is your body shuts down, or what hospice is, or you know what your options are or what like thinking about your end of life care, which can feel like no way, I'm
not going to go there. That's so morbid. But you know, we spend a whole lot of energy preparing to bring a child into the world, and there's a lot of celebration and joy and fear and all of the stuff that happens, right, But we put death under the carpet or we shove it in a corner and we archive our elders, And there's something very wrong with that, and each and one of us will face it at some point, So why not educate ourselves more about it so we can have a good death.
I want to have a good death.
What do you want? We want a party? Do we want speeches?
Do we want sound baths? I mean maybe all of that. I love for you to just have a little retreat for yourself and my honors. Use me as an excuse to get a break. A girl.
We'll go at the same time.
We go, hold hands. Yeah, neither one of us are living without each other. I do know that it's codependency in its most beautiful form.
Chris Carr.
As you know, as I like that, you'll be like Domblin Louise, like you know, hands together and off the cliff you go.
Listen. We could bury each other quite literally with all the ship we know about each other already, so we might as well just go at the same time.
True debt, True debt. What was the hardest chap for you to write in your new book.
I'd say the most beautiful chapter I wrote was actually about my dad's passing, and I was writing that book and crying and you know, feeling all the feelings and because there was a lot of truth there and beauty there. But I'd say the hardest chapter for me to write was a book about a chapter about rage. So this chapter is called Becoming Unbecoming, and in the book, I break out each chapter according to different emotions or experiences that you might go through when she hits the fan.
And what I wasn't prepared for was the amount of anger and rage that came up in me, not just for his diagnosis and the idea of losing him, but also trauma and unprocessed emotions from my own diagnosis twenty years ago. And my father is my chosen father, so I'm adopted. But also so what was coming up too is trauma and anger towards my biological father, right, and holy crap, the whirlwind. And so here I am writing about this while I'm also not too far out from
experiencing this very big emotion. And what I found so healing in the process of just writing the book, and I hope people experience reading it, is when we begin to become more emotionally literate and understand the anatomy of our emotions. Then we get curious and say, Okay, this is what it is, this is how it behaves, this is normal, and usually there's something else attached to it or underneath it. So rather than going into a shame
spiral because I had either irruptions or implosions. I could go, oh, well, let me put on my little wellness detective hat and see what's really going on here, which would help me become more compassionate towards myself, maybe forgive myself for certain things that I did that I wish I hadn't, and ultimately build a healthier relationship with me.
They're so brilliant and such a little light.
Well, you can relate on the dad in the dad sad too of it, you know, losing your father and having anger from your own childhood and the passing. It's like it's a it's it's a lot. It's a lot to hold all different feelings. It's like the angry, the sad, the betrayed, the.
It's also interesting too, I think the there's the morning that you do in your own self, and then there's a morning that you that I at least experienced, and like the idea of what people may or may not become or how they may or may not show up in my life after my dad passed, so I had anticipated maybe a different relationship with my mom, and I also in not that any of us can predict, right that's like grief is the sneaky grief is just me, and so it comes out in different ways, and there's
an emotional intelligence level too.
Like I.
Went first into like my own therapy triage, I just needed a minute. There was times where I took myself out of my own world because I did have the rage. I was snappy with my kids, I was snappy with my husband and I just looked at him and I said, this has nothing to do with you. And I know that. And so I was able to take a thirty six hour mini trip with my very best friend from home, who I knew was going to love me through even if I was just a little head for thirty six hours,
you know. And I came back and those things don't fix, but they're deposits in the healing. But there was there is an interesting thing that I'm observing in the way that my mom is processing grief and her mourning that is also then an offshoot of my mourning, Like huh, well, I kind of thought maybe she would be around more
and more participatory in like my world. Or because my dad was an addict, so he drank and drug addiction my entire life and was very good at victimizing himself, and so he and we then, you know, the cycle of all of that is that we have to pretend that he was a certain way. And my mom is still very much pretending. And so when I interrupt the pr campaign for him by stating something on social media, being vulnerable whatever, and I'm never mean about him, he
can't defend himself. What good does that do? But I am open to say, like Father's Day sucks, and it sucked for a lot of us before our dads died, you know, and I'd say it much more beautifully than that. But the mourning, the loss of ideas, I think is also another layer that goes with grief, and it's mourning maybe the people that are still alive a little bit in a way. Did you experience any of that around.
Oh, without question, because I think what happens is when you go through loss, family structures and relationships change, and sometimes what wasn't working really comes out right, and so there's big tectonic shifts in the structure. And from my own experience, it's just I can't change you. The only time you can change someone is when they're in diapers. It's a good thing to remember, I.
Really want to hug you that one hits.
So I can't fix somebody else. I can't change how they're feeling. And I think when we talk about like what I mentioned earlier about the chapter awkward times, awkward people, we step in it so much with each other around this messy stuff. Sometimes we center ourselves. Sometimes we interrupt, we make it all about us. Sometimes we quickly change the topic. All of these things that we do, I
believe in the goodness of people. We do them unintentionally, right, but we do them because we don't know what to do. And so it's one of those practices where it's like keep your side of the street clean and say, you know, here's the work that I'm doing on my own healing. And first and foremost, like there's a story that I write about in the book that I've been talking a lot about in podcasts, which is because it was emotion I didn't want to experience, and because I kept pushing
it down. There was one moment where it was like at the tipping point and I was in CBS and my mom had asked me to pick up more and sure we didn't know how much longer my father had and unconsciously, the thought came to mind, like should I get a six pack or should I get a case? Well, how long does he have to live? And all of the flood of emotion that I had been keeping at base just came to the surface, and I was like and run out of CBS and I made it to
my car, and then the deluge just came out. But after that experience, there was like a calm in the storm. It was almost like a dose of medicine. It's like I was high, and I thought to myself, this feels so much better. And if this feels better, why am I avoiding it? And what else am I avoiding? Right?
And so.
Doing that work of like, hey, this is my side of the street. This is the grief that I'm experiencing. And yes, there it has tentacles. But everybody's journey, I think, through it, not over it, but through it is unique to their own hearts.
The side of the street things interesting because I remember doing that with the past, and sometimes other people can spill all their stuff on the other side of the street too, So now you're only cleaning, You're cleaning up lots of stuff on the side of the street.
But I keep getting invited over on the other side the street. I think that's where I'm like, oh no, no, I'm good over here. Yeah, yeah, thank you. It is interesting though that you say people will You said something that really super reminded me. I'm always careful to say too much on here because, like, my mom is a healthy person out in the world, so it's not a bad thing, but I do there's so much attention back
to her. Like even my daughter has recognized a couple of things where she's like, wow, it's just really about her, and it's like she's just in this like freedom phase. I call it spring break if I'm honest, which is probably a little ugly, but I mean, she's on spring break.
You know.
She also took care of him for a long time. They were married for forty years, and she'd been with him since he was she was twenty three, So a lot of times I witnessed twenty three year old like behavior. If I'm just observing, I'm not judging, just truly just observing. I'm like, huh, that's interesting, but that, like it is their own process and so sometimes really hard to watch.
So did you did you feel like this if this is too personal that's fine, you can just give me the pass or tell me no, because I know you're good at it. But how did your mom's relationship and your relationship then change after the passing of your dad. Did you feel like the big shifts or did it feel like you leaned into each other more? Was there a time of space? Does it go with the ebbs and flows? Does it like how does that work for you too?
We're a lot closer now, but we're both committed to the work and it's messy. So there are times when I'm like, you're stepping on me, You're making this all about you. I don't feel heard. Yeah, that's the truth of my experience. And does she hear you, Yes, one
hundred percent. Because we have decided that we're going to do the hard stuff because our relationship is our core intention, right, And so that means when you're like, well, my intention is to have a healthy relationship with you, that means I'm going to have a lot of times with you too, and we're going to talk about him.
That's the piece.
Yeah, And so it's not it's not like it hasn't been bumpy.
It was.
It's been very bumpy at times. But it's like, Okay, what's my what's my goal here? It's to have a deeper relationship with this person. And I think what you're talking about is centering yourself, and so I see that a lot in grief, because it oftentimes can come from anxiety.
I don't know what to say, so I'll just say a lot of things and make it about me and a lo Oftentimes, you know, just because I've written this book and I've done a deep exploration of this topic for the last four and a half five years personally but also as an author, people will.
Say, well, well, if you.
You know all these things not to say, and we could talk about some of those, but what do you say to somebody who's going through grieving process? And I'm like, there's actually nothing you can say. You can't say, so take the pressure off. You can't make it better, but what you can do, and it's you're not your job to fix it, By the way, it's not your job to fix it. If you want to be in relationship with this person, then my advice is just to listen.
Just just show up and be present and be like, I don't even know what to say, but I love you. I brought tissues or brought lasagna.
Yeah, I think that's I mean everything, because it's like, even like going through you know, divorce or whatever, people will be like, oh, well, at least it's like no, there's no don't give me an at least, don't give me a butt, don't give me a well you get your kids. Oh my gosh, well, how nice of a break. I'm like that none of that helps to hear any of that. That's I don't want to break from my kids, Like I like, sure, yeah I do, but like I don't want them out of my house, you know, like
every other weekend. Or it's like I think people their own uncomfortability lends them to saying like, well, now you can do whatever you want because you've got a death sentence and you can now go do what. It's like, no, like none of these nothing you're saying is actually.
It's like we default to this like bright side mentality, and sometimes it's okay to just say, like I I work in an infant stillborn task force in Nashville, so we'll go and so I'm in the thin places a lot. And that's been interesting to navigate to after the loss of my dad, and all these others at the same time. But I think, like the most validating thing to say to anybody, whether it's divorce, miscarriage, death, any of this is just like I'm sorry, and it's not fair because
that's the reality. I mean, it's like we toxically bright side everything, Like you don't want to be without your kids for a week. You actually didn't even want to get divorce. No, I mean, it's just crazy. It's like we all it is that, Like, I think, what the most beautiful thing? And I cannot wait to read your book truly, Like, and it's gonna sound creepy, but I'm taking you in the bathtub with me. I guess that's
when it's the most silent for me. But I think the most beautiful thing is just this this idea that we just need to like sit with it because we're so we're such a go society. We're so fast paced that we even just fast paced ourselves through emotion. It's like, oh, no time for that. Got to keep on moving because I mean, but eventually it does, like it builds up, it goes somewhere, whether it's in your body, whether it's out on a spouse, you know, I mean, there's we need the freedom.
Yeah, and let's agree with you more.
I know that's why you're going in the bath with me.
Chris car Well, everyone go get Chris Carr's book. I'm not a morning person braving loss, grief and the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for being honest and vulnerable and helping so many people. And you have an, you know, an incredible story, and obviously you're helping people that, like you said, they go through all types of loss. So thank you for doing what you do in writing that book.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks girl, What a good, wonderful spirit.