SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I think the fact that I was writing about this stuff and friends who had been through grief before were telling me, I hear you and it will get better, and saying other small things without trying to fix me helped me actually push and accelerate the early stages of healing much more than many people have.

Matt: 0:56

I'm Matt Bradley, your host, and I am honored to join you as we explore the complexities of grief, the challenges of solo parenting, and the struggles of getting back to living, and maybe even some adventures of finding love again. Each episode we'll sit down with courageous dads who are bravely sharing their experiences, insights, and lessons learned along the way on this journey, sharing how grief has impacted them, their children, and their lives. We might have a crosstalk conversation with widows and widowers sharing their experiences, the similarities and the differences in grief and being a solo parent. Occasionally we'll have grief experts on to dive deeper into the understanding of grief and healing. So whether you're a solo dad or solo mom, or a friend of a solo parent, or you're wanting to just understand more about this journey, you're in the right place. Don't forget to visit our website, solo dad.life, for more resources, episode updates, and to connect with our growing community. You can follow us on all the social media platforms, find our group on Facebook, look for us on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and on the YouTube page. On YouTube, you can find more content and some behind the scenes moments. Just search the Solo Dad Podcast. And remember, don't forget to subscribe. Lastly, if you've enjoyed what you've heard or found it helpful or insightful, we would appreciate your support. Head on over to buymeacoffee.com slash the Solo Dad Podcast to help keep the show running and fuel our mission of supporting solo dads everywhere and giving them a space to have open and honest conversations. Thank you so much for being here. And let's dive into today's conversation. Welcome to another episode of Solo Dad Podcast. I'm your host, Matthew Bradley, and this is an interesting connection that I have um through my grief coaching class. The gentleman that's going to be joining us today, his name is Tony Stewart. He is not only an author, he is not only uh now a, I believe, I'm not speaking of turn, a certified grief coach, and also, sadly but true, also a widower. Tony, thank you for being here and taking time out of your day. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00: 3:17

I am doing really well, Matthew. Thank you for asking.

Matt: 3:20

Yeah. You know, I gotta say, on the grief, when we were doing the grief coaching together, and it's just kind of random, you'd ask questions or I'd catch your energy, and then you you would mention, as you should, that you've written a book, and and we'll get to that uh here in just a second. But I just really liked kind of your overall good energy that you would have when you'd ask questions. I don't know if we were ever in a breakout room together. So I think it was very serendipitous that you know you would speak out because there's a couple hundred people on those calls, right? And the fact that, you know, a couple of us would ask questions, and I was like, wait, this is another guy, because I you can attest to this. There's not a lot of us on those calls.

SPEAKER_00: 3:56

Like five percent out of the whole class were guys, maybe 10.

Matt: 3:59

And so, and and I'm like, Andy's written a book. And I was like, Well, this is definitely somebody I gotta hopefully if he wants to, and you did, uh, have a chat about this. So tell me, you are uh let's go with the book, right? Let's what's the title of your book? And how did that all kind of well, actually, let me pause. Let me go back. I said this is what I want to do. We met through groove grief coaching. Give me maybe or in our people two to three things that were big aha's for you, just uh you're four and a half years out, even at four and a half years out, and the grief coaching and the amazing job that David Kessler does. What were you just like, wow, that's that even at four and a half years, that's a big aha for you going through the grief coaching stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 4:41

Probably the biggest aha for me, because it hasn't happened to me, was seeing people who were not just stuck in their grief, and a word they might themselves use. I just want to say, you've probably talked a lot about this. For us to claim that someone else is stuck in their grief is of course a terrible thing. We can't know that. But people who would come on and ask to work with David, who had lost in, I think in the the one that I'm remembering, they had all lost children. Oh, there's a lot of them years earlier, who were really stuck and were helped by David asking them kind of factual questions, which I found fascinating. So, like there was someone who was stuck, and I don't think this was a child, this was her husband she had lost, but she was stuck in the idea, or her father, that because she hadn't visited him enough in the last week or two of her life when she was traveling too much, uh, he died, he had a heart attack at home. And she might have, something might have turned out differently if only, if only, if only she had been as good a daughter, I now remember it was a daughter, uh uh as she wanted to have been and had been previously. And David started asking her questions like, well, uh, how how often do people who have heart attacks die? And how often do people who get taken to the hospital with a heart attack die? And he just, through this simple asking of questions, got her to challenge the story that she was holding in her head that somehow she could have saved her father if only she had been visiting him three times a week like she used to.

Matt: 6:30

It is, you know, I I know exactly who you're talking about. And there were some others that were very similar, right? Like, and again, I really appreciate you putting that in context of it. So not us to call them they're stuck in grief, but they can you could kind of see it and they would almost say it. And there is something about that that messy thing with grief and guilt, and also this like somehow we have, and I love Simon Seneca talks about this where he's like, we always project out better, and right, and so like, well, if I had done this, then all these good things would have happened. You're like, or maybe not, right? And I think yes, kind of David breaks that idea of like, yeah, you could have shown up four times a week, and he still would have had a heart attack, right?

SPEAKER_00: 7:09

And it's and and and if he had had a heart attack right in front of you, uh I mean she didn't it's sort of like when people have heart attacks right in front of the EMT, how often do they survive it? And it turns out the answer is almost never.

Matt: 7:27

Oh, correct. Yeah. And yeah. And so I that's a really good aha. And and I I do like that one because and I think and I the other thing you said that I think is super important for people that are gonna listen to this is it's not like David Kessler took a sledgehammer to it. It wasn't like he forced reality in their face, it was just this the way his years and years of doing this, right? Yes, just the way of kind of just presenting it and then watching the person kind of, whether it was, I can't remember if this person or not, right? But fully accepts it, or they just start to like kind of marinate in the idea that, yeah, it may have not changed anything, and kind of watching almost like a weight get real, you know, uh released.

SPEAKER_00: 8:12

Or the possibility of a weight be removed, because another thing that I learned was he's he told us again and again in a difficult situation like that, where someone is is really stuck in a in a in a in a belief that you as an outsider and almost any objective outsider might say, Well, that doesn't make sense. But the person who's living in it, of course, as we all have, you know, like like I had my moments after Lynn died where like I should have died with you, or whatever.

Matt: 8:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:41

The person who's living in it is living in it and and not being their objective self. Anyway, David said, Sometimes the most important thing is simply to plant the seed. Don't push it. That's right, he did. Don't push it. Like with those questions, plant the seed. And then he would ask, because each of these was a volunteer who had volunteered to have a dialogue.

Matt: 9:03

God bless them. Oh my gosh. Yeah, oh my god. Some of them. Oh right.

SPEAKER_00: 9:07

That was heartbreaking, heartbreaking. Uh, and he would ask, and I I I wish I I'm not David Kessler, I don't remember the exact words, but very gently, like, do you think the the import of his question was, do you think you might eventually let this idea in? Not do you believe it now?

Matt: 9:25

Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:26

And he asked it way better than what I see right, yeah.

Matt: 9:29

Right. Maybe we use chat G.

SPEAKER_00: 9:31

And then they sometimes they said, yeah, and sometimes they said, maybe eventually, but you've given me something to think about.

Matt: 9:38

You know, that's another really good thing. There are several times when he would do this throughout the the training that that is something I I I'm hearing it again and again in some form or fashion. Those words of like, that's interesting, I'm gonna think about it, or like, wow, I hadn't really because they you're right. In grief, unfortunately, yes, we all wish there was a 22-step program that you could just check off for grief. But it doesn't work that way. And like you said, it is a good point that in grief, I think planting planting some seeds, whether it takes a week or it takes a year, I pray hope send vibes on people that it doesn't take a decade. But um, you know, whether it's one week, one year, one decade, that it they just kind of ruminate on it and it and marinate in it and kind of turn it around. And I remember in and we'll we'll move to your book in a minute. Um, the other do you remember the one where you talked about like a I think it may have been the same later, maybe not, but like a superpower? Oh yes. That was like that was great.

SPEAKER_00: 10:40

That right, like, oh, if you had the power to stop all and just because I'm pushing and are in the same boat, cancers if you could have if if if you could actually if we could be sure that your being present would cause this person, your loved one, not to have died, then oh my god, you've got to be able to do that. You should be in every hospital all the time. Exactly. They're all gonna be competing to have you in their hospitals because no one else can do that.

Matt: 11:05

Yeah, I mean, right? I mean, it and it's interesting, like, and I and I do like he, and you and I both know that that a year is not a definitive mark. It's not 12 months, it's not 365 days, it's not however many hours on a year. Um, but I do like how sometimes it's like they need to be a year out, and and and I think it's more about like just time. Like, this is not something you and I are both gonna nod on this one that you bring up at the funeral. Like, you know, right? Like you're like, did you think that maybe like you're like, no, no, no, like you've got it, and I think as with any wound, there's a point whether, you know, like I blew my Achilles years ago, you don't start physical rehab the week after you do it, you have to give it some time. Yes, and then you right, so I think that there's that kind of component too. So I also want to make sure people understood that David Kessler was not like, you know, calling people out who are six weeks post-loss, telling them no, quite the contrary.

SPEAKER_00: 11:56

He advised all of first of all, the volunteers, he said you have to be at least a year out to volunteer. Yes, and he said to us that he does not attempt a significant interaction, intervention, anything like that in the first year. I agree. The first year, yeah, and you think of the common conventional attitudes towards grief out there. Oh my God, three months have passed. Aren't you aren't aren't you over it? How come you're still crying or or whatever? And David won't even try to address the grief in a deep and meaningful way until more or less a year out.

Matt: 12:29

Those those those words right at the end there that aren't you over it yet? And I I love he's gotten a lot of attention after his mom died. Oh, I can see his name. He played Spider-Man for a minute. It's not anyway, very good. Anyway, he's on a late show and his mom had passed recently, and he goes, If I start to cry when I talk about her, it's only because it's grief is love unable to be expressed. And we loved her so much. Right. And, you know, the fact that he kind of went into it, he goes, I'm gonna miss her, and he said it publicly, which is I think in David Kessler uses this phrase a lot, and I'm starting to now in our very grief illiterate culture. And I only live in the United States, so I don't know what's like anywhere else, but I do know what it's like here, and it's not great. Um, everything from, you know, like, oh, you know, you and I can both say, Well, my wife died. And then someone goes, He had a plant die last week. You're like, Oh, so close. You're I know what you're trying to do, but damn it, right? And and it was my wife, and even if you say it, I'm like, I don't, I didn't have a relationship. I wasn't you with your wife, right? So I don't know what that loss was like. I don't know what my loss was like. And there's some similarities, but at the same time, it's that comparison which steals, I think, a lot. But yeah, I the whole year out thing, right? And it's like, you know, whether you're young or we're old, and those are all subjective, but you know, I I'm in enough younger widow groups where young widows get told, like, well, you can find somebody else. And they're like, What? Like, yeah, right? Like, just because you got 40 years and I only got four doesn't mean it's any less significant.

SPEAKER_00: 13:48

Like, yes, exactly. And and and and by the way, I know people who started romances in their 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Matt: 13:56

And it's beautiful, right? Yeah so I really appreciate that's a really good aha. So I'll make sure I'll pinpoint that. And I also make sure, just to let everybody know, I'll put a link, and it's okay, I'll call it a solo dad. It's solo dad.life approved resources, definitely anything by David Kessler. And I'm going to make sure I say this, and Tony's gonna nod as well. Ah, the six stages of death and dying are not a checklist, they're meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive.

SPEAKER_00: 14:23

And not a roadmap, not a roadmap once.

Matt: 14:26

No, and I I'm I'm so sad. I think people tried to make it a pamphlet because that would be nice if there were six steps, and there's not, and you can't check them off. And they come in different ways. So, David Kessler's stuff. Um, I would highly recommend anyone listening to if you want to find a certified grief educator and coach, they're on the website. Uh, and so Tony and I will be are are there, are we there? Um I've certainly applied for it.

SPEAKER_00: 14:48

I filled in the form.

Matt: 14:49

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so hopefully. So, so let's go. Uh, let's see, I'm probably gonna break what I told you I want to do, but let I know let's go to the book. So you wrote a book post the loss of of your wife Lynn called Carrying the Tiger. What brought you to feel that you wanted to write a book? What was the antithesis? I know I'm gonna assume that cats are present because you had one just jump in your lap and leave. There is a tiger. So kind of bring that all Yeah, bring that all together and tell me how to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 15:17

Well, it's it's two or three different stories. And I've been told by people who've listened to me on podcasts that I have great energy and I tell stories, but I tend to go on and answer more than the host asks, and would I please stop occasionally? But story number one, how did I come to write the book? And at the time I had no idea it would be called Carrying the Tiger, and tigers weren't big in my head, all through Lynn's cancer journey, which lasted five or six years, much longer than usual, with some great periods. It wasn't uh in because some of the she had incurable cancer from the day we learned about it.

Matt: 15:52

And every and what type?

SPEAKER_00: 15:53

You might mean asking uh it was uh a adena carcinoma, which is non-smoker's lung cancer. And it had metastasized to her spine. Uh so the first we knew was serious back pain, um, which turned out to be the metastases, the tumors sitting in her spine. The whole first half of Carrying the Tiger is this like the twists and turns of those first five or six years, which we could spend the entire time to get away from the city.

Matt: 16:18

We could spend five or six years talking about those, right? Yeah, exactly. Maybe we'll have you back up. Yeah. Or they can read the book.

SPEAKER_00: 16:23

You can, yes, definitely. Read the book. I want to leave you some some reason, some surprises when you read the book. So it was very, very fascinating, cool, rewarding, uh, frustrating, horrible, dangerous, scary period, all of those things. But during that time, quite early on, Lynn had a lot of friends, and and we wanted to stay in touch with them. She was very clear from day one that she wanted to be open about this. In fact, it wasn't a conversation. It was just her nature. It never occurred to us. She had a lot of friends. So we quickly, we we started with emails, we got inundated with the emails. Um it was just over our, I mean, people writing back, you know, it it becomes a lot of emails very quickly when you're also scrambling to find the right oncologist, find the right treatment, or what are we going to do about these tumors in your spine? Uh, and someone turned us on to a uh a website called caringbridge.org, which is for people who are facing challenges. And you can set up a uh we set up a private social media page, only accessible to our friends, where Lynn had me write the posts, where I was writing posts like we went to the doctor and here's what they told us, and now the next challenge is this, and fingers crossed for tomorrow kind of posts. That's where it started. And as I said, this went on for years with so many twists and turns, some major operations, things going wrong, things going right. That's the first half of the book. Um so I there were a lot of posts. And after a while, just a few months, I started getting more and more open with my emotions in these posts. And I started, they started becoming something more than just the factual here's what happened, but it's also here's what it feels like. And we were getting these responses back, like, thank you, thank you. I love reading what you're writing, thank you for keeping us informed. This goes on for five or six years until the drugs stop working. She could we're lucky there were some miracle drugs that gave us those five or six years. A lot of things went wrong despite being on those drugs. And even because of being on those drugs, every drug has its side effects.

Matt: 18:30

It does.

SPEAKER_00: 18:31

Um, and then eventually the cancer beat the drugs. Very horrible sixth year, as as could have been our first if the miracle drugs hadn't worked. It would be more like what most people with this kind of disease face, where you're looking at a year.

Matt: 18:45

Yeah, I remember my wife's on call just saying because she had colon cancer, and they have basically a three three-part cocktail. I mean, whether you do it in three parts or you do it one part, dumb out, and they're like, You just really hope your cancer's dumb. You just really hope that it just doesn't. Because once it once the cancer figures out the drugs, you're like, oh boy, here we go, right? So yeah, definitely think of the cancer journey for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:06

Yep. So uh at the end of that last year, she decided to do home hospice. We decided, which was very, very hard decision. Um, it turns out that despite all our best intentions, the pull to keep going, the pull to do one more set of treatment, to not say the final goodbye, to not say, This is it, we're stopping, I'm gonna die now. That pull, which was worse in me than in her, because I wanted her to stay with me, she was more ready to go. Anyway, that's one of my favorite parts of the book, actually, is what that was like. But I kept writing. We went into home hospice and which only lasted a few weeks, and I was writing every night. And it was during COVID. We were here in the apartment together. Oh man. But it was beautiful. Yeah, it was beautiful. I don't know that every minute was beautiful, but look. Looking back, those were the best weeks of my life was when I took care of my wife and helped her die. And I was writing these posts now, and then you couldn't. I had started out thinking this was the Lynn Cthulhu journal, but it was becoming increasingly Tony Stewart's emotional journey and talking about what it's like. Friends told me how great that was and how they loved reading it. And then she died, and I really thought, this is it, I'm gonna stop writing. And I couldn't stop writing. And I kept writing and I journaled during the early months of my grief. I was writing every day or two what that day or two had been like. And again, these amazing friends. And now the group had grown. Now there were several hundred people reading these things, right? Um they just said, thank you, thank you, thank you. This is fascinating, heartbreaking, and you're really helping me with my own feelings, my own grief, to read the details of what it's like to go through this.

Matt: 20:55

What do you think, real quick? What do you think allowed you to be so, and I'm gonna take this from a guy perspective, like so vulnerable that way?

SPEAKER_00: 21:07

Combination of two things. One, Lynn had started working on me early in our relationship. And I and I do tell this the anecdote in carrying the tiger, I jump back and I tell you about us and stuff. There's a lot more in it than carrying Bridge of Post. Sure. Uh, but uh early in our relationship, she had started working on me to like at dinner time. What are you thinking? And I would start it out saying, Oh, I don't know, not much. And she'd beat me up saying, No, you're thinking something. Tell me. And then once I got comfortable doing that, she moved to what are you feeling? Oh, yeah. Which like blew me away. So she forced me in the privacy of our dinner table conversation to tell her things like what am I feeling? that I had never as a guy, like that, you just didn't talk about that.

Matt: 21:48

Yeah, there's something about there's something about having a space that you feel secure enough to be vulnerable. Yes. And it's a it's a you can't put your finger on it, right? Like we, I'm sure you I'm gonna speak out of turn, but I'm sure you have some amazing guy friends you've been friends for for a long, long time. I am blessed to have well, there was there was three, and now there's four, and fortune one passed away, but um, because grief, grief, grief comes all the time, right? Um, that I'm lucky enough that I can hop on a Zoom call and we can talk about our kids and talk about life and sports, and then one of us can start to go, like, man, I just feel this way, and really just kind of oh, I always feel like a turtle on its back, right? You're helpless, there's nothing you can do, and you don't want anyone to make fun of you. And so, what a blessing your wife was able to. I'm just envisioning it's like her being Michelangelo working on like the sculpture David, just chiseling away at you night after night, like we're gonna get there. There's beauty in here somewhere.

SPEAKER_00: 22:43

Now, I wouldn't I she didn't perform miracles, she started the process, right? Right, right. And then this whole caring bridge cycle that I just talked about is what did it. So here I am, I'm writing in the first year. I'm hardly saying anything about how I'm feeling in the first few months at least. And then one day, what the only thing to say was this feels horrible. I feel it feels like we're slogging through a swamp. We don't know how long this phase we're in is going to go on. Every day is hard. Lynn is in pain every day. When will it start to get better? And I almost didn't press publish on the post. I wrote the whole thing, it's only a f only a page or two, and then I published it. But I said, you know, I'm nervous about writing this, and I got so much love back for sharing what I was really feeling, what we were really feeling. So I got into this feedback loop in my safe space.

Matt: 23:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:34

In the private caring bridge with only friends reading it. I'm not, I didn't know them all. We were now onto friends of friends of Lynn.

Matt: 23:42

Right, people that yeah, they were following this.

SPEAKER_00: 23:44

They were like our followers. They were they were really they wanted to be there.

Matt: 23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 23:49

And that feedback loop, as I as as the journey got more and more emotional, and we moved in towards grief, which is the most emotional of all, that feedback loop is what opened me up and got me to put these things down that I never would have done.

Matt: 24:04

To steal from David Kessler again, your grief. Well, uh even even pre-grief, we'll call it pre-grief, anticipatory grief, right? We've heard those terms, right? Like for sure. We both we both were on a cancer journey, and and there was it was very like yeah, I know when I was having and I can look back and now understand when I was having anticipatory grief, knowing that my wife's journey was there was we did a pinky promise saying we weren't gonna look. We looked, um, and there was no happy ending in this story, right? And we were like, oh man, and so anticipatory grief, but to to steal what Kessler has said, and I love that, and other people, and I use this all the time, grief has to be witnessed, and it was because you're being authentic, vulnerable, and honest, it was being witnessed, whether by friends or friends of friends, yes, and I I think an important thing that people need to hear about that is whether it was online or in person, just like when uh athlete scores a touchdown and there's celebration, people witness it. We always love those happy stories. Grief is also an emotion that needs to be witnessed as uncomfortable as it makes people, right? And so I think that's probably because there's a guy who wrote a really good book, turned into a movie with Kevin Hart called Parenthood, real quick. He started the same thing. His wife, something happened. I think it was can't I can't remember? It was called Parenthood, and he started because it was a blog and he was letting people know we just gotten married, they traveled internationally, she wasn't feeling well, and blah blah blah, right? And there's like, oh yeah, she's saying that, and there's like, Oh, this is not good. And they had a newborn, and then I think she actually died right after the baby was born, at least in the movie, that's how it works. But he had all these people following him on their like he was raiding beers when they traveled internationally. So it was just random people, but then it just turned in this huge community, but and you would just get real of like I have seven different types of diapers, and I have no idea what I'm doing, right? Like, and it was just raw, honest. And I struggle. I wonder I this is probably a question for my own therapist, but there's something about being authentically vulnerable. I can be authentic, but the vulnerability side, like I feel like I'm always I'm an authentic turtle, but I'm right side up. I have a shell. I can't, but don't flip me over, right? Like, don't don't expose my butt. That sounds Tony. That just so okay. So sorry. So your grief is being witnessed, you're being honest. You shook your finger a little bit, got a little nervous about pressing posts, and you did. And it was an amazing uh echoing backwards and and support in the in the caring bridge post. So that kept you on that, and nothing wrong with a good positive feedback loop, even when the story's sad. There's nothing there's not a wrong thing. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 26:34

And that wasn't even my grief yet. That was that was early on, yeah. This isn't a year in. Like are we gonna get to a treatment that's gonna work where not only does it hold down the cancer, but we've got pain meds or whatever, so that Lynn can function can find the can function. Yeah, because finding that balance between she didn't want to be a zombie. I mean, this is life. She needed to be up and about. She was an artist. We didn't have kids, but she was an artist, she needed to paint. Yeah, and this was live life. Yeah, she needs we that's the whole point to be able to get to the point. This is in the cancer journey, to get to the point that you can have some amount of time of real life, whatever that has turned into for you, because of course it's not what you had before the diagnosis, it's something else. Yep, yeah. It's really good. But then, yeah, then I kept writing and I the feedback loop kept going, and I got addicted to it. And so I kept posting these things after she died. And I remember writing the post the day she died, you know, sobbing and all, like, this is it. She died at eight o'clock. They're going to take her body away. They're coming. I like in that little gap before they came to get the body. I wrote this post to let everyone know because it had been I'd written a post earlier that day.

Matt: 27:45

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 27:46

It was the last days of hospice. It was getting very intense and very private and personal and beautiful, actually. Um, and I said, This is it. This will be the last post. It was the Lynn Catula Journal. That's the name on Caring Bridge. By the way, it's private. No, you can't find it on Caring Bridge. You have to read Carrying the Tiger if you want to read this stuff.

Matt: 28:04

Love it. Let's do it. I like it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:06

Gotta get the name of the book in there.

Matt: 28:08

That's right.

SPEAKER_00: 28:08

Um, but then two days later, I wrote another post basically saying, I gotta, I can't stop. I thought I would stop, but I can't. And that I kept doing for the next, I mean, for the next few months, it was still every day or two. And then as I got out of the initial unbelievable shock disorientation, they started getting a little further apart. Sure. And I I will say, looking back at it now, with the knowledge that I have, like from taking the class, I got through the worst disorientation, et cetera, much more quickly than many people I know. I will say this was not complicated grief. It was a quote, good death. There were no overtones of like, we, you know, what did I do wrong? And oh, I'm so I didn't feel guilty. But still, I think the fact that I was writing about this stuff and friends who had been through grief before were telling me, I hear you and it will get better, and saying other small things without trying to fix me helped me actually push and accelerate the early stages of healing much more than many people have. There is just luck. It's just luck.

Matt: 29:20

Well, so I I just had my you're gonna notice I probably have well, not probably. I definitely have some sort of ADHD. My brain does really weird interesting things. I thought everyone did the same I did, but they don't, I found out now as an adult. But anyway, I think what's interesting, the first thing that I I wanted to say was what was the title of the Carrying Bridge? What was it? It was Lynn, what was it?

SPEAKER_00: 29:39

Lynn Catula, Caring Bridge Journal.

Matt: 29:42

So after she died, she was still caring for you by you posting that stuff. I was like, maybe it should have been called something else. I'm like, no, no, no. She was still giving you a space to care for you, like at the dinners, right? Um, that's just a little like in a reflection I had. And then the other part that I think is really cool that you just said is, and there's a great video that I just found on a TED talk, and the lady talks about grief is here to be felt, not fixed. Yes, right? And we we we hear about this in the Kessler thing where it's like it needs to be feel, like you gotta feel it to heal it, right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 30:13

You can't heal what you don't feel, right?

Matt: 30:14

Another great, another great bumper stick, a lot of bumper stickers. Um, but another little t-shirt, something. Um and I think that whether it was, you know, and and everyone like we said at the very beginning, if people were in grief, I wish I just like if if there was a checklist, we'd do it. If there was one therapist that could sit with you for 12 sessions over six weeks, and at the end of it, you'd be as healed and ungrievy as you possibly could. That person would have a wait list so long. Yes, unfortunately, everyone has to kind of dabble in what works, and what was working for you was being able to have the space to write, give the feedback, be witnessed. Now, we both know plenty of guys are like, I'm not gonna write my feelings. You're like, fine, absolutely not. Yeah, find a way, go to a rage room, like you know, whatever you need, like, but it needs to be done. And I wish that I could say David Kessler is the perfect grief counselor and everyone should talk to him, but he's not perfect for everybody. Just like this, like we said at the beginning before me before I personally, this podcast isn't for everyone. They're not gonna be like, This is silly. Why are these two guys talking about it? And I'm like, Well, then it's not for you. Go find, go find something that is for you. But I think, but I think that the fact that you were probably already. Did you journal before in your life? Just real quick, did you ever join never? Wow, no, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 31:29

I had tried to write a novel once, and that has and that came back to me. It's just I made movies, I was a film editor, I did a bunch of things early on in my life that are creative in a very traditional sense of the word creative. Yeah, but no, I never journaled.

Matt: 31:42

Oh wow. See, I'm one of those intermittent journalers. Like when my kids finally find my journals, they'll be like, This is fascinating. Nothing, six months, Dad, nothing happened for saying like I just I do it like in spurts, right? And um, and so okay, so the the the Lynn Cthula uh carrying bridge posts, so they just so I understand, they kind of get saved and archived, right?

SPEAKER_00: 32:05

So if you wanted to just literally put I mean I can go there right now. The 200 people that who are who have the password and all, they're still there. I didn't take them down. Gotcha. I just decided when I did the book that no, I I that was source material. I was creating a book. I didn't want people going back and reading, strangers going back and reading this material that I had written privately. I went to a lot of trouble to make a book that would be for the public. And it actually reveals much more than the Caring Bridge.

Matt: 32:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 32:34

Yeah, because it's filled in all this stuff. All the gaps and stuff, yeah. All the gaps and the things I didn't want to say on Caring Bridge, they're in the book.

Matt: 32:41

So what kicked off? So you you're you time's irrelevant, but you're so far past the event of Lynn of Lynn passing and dying. What kind of I obviously you tried, you're a creative person, but you try to write a novel. Um, I do think I tried to write one in like third grade, and I realized I don't think this is for me.

SPEAKER_00: 32:58

I actually finished my novel. I should say it took me two years. I was in my twenties.

Matt: 33:01

You did finish it. Oh, good, good.

SPEAKER_00: 33:02

Oh my god, an agent and everything, it just wasn't good enough to sell it.

Matt: 33:05

Yeah. But but so what kind of kicked off the oh, this could be a next, the next step would not next step, but like kind of the next process of it would be a book. And I I've been told at some point I should try to write something, and I keep coming back to like, well, I don't know what people would get out of it besides my meanderings, and I'm sure that's where an editor and someone else would help. But what kind of walk me through the the creative process of like, well, if I'm gonna write this book and fill in the gaps of the carrying bridge posts, and kind of kind of and then was there when you started, and I do know everyone so people know that that when you write a book, you don't usually start with the title, much like when you write a song, you don't start with the title of the song either. Um kind of walk us through when you first start or if there was a process of like, what do I want this to either help people or be about? And then was there like a change, and then maybe land on carrying the tiger? Okay. How's that sound? Um, kind of like through the process.

SPEAKER_00: 34:01

It sounds worth worth worth an attempt. The only I'll I'll just try not to make it, you know, 10 hours worth of talking.

Matt: 34:07

Um I have an editor, you're fine, Tony.

SPEAKER_00: 34:09

Okay, good, good, good, good. Um, I decided, I mean, we know David Kessler has written an entire book called Finding Meaning about how meaningful it is to the grieving person to find ways to get meaning out of their loss. Yes. So within months after Lynn died, while I was getting all these comments back, I thought, oh my God, I actually have some material here, and the story of what we went through is so powerful, I I want to make a book out of this. And six months after Lynn died, I printed the whole thing out uh and sat around starting to make edits, and I made useless little margins, uh margin comments, and I cried a lot, and I realized I can't do it way too soon. Couldn't do it. Then several more years passed during which actually I kept writing more caring bridge posts and sort of got through the earlier stages of my grief and also took care of Lynn was a painter. I took care of a lot of actual what I felt like responsibilities that all are forms of finding meaning, giving her a memorial show, doing a retrospective catalog, stuff like that. I mean, she had hundreds of paintings, and I didn't want them all to rot away in a warehouse. And so we I spent a lot of time arranging venues in which we sold a bunch of her paintings and put them out in the world. It was really wonderful. Then we reached a point, I reached a point several years later, where uh I went to a high school reunion and my 50th high school reunion, and one of the other guys there that I hadn't seen in 50 years said brought me a copy of the poetry and po and and stories I had written in high school that he had saved for 50 years, and he said, Tony, you were such a good writer. I didn't know if you still have a copy of what you put together back then. Here it is. And I chatted with him and told him that I had this material and what I was living through, and he said, You have to write that book.

Matt: 35:59

And the universe is a wacky place, ain't it?

SPEAKER_00: 36:01

The universe is a wacky place. Wow. And wow a few months later, it's still I had I was in the there's stuff that I had to go through first, but a few months later I started. So then the iterative process of writing the book, which is the how do you get from 700 pages printed out of Caring Bridge posts and comments uh to a book that someone might want to read? Yeah. It's a so at first I was thinking small. I thought everyone loved these posts. Let me just try editing them down because there's a lot of redundancy and you know, wrong terms and things, and try and find a through line of story. And I spent, I don't know, three months or something editing them down, but they were still largely in the format like I when you printed it, it was like Caringbridge posts, and then occasionally I put a few paragraphs in between to explain something that you wouldn't understand or didn't you know. Without some context, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but it was 90% the Caringbridge posts. And I finished that and I thought, wow, this is beautiful. I'm gonna, I'm gonna send this around. And after about a day, I thought, oh, but no one's gonna read it except the 200 people who've already read it. You know, it's like this is only gonna work for people who those that are who already know us because the Caringbridge posts are written to people who know us. I didn't spend a minute in them saying, Who are we? What's our love like? You know, I was writing it for people who already knew us, and it was about sort of like the the specific journey. But when you want if a stranger is going to read this, I knew from my days of writing and making movies, there needs to be something else.

Matt: 37:40

What a hook, right? Not not in an hook, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:45

You need to know us as people, and you need to understand and also there's all this stuff ranging from my mini breakdown that I had a year in to the reality of what it's like when you're having diarrhea in public place. I I don't mean the complete there's a limit to how much I was willing to put on the page. Yes. But the fact that that kind of thing happens that we don't talk about, these are emotional messiness, physical messiness, all of that stuff. It wasn't in the Caringbridge posts, or maybe it was alluded to. The breakdown wasn't in there at all. I never told my friends that caring for Lynn that hard in the first year gave me a I mean, I broke down at the end of it. Um so I thought, I I I need to turn this into a real memoir. I spent nine months trimming the post further and and taking stuff out of the post format and putting it into just language and writing things in between. So now a almost a year had passed since I first thought, oh, I'm just gonna write these posts. And somewhere in there, I stumbled on the title, which had been in the book the whole time. It's an anecdote in the book about a f that where a friend wrote Lynn that in her Tai Chi group we carry tigers to help our friends who are having difficulties. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. And she wrote, the three motions of bending low, lifting the tiger, and putting it on a hilltop far away make the danger you're facing so much less scary. And Lynn wrote back to her friend and said, Thank you, thank you for carrying tigers for me. And would you teach me how to carry tigers?

Matt: 39:22

And this is through her Tai Tai Chi?

SPEAKER_00: 39:24

Tai Chi. We don't know. Lynn and I didn't know Tai Chi. No, no, I just wanted to. What the friend said. Yeah, if you Google it, you'll see a phrase like carry tiger to mountain is the move she must have been talking about. But I didn't know that until I Googled it later. Wow. Okay. But so carrying the tiger was in there. And it had been that story had been in the book from day one. It was in a caring bridge post. I quoted her note to Lynn because I found it so evocative. Um, and like a year into this process, one day I just slapped my forehead and said, Oh my god, what a title. Uh at that point, I had been trying to. Well it encompasses so much.

Matt: 40:01

It encompasses when you explain it. It encompasses so much.

SPEAKER_00: 40:06

Yes. And that is, and it so represents as a metaphor the whole story. Because Carrying the Tiger, it has this huge subtitle in three parts Living with Cancer, Dying with Grace, Finding Joy While Grieving. Because that's a gross. And it's in three sections that are basically correspond to those. And I felt like each one of them was its own challenge. And each one of them was okay, another tiger that we had to learn to carry.

Matt: 40:36

And that is the book broken up that way?

SPEAKER_00: 40:39

The book is in is broken up that way. It's in inside the book, uh, they have different names. Uh uh, the first one is Living with Cancer, and the second one is something else, et cetera. But it's in three major segments, each with its own little intro, because I felt like you could have written a whole book about any one of them. And there are books about just living with cancer. Oh, yeah. There are books like the Joan Diddian book or the C.S. Lewis book about just living with grief.

Matt: 41:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 41:04

And what I wanted to do here was to say they are part of a continuum, which is the life you are living as you go through the whole story.

SPEAKER_01: 41:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 41:12

And here I had all of this material that went through the whole process. So I put all three together.

Matt: 41:19

Real quick, you you I don't know if you know you just did this. What you said there's three moves in the Tai Chi, and it was called like bend lifting place. Oh, there are. Yes. Do you see what you so bending?

SPEAKER_00: 41:31

I know, and there are three three parts to the book. Right. Ending with finding joy.

Matt: 41:37

And putting the tiger fart, you lifted it up and you put it away, right? I was like, did you do that on purpose? So I was trying to look what are the not until this conversation. Because I'm like, I just make sense. Like the well, if if if you know you're carrying something and then you're putting it away, so the danger's away and all that. And it's like, it's kind of like, well, grief's always going to be there, but it's not going to be as influential OEF on a mountain, right? Whether you did it or someone else did it. The carrying of a terminal illness or the immediate grief, whether we I use the two words on the podcast all the time: terminal versus tragic. Terminal is cancer, disease, death, tragic is here today, gone tomorrow, right? Like something happened. Um, and so because it introduces grief slightly different to your life. Um, I'm not saying one's better than the other.

SPEAKER_00: 42:19

I've had no I I really thought, and I wrote that when Lynn died, I thought, oh well, we've done this all so well. The hospice, I've had years of anticipating this. Lynn and I had talked about it. She'd given me permission to find joy, she'd given me permission to have another relationship. I thought, oh wow, my grief is gonna be so much lighter than some many other people's. And no, guess what? You love the person who died, you are going through it. You're gonna go through it. No question about it.

Matt: 42:49

Well, I love the three parts. Um, I think that's really great because you're right. There are some great, there are great. Um there are great books on all different kinds of segments, right? And I think this is kind of where I struggle with like, well, and I and I I'm going, I will at some point, but like, who's this for and why am I telling this story? But I think you're right. There is something about like, well, let me tell like this telling the the story of us, right? Of you and Lynn and getting people to understand that your life wasn't just carrying cancer, it wasn't just post-loss. There was all these things that led up to it. There's life, right? And then there's this weird chapter in our lives where it's for us about terminal cancer, and whether that's five weeks or five years, it's it's a six years, whatever. It's it's a thing. And you can't you can't leap over it and just go like, well, we we traveled, we painted, we did all this making stuff. No, by the way, she died, now I'm doing that. Like, you're like, Whoa, what happened in the middle? And also just starting in the middle, people don't really understand like the investment, right? Like, yes, yeah, yeah. Like who you were as an us and how you got to being the us, right?

SPEAKER_00: 43:59

Or the we I use right, and then when the we be really important to tell that story, although I try and do it as quickly as I can because the reader is not actually here to read our life story, but if they haven't the sense of who we are, right, they're not gonna care. They're you know, it's really right, which is why the couple can understand w who we were as a couple during the living with cancer, and during we shared the process of giving her a good death.

Matt: 44:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 44:25

And you know, what was that like? And but it's because you've read who we were leading up to that point that you can really understand what was going on there.

Matt: 44:33

And it was a good is good on you for realizing that the reason part of one of the reasons why it was resonating with those, I'll just say 200 people that were on the carrying bridge was because they knew of you and of the we of the two of you. And so that's why if some me stumbled onto the post, I'm like, well, yeah, it's he's doing it's a bummer that she's got lung cancers in her spine, I'd be like, Oh, good for him for sharing, but it wouldn't have been an emotionalist connection because I didn't know Tony, didn't know when so yeah, good for you for making that that correlation. Okay, so I just finished hypothetically, and I I I am gonna scour my bookshelf because I thought the day after you filled out this thing, I went and ordered it, and I've got grief books coming out of my grief hole. Um, I don't know any other places. I think you've read a lot more of them than I have. I yeah, I there's I'll that's my own. It's fine. Um, I'm always seeking an answer, and as I found out, there isn't one. Um, so I let's hypothetically, and I will do it soon. I finished the carrying of the tiger as someone who is grieving and grieved and bereft. What would be some things like don't give away, you know, don't give away all the all the the the nuggets, but like when I close that book, what it was like an overarching hope that you would have for someone who's read that book, either while either they're grieving or they just want to learn about the act of carrying a tiger, of carrying a tiger. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 45:52

Yeah. The two different things. That my overarching desire in writing the book um was to show what it was like for me so that someone reading it and thinking on their own experience or the experience of a friend of theirs who's going through this, uh, would realize that whatever the hell they're going through is normal. I wanted to normalize everything. I wanted to normalize the messiness, the fear, the ups and downs, the confusion, the good n the good times, the moments of joy that come in where you think it's getting better, and then the crashes down a day or a week later, and it's you realize, no, actually, I'm I'm still stuck in it. And everything I just said applies just as much to the whole first half of the book, which is about learning to live with cancer, as it does to the last part of the book, which is about learning to live with point. Solid solid point. So over the whole thing, I thought, my God, I have just opened my kimono and shared so much here that is not normally shared. I I want people to understand that whatever the heck you're going through, someone else is going through stuff like that. Don't be embarrassed, don't be ashamed, don't hold it in. Because I felt like one of the main reasons that people don't get the emotional help and the support they need is because they're afraid of being embarrassed. Whether I'm true or not statistically, I don't know. But I thought a lot, you know, why is it that people don't share what these experiences are like?

Matt: 47:33

Yeah. I you know, we it's interesting. Um, I'm still part of a um stage four caregiver for colon cancer, because that lucky for me, that's the only cancer I've had in my life, and it's bat in a hundred, and I don't really like it. Um, but um it is you're very right. There's when people come into that group early on, and it's meant just for the caregivers, because this is an amazing community for colon cancer, but and when people come in early, you can tell there's either some embarrassment or shame, right? Yes, of course it has to do with the colon, so there's all sorts of weird shame around that anyway. But um that I you know I don't know why like the normalizing of the ugly car ugly car cry, right? Like in grief, right? We've all done it. The music comes on, you're sitting in a parking lot, you just it snots and tears and absolutely right, and and it's so funny. Like you say it, I say it, and then all of a sudden you and I can jump into any group that has grief related, and we will see that like, yeah, 90% of us have all had that random and there's no re there's it wasn't the day of diagnosis, it wasn't it wasn't the bad news.

SPEAKER_00: 48:41

No, why is it this day that I'm sobbing in my case? It and I and I told this story in the book because I wanted people to see me do it, sobbing in the in front of the mirror in my bathroom, snot coming out. I should have died with you. Why am I alone here? We should have died together. You know, this is that point where you think you your life can't go on.

Matt: 49:04

Um that's so well, and it's so raw and it's so beautiful. And I don't and again, we're guys, so there's I think there is a there's a guy unite, you know, American slant to like guys don't cry. And I'm like, Yeah, we do. We just we just don't do it. I don't know how you cry well, but it's not when guys cry, it doesn't look good. Like when girls cry, it's like you know, you make it look pretty. Like I appreciate when guys cry, we're like, oh man, this is rough. Um it's not a fun to look at. Maybe it's maybe it's just me. But I really think there is something to that, and I'm I'm a big proponent of when appropriate. I've sometimes had to make sure I say this, that shame only is given. And I think we talked, he talked about this one time. I thought David Kessler did about like guilt and shame only gets power because you don't you don't you don't shed light on it, yes, you don't vocalize it, right? Like I feel like I've I've said this before. So during my wife's cancer journey, like, well, okay, uh chemo pump the thing, the newborn baby, and it's the night's done. She's like, I'm you know, rubbed her feet. She's like, okay, you're you you can stop, right? Like you've done enough caring for the day. And I I'm a younger guy, and so I play some video games. I'm like, well, and the joke was the bad guys aren't gonna kill themselves. I go play a silly video game. And shortly after her passing, I felt so guilt-ridden that I didn't spend every moment massaging your feet. And then all of a sudden, like I think David Custard's telling me about shame, and I get and I was like, wait a minute, I'm forgetting that she literally quite literally gave permission to go kill the bad guys, right? Like, yeah, and I forgot that part of it, but I had all this weird and I didn't want to tell anybody there, you know, like they're like, You're playing video games or you're white. I was like, Well, and I was also holding a newborn while I was sleeping, like, because our you know, that was our such, but I think there is something about shedding the light onto this weird connection between shame and guilt. Guilt's uh an emotion we assign ourselves, right? It's a some breaking of an expectation we talk about in our grief coaching of we have on ourselves, but it's not in reality, right? Like this it's not a real thing, it's not like the whole, well, he, you know, my my wife got colon cancer because we got married. No, that's not how that works, because everybody who gets married doesn't get cold, right? Like it you it's a guilt thing, right? Where we go, well, we could have stopped it. No, you there wasn't nothing there. It is what it is. Cancer's mean and it should not be around. But I really okay, so then at the end of the book, feeling that whether it's from caregiving to to grieving, that you write honestly about how normal this is.

SPEAKER_00: 51:30

That is that was my single biggest driver as I edited and edited and chose what to put in and what to leave out. And it's like, no, I'm gonna put this detail in and I'm gonna put that detail in. Maybe not in huge, you know, maybe not going on for pages about what it's like to have diarrhea in a public place, right? But about the fact we've all known the common side effect from some of the drugs.

Matt: 51:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 51:54

And it's you you it changes your life to know that that might happen. Yeah. Um, but I also I also wanted the hope and the joy and the the positive spirit in there because we were not gloomy people. I mean, I am not, and Lynn was not. And we faced this thing, even when it was everyone was saying this is incurable. It's only a question of how much good life you can have before it happens. We've we we we were always like open to joy and open to the good moments. And then after she died, I was looking for how can I get joy back into my life? How can I get happiness back into my life? Which was damn impossible. I'm not saying in the first few months, okay? Not in the first few months. I'm busy crying in front of the mirror and saying I want to be with her wherever she is. No, but eventually.

Matt: 52:50

So don't give it away, but I'm assuming in the book you probably have at least a moment or a couple of moments where you're like reflecting back, obviously, probably not in that exact moment you realize it, but you go, This is joy again. Like the first moments of true, honest to goodness, joy.

SPEAKER_00: 53:08

I have I have those experiences. I wrote the book specifically trying not to do uh, oh, here I'm having joy kind of. I I've I wrote the book so that you're right with me. Right all the way through. You're right with me, you're in the room with me. It's a particular kind of book because there are other very good books which bounce back and forth between that and oh, here's what that scene that that means. And looking, I do have things like, well, looking back, I realize I didn't say the full truth. And so I uh it's really interesting sometimes to look at the Caring Bridge post. And several times I say, Oh, and here's what I left out of that Caring Bridge post that I think is more interesting than what I put in it. But it's still what it was like to be there, and so you're gonna see me start to have joy again, one way or another. That's in the book. Love it. That's I'm not like for telling I'm these are not lessons. Well, I've been advised to write another book. Yeah, I mean the lessons.

Matt: 54:14

I mean, they're right, I mean, just like ASOF fables or whatever. Right? They they're they're not meant to be like teachable lessons. It's more about like, here's a story I'm gonna tell you, and here's how you know from start to be you know, from end from beginning to middle to end.

SPEAKER_00: 54:29

Yep.

Matt: 54:30

And at the end of it, if you have three different people listening, they may take three entirely different things.

SPEAKER_00: 54:34

Different lessons.

Matt: 54:35

That's right. I think it's amazing. Um, okay, so the book's written, it's published, it's out there. You you we talked about the grief educator thing. Is there anything else for, and again, we do have a mixed audience, but it's mostly widowers. And it is, yes, it is called the solo dad. And I know that um you and Len were didn't were not able to have children, which is not able to have children. I mean, sorry.

SPEAKER_00: 55:00

No, no, it's literally we were not able to have children, and there and and and we did other things with our lives when it turned out that we were not able to have children. So I am not a solo dad, I am a widower.

Matt: 55:11

You but you are a widower, and I think that um in in now what I think this is my fifth season, I I am starting to realize that this is bear with me, that the stories that some people can tell who aren't solo dads, there is a ton of meaning, understanding, and lessons to be learned from folks that may not have walked exactly a solo dad path, but they have grief introduced. And I gotta be, you talked about like, you know, uh, I can't, it's so hard for me to do, but I have had just about every form of loss in my life. I've had a parent already die, I've had grandparents, I've had aunts, uncles, have best friends die before the age of 50. I've had all the things, right? And grief's everywhere if you look for it. Human existence is tragedy, right? But the one I haven't had is the whole kid thing. And when people are on our coaching classes and they talk about kids, I just I'm like, can I just skip this? Because I, oh man. So, but there, if someone were to lose it, and so what I guess was getting to is that there are lessons to be learned in grief that don't have to come just through a solo dad. So uh I wanted to make sure people understood that the reason, and I said it earlier on, the reason why I immediately, after probably the second or third time I saw Tony on my coaching thing, I was like, and I saw your book, I'm like, I gotta reach out to this guy because the energy's right. There's something here he's gonna be able to teach, whether it's a solo dad or a widower, um, or a widow, and you know, or solo mom, uh, or even just someone in grief. Uh, and I I wanted to make sure I invited you on. Uh, now that the book is done, and now that um you've had you've done some grief, the grief edge not some, you've done the grief educator stuff. What what do you think you just said you might do a lesson book or something like that or lessons learned? Where where where do you see yourself in the grief space now? Because not that we're experts in grief, but like what is your I mean, I know what your hope for the book is, but now what is your hope for the lessons that that Lynn taught you in life and in her death that that you would like to continue on with?

SPEAKER_00: 57:15

So really good question. Um so like I said, carrying the tiger is this almost cinematic journey where you are with me. It's as if I made a movie, and and I was a filmmaker, and that came very naturally to me. Um then I started trying to market the book, publicize the book, been on a number of podcasts. That's actually the main way that I've been getting the word out. Um and I realized I loved these conversations. I loved these conversations. Uh it felt really good to talk about what I went through in a way that might help other people, like finding meaning, giving meaning. So that's why I actually signed up for the course. I'm not at all sure that I'm ever going to either start my own podcast. Well, I see how hard it is, and there are, I think there are very many. I've been on a number now. There are a lot of really good podcasts like yours out there. Um, and I'm not sure. I've I'm I've I've signed up on grief.com. I'm available for peer-to-peer. I'm available for simply talking, listening, and helping people if they want to, and you can reach me. You can reach me through my website or whatever. Yep.

Matt: 58:32

Um there'll be a link in the show notes, everyone.

SPEAKER_00: 58:34

Oh, thank you. Absolutely. Um I'm I'm seriously thinking of writing this second book, uh, probably a smaller one. I'm thinking of it of calling it Tiger Lessons because one wants to continue the metaphor.

Matt: 58:49

I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 58:50

And it's like, well, it's a combination of what did I learn? All all of the pulling back and drawing conclusions as informed by the the reading and the course and things that I've done since then. So there's originally I was thinking it's just what did I learn? And that's that might be a short book all in itself and a useful one.

unknown: 59:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 59:12

But I also want to be able to put that now in better context because I've I know more about other people's grief and I know more about other people's cancer journeys than I did uh when living through it. So I think that where I'm heading for the next year or two is trying to make Carrying the Tiger self-sustaining. Sure. And it is one of the rare books. I'm I'm now in the top 10% of all nonfiction books in the world. And I do not mean I have a huge bestseller. It has been a number one bestseller several times on Amazon, but like for one day at a time.

SPEAKER_01: 59:43

Hey.

SPEAKER_00: 59:44

Which is wonderful because now I get to say that forever. They told me you can put the sticker on. Um love it. But uh I I'm told that the fact that it has sold as many copies as it has in the three months that it's been out so far means. That it's got a chance of having legs. It's got a chance of becoming self-sustaining. And then, so I'm still doing things to try and support that. Talking with you is one of them. Um, but I really think that I'm a writer. I'm I'm not likely to become a grief group moderator, even though I think I'd be good at it. But there are a lot of things I'd be good at, you know. I think the right thing for me to do is to write a companion book.

Matt: 1:00:29

Um I I would I don't see why you shouldn't. I think um as soon as I can get my hands on it, I'll definitely give it a read. And if there, if I'll probably just be like, yeah, when's the next section or when's the next thing coming out? I thought as you were talking, because that's how my brain works, and I'm just gonna I'm gonna plant the seed and I'm gonna check in with you in a couple of months. Men who are caregivers need men like you. I think you're a sager person than I am, and like me, who have walked the walk next to their wife as they are dying. Because now we both come about this in a little bit different avenue, but unfortunately we ended in the same place, right? Our the person that we chose above everybody else dies. There is there's this wicked stat that, and I and I don't know last time they did it, and it drives me bonkers because my private Facebook group, solo dad photo group, has over 700 guys in it, mostly solo dads. And there's some wick weird stat that say husband leave their wives in the first two years of a terminal diagnosis, they divorce them. Wow, and I have 700 guys, and I I don't think one of them did that. Right. And so I don't know where that comes from. And I don't know if it's an older survey, like I'm gonna just be very ageist and go, it was done in the 60s or something. And guys are like, I don't know how to do this, because I can't imagine and it could have been done in the 90s or the early 2000s, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:56

Right.

Matt: 1:01:57

And so I'm like, I can't imagine that there's but maybe, but I think that there is a need, because unfortunately, women get cancer too, um, as you and I both know that there's a need for some version of this is normal, you're not gonna like any of this. Yeah, it's gonna be hard. Yeah, although you may feel alone. You I gotta get this right. Although you may feel lonely, I promise you you're not alone. There are so many other husbands and fathers that are walking this right next to you who are with their person, and I know it feels like you're you know you're a nobody in a big old room of people because there are definitely times when I mean, and God, there's this amazing organization outside of Chicago, people have heard me talk about it, and there's one here in Denver too, but called the Wellness House. And they were smart enough to put together a group of caregivers of men, right? Guys who were being the caregivers of the wives, and they'd been in existence for a long time and they just started it, and all of us were looking around like, How have you not been doing this since you opened this place? Like, are you kidding me? Like, we need community too, although it may not be the same, may not look and feel the same as like a room full of uh females, but we need it, and so the seed all plant is you might just want to leave space for being some sort of care giving mentor, whether it's terminal or not, because right us dudes, us men, like it feels like uh, you know, I the re I've said this before. There's an amazing podcast out there, it's called The Widower's Journey. Uh, he's amazing. I love him. He's great, but he wasn't for me, right? He's like, you know, it's he was older and and he whatever whether he had 40 years, it doesn't matter. I'm like, I have a newborn, like I need someone to tell me that like I am not losing my mind when I don't know which type of diapers to choose. Like I need, I need, yeah, I need some reality. And that's a little bit of how this podcast started, but there in the in the caregiving space, especially, and especially when it comes to like if you have no medical training or you have no caregiving training, right? Like, like I I I kid you not, Tony, this just happened. This just happened like two weeks ago. I've moved twice since my wife died, and I'm pulling out a first aid kit for my daughter, she needs a band-aid or whatever, and all of a sudden I find these alcohol swabs that are forgiving shots, and I had totally forgotten I'd give my wife shots. I don't know what I'm doing. And they showed me you stick your hair, you put it in. And I was like, What? You want me to okay? I totally and I was like, Oh, you can do this. So if a guy's listening to this and your wife's not and not doing well, and you have to give shots, you can do it. I promise you can. But I think there's a space for that, so maybe marinate on that because I think that that would be because you've walked the story, you've gone back and revisited it both literally and physically by pen. And I think that you can hold space for guys that are in the first or in the middle third of that carrying the tiger. Because they're just I don't know. I'd have to go look. I don't know if there is a current resource for if I were to Google my wife is terminally with cancer, I need to call someone. I don't know if there's a phone number for that. Just that's really interesting. So put that put that in your garden of stuff you need to do in the next season.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:06

I know. I mean, I keep saying I've been saying for a few weeks now that I think I'm gonna write another book, but the reality of the timing of it is it took me a year to write that one. Yeah. And I'm deep into gee, should we put more into the Facebook ads or should we put more into the Amazon ads? Oh, I have this whole thing I never thought I would be involved in, which is called trying to make carrying the tiger a sustainable, ongoing, successful book. And that is that is consuming me at this moment for these few months. Yeah, oh I get it.

Matt: 1:05:39

But so if you I just just like I said, just planting the seed and I'm gonna walk around. I'm just gonna toss it in there and leave because I think the idea.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:46

I also, when I say I'm gonna write another book, I don't know, I don't know the shape, the weight. No, of course, you know.

Matt: 1:05:52

Yeah, you just want to write another book, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:55

Another, yeah, I want to write another book and I want it to be called Tiger Lessons. And I and I wanna I want it to be more explicitly about the lessons where the anecdotes become a smaller part of the book as opposed to the whole story.

Matt: 1:06:09

The whole story, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:10

Um I love it. I those are the three things that I am sure of.

Matt: 1:06:13

I like it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:14

Okay, well we'll see where it goes.

Matt: 1:06:16

I so to to to kind of well, I saw I'm gonna see how I want to do this and pause for a second and let my brain catch up. So I usually end with three questions, but do you do I'm gonna end with two with you and then I'm gonna recap real quick. So, all right, is there anything else that you want to say before I ask you these two questions?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:36

No, this has been a terrific conversation.

Matt: 1:06:38

It really has, Tony. I really appreciate it. So, and this is usually where I try not to get choked up, but if Lynn could or was listening to this podcast or could say something to you, what do you think Lynn would say to you?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:55

I think Lynn would say that she's really happy for me that I have not retreated into my shell and that I have found a path forward that's really satisfying and interesting and helpful to people. Now we didn't talk about being helpful to people, but we were she was an artist and she often talked about how she wished she could be more helpful to people, but being an artist was taking, I mean, in more, you know, like go be political or something.

Matt: 1:07:27

Yeah, I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:28

And and I would say, no, you're an artist. This is what you do. That's helpful to people. We need artists. So I think that she'd be really happy for me. I also uh think she'd be pretty damn embarrassed about the amount of attention I'm giving her. She never wanted to be famous. And she's, you know, she one of her last words when she heard they were that her gallery was going to put on a pop-up retrospective show, like immediately online, was I don't want a hagiography. It's not a big deal. Don't make it a big deal.

Matt: 1:08:04

Well, just means she was humble.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:06

She was humble, and I'm I've made a big deal uh out of her and all because I love her and I think she was absolutely worth being made a big deal of.

Matt: 1:08:15

Well put. And then the last one I'll say if you could say anything to Lynn now as far out as you are, what would you say? I think you kind of did, but what would you say to Lynn?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:26

Thank you for making me who I am. Thanking me thank you for getting me this far, because of course I'm still tired of growing and changing.

Matt: 1:08:35

Man, Tony, I this was fantastic. I don't know why the the these questions get me more, I think, than sometimes they do the guests. I find it absolutely amazing that there are all these widowers that are going through the you know post-loss, and just the amount of love and inspiration and support and resources that I think we have just even in the last, let's say 10 years, have started to have for because we're small. We know we're a micro group inside of a subgroup inside of a substack. Like we are not, we are not well represented. And so I really appreciate it. I want everyone to uh when you see the show notes, there will be a link to Tony's website. There will be however we got to get it, we'll get the link to his book, whether it's through his website or whatever. And continue to follow Tony because I I I will definitely dust off the book and go read it. And I can't wait to see what tiger lessons may be coming in the future. So, Tony, I appreciate your time, you being here and sharing with us. Thank you so much, sir. You're really welcome.