The Full Catastrophe: Loss, Love, and Finding Your F*ck You, with Casey Mulligan Walsh

How do you rebuild your life after devastating loss? At age 12, Casey Mulligan Walsh lost both parents within months of each other. Relocated from suburban New Jersey to upstate New York, she spent years dreaming of creating the perfect family life she'd been denied. In this powerful episode, Casey shares how her search for belonging led her through marriage, divorce, and the tragic loss of her 20-year-old son Eric. Her memoir The Full Catastrophe chronicles this journey from being the ultimate people-pleaser to finding true strength and authenticity. Whether you're dealing with grief, struggling to belong, or trying to break free from people-pleasing patterns, Casey's insights about resilience, fear, and developing healthy boundaries will transform how you think about loss and liberation.

Key Takeaways:

1. Ask yourself: "Am I acting from love or fear?" This simple question can transform how you view difficult behaviors - both your own and others'
2. There's a huge difference between fitting in and truly belonging. Are you changing yourself to please others, or standing strong in who you are?
3. Develop healthy boundaries by identifying areas where you need more "f*ck you" energy - especially if you tend to be the "good" one who always accommodates
4. Practice staying connected to lost loved ones without letting "what ifs" become your emotional foundation
5. Remember that growth rarely comes in lightbulb moments - trust that you'll recognize the patterns when looking back

Want to dive deeper? Get Casey's memoir The Full Catastrophe and scan the QR code for her curated Spotify playlist that accompanies the book.

Learn more about Casey:

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Transcript

Jessica Fein: Welcome. I'm Jessica Fein, and this is the “I Don’t Know How You Do It” podcast, where we talk to people whose lives seem unimaginable from the outside and dive into how they're able to do things that look undoable. I'm so glad you're joining me on this journey, and I hope you enjoy the conversation. 

Welcome back to the show. Today's question is what does it mean to want the full catastrophe of life? The messy, beautiful chaos of family with all its joys and struggles. Today's guest, Casey Mulligan Walsh, chose that phrase as the title of her memoir, having spent years yearning for exactly that kind of life.

Casey writes about life at the intersection of grief and joy, embracing uncertainty, and the [00:01:00] nature of true belonging. After being orphaned at 12, then losing her only sibling at 20, Casey was determined to create a loving family. Then a hostile divorce tore it apart, and her beloved oldest son Eric died in a car crash at age 20.

Casey writes about all of this in her memoir. She's also written for the New York Times, HuffPost, Next Avenue, Modern Loss, Hippocampus, and so many other places. She's a founding editor of In a Flash Literary Magazine, and she also serves as an ambassador for and on the board of the Family Heart Foundation, dedicated to raising awareness of the genetic lipid disorders that have affected her family across generations.

The Full Catastrophe, All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, is being released today. So huge congratulations to Casey, as we welcome her to the show.

Casey, welcome to the show! 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: I am just thrilled to be here, Jessie. I've been waiting for this for a long, long [00:02:00] time. 

Jessica Fein: We have a lot to talk about. And, you know, one of the things that you and I have noted as we've become friends over the years is how much we have in common. And it's fascinating to me. And one of the reasons why I love being able to have these conversations, because on paper, so to speak, we probably shouldn't have that much in common.

I mean, we had very different upbringings. And I'll tell you, from major losses. to things as banal as not wanting to drive in inclement weather. I mean, we really are kindred spirits. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: We certainly are kindred spirits in so many ways, and I feel exactly the same, Jessie. 

Jessica Fein: All right, well, let's start with the name of your book.

Your memoir's title draws from Zorba the Greek's description of family life as, quote, :the full catastrophe.” What does this mean to you, and why did you decide to call your book by that name? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: You know, it's really interesting. I landed on that [00:03:00] title really early on. The first time I ever heard the phrase, The Full Catastrophe, was actually, is the title of a song by the Nields, who are from Northampton, not far from you.

And it made me delve into it a little bit, and then I learned that it was a quote from Zorba the Greek, who when Boss asks him if he's married, he says, Am I not a man? Of course I'm married. I have it all. The wife, the kids, the full catastrophe. And many people know that phrase from John Kabat Zinn's book, Full Catastrophe Living.

That's a big fat thick book, mostly about mindfulness and practice, but he describes the full catastrophe as the poignant enormity of life, which to me, that is exactly what it is. And actually, it's funny that I chose that title before I had an epiphany about what it is. The real thread in my book was, which we can get to in a minute, but it fits it perfectly because it's the fact that I was searching for, I wanted all [00:04:00] of it.

I wanted the babies and the bills and the dirty diapers and the college educations and the mess in the house. I felt like in my own life I'd been denied that and I was just determined to make that happen. So the title was very easy to come up with. The subtitle was a real challenge. I just struggled with so many things, and then one day, you know, after lots of writer friend input, many hours, it just hit me, you know, there is a double meaning to that title, The Full Catastrophe.

I wanted that wonderful, joyful, full catastrophe, the joys and the struggles. But instead, I got. At some point, the literal full catastrophe. And so the subtitle is All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, which is exactly what it turned out to be. 

Jessica Fein: Well, you teased us by saying what you actually came to realize was the thread of the book.

So you've got to share that now. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Yes, so, you know, I started writing in [00:05:00] 2011, and those were mostly essays, and 2017 is when I began to write the book as a book. It wasn't until 2021, my husband used to always say to me, so what is this really about? What's the, you know, the aboutness, we like to talk about.

Jessica Fein: What's the elevator pitch? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Yes. And I would. Be frustrated by that. Look, I've told you it's about relentless resilience and the face of repeated loss and how you can go on and live with grief beside joy. And he kept saying, no, that's not it. That's not all there is. I get really annoyed. And one day during a webinar, 10 years after I started writing, it just hit me over the head that it's really a book about the search for belonging and the search for home.

And I think that comes from, as you well know, when you lose so much and so many people so young. For me, the search for belonging and the need to create home rose above all the other goals. that I had in my life, sometimes to my detriment. But once I [00:06:00] realized that, as you know, you know, when you find the real thread in your book, then you can go back and kind of steer everything in that direction.

And that was just a huge light bulb moment for me. 

Jessica Fein: I totally get that. And one of the things that you learn over the course of your book is the difference between belonging and fitting in. And we'll get to that. But first, share with us those losses because you, very young, had repeated profound losses.

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Yes. Yes, absolutely. So, I, uh, was born into a family with my parents and an older brother, seven years older. Both of my parents were ill throughout my childhood and my mother had breast cancer. I think it was diagnosed when I was in third grade, but I think she'd had it a long while before that because she couldn't figure out why she was so tired and her back hurt and all those things.

This is the 60s. There was not a whole lot of treatment to be had in the 60s. My father had type 2 [00:07:00] diabetes, but then he had heart attacks in his sleep and he had heart issues. So, my mother was the one with the terminal illness. Everybody was expecting her to die first, though I didn't know that at my age.

But my father died first of a massive heart attack. On Easter morning, uh, in 1966, when I was 11, and then my mother died 10 months later when I was 12. My brother was 19, so he stayed in, uh, suburban New Jersey, northern New Jersey. And I was sent to upstate New York. It was quite a culture shock by myself.

To, uh, live with my father's sister and her family. And then also my mother had a very close friend who was like a surrogate mother to me, Elle. And right about just before I turned 30, all three of them died within maybe 18 months or so. So by 30, I was really the end of the line. You know, when you get to the place in life where there's no one to call, no one above you to call with the good news or the bad news, [00:08:00] that happened very early for me.

And there were some other, other deaths, significant deaths in there. But then, you know, I think this is a grief too. I had a very long, hostile, drawn out divorce. On watch. This family that I had worked so hard to build, crumble, and then my oldest son died at 20 in a car crash, kind of right in the middle of that divorce.

Jessica Fein: Wow, and thank you for sharing all of that with us, and now we're all on the same page, and obviously that is conveyed throughout your book. And so much more about how you really transformed in so many ways. And, you know, from the beginning, there's just such a poignant contrast between the family you imagined creating, right?

So you lose your parents, you're sent to this other family, all you're thinking about is having a family of your own and your own babies and how perfect it's going to be. And as you said, you know, the bottles and the baths and the bills and everything. And. The family you ended up having, starting with the [00:09:00] marriage you ended up in, or that you were in at the time, because let's be clear, that's not the marriage you are in now, couldn't have looked more different.

What would you say to people who are struggling with this total break between what their vision of what it was going to be is and what the reality is? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Well, that's it. That's very interesting because I didn't necessarily think it was vastly or completely different from what I wanted. Like, we don't just turn around and see, oh, wow, you know, we married.

I was in college. I ended up switching and getting a two year degree because it was just too long to wait. I wanted to be married and have this house in a little town and be part of this family that lived there. And so I did that. And I got a job right in that town. So my whole life was there and I had the cute little craftsman house on the tree line street.

And we had three children and the boat up on the lake. And I mean, it did look idyllic. And you know, I [00:10:00] write in the book about as like the Memorial day parade, right? The baseball teams and the girl scouts and the band, little hands waving to the crowd. Like to me, that's the little vignette that I picture when I think of that town.

And so a lot of it was what I wanted. I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to have those kids and, and raise them where they could just go across town to the little league field on their own. It was the eighties. We did that then, but it was the marriage, right? It was the marriage that I kept trying to, I would say my identifying quality.

Throughout my life is determination and I was determined to make it happen. And that's not always a positive thing because when we're determined, it can, you know, help you achieve great things, but it can also make you blind to when enough is enough. 

Jessica Fein: Yes, that's definitely true. And I think it's also related to the illusion of control. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Exactly. Exactly. You're right. They go hand in hand. And control is an issue for a lot of [00:11:00] us. And what I've come to with control after living through all of this is ha ha ha. We thought we had control. And, you know, prayer through those years was a big part of my life, partly out of desperation.

And I do say that at some point I began to pray or wish or hope or whatever you want to say. Not for a certain outcome, but for the courage to accept whatever comes. And I think a lot of us get there when we've been through things like this, but back to your question, which was what I would say to people.

And that's always a difficult question because even after living all these years, since then, even after writing this whole book. I don't know that I can go back to a certain time and think, Oh, I should have just done this or if somebody had just told me I was a young adult with a family, no family of my own, no support outside of my husband's family.

And I made probably 7 an hour at a part time [00:12:00] job. So I, you know, I can say now I. I should have gotten out of the marriage sooner. It would have been better for our kids had we been two people happy and alone. I just didn't have the means to do that. I also back then was part of a pretty fundamental or evangelical church background and very steeped in that divorce was wrong. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: And so I didn't see it as an option. And that kind of goes hand in hand with my always feeling like I had to be a good girl and stay under the radar and do what I was supposed to do, and that was just not what I was supposed to do. 

Jessica Fein: So what happened?

How'd you get there? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Well, how I got there is so I was married. We were technically married 25 years. We were married 22 years before everything exploded. But what happened along the way is that after about 18 years working at the bank in town, I kind of knew that if I didn't leave, then I would be there for [00:13:00] 40 years.

And that was kind of horrific. And when I was in high school, actually, I was very interested in speech and language and speech language pathology, and I kind of rekindled that interest, and the determination kicked in, even though I lived an hour north of Albany, where all the colleges were. And I hated driving in the snow.

I just came to a time, it's like, this is when you should have children, right? When you just can't not. I came to a time that I just couldn't not do it. And I was still afraid of the drive, and I was still worried about the money, but I just put my head down and found ways to make those things work. I would say that I, deep down, I knew that my marriage would never survive that.

My husband was very threatened by that. He was threatened before that, but that was kind of what put it over the edge. But I didn't go back to school thinking I'm going to go and, you know, get a career and make this money and break out of this. I still really thought I just wanted to make an easier [00:14:00] life for our family, that we'd be able to take vacations, that we'd be able to pay for our kids to go to college, all the things that I was worried about.

And so when it did finally explode, I knew that the writing was on the wall, but in wishful thinking, I hoped that we could kind of get our feet on the ground because now I was in a job and find a way to part. amicably, but I should have known that that would never happen. 

Jessica Fein: And at that point, or maybe along the way, you know, I don't think it was a single moment, you realize that real peace and belonging are things you are going to find within yourself, not by creating this picture perfect idyllic life you had envisioned that depends on other people.

What led you to that understanding? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Well, that was probably the most difficult part of writing the book, was to try to illustrate, you know, I'd always had this deep sense of connection to God or Jesus or [00:15:00] whichever thing it was, but to this higher power. From the time I was a really young child, like I, we moved a lot and I always seemed to hook up with a family who would take me to church.

It was just a really important thing for me. And throughout my adulthood. But during the, the divorce, when things really got difficult, when I really had times that I wondered how I could possibly continue, I began to embrace kind of, it wasn't an about face from the faith that I'd always had, but it made it more real and actionable for me.

And it was a lot of the tenets that I, I always think of it as kind of Buddhist Christianity East meets West. Sort of things just coming to understand that we really are all connected and we're not separate from one another. We create those walls to keep ourselves safe, that the way that we function.

It's either out of love or fear, and fear can be anger, fear can be, you know, any number of things, but if you're not operating [00:16:00] out of love, on some level you're operating out of fear. 

Jessica Fein: Well, I'm going to interrupt you there because, in fact, you say in the book that the six words that defied you and changed you more than anything were, everything that isn't love is fear.

Well, what does it even mean, though, everything that isn't love is fear? I mean, it sounds good, but what does it mean? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Well, for me, it isn't only defining other people's behaviors, right? It's defining your behavior as well. And maybe I should have said that the opposite, because I think a lot of times we can use those kinds of tenets to help us understand ourselves.

But when somebody else comes at us with something that doesn't make us feel good, we're not giving them that same grace, right? And so when someone is angry or challenging or hurting my feelings, you know, making me feel any number of ways because we personalize everything and we often think it's about us when it's not about us.

It helps to recast or reframe that when we can, because I'm [00:17:00] also a big believer in not engaging in spiritual bypass where we just have these wonderful spiritual phrases so we're not going to feel anything. I'm a big believer in wallowing. I think we have to feel our feelings. We have to feel miserable when we're miserable.

But when we can get to the point where we can say, you know, maybe that behavior was not about me. Maybe it's something that it's sparking in them, a fear in them. And I, one of the things I say toward the end of the book is both my ex husband and his mother, his mother who had become my mother, who had become my family, and then really turned on me during the divorce.

And then my ex husband, his behaviors, I think they were really acting out of the fears that they had too. And I think we all do that. I mean, you know, why was I, I created a family because I wanted kids and I love them, of course. But I was fearful of spending my life alone. I loved them too, but that was the initial impetus.

And I think about my ex husband's mother, and now that my kids are older and even my [00:18:00] grandkids are growing up, I'm more able now to see how terrible it must have been for her to think her son was okay and set and had this beautiful family. And watch it all explode. And she had this fear, I think, of watching him crumble.

I can't really know her motivation. But it makes me more empathic for her. How hard that part must have been for her. And she just didn't know how to not choose. She thought she had to choose. So when you can cast other people's behaviors or the things that happen in the world, not as something that's a personal offense to you, but that's a natural thing that we all operate out of sometimes.

And sometimes if you, I don't mean this necessarily in a Pollyanna way, but. Sometimes, if from a place of strength, we can extend love to somebody who maybe isn't being that loving to you, that's not a formula. It isn't always going to work out, but it's all about who you want to be, really, not what you want the reaction to be.[00:19:00] 

Jessica Fein: Yeah, I'm often saying that to my kids when they're, you know, complaining about, well, so and so did this, or this isn't fair or whatever. This isn't about you. Everybody's starring in their own movie, you know, we take it all so personally, and really, it's about the other person. But I also think it's so much easier to say that than to always act from that place.

Casey Mulligan Walsh: And I will say, we're much more likely to act from that place when we're in a time of struggle or a crisis where you don't have a whole lot of those go tos that we use day to day that kind of work for us because, you know, it's just what we do. We could all be Eckhart Tolle, I think, if we were there all the time, every minute, sitting on a park bench, just being blissful.

But I think human nature, we strive for that, but I think for me, it's most activated when there's a crisis.

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Jessica Fein: We talked a little bit before about your search for for belonging and how you ultimately did come to understand the difference between fitting in and belonging.

What is that difference? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Well, I have to credit Brene Brown here, of course, because she's the trailblazer in all of this. But, you know, this need for belonging. Often drives us to instead work on fitting in more than belonging. So fitting in is what I did my whole [00:21:00] life. I just say, I say early on after my mother died, like I've learned my lessons.

You smile when you're it's expected. You know, cry when it's expected, like I know the drill, I know how to fit in. And part of that came from my childhood where we, not only were my parents sick, but we moved really often. I was in three schools in sixth grade and most of that was due to my father's career.

But also I never knew when I was going to be staying with other families because either one or both of my parents were hospitalized. That went on for about four years. Uh, before my mother died. So I felt safe in terms of feeling loved, but I didn't have stability and security. And I stayed with other families a lot.

And I, as I wrote in the book, if they feed you liver, you eat liver. Like I would never have said, I look at our kids now, I laugh, they're like, no, I don't like that brand of potato chip. And I'm like, I just ate what they gave me. So I spent a whole lifetime, you know, trying to fit in. Being part of my ex husband's family, like I'd [00:22:00] always been there and earning my way, if it was something that required, you know, doing well academically or writing or, or being of service so that people need you, that's all fitting in, right?

Not that you wouldn't do those things that kind of circles back to our last conversation about fear and love. You can do the same things. From very different places of motivation. So you can be loving towards somebody because you're afraid they're not going to like you anymore. Or you can extend that from a place of strength.

That's a huge difference. Belonging really comes from being solid enough in who you are, that you're comfortable to stand alone, but also happy to engage with others. I think is one way to look at it. It took me a long, long time to understand that. And to be honest, some of this is baked in, right? Some of it, like, I'm an empath.

I'm a highly sensitive personality. This has been something that's been true for me my entire life. [00:23:00] 

Jessica Fein: It's interesting that you talk about it being baked in because another thing that I was struck by and that I, I know you must hear all the time is about your resilience. But I want to quote from your book what you said about resilience.

You wrote, quote, “I won't hear the word resilience until well into adulthood. I don't yet know there's a name for putting one foot in front of the other day after day, whether you want to or not. Whether you think the light at the end of the tunnel is help on its way or an oncoming train. I never consider that I could rebel, go off the rails in any one of a hundred ways."

What would that get me, I'd think, and who will clean up the mess that I leave? I thought this was so interesting because you haven't heard the word resilience. You haven't really thought that you have a choice and meanwhile from such a young age you're exhibiting this like almost super human resilience.

So I was wondering whether you think resilience is something that we're born with or something that we develop over time?

Casey Mulligan Walsh: I think the [00:24:00] answer is probably both, but I do think that some of us maybe are born with more of an ability to do that. I do think that certainly over time we can develop resilience.

But in my case, what I do know is just that all I ever knew is that you just do what they tell you to do that day. Like you do what's in front of you that day. And was I born with that? Or was that the result of the fact that things were always changing? You know, when I was a young child, it's time to move.

I'm going to be in the hospital. I didn't have enough fuck you in me. 

Jessica Fein: I just, okay. That maybe that's the title of this episode. I didn't have enough fuck you in me.

Casey Mulligan Walsh: I know that I was an easy target. And so we moved a lot. That's one thing, but. I was bullied a lot at school, and I could never figure it out until well into adulthood, when I was just an easy target.

I just thought if you were nice to people, they would be nice to you, and it kind of doesn't work [00:25:00] that way, especially when you're in elementary and middle school, you know, it does not work that way. I always had like a close friend. It's not that I was completely friendless, but my whole fifth grade year, the most popular girl in the class told everybody if they spoke to me, she wouldn't speak to them.

So I just like stood at recess by myself. 

Jessica Fein: Aw, I hate her. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: And then in eighth grade, that's in the book, I had a similar experience. 

Jessica Fein: Well, I'm wondering if part of getting some fuck you is when you also understood that belonging meant you were comfortable standing alone. It seems to me that perhaps those two things go hand in hand.

Casey Mulligan Walsh: I think that they do, but I think that toward the end of my book, there's a lot of resolution and a lot of that. You see in retrospect, like, I didn't think like, Oh, now I know what belonging is. 

Jessica Fein: And wouldn't it be nice if it did work that way? If it was like, Oh, light bulb, I get it. This is belonging that was fitting in.

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Exactly. And some of the time I think as [00:26:00] writers, when we get to that, first of all, I worked on the book for so long and I started it so long, like 10 years after all the events in the book happened. So 10 years before I started writing, like 12 years before the book was all finished. That if I had started writing sooner or not written as long, some of these realizations would not, it wouldn't be the book that it is.

And some of the time, I think we see those threads as we write those themes in our patterns in our lives. We identify them and we write about them, but we're still also working on them. We're still, I think we'll work through a lot of those things for the rest of our lives, some of these patterns that we identify.

So I wouldn't want readers to think like, Oh, and then the light bulb came on and I became strong and tough and that's who I am now. Because we're all in flux always, I think. 

Jessica Fein: And I think, you know, I forget who said, I write to find out how I feel about something.

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Yeah. Right. [00:27:00] Right. And it's such a great moment, as you know, when you're writing and revising and looking at draft after draft, and then you see this thing that you didn't see before.

It's just a wonderful experience. 

Jessica Fein: As you go on this, what I really consider a spiritual journey throughout the book. Because you do evolve so much, even if it was in retrospect that you were able to identify all the ways that happened. One of the things is you never asked, why me? And that was yet another thing that I related to you.

I am also not somebody who asks, why me? But boy, you had a lot of reason to ask it. I mean, talk about being a whack a mole, right? It was one thing after another. Are you tempted? Were you tempted sometimes to ask why me?

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Not really. And I have never spoken about this. I didn't write about this in the book.

But one of the things I somehow intrinsically knew, and this actually really [00:28:00] came to my awareness later in a relationship that could have had a lot of wishful thinking. Is that I can't engage in how I wish things were, and maybe you relate to that, but you know, we have what we have in front of us now, and I have beliefs about how people are still with me and they've only changed form and all of that, but if I were to start wishing this was true and wishing that were true, there is such an avalanche of things I wish were true.

For people, I wish were here that that would not be a healthy road to go down. 

Jessica Fein: Okay. First of all, that just brings me back to the livers in front of you. You're going to eat the liver, right? You're not going to wish that it was actually, you know, Burger King or whatever. But, you know, it is interesting the way you put that because, yes, there would be an avalanche if we started Why Me, What If, Wouldn't It Be Great If, this was a different way.

But sometimes I do find [00:29:00] myself more immersed in the, you know, I get out of it quickly. But I can get into that, what would it be like if, you know, my whole family were still alive? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Yeah, I don't mean that I never think about it, right? But that's. It can't be my emotional foundation. That's a better way to say it.

Jessica Fein: I love that. It can't be the emotional foundation. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Here's something that goes directly to that point. I talk about the fact that I was in my 30s before I allowed myself to really reconnect to the fact that I had parents and a brother. It's not like I thought I didn't, but I was 12 when they were gone. I was 20 when my brother died.

Through my teens and even through my 20s, it was as if this is your life now. That life was just a fairy tale. Like that's this thing that happened to someone else, because it's unusual to lose two parents so young, so close together. But also I was singularly like plucked up out of that life and like deposited in upstate New York with my mother's sewing machine and my dresser and my clothes and me.

So I was away [00:30:00] from all of the people I knew, all of the places I knew, all of the family. And so I really did. It's kind of like, I always pictured the claw with the stuffed animal, you know, that you put the money in the machine and try to pick up the, I feel like I was just like deposited there. And so that became this sort of fairytale story.

This is my life now in Hoosick Falls, New York, this little upstate New York town. And my thoughts stayed very much focused on how I was going to fix my life so it was going to be this way when I was an adult. And in my thirties, I think I began to just like look in the mirror sometimes and think, you look like somebody, there's your father in there and your mother in there.

And it was just really, it wasn't like a revelation. I mean, I knew that, but I connected with it after all that time. 

Jessica Fein: You said that you stay connected to your people and you feel them with you in a different way now. And I'm very curious about what [00:31:00] that's like for you. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: I would say mostly that refers to Eric to my son, and everyone feels like they have signs and, you know, things that some people talk about cardinals or rainbows or whatever, but With me for Eric, it's that 11:11 on the clock that just, it just blows my mind some of the times.

I mean, my husband used to kind of laugh and now he's a hundred percent on board because he is seeing like all these really interesting or pivotal times and we get in the car or whatever randomly, it's 11:11. I don't know. And I see his two big blue eyes between those two sets of lines. You know, cause he was the like, look at me, I'm up here in the tree, you know, so there's that.

And then just significant music being played at the, at random times. And I'll tell you a funny little story on the 25th anniversary of his death. I had heard a song a couple of days before, I think I had the [00:32:00] 90s station on. I love 90s music cause that was my kid's music. And this song came on and I wasn't sure.

I thought, Oh, I bet this is a song Eric liked. Cause it was just irreverent and weird. And then a few days later, it was the 25th anniversary, and I had an errand to do. And I went over and dropped something off about 10 or 15 minutes away. And I got in the car, and that song was on again. And it was 11:11.

It was the day that he had died. And so I came home and texted his friend, who was really close to him. And I asked her, did Eric like this song? And she answered, like, with all caps and exclamation points, yes. So just things like that, they have meaning for me. 

Jessica Fein: What was the song? 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: It was Loser by Beck. 

Jessica Fein: Okay, I got to tell you, music was such a big theme in your book.

And more than once, while I was reading your book, I had Alexa, which I'm saying quietly so that that doesn't go on, but I asked Alexa to play the song you were referencing because I [00:33:00] wanted to really hear what you were hearing and you talk about the soundtrack that's carrying you through this time. And I know, by the way, you have also created an amazing soundtrack that people can listen to that really is the soundtrack of the book, which I thought was super cool.

Casey Mulligan Walsh: I always wanted to do that. In fact, early iterations of the book had way more lyrics and quotes, like at the beginning of every chapter, which was clearly overkill. And, you know, often lyrics are a real no, no, because you have to get all kinds of permission. But a lot of the people that I was just obsessed with and whose lyrics comforted me the most were smaller singer songwriters who were thrilled to have their lyrics included.

So that's another way where I feel like it's promoting them too. Which I like. And even Bruce Coburn, who's big, the stanzas from him, he gave me permission to use. So. 

Jessica Fein: With my first book, which a lot of people don't know I had a first book that was published when I was in my 20s, I had started every chapter with A [00:34:00] quote from a song.

I had no idea. Then the publisher was like, well, that's great. But no, but I did get Bob Dylan. I was so excited. I did get Bob Dylan to agree. So at the very beginning of the book, I do have a Bob Dylan quote. So yes, it is not easy. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: No, but once people have the book in their hands, there's a QR code on the book and one of the things that links to is that Spotify playlist.

Jessica Fein: Well, awesome. Okay, well, so everybody who's listening needs to have that book in their hands, not only so you can get the Spotify playlist, which is really, really cool, but more important so you can read this story so that you can cheer Casey on as she is going through so much, so much profound loss, so much change.

And really these lessons, and I know that they're not things that you were, as we said, having light bulbs at the time that were going off, but so many things I kind of stopped and really took them in and thought about how they could apply to some of the things I'm going [00:35:00] through now and how they could be really helpful.

So everybody needs to check it out and thank you for coming on the show. 

Casey Mulligan Walsh: Thank you so much for having me, Jessie. It's been such a delight. 

Jessica Fein: Here are my takeaways from the conversation with Casey. Number one, being too nice makes you an easy target. As Casey learned, not having enough fuck you in you can keep you trapped in a pattern of people pleasing rather than true belonging.

Number two, there is a world of difference between fitting in and belonging. Real belonging means being solid enough to stand alone while still connecting authentically with others. Number three, resilience isn't always a choice. Sometimes it's just putting one foot in front of the other because what else are you going to do?

Number four, you can stay connected to those you've lost without letting what ifs become your emotional foundation. Number five, growth rarely comes in light bulb moments. Usually you only recognize the patterns and lessons when you're looking back. 

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I'd be grateful if you'd share it with somebody you think might benefit from it.

[00:36:00] And take a minute to rate, review, and follow the show. I have some fabulous episodes coming up, and if you follow the show, they will just appear immediately on your feed, and you don't even need to worry about it. So thank you in advance for that. Enjoy the day, and I will talk to you next time.