Episode 04 - Nothing's Real, Everything's Temporary: Embracing Life's Chaos

In this episode of Hey Pops, Cori is back from her travels and dives into life’s twists and turns, reflecting on grief, change, and the beauty of living without a set plan. From a few panicky moments to embracing the unknown, she shares personal insights on navigating the unpredictable. Whether you're new to the show or a regular listener, this episode is full of thought-provoking musings on the highs, lows, and everything in between.

Key Takeaways:

• Embracing change and letting go of rigid expectations.
• Grief as a journey that shapes perspective on life and loss.
• Finding freedom and peace in life’s uncertainty.
• Navigating panic and discovering growth through acceptance

Timestamps:

[00:00] – Welcome back! Cori’s two-week break and reflections on her trip to Vietnam.

[01:00] – Remembering Pops through travel: the rituals that keep loved ones close.

[02:00] – Thoughts on grief: the blessing of experiencing true love and loss.

[02:38] – Grappling with nihilism: everything is made up, and nothing matters—but that’s a good thing!

[03:30] – On legacy: wanting to be remembered for how we make others feel.

[05:00] – The weight of fear and financial panic: recognizing it’s all temporary.

[06:36] – It's not all about me: cutting ourselves slack in the grand scheme of things.

[07:50] – Facing fear and choosing personal safety over toxic relationships.

[10:44] – Embracing change and living for yourself—career shifts, identity, and finding joy.

[11:09] – How losing pops forced a reevaluation of life, safety, and personal growth.

[13:05] – Closing reflections: loving life, accepting change, and a reminder that everything, good or bad, will pass.

[14:56] – What’s next? A voicemail to pops is coming in the next episode, followed by a compilation of his favorite clips.

Tune in next week! 

Don’t miss Cori’s personal voicemail to her dad—a raw and intimate reflection of her ongoing conversation with him.

Stay Connected: 

Follow Cori on Instagram at @coriorak for more updates, behind-the-scenes content, and reflections on life, grief, and growth.

Share Your Story:

If this episode resonated with you, feel free to leave a comment or send a message. How are you navigating your own journey with loss and love?

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Links & Resources:

• Learn more about the podcast - https://coriorak.com/hey-pops-podcast
• Submit your own voicemail or story about Dan - https://www.speakpipe.com/HeyPops
• Get involved and learn more about the Dan Culhane Memorial Fund - https://www.danculhanememorialfund.org/

This episode reminds us that it’s okay to not have everything figured out, to feel fear, and to embrace the messy, beautiful moments in life.

Transcript

Hey, my lovely listeners and all you lovely people out there and some new listeners, since I just got some of my Vietnamese friends to tune in, I am back. I had a little two week hiatus, so it was amazing. And I'm so happy to be talking to you and to be talking to my dad. Here is episode four.

[00:00:22] Hey, I’m Cori and this is Hey Pops.

[00:00:28] I feel weird. I don't know. I feel really weird. I took two weeks off, go to Vietnam and see friends and then it just kind of overlapped with the last two episodes. And so I feel weird kind of sitting down and doing this again. It was such a great trip and it really got me thinking about how Incredible my life is that even though I have very, very limited funds, I am able to go see friends in Vietnam, some [00:01:00] of which I've had since 2006 and be able to share with them my life, see their life, their kids.

[00:01:08] It's incredible. And I always think of my dad when I travel. When I used to ride on the back of my ex husband's motorbike, I would take videos on the way to the airport and send it to him before trips. So now I take a photo of my bike at my house and then send it to my stepmom. And then send her kind of photo dumps throughout the trip, which is a blessing because sometimes I don't feel like I have.

[00:01:34] People to share these things with, which is why I'm on social media so often is that it's a place and a way for me to feel seen and heard. And I think that's a little bit what this podcast is for me, a way for me to speak and share my thoughts and feelings. And a lot of it, it just is so deeply intertwined with grief and my dad.

[00:01:53] And I think it's a blessing to grieve because you've had that life, that love in [00:02:00] your life. You've known true love. You've dedicated your heart to something that it's pain in its absence is a direct relation to just how much the love was in its presence. And I think that I'm learning so much through this process.

[00:02:14] You know, podcasting and work and something that I think about a lot is that when my dad got sick, we started to have like a lot of those more deeper conversations about what's next in life and life goals. And I was joking with my therapist this week about how I'm actually quite a nihilistic person, but I'm positive in my nihilism because everything ends.

[00:02:38] What's the point? But I think of so many things when I start to get upset. Or stressed, or I watch, I don't know, petty arguments or people bullying each other and I, I think, what's the point? I think the nihilistic point of view that I have is that, what's the point? We're only here for a short [00:03:00] time. What is even real?

[00:03:01] Everything is made up. Nothing matters. And in turn, the positive side of that is that, you know, everything is made up, nothing matters, all of it is fake. We're all building and creating our own existence in this world. And I think that being able to see the real things that matter in life. and being able to know and understand what will last and what is temporary.

[00:03:30] You know, I'm part of a group of women who choose to be childless, not for health reasons, not due to a lack of trying to have children, but women who have just chosen a path in life without children. And I am one of those women. And in that group, we've discussed legacy and what we leave behind. And I don't remember who said it in an interview, but I, I heard someone say once that the question was, how do you want to be remembered?

[00:03:59] And it [00:04:00] was an interview with, I think, a famous actor. And their response was so beautiful. It was, they wanted to be remembered for how they made people feel. And I think that that's a big similarity between me and my dad. He spread kindness. He tried his best. He wasn't always perfect, but I know for a fact that he tried as hard as he could to understand what was happening.

[00:04:23] If something was going wrong, if some, if there was a disagreement and speaking purely for myself, I always want,

[00:04:34] gust of wind just now. I always want to, let me see how to phrase this. I've felt so much heartache in my life. Yeah. And I'm still young. I shouldn't have experienced as much heartache and pain as I have, but I know how I feel when things are difficult, when things are scary, when things are frustrating, when people are being mean that I never want [00:05:00] to be the cause of that for someone else.

[00:05:02] And instead, I'd rather just be bright and fun. And I'm not always a bright and fun person, but the majority of the time I am. And so, kind of on a tangent, I knew this was gonna be a weird one, coming back after not doing this for a while. But I guess all that, you know, roundabout way of talking about nihilism and mortality and kindness.

[00:05:28] And everything stems from me swinging in and out of fear. I keep having it. I have it about once a week where I have this huge panic moment of I'm doing something wrong. My money is going to run out. I'm all alone. And for a lot of that, it's temporary. And the reminder that I have is that it'll pass. It always does.

[00:05:50] It'll work out. It always does. And I'm not doing anything wrong because it is all made up. All the goals, all the arbitrary [00:06:00] deadlines and ideals and labels that we put on things are all made up. And so I do have the freedom and the power to choose to manipulate those to suit me, if that makes sense, as long as I'm not harming anyone else in the process.

[00:06:14] And so I kind of, you know, panicked because I felt so bad about missing the past two weeks of this podcast that is purely a project for learning for me. And it is a passion project. It is not that serious. And I was even going to try to rush out a quick mini clip episode that says, Hey, I'll be gone for two weeks, but it doesn't matter.

[00:06:36] And one of the painful and most beautiful. sentiments and statements that I remind myself of all the time is that it's not about me. It's not all about me and nobody cares. And again, those are bleak or nihilistic types of things to think about. But also they're positive because it's not about me and nobody does care.

[00:06:57] Nobody is sitting there watching the clock and [00:07:00] thinking, Cory said she was going to put out a podcast every Monday and you know, she hasn't done it in the last two Mondays. Like who cares? Honestly, and I remind myself all the time to cut myself some slack. And the majority of the time I do cut myself slack.

[00:07:14] I live a pretty easy life where the scary things that come and go, I deal with head on. And I tackle them. I don't let things side. I don't hold resentment. I don't hold on to my anger. I face it all. I address it all. And I know it'll pass. And I know that It's temporary and everything's temporary and life is temporary.

[00:07:37] And I think that one of the best parts of this whole practice of my own podcast is reminding myself that I'm OK, that I'm going to be OK and reminding myself That life is so beautiful and even if I do change, um, my goals, my career, where I live, how I look, [00:08:00] that all that's okay. And I remember talking to my dad, um, I think this was before he got sick, but he often talked about wanting to have a, you know, a small scuba shop on the beach somewhere.

[00:08:11] And I always told him to just do it. Um, He really wanted to, and he was talking about how he can't just change. He's built this career, this persona, and this identity, and I think that's one thing that's very different about me is that it actually scared the shit out of me when I realized this, but I don't know what Cory's persona is because I've changed it so much in my life so far.

[00:08:37] I have been a billion different things. I have wanted a million different things. Okay, I lost track of thought. I think what I was getting to was that it scared me when a couple years back, I don't know, 2017 maybe, I, kind of picked up, um, therapy again and coaching. And [00:09:00] I was made to list out, what do you want?

[00:09:02] What's a list of what you want and who are you? And I couldn't answer those things because so much of my life has been to be of service. That's my love language, acts of kindness, be of service. And so, so many of my answers were, other people's answers. They were, boy, I got the dogs. I'm going to keep going, power through.

[00:09:27] I could have made myself my creepy little recording done, but it feels weird in there. So you're just going to have to suck it up and listen to the Bollies. Anyways, everything that I listed for my wants and my dreams and my goals and my identity. Were not my own and that's kind of how I knew I was not in alignment with myself and I kind of started a deeper dive into who I am and who I want to be and I'm still figuring that out [00:10:00] clearly, but.

[00:10:01] I now know a lot more about going with my own gut and my own intuition and reminding myself I'm not in trouble for the choices I make, for the things that I find joy in, for the person I want to be, for the professions I want to join. I mean, This podcasting avenue is something I like and is a passion, and I love working on it.

[00:10:24] But I also love doing random business things and coaching and providing support, being personal assistant, keeping things organized and structured, and I'm trying to manipulate and find ways to do all of that stuff and, you know, Give myself financial security and it's fun being able to explore all of those things.

[00:10:44] And I don't know if I would have had the confidence and the clarity and the motivation to do all of this and to be on this journey without having a guy like my dad be my dad, but also without losing him. I mean, when the [00:11:00] scariest call of your life comes through when the worst case scenario turns out to be real, you reassess, you check in.

[00:11:09] And with my dad passing, it happened at a time where my entire world and life was very confrontational and I had to really see what is safe for me and what isn't. And again, that circles right back to the nihilism and, and knowing that life is too short to be. in unsafe, dangerous situations in which I feel a constant sense of fear.

[00:11:35] I feel as though I'm living purely to keep my head above the water. And I don't think that's worth it. And I made the changes I needed to make so that I wasn't constantly, you know, treading water and keeping my head above the water, putting out fires, constantly in fear of dialogues with family members that hurt way more than they ever felt good.

[00:11:59] And that's a [00:12:00] hard pill to swallow. And a lot of people talk about going no contact and how that's People think it's a new thing. But back before we were all so connected, family members would move across the country and be estranged. And that's just because of the choices they made, you know, for careers or anything like that.

[00:12:17] But a lot of times it is to keep their safety and sanity. And I've made a lot of choices to cut ties with a lot of people. And a lot of that boils down to me putting in 110 percent of my heart and my compassion and my understanding and my empathy and being harmed in return. Anyways, this may be all over the place, this may be a mumble jumble, there may be a lot of distractions and everything.

[00:12:42] And it's not really the most positive episode, and I actually intended for the next Hey Pops episode to be a compilation of some of my dad's favorite clips, but that'll have to be next time. Because I just needed to talk through what I was going through right now. And you know at the end of it, and at the end of [00:13:00] this trip in Vietnam, one of the best things became the most clear.

[00:13:05] And it's that I love myself. I love where I'm at in my life. I'm happy without desperately seeking it. And I'm okay. That's fucking awesome. Ah, so I'll leave you with that. I'll leave you with the bleak yet amazing statements. That's nothing's real. Everything's made up. Life is short. This will all pass. You know the phrase, this too shall pass.

[00:13:33] I actually have tattooed on my arm in old English writing, but it's a great phrase for both the positive things and the negative things in your life. Something's amazing. It'll pass too. If something's difficult, it'll pass. And the entire beauty of being a sentient being and understanding what's happening is that we know it ebbs and flows.

[00:13:58] We know that, you [00:14:00] know, you can't have the sweet without the sour. You can't feel the good and see the bright without the dark. And I'm just in a bright patch right now. And I have to be honest, I'm afraid of the other shoe dropping, but I'm not focused on it as heavily as I used to be. Because if the shoe drops, it drops.

[00:14:18] I'm gonna sit and be happy and enjoy myself. And listen to the motorbikes in the background and the ceremony that's happening in my neighborhood and the dogs that are barking and just be filled and fueled with life.

[00:14:35] Thank you all for listening. Thank you for taking out a couple of minutes of your day. To hold some space for me and for hanging on. If this was all over the place, I appreciate you all. I appreciate this platform. I appreciate this project. I appreciate life itself. I'm looking forward to next week's project.

[00:14:56] voicemail directly to my dad. I got a lot to tell him and I'm [00:15:00] excited to give him a call and that's it. So stay tuned next week for a voicemail from me to my dad and the following week will be that compilation of cool sound bites from my dad. Cause I just want to revel in his voice for a while. So stay safe, stay healthy, stay happy and learn something.