#268: Kris Carr - Going from Grief to Growth When Life Falls Apart
How many of us try to avoid pain at all costs? When life throws us challenges—whether it’s the loss of a loved one, a job crisis, or health struggles—it’s easy to shut down or numb out with distractions like food, Netflix, or social media.
In this conversation with New York Times bestselling author Kris Carr, we talk about how avoiding pain can harm both our mental and physical health. In her new book, I’m Not a Mourning Person: Braving Loss, Grief, and the Big Messy Emotions That Happen When Life Falls Apart, Kris shares how she faced her own struggles—losing her father, a tough business period, and her 20-year cancer diagnosis—all during the pandemic.
She opens up about the difficulties of mourning, the importance of emotional literacy, and how embracing our messy emotions is vital to healing and growth. Kris shares powerful insights on how to lean into our emotions rather than shy away from them, allowing us to experience the fullness of life in both its joy and sorrow.
Kris also emphasizes the importance of community and connection during tough times, including having those difficult conversations with loved ones to foster deeper connections.
This conversation is not only a testament to Kris’s resilience, but also an invitation for all of us to acknowledge the complexities of our emotions and the beauty that arises when we embrace our true selves. It’s a powerful reminder that embracing grief and hardship can lead to profound growth and transformation.
Episode Highlights
4:45 Embracing Grief and Loss
4:55 Getting to Know Kris Carr
7:45 Kris’s Journey with Cancer
9:55 The Power of Health Choices
17:10 Daily Rituals for Wellness
18:50 The Role of Food in her Cancer Journey
28:20 The Impact of Grief on our Physical and Mental Well-Being
32:50 The Importance of Acceptance
1:12:45 Conversations About Death
1:20:30 Navigating Grief and Love in Your Relationships
1:25:00 Signs from Beyond
1:37:30 Simplifying Life's Load
1:41:14 Closing Thoughts on Connection
Episode Resources
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Full Transcription via AI Transcription Service
0:00] I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. It has been a long time coming. My special guest today, KrisCarr, you may affectionately know her as Crazy Sexy Kris , has been living with stage four cancer for over 20 years while utilizing a whole food plant-based diet to not only manage, but thrive physically and mentally. She's written multiple books about her journey and her diet, but it's her latest book that we're going to talk about today. In a departure from her crazy, sexy moniker, I'm Not a Mourning Person is a beautiful guidebook on dealing with loss, grief, and life's ruptures. We're going to go deep on all matters of the heart right after this message from PLANTSTRONG.
[0:55] I have two big PlantStrong announcements for you this week. First, we just launched our latest offering from the PLANTSTRONG Test Kitchen.
[1:06] This is a fun platform where we get to roll up our sleeves and experiment with requests that we receive from all of you, members of the PLANTSTRONG community. Now, one thing that we've heard multiple times is that families have a hard time making meals that understandably appeal to everyone. And this is a truth for many people that are unfortunately living in a house divided over eating habits that can be super challenging. Challenging this is exactly why we created our new PLANTSTRONG personal size pizza kits they're perfectly portioned for each person to make and enjoy their own pizza and these adorable kits come with four crusts and four sauce packs they're made from all organic ingredients they're oil-free and without excessive sodium just like all of our other test kitchen products you're going to be invited to provide feedback on these new crusts so that we can see if they're worth a spot in the PLANTSTRONG lineup. I would encourage you to act quickly because these mini pizzas are here for a limited time. Now, the second announcement is if you happen to live near a Whole Food Market store, be sure to stop in and stock up and save on all things PLANTSTRONG. Our four clean label milks Folks, and all 10 of our heat and eat chilies and stews are on sale nationwide.
[2:33] No coupon necessary.
[2:36] Hop into your local store between now and October 1st and save. Let me ask you this. How many of us try to avoid paying at all costs?
[2:49] When something bad happens, be it death of a loved one, job loss, a health crisis, you simply hole up and have a, I'll deal with it later mentality. Or you numb out with alcohol, food, Netflix, social media, exercise.
[3:08] No one wants to look grief in the eye because sadly, we're not taught to do so. But avoiding pain can absolutely wreak havoc on your physical and mental health.
[3:22] This is the theme of my conversation today with New York Times bestselling author, KrisCarr.
[3:29] During the height of the pandemic, she was dealing with the death of her father, a business that was struggling, and she was approaching her 20-year cancer diagnosis. Diagnosis life as Kris puts it was rupturing all around her and so she did what she does best she wrote about it i'm not a mourning person mourning is spelled m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g braving loss grief and the big messy emotions that can happen when life falls apart is a transformational a book about love, loss, and all the life-changing insights that we receive when we embrace them. What if instead of denying or ignoring our grief, stress, or fears, we embrace them and realize that everyone, and I mean everyone, is going through pains that we don't know about? out. Kris opens up about her personal experiences of pain, along with her insights on how these tough times have been a massive catalyst for growth and change.
Embracing Grief and Loss
[4:43] It's a really meaningful conversation that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I think you will as well.
Meeting Kris Carr
[4:55] Kris Carr, welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. It is such an absolute pleasure to have you join me today because, as you so eloquently said before we kind of went live, we have both been orbiting around each other in the plant-based universe for a long, long time. And let me ask you this. Have we ever met in person that you know of? No. No, we haven't. We haven't but i feel like we've met i'm like oh yeah rip i know him i know i know Kris oh yeah i know Kris but i think that we both were speakers at a whole food market yes big event it might have been in atlanta in like 2010 or 11 does that ring a bell at all yeah absolutely and margaret wittenberg was the mc oh my goodness yeah yeah um so i don't think we actually got to shake hands or hug but i remember hearing you speaking like oh she's great same yeah it's just such a joy to finally get to spend time together just us because we have been doing this for so long and we have been in each other's worlds and um yeah it's just really special i feel like we're ogs yeah well we We are in many ways. Back then we were new.
[6:24] What's the word for a new OG? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. We were, I don't know. We were shiny. I don't know. We're still shiny. We're still sparkly. We're little fresh peaches. Yeah, exactly. Now we've got a couple dents in us.
[6:39] So tell me, where are you right now? Like, where am I talking to you from? Yeah. So I live in Connecticut and I am in my little podcast studio room where I shoot all of my interviews, but also where I do all my coaching videos and programs. And it's a former bedroom that's turned into a space that I get to come in and create. That's great. So that way you kind of, you walk into that space and that's kind of. Lights on, mic on, let's go. Go. Yeah, that's great. Actually, I have something very similar where I am right now. So we both have our little dens where we can go and get creative. You know, before we dive into some things that I'd love to talk about today, tell me and tell my audience, what are, you mentioned, so you go into this room
Kris 's Journey with Cancer
[7:39] or this, what used to be a bedroom and it's now your kind of your studio. But what are all the different ecosystems you have in the KrisCarr, you know, world right now?
[7:55] That's a great question. You know, it's changed over time. So when I first started, for those of you who don't know my story, I'll just give a quick little summary.
[8:06] Like many people, I came to the world of healthy living, specifically plant-based living, because I had a big wake-up call. So I often say people come with a warning sign or a wake-up call, and the warning sign is a little gentler, and we all have them. Like, ooh, that's a weird feeling. That's an ache and pain. Let me get ahead of that, right? And the wake-up call is, holy, there's something really bad happening in my life. I better figure this out. And so mine was a stage four cancer diagnosis that is incurable. Let me ask you about that. Okay. So, okay. I know we're going to dive into this, especially as we discuss this little gem right here in a little bit. So you don't just wake up with a stage four cancer. Did you have warning signs? Do you not feel well? What triggered all that? Yeah, absolutely. So I did, but I was in my early thirties, late twenties, early thirties, and I didn't really take them seriously because I thought they were nothing. And so I sort of ignored the signs. Um, and I wasn't feeling well for quite some time, quite honestly. And so, but I figured I would figure those things out later, figure out things like fiber later, you know, because when you're in that stage of your life, you're like, I got so much to figure out who am I going to be? How am I going to support myself?
[9:32] What impact do I want to make on the world? And so it wasn't until I was 31 where I really hit that rock bottom of not feeling well and then finally taking myself to the doctor. And on Valentine's Day is when I was diagnosed with this rare and curable stage four cancer that I've been living with now for over 20 years.
The Power of Health Choices
[9:57] So I live with stage four cancer and I am a a cancer thriver, right? And because it's incurable and because it's slow growing, it gave me an opportunity to say, how can I support my health between these doctor's visits?
[10:20] How can I become an empowered participant in my well-being? What can I do and not just sit around and wait for some cure to come or, you know, for cancer to make the first move? And that was really the question that led me on the journey that brought me to Whole Foods for the first time. That was terrifying because I had never seen any of those things. And kale, you're sure. It was amazing. But when I first saw kale, I was terrified. I was like, that's disgusting. What's going to kill me first, cancer or that plant?
[10:57] Because I didn't know how to use any of these foods. You know, I didn't know how to make anything taste not only good, but also like something that I now crave. But what was it, though, that after that doctor's appointment, had you decide, I'm going to go to a Whole Foods store? I mean, did you back then, 2003, know that there was something about eating well that might help you? No. No? No. Burger King was my favorite restaurant. It really was. And so, um, no, I didn't. I just, because again, because I couldn't have surgery or chemo or radiation, I didn't have any of those options targeted therapy that I could take. And so I was like, Oh, Whoa.
[11:53] And literally I just thought I left the doctor's office. And I remember we went down uh seventh avenue in york to the whole foods market and i just started there and i found a book, like like so many of us do whatever the book is whatever the entry point right for me originally it was macrobiotics um and i found that entry point and i was like well a lot of this makes sense because truth is my digestion is a mess i don't have energy and and at 31 i I should feel better than I feel. And so, again, like it just, I didn't know where else to go, quite honestly. We all here were supposed to eat our vegetables, but how many of us actually do it? And at that time, I wasn't eating any of them. So I was like, okay.
[12:46] What were you doing at the time for work? Okay. So I was an actor and I also was a acting teacher. So I taught at NYU and I spent the thing that I was probably the most well known for. And also the, you know, the way I made my living was through advertising through many, many TV commercials, selling all the things that I would not sell now. And teaching actors how to book TV commercials. And so that's what I was teaching at NYU. And I was also really, really talented cocktail waitress. Got it. Very, very nice. Where, where are you in Connecticut? I have two brothers that live in Connecticut. Oh, amazing. So I live in Litchfield County. And yeah, I moved here three years ago. I grew up in Connecticut actually. And then I decided to to come home after my dad passed and be closer to my mom. And it's such a wonderful place to live. I mean, this morning I got to watch a bobcat and like four deer in my backyard. Kind of hanging out together, which I thought, wow.
[14:04] That is a wow moment, a bobcat and four deer in your backyard. In my backyard. Wow. I've got one brother in Higginham, which is not too far from Hartford, and then another brother in New Haven. Oh, amazing. Well, we're not far. We'll find each other. And they love it there. Let me ask you this before we kind of dive in. And how, how are you feeling today?
[14:32] I feel great. So I, when I first started on this journey with my doctor and I, well, a lot of the stuff that I teach, you ask like, okay, what's the Kris Carr universe. I have online programs. I have many books. I also have a membership community. And basically what I teach is what I call the five pillars of wellness. And they're the basis of lifestyle medicine. in. And they revolve around how we can be mindful about what we're eating, what we're drinking, what we're thinking, and how we're resting and renewing, right? And you know this inside and out, Rip. It's really about creating that anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle, reducing stress, stress from what we're eating, our emotional stress, and our environmental stress. And so that's the sort of lexicon of what I teach and practice. And when I first started getting my regular scans and medical tests, it was very frequent because we needed to establish a baseline to figure out how aggressive my disease was. And now I get tested every five years. I go in for all of my tests and I had one this past year and things are going really well. And so I'll go back again in five years. But what I try to do is not look at.
[15:59] There was a time in my life where I felt so my health had to be perfect in order for me to consider myself thriving. So perfect on paper, meaning there's no tumors in my body. I have many.
[16:11] And then I realized like, okay, that isn't my metric for success because they may or may not go away. So I use my metric of success as like, how energetic do I feel? How vibrant do I feel? How content do I feel?
[16:27] And all of those metrics i am exceeding and i'm also still living with stage four cancer but it's stable so i i'm doing pretty great yeah yeah well that's yeah so when i asked you that question how are you feeling uh i i kind of meant like right now today in this moment in time are you feeling like, you know, you're having a good day. How did it feel when you woke up this morning? What'd you have for breakfast? Obviously the bobcat and the four deers, that was a moment. No, that was a really great moment. Um, I feel great.
Daily Rituals for Wellness
[17:08] I feel really, really well, which, uh, which is a blessing. I, uh, I had my very large smoothie this morning, which is, Because I think part of my secret, I don't know, my secret to longevity, which is a big 32-ounce smoothie that's packed with all the goodness, you know, the greens, the phytochemicals, the berries, the good fats, healthy protein. There's no powders or potions in it. It's all real stuff.
[17:42] And my husband and I have that every single day without fail. Wow. And I think it's made such a big difference in my health, but also in my energy and my gut health. So that's what I have for breakfast. Yeah, nice. And you're on Eastern time today. So yeah, it's early afternoon for you right now. Yes. Have you had lunch yet? Yes, a save the tuna sandwich. And so is that made from chickpeas or what? You know it. but chickpeas and onions and capers. And yeah, in another life, I would own a sandwich shop because I think sandwiches are just like, probably they're probably my favorite thing.
[18:29] Sometimes I like sandwiches more than my husband, but do not tell him that it's just, I have a deep, I have a deep love of sandwiches. Yeah. Well, the sandwiches, sandwiches are wonderful. Do you have a favorite type of bread that you like to make your sandwiches with? I do. And my husband is listening. So Brian, it's not true what I just said. I love you very much.
The Role of Food in Healing
[18:52] I am a big fan of sourdough bread and Ezekiel bread, but also wraps or, you know, just keeping it very simple. Nothing is processed. Your husband's name is Brian. Brian, you, you talk about them in, uh, I'm Not a Mourning Person. And actually I heard something that's, that runs a little, little counter to what I read in the book. So I just want to press you on this because I think it's good. But in the book at the, at the end, I think you mentioned how you were going to go in and get this test or this scan. The doctor said, it, let's go every five years. And then Brian was like, Hey, let's go every three. Let's not kind of get over our skis here. So was it three or is it in fact five where you are now?
[19:46] Okay. Well, yay. Yeah. You look, I can go in three if anybody else in my family is anxious about it, but five is my preferred. Yeah. So you, you had this cancer diagnosis on Valentine's day in 2003. How long was it before you, you kind of launched the crazy, sexy brand, crazy, sexy cancer brand? Yeah. Well, you know, that was not my intention. It was really, um, for me, I've always been creative and I've always loved writing and producing and, um, you know, filmmaking and all that. And when I was newly diagnosed, I was so scared that I knew I needed an outlet, I needed a creative outlet that would keep me grounded and inspired. And I think because there was so little out there at the time for especially young women like me who were like living with a disease like cancer, but also wanting to approach it, not just holistically, because I do talk about bridging the two, but who was interested in a holistic lifestyle. And so when I realized that, that's when I thought, okay, I'm going to make this a creative process. All the things that I'm learning, I wish I knew these things before. I'm going to share it with other people.
[21:11] And that's what started it all, really. But not many weeks after I was diagnosed, quite honestly. I picked up the camera and I started filming my journey.
[21:25] And when did you launch your first book? So it took me about, I was diagnosed in 2003 and I sold my film to the discovery channel in 2006 and it came out in 2007 and then it, it aired on TLC and discovery channel. And then later on the Oprah Winfrey network when that launched and I leveraged all of that to also, um, get my first book deal because the film is, it follows my journey, but also other young women, in, but there was still so much I had to say and teach specifically about diet. So they ended up coming out at the same time. Um, and that was just the day everything changed. Yeah. And I know a couple of years after that you wrote, I mean, I think you've written seven books at this point. And is this, is this the seventh or is this the eighth? This is the seventh. Okay. This is the seventh. Um, but I might've been your second or third book. You wrote with a very good friend of mine, Chad Sarno. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. Chad's amazing. Yeah. Who at the time, you know, we were working together at Whole Food Market stores. Yeah.
Celebrating New Releases
[22:37] Okay. So let's talk about this book. This is like the year anniversary of I'm Not a Mourning Person. Here it is right here. You sent it to me the other day. I look at, I just immediately, Immediately, it made me feel so good when I saw this little star, little line shooting out of my pee and rip. And then with love, I mean, wow. It made my day. And I want you to know that I've been devouring this the last couple of days. And you really have done quite a remarkable job. And it's quite a departure from, you know, your typical themes that you write about in your books. And I think it's fair to say that this is a book that was born from. From. A relationship with your incredible father and I think his departing gift to you Thursday. Yeah, definitely. That's so sweet. Yeah. And I just want to, you know, I'm going to read some little parts of this book as I asked you some questions.
[23:53] But this is in the introduction and you, you say, give yourself permission to feel. And I think this kind of will give everybody a nice idea of kind of what the journey of this book is about. You say, while we may not want to even think about grief, loss, or unexpected and unwanted change, in order to feel less alone, less broken, less crazy, which you're not, we need to talk about and tend to our most tender feelings. We also need to find the right kind of support for our emotions and ourselves in the process. Only then will we be able to pick up the pieces of our shattered hearts and live and put ourselves back together. Only then can we heal. That is what this book is all about. Learning how to be a mourning person, M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G, when we'd rather stay under the covers and go back to sleep. That really, you know, I thought did a great job encapsulating it. And, you know, you start out chapter one. And, well, before I go into chapter one, let me say, was it is it fair to say that you used to run from your big, scary feelings? And now do you kind of face them head on?
[25:17] Yeah, it is very fair to say that. I think that especially when I go back in time to my cancer diagnosis, I hit the ground running. I left the hospital and I went to Whole Foods, bought the first cookbook, started cooking, started figuring it out, made the film, sold the film, you know, created the revolution and started teaching, helping. And I just kept moving forward, which is really powerful and very healing and very helpful. But if I'm to be very honest, there was a big piece where I was running from those emotions and the fear and the worrying and the ruminating and the what ifs.
[25:59] And it wasn't until this most recent rupture, which is what it was and what I talk about in in the book, which we will all have, that I realized I had to stop running because it was a culmination of many things happening at once. We were in the pandemic. My chosen father who adopted me was dying. My business was struggling. And I was approaching my 20-year anniversary of living with stage four cancer when I was given 10 years to live. And so it was just a lot. And I realized it was so big and I was carrying so much and the weight of all that carrying was exhausting. And I just thought, what would it feel like to put it down and actually start to allow myself to tend to these parts, these hurting parts?
[26:52] And so that was the invitation that I had because it really wasn't another way. I made the commitment and I believe that you know through life it's important for us to set intentions and those are the intentions that will guide us especially in difficult times but throughout all the great chapters difficult times wonderful times to me they're all great in some way um but when we set those intentions now we have a roadmap and my intention was to show up fully during this time of love and loss with my chosen father. So in order to show up fully, I had to deal with some of the stuff that was coming up for me that I would have my knee jerk reaction would be to suppress or to push it aside or to push it down. And in doing so, I would be be cutting off aspects of my heart and that was going against my intention. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Kind of puts you in quite a pickle.
[28:03] Not a crunchy one either, which is the only kind of pickle you want. No. Um, so yeah, I want to go through some of these chapters and just kind of,
The Impact of Grief
[28:17] let's just see what comes out of it here. In chapter one, the title is I'm Not Okay. And I love how you start every chapter with kind of a quote. And this one is from Khalil Gibran, if I'm pronouncing that right. And it's, our pain carves out a larger space for love to fill.
[28:40] Our pain carves out a larger space for love to fill. So what to me is so exciting about that is that when you're going through pain, if you can realize that on the other side of that pain is something really exciting, right? Like more love that we all want more of. That's pretty cool, huh yeah it's true yeah yeah um you um but in this whole chapter it's kind of you're introducing your father yeah right who you just you just mentioned and how when you first, when you first met him and i think you were maybe six or you were you were pretty young you were like giving him the stink eye you wanted nothing to do with him but he kind of of, he played you correctly and, um, and you guys just developed this insane relationship. And you say in this chapter that he really, he loved you for you, which is, I think what any of us want in this life is for the people we're closest to just to love us for who we are and not try and make us into something we're not. Fair to say? Oh, 100%. And it's true that love can be that easy. And love can be as simple as being willing to show up for somebody and truly appreciate who they are as opposed to trying to change them or fix them.
[30:09] And I had this great opportunity to heal a deep paternal wound. And I think that we have the people that we are related to, and sometimes we have an opportunity to be very close to them. And sometimes we choose our family and we have that opportunity to heal the parts that, you know, the longing perhaps that we'll never have the type of relationship with the person, you know, that we're related to. And that was the case for me and my biological father, but then I had my chosen father and that made up for, for that. And then some, you know what I mean? And so it's a gift when we have those opportunities and, um, it doesn't, my point is it doesn't always have to be with the person that you are actually related to. Yeah. And to go back to the, the title of that chapter, it's, I think that all of this starts with that acceptance and that awareness and that willingness that each and every one of us have the opportunity to have to actually voice the truth of where we are. And in our society, I think oftentimes because we live in a grief-phobic, messy, emotions-averse society, we're afraid to say when we're not doing well, so we'll say things like, I'm fine.
[31:36] And the invitation is to say, is to actually create true community and true relationship by sharing the truth of where you are. I mean, we live in this epidemic of loneliness right now. It's one of the major things that are affecting us as human beings and affecting our health and longevity. I think that our bravery, our choice to be courageous and share more of what's really happening starts to bring us closer together. Yeah. Yeah. You say, you know, be gentle with yourself when things aren't okay. And I can't even tell you already in this day, you know, and it's just afternoon after 12 noon here, how many people I've already, you know, talked to, met in person and said, how are you doing today? You know, I mean, okay, doing well. It's all good. Thanks. How about you? You know? Um, and then if I'm not having a good day or something, you know, is awry, there's those people that I will say, you know, it's not going well,
The Importance of Acceptance
[32:47] you know, or what, but it's kind of few and far between, right. Kind of decide who you want to share that with.
[32:58] With. Okay. So I'm not okay. Let's, and again, I want to touch upon a bunch of these chapters because I think they contain such great kernels for, for the audience to take away with. So the second, and you already mentioned the word and I never heard it in this context before, but it's, you know, the chapter is called the rupture and, you know, it's when you kind of have a major upheaval in your life. And you already talked about, you know, kind of yours. Uh, the major one was on Valentine's day in 2003. And that, and then, and then the, on the other side of that was you kind of becoming the CEO of your health and you, and you recommend for everyone to become the CEO of your health, correct? Absolutely. And what's the, what do you think is the best way for people to become CEOs of their health? Do they have to have a traumatic event or a rupture? No, no, no, you don't have to. I mean, it's actually preferable if you wake up sooner, right? And avoid that because it's a lot harder when you find yourself in that time. I think honestly, being the CEO of your health means that you decide that you're going to be the leader of your life.
[34:15] And as a leader, as anybody who has been in a leadership position, and all of us have, it means that you hopefully get to surround yourself with people who are going to help you along the way, right? It's very hard to lead alone. So we get to surround ourselves with smart people. And when it comes to health and well-being, that means our doctors, or any practitioner you're bringing in to help support your well-being, you are interviewing them. You're still in charge. You're still the boss. You still know the most about your business, which is you.
[34:54] And that's very important, especially when we find ourselves in the medical world, which, you know, I think is, I am all for conventional medicine. It's because I haven't had it doesn't sometimes people are like, oh, she's, she's anti Western medicine, or she's only holistic. No, I didn't do any of that because there wasn't anything available to me, but I've been with my oncologist at Dana-Farber for over 20 years. You know, we have a very dear relationship and he's the one that keeps track of my health while I work with other practitioners, depending on what's going on, you know, in different areas.
[35:30] But my point is as the leader of our life, we start to assemble our teams, whether it's our Western team, which I believe each and every one of us, we should have a general practitioner. We should go get a yearly wellness check. We should know what our cholesterol is. We should, you know, at a certain age, get that colonoscopy. So we need to have our general team that's going to look under the hood. We bring our cars in, but we don't bring our bodies in to just say, hey, this is what's functioning. This is what's doing well. We can tweak this here and there. Great. And then we have our functional medicine team, or maybe, you know, maybe you see a dietitian, or maybe you become your own dietitian like I did by really learning about what it is we should be eating and shouldn't be eating, right? So we start to fill in the gaps. And ultimately, that's what being the CEO of your health is. It's saying, I'm willing to take responsibility and be the leader of my life. This is my go team. And if somebody doesn't fit on that team, I'm not going to bring them on.
[36:41] So on the other side of that cancer diagnosis, you just put your head down, you barreled forward. And the next thing you know, you have got this health wellness brand. You've You've become this sensation. At what point are you like, wow, this cancer diagnosis has led to non-stop achievement, and I am on this hamster wheel and wow, can I get off it? Do I want to get off it? Because I am getting like pummeled now in this new arena. Well, yeah, I mean, that happens as well. Well, I, at what point, you know, I think it was probably maybe after my fourth book, where I just realized I was really tired. Isn't that something? I know. I know the feeling.
[37:46] I'm so tired. Yeah. but then you have this, as you said, this big brand that you are responsible for. And at that point, a lot of people that I was also responsible for specifically on my team. And, and I love the work that we do in the world. So it took me a while to figure out. I don't think I've actually, it wasn't until this past big rupture that I started to say, okay, okay, you've been doing this for a long time now. You've had all the highs, you've had all the lows, you've had lots of accolades. What do you want? Give me an idea. So you just said, you know, highs and lows. Give me an idea. What just comes to mind as like the high and what was like a low? Well, the highs are the, you know, okay, let's just talk about the highs that you put on a bio. Um well yeah working with Oprah you know multiple times and being a New York Times bestseller and you know cracking some of those big goals where you're just like whoa I did it I got the ring.
[39:02] Those are huge successes. I'd say the successes that really fuel me are the successes that I'll see in Slack, which is coming from our customer service team, which will say, you have to hear this letter that came in today. And those are the things that keep me grounded, moving forward, and really feeling joyful about what we do. Lows are, they can be financial lows. They can be, you know, campaigns that didn't work. They can be loss of partnerships, loss of, you know, people in my company that, you know, for whatever reason, it's time to move on. Or around the pandemic, we took a really big hit because I had never led a company through a global pandemic. And we were about to launch our very big 21-day wellness program, which was the majority of our revenue at the time. Because I hadn't really diversified our offers enough. And here we are about to lead people through cooking, shopping, meal prep, and there's no groceries on the shelves. There's no produce. Yeah. Right. And so we pulled the launch.
[40:20] And that was huge. I mean, that was a big, big hit where I was like, I don't know what we're going to do. So, yeah, those are, you know, you have the highs and lows, just like every business.
[40:32] Yeah. I also saw kind of in the context of this conversation we're having right now. You had an Instagram post where you mentioned that you got this invitation to go to this party and everyone was going to be there. and it was going to be epic. And you decided not to go. How did you have that kind of maturity and self-restraint?
[41:03] I'd say this is a big part of what these last four years have been for me. You know, when we go through these ruptures, I think obviously we focus on how painful they are and life won't be the same because life is changing whatever it that rupture is for me it was a death um but i think the other thing that can happen is that these ruptures put our values into sharp contrast and they can also reawaken buried desires um and for me that sharp contrast was exactly what you touched on, Rip, which was being on a treadmill of success and not having enough space and time to truly enjoy my life. And it's a life that I've really worked hard and sometimes had to fight for, quite literally. And so I think that in this last rupture, to me, the compass was, what does fully alive living mean to you, KrisCarr? What does fully alive living mean to you, anybody listening? And really taking that inventory and doing some of that pruning. For me, actually, the answer that came was simplify. Yeah.
[42:32] Well, and you looked at that invitation and what was more important to you than FOMO, right? right. The fear of missing out was just kind of, I think being centered and grounded and, you know, you were, you were in a good place. So, um.
[42:54] All right. Um, let's, let's do this with the rupture before we move on. And so you have, you, you end just about every chapter and you talk about different methods for kind of taking care of yourself, whether it's a rupture or whatever it is. And you, the word that you use, and I think it's very intentional is caring. You're like caring for yourself in times of rupture. So tell me, why did you use the word caring as opposed to another word? And then what are some ways that we can care for ourself in a time of rupture? I love your questions. You're so inquisitive and you do your homework. It's really joyful. So the book, basically, it's what to expect when you're not expecting your life to fall apart. Or for your, let's say, you know, you're not expecting a big change. The rug's been pulled out from under you in some way. And so each of the chapters touches on something you might experience, something you might feel, something you might need support with. And the reason it's caring is because.
[44:10] This book ultimately is an invitation to do some of that heart tending right and that to me is the balm where all healing begins you know you and i started at the top of this interview talking about food and for the last 20 years i've been focused on what we're eating and that's been so important And it's the foundation, right? Because we want to feel good so that we can actually do some of this spiritual work, this deep emotional work. And I feel like this book is really, the reason why it's so different is because this is probably the first book that is solely about addressing what's eating you. And the two of those make up holistic well-being, right? Right. And that caring is that invitation that each and every one of us have to say, this is the piece that I want to put some attention on right now.
[45:05] Yeah. I just kind of got that. And I think you mentioned in the book, but yeah, not only what are you eating, but what is eating at you? What a wonderful way to look at that. You know what I forgot to do, and I want to go back and do this, is I want to read the quote, how you start Chapter 2, The Rupture. You say, now, every time I witness a strong person, I want to know what dark did you conquer in your story? Mountains do not rise without earthquakes. That is pretty darn cool, right? When I read that quote, I was like, you get it. Yeah. Yeah.
[45:58] We all have those. And to answer your, I'll just share one thing about the rupture to answer that question that you asked, which is we all have those moments. We can't, I've said this a lot on different podcasts, but like, we can't expect the rainbow and say, hold the rain, right? I want this, but not that. And I think sometimes we may find ourselves caught in a why me or asking the question, why, why, why, why did this happen? And look, there are helpful answers that can come from that question. You have a medical issue. Why did this happen? Oh, geez. Okay. Now I've learned a little bit more about maybe some of my predisposition, the choices that I made, so forth and so on. But at a certain point when we find ourselves stuck in that why, then we begin to stagnate. And I think that's when we can really –, Just stay in that place where we're stuck and we're not moving forward in growth and healing. And so a better question to ask, what can I do now? This happened. I may never know why. And that's okay. What can I do now to care for my heart, my mental health, my physical body?
[47:24] How how often over the years have you asked yourself why me why did i get cancer did you did you do that a lot or not no not really i mean i asked in the beginning because i was like first of all what is this thing i've never heard of it and it makes no sense and it affects so few people why? And there isn't a reason why, you know, there isn't a clear cut answer. And so I just realized that that would be foolish for me to put too much energy there. Yeah. Well, I do have to say that, you know, in reading this book, I was also, um, very much surprised. I don't know if that's the right word. Cause I really, you know, know this is our first time really meeting right but at your sense of humor and like you're like you know why you know why did i get this is it because i sent that one teacher sex toys or whatever it was what teacher back in the day did you send a sex toy to and why, it was the school principal it wasn't a teacher it was like the dean of students and it was a my mother caught it, right? So she, cause she knew that I was sneaky and she saw me like slither down to the mailbox and put the flag up. And she was like, there's nothing good in that box.
[48:53] And it was a catalog made out to the dean of students that would arrive at school. Wow. Well, I adore the way you sprinkle in a lot of the truths that you've done over the years. And so the next chapter I want to start with is fear and anxiety. And you start out with a Mark Twain quote. quote, I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened, which is so apropos, I think for most of us, um, like it's crazy. Like this morning, I, my daughter asked me to drive her to swim practice. And she said, daddy, I can't be late. So you need to get up at 5 55 AM. And so I had so much anxiety around making sure I got up in time to take her to the practice that I woke up at four, four 45, five 30. It was almost like I had a morning flight that I had to get to the airport. You know what I'm talking about? And I'm like, why this is eating me up. And I, I think my pro I should have just set, you know, I never use an alarm, so I should have done that. But, um, anyway, I'm, I'm getting way off track, but you, you, you start off by saying, you know, some of the things that I think give you, I don't know if it's fear or anxiety, you say pizza with pineapple and unexpectedly having to talk with my neighbors.
[50:23] I'm sitting here laughing my brains out. But what is it about pizza and pineapple? I love that combo. See, this is where, this is where we depart. You know, it's like, um, I don't know. I just have a thing. I, I think I start that with, I'm afraid of more things than I should be. Right. And I think we as human beings, we have got a lot of fears and a lot of anxieties and yes, pizza and pineapple is one of mine. I don't think that they should even touch each other. Like fruit and salty should not touch.
[51:01] So, I've got a very quirky personality, as my husband likes to say, and I do use a lot of humor in this book as a mechanism. Yeah. Because when we're talking about difficult things, it makes the medicine go down easier, and it's a rhythm, right? So, I try to bring us to really difficult places. And when we're in those difficult places, sometimes we can feel a heaviness. We may start to cry because we need an emotional release. Those emotions were there. They needed to go somewhere and it's coming up, right? Because it's energy.
[51:39] And sometimes we need laughter to just kind of like break it up a bit. And I'm very aware of that when I write. I'm aware of that rhythm. them. And so, um, and I also really enjoy playing with that rhythm. And so I'm really happy to hear that you laughed because that is the thing that makes me light up the most. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Uh, I'm also, I know a lot of people who have kids, especially now that we've gone through COVID that are now suffering from all kinds of anxiety. I was talking to one the other day and he went basically to save his son who was suicidal and absolute mess. And I just don't, you know, other than my little anxiety that I have about getting up in the morning and some things like that. I mean, there's people have. Really severe, almost like I can't, you know, get out of bed, maybe anxiety.
[52:54] What I'm trying to figure out the best way to phrase this. Yeah. Well, I can tell you a little bit about what I have experienced, but also what I researched for the book. So I talk about fear and anxiety because again, when we're going through difficult times, of course, we're going to deal with a lot of fear fear, and anxiety. And so what I believe is the more you get to know your emotions and you, become more emotionally literate, the more you can understand how they work, why they're there in the first place, what they have to teach you, and how to, going back to the word that you pointed out, care for them. And so we're going to look at fear, anxiety. I have a whole chapter or about anger, because these are the things that come up. And what I learned, not just through living with stage four cancer, which is a marathon of learning how to deal with fear and anxiety.
[53:50] Because it's not over, right? And so I have this incredible relationship that I've been able to build with fear and anxiety so I can learn how to care for them, be in relationship with them, and not let them overtake my life.
[54:11] So this has been a big spiritual practice for me on my health journey, but then reading and learning and educating myself, it's fascinating because we think about fight, flight, freeze. You learn more about your amygdala. You learn more about how this ancient part of our brain is, you know, we're wired this way so that we'll survive. It's why we've evolved, why we're here in the first place. If we didn't have fear and anxiety, we would not be here. And so we can't amputate any of our parts and hope to be whole, right? We need fear. We need anxiety, but we don't need them to become chronic and overwhelming. And so if you find yourself in that place, anybody out there listening, this is a good time to reach out for support and find a therapist or find a practitioner that you can work with to help guide you through this. But the very basics of these mechanisms is fear comes on in an instant. It has a beginning, middle, middle, and an end. You know, like when the Bob, when the deer saw the Bobcat in my yard today. Yeah. They had an instant reaction of fear. You know what I mean? And then they calm down or a couple of them took off and then their nervous system starts to regulate again, but it gets them out of harm's way. That's what fear does.
[55:40] Anxiety is what most of us deal with we may we may think of it as fear but if we get really still and understand anxiety a little bit more than we can realize oh that's a ruminating that's a fear of what may or may not happen in the future it's not happening right now in this moment like the deer and the bobcat it's me thinking about well my next cat scan what if If my doctor says my disease has become aggressive, now all of a sudden I'm living in a fantasy in the future and I'm starting to plan what I'm going to do. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there chopping my celery to put in my fricking tuna sandwich. I am not at the oncologist's office, but my body doesn't know the difference between the two. too.
[56:35] You also say that, well, one of the big differences between fear and anxiety is that anxiety is very habitual.
[56:43] Yes, it is habitual and we can feed it, right? But again, your body doesn't know the difference between the two. And meaning like my body doesn't know that I'm not at the doctor's office in that moment getting really bad news. I'm just telling myself a story, but But physically, I'm having that experience. And so what can we do in those moments when we're kind of having these out-of-body experiences? I think that that's what all the mindfulness practices teach us, is how to get back into your body and say, oh, right now I'm chopping my vegetables to put in my sandwich that I love so much. Then I'm going to have a conversation and finally meet Rip. I'm back here in this moment. it's 70 something degree weather outside it's so beautiful this fall now i'm here in the present moment and then all of the chemical reactions that start to happen in the body when we're able to do that self-soothing and move out of fight or flight and back into rest and digest this is the practice of being a human being right yeah you you uh you have a quote i think it might be in the first three pages. And it's, I can't remember the woman, but I wrote it down because again, it's, it, it shows your humor and it's my mind is a bad neighborhood. I try not to go into alone.
[58:07] Yes. I think that's Anne Lamott. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. And so more often than not, anybody out there listening, you can say, Oh, you catch yourself in the rumination. You call it out here. I am ruminating. And then you do what you need to do to come back to the physical. And to that present moment. Um.
[58:29] Rinse and repeat. Um, let's go to chapter four. All right. Yeah, good. So, uh, this is called becoming unbecoming. And the quote you use to start this chapter is where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. Um, and you start out the chapter by talking about your, your, I think it was your grand, yeah, your grandmother that, you know, said, Hey, hey, that's very unbecoming as a woman. You know, sit this way and don't do this and don't do that. And you start out again, making me laugh hard. And you said, I don't think I farted until I was in my mid forties. And my question is, is that like true or like out loud in front of your husband? Or what are we talking about here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She, yeah, that was, I do remember chuckling when I wrote that. Like when I realized that I had free will. Free farts. Yeah, yeah, free farts and free will. The liberation has begun.
[59:34] Yeah, no, actually, we took a long time. I think that's one of the reasons why I had such digestive trouble. Right. When we grow up and we are domesticated, really, because when we come into this planet, I think none of us as little kids are like, I shouldn't feel this or I shouldn't sit that way. You're just a little kid and you're free. Yeah. And so ultimately, we try to get back to that freedom. And one of the things that I was told by my very well-meaning, by the very well-meaning people who raised me was not to show my anger, but also not to show my sadness. So the two things that I had a very hard time expressing were anger and sadness. But for me because i had a hard time expressing anger it when it would come out would come out in a rage um and that's what the chapter is really about is befriending that feeling and um and that emotion and learning how to understand it a little bit more going back to emotional literacy.
[1:00:45] Anger is a signaling emotion, and it's here to tell us something, to point something out that's really important. And sometimes it's pointing out injustice. Sometimes it's pointing out danger, but it's always pointing something out. Sometimes it is protecting us. And so for me, when I felt sadness, which I did not know how to express, therefore the title of the book.
[1:01:17] I think anger came on as my protector because it felt so big, like I would fall apart, like I would die. And so the protector was like, I have you. I am the warrior. I am anger.
[1:01:35] And then getting underneath that is like, oh, wow. Okay. It was just more validation that this is the piece where I need to put some care and attention. And I talk about some really difficult examples in this chapter, and they were just my way of trying to normalize the things that happen. And when you have these big eruptions, and for some of us, I just have a hard time accessing anger, so we talk about that too. But when we have these big eruptions, ultimately what can happen afterwards are these waves of shame, right? Yeah. And Brene Brown teaches us that shame is really this belief that there's something wrong with me. I am bad, right? Not that I did something bad. It's that I am fundamentally flawed and bad. Right. And so all of, again, all of these pieces come up for healing when we're going through the darkness. And I give some tools for anybody out there who's struggling with those emotions, specifically in this chapter, anger. What year did your father die? He died on February 11th, 2021. Okay.
[1:02:58] And the reason I ask that is because, you know, you've said this phrase at least three times since we've been talking today, and that is to become emotionally literate. Yeah. Right. And when I look at my life, I look at myself, I don't feel like I'm emotionally literate. I'm feeling like I'm good. But when I think about how you said you didn't kind of maybe have the tools to deal with this. Right. And I think, as I said, at the very onset, this is one of the great gifts that your father passed on to you. And and it it sent you on this journey of exploration around your emotions and what they mean so my question is so he died in february of 2021 did you just go on this crazy, like hunt to understand the emotions and read books and talk to people because you don't just write a book like this you know um yeah i did partly because i needed to make sense of it And I was in so much pain. And I knew that this would, I would be my number one reader. And I was hoping other people would benefit too.
[1:04:17] But it did feel like it was a hole in my personal development. And as people who have run big communities for a long time, what I have found over the years, more often than not, is like kale is easy. It can be the resistance around learning something new it can be the fear of making a mistake like so many people in my community who have said oh i didn't try that recipe because i was afraid i would mess it up right and i'm like oh wow it's really not about the kill at all it's how do i start to help people become more confident and more um willing to care for themselves. And then that is the emotional journey we go on. And the food is secondary. It's like you deserve to feel good. It's okay if you make a mistake. Throw the recipe out or like give it to your dog or, hey, you know what? Some of my best recipes have come from the worst mistakes. It's a breakthrough.
[1:05:26] Yeah. I want to read a, this is page 60, 68. And this is in Becoming Unbecoming. And it's, this is where, if I'm not mistaken, Kris, your father has a bucket list that he wants to do before he dies. And one of them is go to Nantucket. And so you guys are all in Nantucket. I think you're at a nice restaurant. You have talked to the maitre d' and you've gotten the perfect table that you wanted. There'd be no getting the table in the back. And you're sitting there and I think, so let me read this. Before I had a chance to let his words sink in, And words that would become my compass in this next stage of my life. He lobbed the final bomb that demolished my brittle defenses. I hope you'll all come back here on my birthday from time to time. This is a good spot to remember me. I love you all.
[1:06:36] Pretty darn intense. tense and then is is is that when you ran to the ladies room and basically had your you know you showed all your emotions to basically the toilet and nobody else but but i i say that because it sounds like that was a real pivotal um juncture in you trying to understand and come to grips with your emotions and everything that was, that you were feeling. Yeah. That was an implosion. And then in the next scene, there's an explosion. But I think all of that is really about denial, denial, push down, too painful, can't handle, can't see, too hot.
[1:07:24] And it goes back to what we were talking about. The more we do that behavior, it's physics. It's going to come out in some other way, you know? But what was really, really magical about that evening was when he talked about, This message that I've been sharing for the past year of the book, and I think if people take away nothing, this is truly it, which is we have to make our golden years now. Yeah. We put off so much for the future. When we'll have more time, when we're retired, when the kids go to college, when we do this, that, and other thing, then we'll allow ourselves the things that we enjoy, the experiences that we desire, the creative projects that we long for. And here he was at the end of his life that was cut short and he didn't have the opportunity to do those things and so his message to me was make your golden years now make every day golden in some way and doesn't have to be big right but you asked me why i declined that invitation, because it wasn't a golden moment to me.
[1:08:47] And that's what I mean by bringing our choices into sharp relief. You know, it's like you've probably heard this, and this is something that has been said for a very long time. I did not coin it. But the other side of grief is love. We can't have one without the other. And as you said earlier, we all want love. We want more of it. That's the whole point. and so when we move our compass in that you know and align it with how can i make more golden moments now it becomes very easy to decide where you're going to put your energy very very easy yeah uh well that's a that's a great transition to you have a whole chapter on grief and trauma, And you start out by a quote from Jamie Anderson, grief I've learned is really just love. It's all the love that you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.
[1:09:58] So what's your recommendation for us to, how do we let that grief go so we can then embrace the love that's on the other side? Yeah. Well, you know what? It's a process like everything else. It's a practice. I mean, I can't work for it. I know. It stinks. I had a friend who, she said something so great. She's like, I want to do this work so I can prevent grief, sort of like preventing illness. Is there like a prevention plan? I was like, ah, I wish that was the case. No.
[1:10:35] I'm going to do an analogy here. There's an analogy used a lot in the grief community, which is about the waves and the waves coming in and going out. And oftentimes when we resist, you imagine that the waves start stacking and after a while, let's say you can resist the ocean, you're that powerful. At some point, you're going to crack because you're not more powerful than the ocean and it's exhausting. And so as we allow ourselves to feel those feelings, as I allowed myself to actually cry, as I allowed myself to be in a meeting where, Somebody said something really tender. We write a lot of copy. This is ultimately what I... What is your day like? Well, I sit and write a lot of copy. That's my day. It could be a recipe. It could be a marketing email. It could be a podcast show notes. I write copy for a living. Not anymore. Not with AI, but okay. Yes, I have a buddy now, which is helpful.
[1:11:37] But I remember being in a work meeting and And I had to write something for the book. Maybe it was part of the sales page or something like that. And one of my colleagues showed me some copy that she had written and it was very moving. And the old me would be like, Oh, that's awesome. Okay. Next point on the agenda. And I just sat there and cried. I was like, that is so tender. That is so beautiful. I, that just, that touches me in such a deep way. And I just want to thank you for tapping into your heart. And that really touched my heart. And I hope it touches somebody else's. And we all just sat there for a minute and we let it be. And then we moved on to the next point. Yeah. So how do we do this? I can't offer a formula. I think it's more so just a normalizing that we're allowed to bring, to put a seat at our table for our sadness as well.
Conversations About Death
[1:12:40] Yeah. Are most of the people on your team female? Yes, I'll do. I do have a few brave men. Okay.
[1:12:52] I find the same on my team. We've got eight people on my team, and five of those are women. And I'm just amazed at how much more evolved women seem to be than men. I applaud them. I love them so much. Women are so incredible. Yeah. So acceptance, you have a chapter on acceptance and you start it by saying the boundary to what we can, I'm sorry, let me try that again. The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary of our freedom. That's pretty big, right?
[1:13:37] What does that mean to you when you hear that? The more you can accept, the more freedom you have, the more accepting you can be? 100%. I think that acceptance gets a bad rap, and it's one of the reasons why I wanted to write a chapter about it. Acceptance isn't about giving up, lowering your standards, anything like that. I had to accept that I will always have cancer, and it's more than likely going to be the truth of my life. And what I realized was acceptance for me was saying, I will not give up on you, is saying I have my own back. And um and both of these things can live together i can be healthy and have cancer you know it's like that both hand and um so this work of acceptance i think in some ways does, expand our freedom so i talk about this a little bit with a story about the difference between healing and curing so for the longest time i wanted to be cured i wanted to be cancer free, and at my 10 year mark when everybody was happy i wasn't like i felt like a failure i also felt like a fraud my books had been out in the world i'd already been a new york times bestseller i'm like why should anybody listen to me i still have it i didn't cure myself.
[1:14:57] And then i realized my dad had said we just want you to be a little bit happy we're so happy we We just want you to be a little bit happy. With a lot of love, you're still here. And that's when I decided I got to make the distinction between the two. Healing and curing. So curing is a physical experience. It may or may not happen. It doesn't mean that you failed. Healing is a spiritual experience and it's available to each and every one of us. You know, throughout space and time. And so I said, okay, I'm on a healing path. And that to me is what acceptance is as well. See how big the world can be when we're just like, my only definition of success is if the tumors are gone. See how small that is and how big and vast our world can be if we shift to like, here's what my definition of healing is. Yeah. Yeah.
[1:16:02] Yeah, we really got to get out of our own little blinders and look at the vastness and all the wonder that's there. You have a chapter on rest in love. And I'm going to read the first sentence from you. You say, for most of us, death remains our number one fear. Yet end of life conversations are often taboo, which is ironic considering it's the one thing every living being has in common.
[1:16:38] Tell me, were you able to have conversations about dying with your father? I was. I was. And I talk about how to prepare for those conversations because they are intense and scary. I remember talking to my therapist and saying, how do I approach this? And she said, and I share this in the book, why don't you begin by talking about talking about it instead of going right in to it? Because not everybody wants to talk about it, but I knew that my dad did want to talk about it. And so we started with that little kind of dress rehearsal and me saying, is this something you'd want to talk about? And he'm saying, yes, I would. It's very lonely. Everybody else's life is going on and mine isn't. And it's lonely. I would like to talk about that. And so I said, I'm not going to probably know what to say or do, and I'm probably going to cry and feel overwhelmed. And I just want to make sure that you don't feel like you have to fix it or that wouldn't make you feel bad. And he said, no, it's okay. And so then we didn't talk about it that day, but we did talk about it in a few days days later and it was so much easier. Right. And it was also so, and, uh.
[1:18:02] So beautiful and brought us closer and I think also hopefully gave him some peace. Yeah. No, it's a really uncomfortable conversation to broach. But once you've broken that ice, it makes it a lot easier. We've done the same thing with my parents. My mom's 89. My dad's going to be 91 this year. Amazing. And listen, hopefully they'll live a lot longer. But, you know, at this point, you never know. And so, you know, all the kids, we flew home last Christmas just to spend two days having conversations about how they want to die. What does that look like? Do they want to have a service, you know, memorial, where, blah, blah, blah. And it was a beautiful two days. It was really wonderful. That's so great. And I think, look, we all have to do it. We all should make a plan for ourselves, right? And of course it can feel very morbid, but what I have learned is that dying is a lot of work.
[1:19:15] For everybody? For everybody, including the person who is dying. My dad used to say that dying is exhausting. It's a lot of work, you know, and there's a lot of work afterwards too. And to be able to be on the same page and to kind of, you know, get those ducks in a row earlier, I think it brings more peace than any of us understand. And it's certainly to the person who is going through the experience. If we think about our culture, we make so much out of a baby coming into the world. There's parties and stuff and things and celebrations. But when somebody's going, we have institutionalized death. And it's something that we hide in the shadows and under the rug. We don't want to talk about it. It's it makes no sense when we look at the circle of life. Yeah. Right. And if that's our number one fear, let's pull it out. Let's put it on the table so that we can actually be less triggered by it. Yeah. You also mentioned in this chapter on page 118, you say, listen with your full being.
Navigating Grief and Love
[1:20:29] And, you know, I think it's in relation to, you know, listen to the person that's dying with your ears, with an open heart. And you also quote, you know, that famous Maya Angelou quotation, people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And um that's really what it's all about super powerful yeah um all right i'm moving on and this is this is uh intense here it's called beyond the stars and uh kind of like the afterlife right Right. Is that fair to say? Yeah.
[1:21:18] And you talk about, did your, what was your dad's, were you there when your father died? I was. Yeah. Would you mind sharing with us a little bit about that? How that was? Yeah. I mean, it was very beautiful in a lot of ways. It was also really sad and very difficult, but, um, what a privilege to have that experience and to be there at the time when somebody is leaving their bodies. Um, you know, I, I want to say that the most powerful part was witnessing my parents' love because it was there deeply, You know, my, I, I held his hand. My mom was right there holding his heart and she was coaching him. You're doing such a beautiful job.
[1:22:10] You're doing so well. You know, we knew that his breath was slowing down and that it was coming. It was, I mean, it was around, we were sitting there around the clock, but then we knew it was like, you know, it's happening. Stunning um you can do this we love you we're gonna miss you um but we'll always be with you and and just praising him and telling him how much she loved him and and truly like coaching him you're doing such a good job and i was just like oh my gosh this is the biggest medicine i've ever I've never seen my parents doing this together.
[1:22:51] And then the moment that he passed, it really was, I heard... Him, basically, I don't know if you've ever, I'm scared of heights, right? You know how I said I'm scared of like everything. Yeah. I guess I'm not scared of like the big matters of the heart, but do not put me someplace high. And if you've ever jumped off of a rock into the water, like, you know, cliff dove or anything like that. There's maybe this moment where you are like, oh my God, I guess I'm good. Here we go. One, two. And then you jump and it's excitement, but maybe a little fear. Maybe you kind of yelp a little. It was like that. It was like his last breath was this like jump into the unknown. And it was almost like a little child's voice of excitement and wonder and fear. And like the first day of school and maybe seeing your parents missed for decades because they're gone. I have no idea what it was, but it was absolutely fascinating. And after that, there was this very big, beautiful smile on his face.
[1:24:07] And that's what the experience was. And it, in some ways it made me fear my own death less. It made me fear talking about death less. It made me inspired by helping people fear death less. Um, Yeah. Well, I mean, when I, when I, thank you for sharing that. And when I hear you share that story, it just makes me think what you couldn't ask for anything. I don't think a better departing gift than to have somebody that you absolutely adore and love holding your hand, holding your heart, and then saying these wonderful, kind things as this light goes off and another one goes on, right?
Signs from Beyond
[1:24:57] As you make the transition into wherever it is that we go. So speaking of which, I mean, you also then you you have a lot of them like little stories about people that have kind of experienced the afterlife and that there probably is something else on the other side.
[1:25:20] Could you share one or two of those stories? Yeah, I don't know how it works. So this is definitely not me saying that I have any clue. I think we're all going to find out or not. not.
[1:25:34] But I have a lot of friends who are mediums and I have always said that I have a very fickle, feral and fluid faith. And I think that as a result of the, some of the things that have happened since my father passed and some of the heart spaces that I've allowed to open, I have kind of invited people to make their life a treasure hunt. And basically what that means is perhaps staying open to signs and synchronicity and winks and connection, because we know that energy never dies. It just transforms, just like love. And so the one story I'll tell is a personal story. Um, cause there are a lot of anecdotes in the book and other people's stories, but two days after my dad died, uh, or three days after he died was Valentine's day, which is my cancerversary. And he always sent me red roses and now I don't have any red roses. Right. And I was devastated and I was sad. And my mother and I were walking on the beach and, And, you know, she doesn't have her valentine. I don't have my dad.
[1:26:54] And we keep walking. There's nobody on the beach. Gone past where everybody usually hangs out. And I see these two red roses standing at attention in the sand fluttering like this. Yeah.
[1:27:10] That sounds like a kind of a sign doesn't it yeah that isn't a sign like knock me over the head you know and then so we we are just squealing and we're just so shocked and so you know crying and and and moved and we grab the roses we go back to the car and getting in in this little parking lot and i look up and i look into somebody's apartment they've got their big screen tv they're about to watch a movie i love movies i'm like what's he watching um do i want to check out that show and it comes on netflix and it says surviving death.
[1:27:47] Yeah so i was like okay i'm gonna refuse to believe in this moment that these are just messages from my dad hey dad how you doing and i continue to talk to him you know sometimes every day definitely every week say how you doing or here's a problem i have going on you know i put him in charge of HR last year. He did a very good job. Yeah. Good. Well, and then the other, the other sign that you didn't mention was you asked, okay, you know, let me see a, some kind of a wild creature that's got like a unicorn type thing and it materialized, right? A hundred percent, which, cause I was very skeptical. I, you know, even though I grew up in a very spiritual family. I'm, you know, I'm not religious in any way, shape or form. And I, like I said, I go in and out of, of faith in a traditional sense. And my girlfriend brought me to a medium weekend. You know, again, I have a lot of mediums in my life, um, for whatever reason. And she said, I want you to pick a sign, but I want you to make it hard. Like, don't make it a squirrel. Yeah. You know? And I was like, wait, I'll make it the hardest sign of all. Cause she was like, pick an animal. And I was like, I'm going to pick a narwhal because they, there's like very few narwhals. You're not going to see a narwhal. It's a combination of basically a dolphin and a unicorn. So I'm not going to just see one easily.
[1:29:14] And, you know, a few weeks go by, where's the narwhal? See, this doesn't work. All the stuff that comes up. And then, you know, one month later, I'm in a little antique store and I walk in and there's this beautiful narwhal.
[1:29:29] Wild, wild. Tell me, so how is your mother doing? You know, three years post your father's death? She's doing really well. She's doing really well. Well, she's, I think in some ways, learning to be alone and meeting another part of herself inside of herself and really understanding what she wants in this next chapter, what her preferences are, where her joy is. And a lot of that has been coming through in the form of writing. So I think, you know, we may be seeing something from my mother one of these days, which would be a really beautiful gift because she is my original mentor.
[1:30:19] I have some more questions for you, but I just want to pause for a sec and just acknowledge how grateful I am for you writing this book for those that kind of accept the challenge to deepen your understanding of your emotions. That I think will then allow you to live a deeper, richer life.
[1:30:52] More exciting and fulfilled life. And, um, just in talking to you here in the last, you know, hour and a half or so, it's, it's just become abundantly apparent to me that you've, uh, you know, you've, you've done the work you, I love the way, you know, you, you so openly talk about things, the way you express things. And it's something that, uh, I think many of us, including myself strive for so i want to thank you for that for that gift thank you yeah yeah thank you um you daily practice gratitudes with your husband is that correct yes we do so can you give me an example of what what like i do you do it at night do you do it in the morning and anytime you You feel like it? We do it in the morning or we might do it on a walk. So it's just three. We go back and forth and we call it, sometimes it's gratitudes or sometimes it's wins or sometimes we call it gins. Let's do gins. And it can be a combination of gratitude and wins.
[1:32:05] And they're very small or they're very big. And it's just, I'm grateful for, this is the win I want to share. And it could be something, like I said, big, something wonderful in work, some difficult project we got through some insight we had um but it i think it it helps to stay in that place of appreciation because the world is intense and it's so easy to focus on all that isn't going well whether it's out in the world whether it's in your in your home in your bank account in your physical body and to just be able to sharpen your attention towards.
[1:32:50] Mm-hmm. So you're 53, correct? You're 53. I'm 61. I have found as I've gotten older, I want less and less. In fact, I want to rid my life, our house, of just all unnecessary stuff. Less is more, right?
[1:33:25] And I saw you had an Instagram post where you're like, what else can you simplify? What do you have any thoughts around that for listeners that should lighten the load in their life only that i'm with you and and it's interesting because my mother is going through that process right now um and as we go through life sometimes we can accumulate so much not just our own things but our parents things or in her case her husband's parents things Mm hmm. Right. And my mom is 72.
[1:34:03] And so it's part of her, I think, coming into her own in this chapter is letting go of what isn't serving her, but also what isn't sparking joy and simplifying. And I think it's actually really important for us to go through our lives on a yearly basis and really go to that springtime. Cleaning, which you can do in August or September, um, and just pull it all out. Do I want this? Do I not want this? You know, and there's just a lightning that can happen. It's hard to take on big things when we already feel like our plate is so full, um, of physical stuff, but also maybe like to the point of this book, emotional stuff. Yeah.
[1:34:57] What has, so far today, what has moved you the most? Was it the bobcat and the deer? Well, that was fun. That was very fun. What has moved me the most today is truly this conversation because I love having it. And to be honest, I have been interviewed by a whole lot of people, but I haven't been interviewed by many men.
[1:35:27] Especially on this topic. And, and I don't, I don't think it's a gender issue but it is always very fun to get a different perspective, you know, and to be in conversation with, somebody else. And, and I've been wanting to talk to you. So to be able to have our first conversation be our deepest conversation, is very fun but how appropriate right i mean because that i mean to me the most, meaningful thing that we can do is again as i get older is to have these deep wonderful important conversations that maybe up until this point we've steered clear of we've been afraid of and if you can go there and the other person like lets you in oh that's great it's fun yeah yeah what do you what are you most excited about right now um in the remainder of 2024 is there anything your project you're working on or a vacation or anything i'm starting to I went to noodle on another book, um, and I.
[1:36:48] I'm approaching it in a very different way of just really keeping it light and bright and what is what's inspiring me, because, you know, when you when you do these things, it's going to be a few years of your life and then some. Yeah. And so it's it's like a relationship. You just say, like, choose wisely because you guys are going to be in it together. So I'm noodling there. But really, this season for me, it's great that you asked that question about simplicity and wanting to get rid of stuff. This season to me is truly a season of simplicity and simplifying systems in
Simplifying Life's Load
[1:37:25] our business, stuff at home, and just kind of saying I don't have to do more. I just have to really digest what I've already created and what this year has already brought into my life in preparation for the next meal of the next year. Yeah.
[1:37:49] So i want i want to end today with this is you in the introduction i believe it is you um you basically say join me on this healthy trip as we tour some of the most difficult and treasured parts of life, grieving and loving, stumbling and flying, living and dying. And I just want to say how much I appreciate us being able to have this conversation around that journey. And I invite Invite all you PLANTSTRONG listeners to have those difficult conversations. Go deep. Go hard.
[1:38:42] I try and do it as much as I can. And you, you typically don't regret it. Right. And Kris, you know, you, as you say on the cover here, man, you are, you are brave. You are great, courageous, and look what you've done. And you shouldn't, well, we're so glad that you're still alive.
[1:39:09] Thank you. Go dying anytime soon. All right. No, no, no, no. I'm not done. I am grateful to you and for this opportunity and, and truly, you know, it's really special to come to a community that already is interested in health and wellbeing the way I'm, I know your community is. And, um, I've not that this is the missing piece, but this could be part of it. And And I think we're all here because we want to feel vibrant. We wouldn't be teaching what we teach. We wouldn't be listening and tuning into the things that we listen to if we didn't want another piece of the puzzle, another clue that could help us feel better. And so anybody listening, this could be that nugget for you. And and may it take you to places that to actually not only deserve your attention but also delight you yeah and i just before we say goodbye i i do want to say that what i've also discovered is that and having these conversations not only one-on-one but also like with your family like we've had some Some really hard, difficult conversations. And I've got two daughters and a son. My daughter's 10 and my son is 17. I have another daughter that's 15.
[1:40:37] It brings the whole family together. It makes everybody kind of stronger and closer, ultimately. And then I think when something's going on in their life, they're more apt to bring it up and talk about it. As opposed to, you know, repressing it and hiding it. So this is just an endless, it's an endless topic. It's an endless, wonderful stream that, you know, we all need to get on our canoes and go down it. I like it. Oh, good. Yes. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah.
Closing Thoughts on Connection
[1:41:14] Kris, I hope that sometime in the not too distant future we get to meet in person that would be wonderful me too me too thank you thank you for all this time with you oh thank you and will you do me a favor and will you give me a virtual PLANTSTRONG fist bump on the way out boom.
[1:41:41] Thank you so much for listening and providing Kris and me the space and the opportunity to share this. If you happen to be going through a particularly difficult time, I hope that this book will provide comfort and community. Know that you're not alone and you're also just a few steps away from a beautiful catalyst and we're here to help in any way that we can. Kris's book, I'm Not a Mourning Person celebrated its one-year anniversary just a few days ago, and I'll be sure to link up on how you can buy it in today's show notes.
[1:42:19] Now, stay tuned because starting next week and the whole month of October, we're going to recognize Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a series of interviews with actors, patients, and doctors who are sharing their stories and the latest research on the positive impacts that a healthy, whole food, plant-based diet can have on outcomes and recovery. Until next week, thanks so much for listening and sharing this podcast with loved ones. I would encourage you, open your heart to the big, messy emotions of life, and always, Always keep it PLANTSTRONG. The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, and Ami Mackey. If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones. You can always leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. As always, this and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. And Anne Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.
