Real Conversation About Grief (With Chris Cook)
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Coming up on the Dr. John Deloney Show. This is what you did for me. Presence over platitudes. I need to learn better platitudes. Too blessed to be stressed. I'm pretty terrible. My God needed another angel, Chris. Someone came up to me. No, they didn't. Well, you know, brother, he moves in mysterious ways. And I said, God didn't say that. Bono said that. What up? What up? What up? This is John with the Dr. John Deloney Show. I'm so grateful that you are with us.

We're talking to real people who are going through just the hard stuff. The world's gotten chaotic. We have an election coming up. We're back to school. We've got fall. We've got travel plans coming up. We've got money issues. We've got work. Everything feels chaotic. And, man, a few weeks ago, I flew back to Texas for...

a buddy's mom's funeral. It was a tough, beautiful, sad, but uplifting time with friends and family people I haven't seen in years and years and years. And it reminded me that underneath all of the madness and the headlines, life is just going on. And when life is just going on, that means we're all dealing with hard stuff. And on today's show,

A friend of mine named Chris Cook, who recently wrote a book called Healing What You Can't Erase. I was honored to write the foreword to the book. It's a book on his journey and study into grief. He has a incredibly successful podcast called Win Today with Christopher Cook.

So this book is a very vulnerable exploration. And if you've ever wondered what is it like when Deloney sits with somebody for an hour and really unpacks grief and what's the next right thing, this is it. This is me sitting with a friend who gets very, very raw and very open and he's pretty courageous. And we just go there. We work right through the middle of it.

And so, man, it was one of my great honors to sit with my friend in this interview. And, man, I'm glad that the cameras and the tape was rolling because you guys get to have a ringside seat to what silence and grief feels like. And if you've got somebody in your life that's going through it, this may be a great episode to send them. So thanks for joining us. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Please, please, please. We're so close to that million mark that we've been shooting for. Hit the subscribe button and subscribe.

Pull up a seat and enjoy my conversation with my friend, Mr. Christopher Cook. We got this book and you and I have been talking about this for several years now. It's come to fruition. What's it like to hold it?

It makes me really proud. Yeah. It's sobering. Yeah. It makes me, you and I were on the phone release week and I said, dude, I feel like a fraud because I still struggle with the things I wrote about, you know, but I'm very thankful. Yeah. I get hit up a lot. I'm sure you do by people like, hey, I want to write a book or I'm thinking about doing, what is it like being on this side of it? Is it because, because I can imagine, we're probably the same before it comes out. You're like,

What if this sells 4 million copies? And then suddenly I can buy six houses. Like you should have those thoughts. And then you get the first week number. You're like, oh, or the second week and the third week. Like, okay, so it's not going to be that. So what if, right. So talk to me about how you've experienced this. Exactly. As you said, I think there's the idea that this could, this could absolutely change my life. Right. And I found out that it did, but not in the way I thought it would. Tell me about that. Yeah. Yeah.

Writing a book was both very cathartic and therapeutic. It really helped me process a lot of the things that I'm excited to help people about. But on the other side of it now, it made me realize, and again, I'm so thankful for it, but a lot of the superfluous things in life just don't matter as much as the relationships. Yeah. Picking up the phone, talking to a buddy like you, spending time with my nephews and my niece. Mm-hmm.

It's holding both. I'm so thankful and yet I'm really realizing ah, this is what really matters. Yeah. Yeah So it's like you have it and it's like oh I thought this was gonna be this thing the old line you go with you Right and so wherever you go. Yeah, there you are, man All right, so we're gonna swan dive in and get heaviest is yeah, and then maybe we can come back out to a light so a lot of folks reach out to Me in my show about how do you communicate hard things to kids?

And how do you grieve well? How do you do some of these major things that we spend our whole lives trying to hedge and avoid, and they're coming for us all? And in your case, it's mom gets a call that she's got cancer when you're young. And the way you've told me that story, the way I read this story, is really interesting.

If you look back, and she passed away when you were 30, right? Yeah, 2012. Okay. So it was 18 years of grief, basically? 18 years, yeah. I mean, she was diagnosed in September of 94, and things got really, really, really bad in 2006. Okay. And then those six years were just arduous and so hard and traumatic, yeah. And then after her death, the grief was just like nothing I've ever experienced. So...

i want to talk about hearing that as a kid the best you can remember and some wisdom you might have for moms and dads and brothers and sisters who are having to communicate this stuff but then i also want to talk about what looks like it read like a vice grip on your family of grief and you start to find yourself waiting for what's tomorrow and what's to like this like this shoe's gonna drop that's it

And I find that when we are waiting for something bad to happen, whether it's you know he's cheating on you and you haven't said anything. You know you have to have this conversation with your parents or your romantic partner. You know that. You know you're probably gonna lose your job. Or job's getting dicey or your boss is asking you to do stuff in a trajectory that you know you're gonna end up crossing a line you don't wanna cross. Whatever is going on in your life.

We think that if we hedge it, if we somehow worry about it, if we somehow build up this protective wall, that when it happens, we'll be all right. We'll have a safe landing. Talk about, you know this day's coming, and then it hits. And there is no hedge, right? None. Talk about that. Yeah, well, I didn't anticipate that day coming. I thought she was going to be healed. I thought a miracle was going to happen. So you like...

In your soul, like, oh, this is going to work out. Yes. Okay. And yet the anticipatory grief. Like your body knew. Oh, yeah. So is it fantasy? I mean, what is, is it a place that you went? I don't know. Because I hear that all the time. Like over the last 20 years, I sit with people whose kids are about to pass away and they're like, no, this kid's going to be healed. Yep. Yep. I'm looking at the doctor's notes. I'm like, they're not. Mm-hmm.

And if they are, let's celebrate that when that happens because we've got some preparation to do, right? Is that a protective measure? Is it a, I can't go there? Or is it a, no, the sky's blue and mom's going to be okay? Yeah, definitely. It wasn't like I'm denying the reality of what's happening. It was a deep and abiding faith. And I think it was self-protection and survival because if, you know, I'm just trying to wake up every day and

live as normally as possible, this doesn't have to be as blistering as it really is as a young adult. Yeah. Looking back, you know, so she's been gone, it'll be 12 years this fall. I think in my early twenties, there was some immaturity that I just didn't know how to approach this. And now looking back, I'm like, I wish I would have maybe considered this or done this differently. I didn't get to say goodbye to her. Okay. And why not?

Well, so she passed when she was alone in the room Okay, and she was in a coma for a lot of the last six weeks of her life And I never thought I'd have to say goodbye to her so I never did that unmasked Another level of trauma in pain after she actually did pass dude as though What would have saying goodbye I've given you I don't know. Um, I

Not at all peace or closure, but... Yeah, you know what I mean? A level of at least where I can put a period on the sentence that the finality of this is a real thing. It doesn't take away from the harshness of the finality, but it does put a period on the sentence. In other words, not doing that perhaps could have exacerbated a level of trauma I experienced after her death. Gotcha. I am...

So, okay, saying this, I think I moved through the grief process too fast, too quickly. Okay. And in a way, it caused complicated grief in my life. There you go. Okay. What does that look like? What is grieving right versus moving too fast? Stuffing the grief for me was trying to...

normalize or get back to normal in a way in the other domains of my life without recognizing that I'm living with this scar. Everything's different now. Yes. Moving through grief is so necessary and it would have been better for my neurophysiology, for my mental emotional health, for my spiritual health. I don't think I would have had as many panic attacks a day as I did. I'm not saying I avoided the grief process, but

I think looking back, I would have handled it differently now. You're right. The moment somebody in your life gets a cancer diagnosis, there's no going back. There's only forward. The moment somebody passes away, there's no life to quote unquote reclaim. There's a new life to be lived, but everything from that day forward is new. Everything. And I think the more, like when in couples, when somebody cheats on the other one,

And the most common thing you hear is, I just want to get back to when we were dating again. And it's like those days are over. You all have a kid, you all have a house, you have a mortgage. You all have to build something new. We've talked about this privately. And so it's, I had never considered it this way. Like the energy you spend trying to just get back to the way it was at work and the way my, I want to get back to my workout routine. I want to get back to my sleep routine. Everything's different now. And your workout routine might be the same someday, but

But trying to get back is such wasted energy. And I wonder if it just... It drove me crazy. And I don't mean to use that word lightly at all. But it created this level of compulsion in my life where I have to get to where things were. In other words, I created as a result. And you can speak into this. I don't know if this was just because of the first couple of years of grief or...

But I shrunk my life to such an extent that I didn't drive five miles outside of home. Yeah. I did the same thing this day and this day, and it was maniacal. Yeah. And it was, I would say, a drive to avoid more pain. But had I realized the full depth of the weight of the grief and moved through it, not on from it. Yeah. I think...

the experience of grieving her death would have been different. Now,

You and I know that, or you know this as a friend, I experienced a medical diagnosis nine months after her death. So I was like, I'm hit while I'm down. Right, right. So that introduced another level of pain in my life, but I was doing everything in my power to avoid more pain. And in so doing- Created infinitely more pain. Infinitely more pain in every domain of life.

of my life. And this is what I don't think people realize about the consequences of avoiding grief. Or even folks might say, I'm not avoiding grief. I'm grieving. I'm saying, I'm not sure you're grieving as thoroughly as you need to grieve. Grieving what could have been, what should have been. You know, I wanted to get back to Thursday and Friday night as it used to be. And my

i keep using the word maniacal but i think it's right my maniacal efforts to do so only made it worse because i could never recreate the thing that my soul longed for most gotcha i wasn't i've learned this from you over the last few years i was unwilling if i'm being honest to explore writing a new story because i because it had been 18 years and i said

I don't even know what... This is my story. Yeah. I'm sticking to this one. I don't even know what story this is. I don't know who I am. Yeah. And I think in my wiring, in my temperament, because I am wired for routine, predictability, stability, added a layer of complexity to the whole process, you know, which made things so, so, so, so hard. I was just talking to somebody about this the other day about anxiety, and they were trying to get me to map out something. And what I explained to them was,

I can't give you a play-by-play every time because somebody's going to sit in here and talk to me about their anxiety, and I'm going to tell them, you've got to start exercising every day. And then the next person is going to walk in here, and they're a CEO with three kids with a fourth on the way, and they're doing a triathlon, and I'm going to tell them, you've got to stop exercising so much. Your body can't handle it anymore. And so the exact same pathology is going to have two different paths. And I find that people who are wired for routine –

I need some structure. And I would, me being like, like no structure, I would say just as a regular type A, like dial it back, Chris, that when they experience a significant trauma, they try to squash every variable in their life. Every one. They constrict. And the other side of it is people who have none have like kind of go through life like me, just like what's the next five minutes, the next five minutes, and

come unwound, right? Yes. And addiction helps both of those pathologies, right? Oh, man. And you can get addicted to any number of things to band-aid over that hurt over time. I was addicted to routine. I was addicted to, oh, man, this is embarrassing to say, but whatever. Like, I was addicted to, I have to drive these roads in this way and listen to this podcast on Friday when I go grocery shopping. Yeah.

Because it's the only thing that makes me feel safe. I was addicted to that. Yeah. It messed with me. And then one thing off, your body goes to? Shut down. Yeah. Okay. Freak out. Now, freak out for me is implosion, not explosion. Yeah. Mine's explosion. Mine's all over the place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just before this, I was meeting with...

somebody that works closely with me and I was having a great Friday night my wife and I were doing like a long-term planning and so I sent a note to him about some of our Business thing we're working on and he met with me this morning. He's like dude Are you spinning out again and I was like no, but that's the world I've created for him, right? I explode It wasn't but you implode and I explode which is very similar so

Give somebody some tools. How do you head through it? Gosh, this is going to sound really cliche, but I mean it because it was my experience and the experience of so many people I've talked to. I had to come to this place of deciding that the pain of regret was going to be greater than the pain of making a change. What were you going to regret?

Staying stuck, like turning 40, turning 50, turning 60 and going. And still listening to the same podcast in the same grocery store. With the same furniture, in the same routine, in the same food in the fridge. It's like Groundhog Day all over again because of the fear motivation. And I really believe this, like in life, everything comes down to a core motivation of fear or love. Like fear says self-protect or self-promote. Shame says self-protect, self-promote. The fear motivation was I can't stand any more pain.

So I'm going to shrink my life to such an extent that no more surprises. I can manage everything. Yes. Everything. And the greatest surprise is there will be change and more surprises. Right, right, right. That's such a fool's errand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So back to your question, I came to this realization, thank God, change is going to hurt. Moving forward is going to hurt. Grief hurts and the grieving process will invoke pain. Mm-hmm.

I don't believe we ever move on from grief, but we do move through it. I had to come to this place of deciding, okay, which pain do I want? Pain of regret? Pain of change? That could open up a new chapter for my life to move forward with scars. I want to double click on that. Yeah, yeah. You don't... Say that again. You said that perfectly. You don't move past it. Yeah. You can't erase it. I mean, not to hit on you, but like... You can't...

You were abused. There's a period in that sentence. You were bullied as a kid. There's a period in that sentence. Your mom passes away. There's a period in that sentence. Correct. It just is. The question is not, can you somehow swim upstream and unwind that or erase it off a whiteboard? The question is, what are you going to do next? Yeah. And I think to your point, if I, if we try to do what you said, it's like moving through quicksand. Mm-hmm.

The pain of change is like recognizing and owning the period on a sentence and being really honest with ourselves about what we're feeling and the pain involved in that. I say this to folks on my show and in the book, like, and this is the key maybe. Man, it was so many. We want quick fixes because we're sick and tired of the pain. We just want to wake up and feel okay. But transformation doesn't happen in one day. It happens daily. Right.

So the pain of change is, okay, what are the choices I'm going to make today? What am I going to do in therapy today? What do I want to see happen in my EMDR session today? What's going to happen when my good buddy Deloney calls me on a random Monday night in the summer of 2021 and I'm melting down again? And you said to me on the phone, dude, you can hold both things in one hand.

okay, that means I can take another step toward wholeness and transformation. Maybe this is the key for folks today. Like the goal isn't to move on. It's to move forward. Yeah. In my mind, the semantics are different. I think it's a powerful statement because you're, it happens. It happened. And that's what the fear motivation is.

says Chris don't admit that it happened. Deloney, don't admit that it happened because if you can ignore the fact that it really happened, you can live in a padded life, so to speak, and avoid the pain of the realization, which is gonna give you a faulty sense of security because eventually something's gonna happen and it's gonna hurt even more when the rug gets pulled. So it's almost like admitting it happened

in a future tense can mean it could happen again. Something. And something will happen again. It happened to me nine months after she died. Right. And we can't absorb that, so we're just going to lock it down. Yeah. And I think the... Tell me if this is bad advice, because my mom's in her 70s, but she's still with me. My dad, too. Yeah, yeah. I almost want to encourage people when they are walking through the nightmare...

to do opposite George Costanza. And that's an old Seinfeld reference. But going back to somebody, sometimes I'm going to tell somebody who's got anxiety, stop exercising so much. I'm never going to say none, but it's someone I'm going to say, you got to get a program.

In my world, the greatest gift I can give myself when I'm grieving is structure, high structure. You will go to the store on Friday. You will listen to this show on Friday because that's going to give me an operating manual because I don't live with one. It may be in your situation that I'm going to loosen the reins a little bit.

I'm going, I, because that's where my default setting is. That's where my body's going to try to protect itself. And the only way through this thing is pretty raw ended, right? It's just, I got to go through it. And so you, my friend are calling me in.

X months saying I gotta do this I gotta do this I'm gonna tell you I want you to just go to the opposite I want you to shop on Saturday night and I want you to not listen any podcast just go with no music and feel how uncomfortable that is and me I'm gonna tell myself you got to stick to the same routine for 30 days you cannot deviate it or you have to send a thousand dollars to the opposite political parties I'm gonna make myself do this thing right

I don't know if that's great advice, but... Is that about carving new neural pathways? Yeah, I mean, I think... Building new structures, building a new narrative, allowing... Is that what I hear you saying in a way? Yes, but it goes back to the thing of what I told you on that one day. Like, hey, you can hold it both. Oh, yeah. I didn't even know how to do that. I know, but it rang true. Oh, yeah. And it's just... It's the same as my coach in high school saying, or in college saying...

You can take this neck clap faster. Yes. And I don't think I can, but I trust that guy, right? And I think doing the hard path, doing the opposite thing my body's trying to do to circle the wagon to protect me, I'm teaching myself, I don't have to do that.

I can live with structure or I don't have to listen to the same podcast every day. And I can almost be like, it gives me an opportunity to see through the fog and to, again, be curious, not judgmental. Like I can. Yes. I'm going to be curious about my body's trying to protect me on this random Thursday morning. Mama's passed away. I'm in a dark black hole of grief. Mm-hmm.

But I don't have to go to the store today. I can go. I'm just going to... You know what I'm saying? Like, oh, I see what you're... We're good. We're good. But for me, it would say on my list, it says we're going to exercise. So we're going to go for a walk. You know what's interesting about that is my sister is my best friend. We're super close. Our experiences, we had the same life experience, but we expressed the grief of it differently. Oh, yeah. She...

is way better in the spontaneity than I am. And she would encourage, I remember right now her saying, just come out, come out, Senator, just come out with us, hang out. I was like, no. Yeah. I wish I would have. Yeah. And at the same time, I always want people to be, it's not a roadmap for each of us, right? And you can look backwards now and be like, I probably would have taken a different route to get where I'm at. Well, that's it. It's like being compassionate with younger Chris. Yeah.

Because we're going to have to be compassionate with future Chris at some point, right? Well, this is what a great statement you just made because like physical health, like what we feed our bodies, there's no silver bullet. We need to listen to our bodies. The biochemistry is different. You know, like carnivore might not work for everybody. So in the same way, what I hear you saying, and this could be a sort of a take home, I'm perceiving it as a fresh take home for me is like,

we need to be willing to explore the specificity of who we are and lean into that to grieve well, to try things that will move us in our uniqueness forward, not on. Is that? Yeah. And I think there's some, I've found some guideposts being like, usually when somebody passes, there's a strange undertone of anger. Like I didn't realize I was mad at my mom for getting cancer and leaving me. And then you feel guilty for feeling, being angry.

And so I always, I've never had somebody circle back, not someone who's not going to circle back and tell me this, but no, I actually had no anger at all. And I can't believe you had asked me to write a letter to them telling me that you're mad that you're not going to ever see my grandkids one day or that I'm mad that you're not going to be at my 50th birthday party or whatever the picture is. That there's usually a sense of powerlessness. Like I needed to have been there to tell you goodbye. I needed to have,

Googled the right thing that would have come up with the one doctor in northern Seattle that can solve this problem, whatever. And then the third one has been, as you mentioned, the I want you to know mom, dad, husband, wife, here's who I'm going to become. And this is where I'm headed. And it's almost your body's way of saying yes.

The most common thing I tell people is to let your mom go. Let her go sleep. I feel that right now. Does that make sense? It's this sense of like, I'm going to hold, I'm going to keep holding. Because if I do these feeling things, then she's for sure gone. And sometimes our pain, tell me if this resonates, holding the pain is the way I can keep her embodied. Okay, so I'll pull the curtain back. It's a little nuanced for me. I never was angry at her.

For whatever weird reason, because she was in such a helpless state in the last six weeks of her life, I felt like she was still in trouble and I couldn't help her more. Ah, okay. So hearing you say that, it's like, I can't even reach her now and how do I know she's okay? Yeah, yeah. Which makes me feel like, well, worse. Yeah. It's that powerless feeling, right? Powerless is exactly the word.

Which is why I have no, like here we are. Dude, I had no plans of this because I'm not actively grieving her anymore. But I wonder how many of us, because it resonates with me, have these subconscious narratives of powerlessness, self-protection, and because they're subconscious, we think it's just Tuesday.

And we come to this moment of realizing I didn't know I was living this narrative of powerlessness until I did realize I was. Yeah. Now what do I do? Well, it's the story of, I mean, if you read scripture historically, what made it so bananas was gods were ruthless. Oh, man. And this God is saying that if you take a knee...

And you go on behalf of, like, that's the road to path. And it's the Obi-Wan Kenobi, right? Like, if you strike me down, it's that submission, right? It's that powerlessness is, that's the...

Path towards now now you can't touch now. You can just take on anything right it's surrender But that's a that's a horrifying thing when your mom is sitting right there, right? I mean, that's a horrifying thing. I'm sure you're in control of outcomes, dude. You can't yes. That's why that's it since I was a little boy hmm surrendering the control the this the perceived control of Outcomes has been one of the greatest challenges of my life and you know even in the last

12 months of my life, you and I have talked privately about stuff that I've walked through in the last 12 months. And there it is again. Are you willing to surrender outcomes? No, I'm not. No, because I don't want more pain. And yet, like in that book, my first step out was surrender. It's not giving up, it's giving in. That's right. That's right. I'm not going to quit. I'm going to do the best I can today. That's it. It's giving in, saying, I'm going to give in to this process of change and the process of confronting change.

Whatever dysfunction is in my life so that I can move forward. Right. And grow. But that goes to like let's talk to the couple who wife cheated on husband and they are trying to make it work. The more he tries to quote unquote win her or the more she tries to win him back, they're trying to play the outcome game.

And you end up squashing, okay, I don't like this, but I'm going to be quiet about this because I want to get them back. And this thing weighed on me for 10 years before I responded to that guy's text at work. I'm not going to talk about this because I want to get them back. And you end up just getting right back in the cycle. And so it's that idea like,

now i'm gonna wake up do the best i can today and most of us don't know our limb most of us are capable and this is true in the physiology research when it comes to like weightlifting when it comes to like vo2 max when it comes to relationship stuff we're capable of more than we think we are most of the time um and then i know there's always a single mom with three kids like and i want to tell her no no you're maxed you're maxed right right so right but most of us could do more

And are capable of more. I'm not doing more, but we're capable of more. And I can hold more pain. I can hold the same time. It's just being able to go, I'm going to work really hard today. It's amazing to stay on that metaphor. In a way, I had atrophied. Because I wasn't using these muscles anymore. I wasn't exercising anymore.

In a sense, what it took to move forward, what it really took to grieve my losses in a wholehearted, thorough manner. And as such, my soul and spirit atrophied for a season. And I think the same thing, what I hear you saying is like, it happens physically. If we don't use the muscle, it will eventually atrophy. That was the greater pain that I could have never predicted. And yet it will happen. It'll happen. If we don't. Right.

So before we leave this and talk about something else, and I was going to get lighter. I think I'm going to get darker. Before we leave this, can I say one thing to you? Yeah, you can say anything you want. I wonder if, tell me if I'm off, that haunting, I didn't say goodbye. I would be willing to guarantee you that if your mom was sitting here, she'd be like,

Chris, you told me goodbye like 5,000 times to the point that I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't speak. Stop telling me goodbye. Is that a measure of I want to control the descent of this plane? Does that make sense? You are popping a balloon, my friend. I mean, is that the – Yes. Is that the – yeah. Yeah, because I think the anticipatory grief and the picture I had painted, the expectations didn't meet reality. Yeah.

Yeah. And almost nobody is prepared for when somebody gets a terminal diagnostic, we think, oh,

there's six months or let's say you get a year and you were six months in that you think that the back six months are gonna be like the first six months or the first it's a five year. And so the first four years are gonna be the last year is gonna be like the first four years. And most people are unprepared for no, no, that sucker goes downhill and it's gruesome and it's tough and it's hard. Right. In an unprepared way. And so I wanna like control how this thing lands.

And our brains put little GPS pins in these weird moments. Like I didn't say goodbye or I didn't change the towels or I didn't make this last text, right? And the phone, it's like now the plane landed and they're, they're at peace. Hey, it's Deloney here. And I'm going to tell you about Merrick health, the premier health optimization platform that exists in the universe. They're

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It's time for both of us to choose reality. And that means it's time for us to step up and take personal responsibility of our health. Head to MerrickHealth.com slash Deloney or use code Deloney at checkout to get a 10% discount on the core package or the all-in package. That's Merrick, M-A-R-R-E-K, health.com. How do you pick up the pieces? When you are praying, you're a youngster praying for your mom.

and you have come to a place where I believe this is going to happen. My mom is gonna get up and be the same old mom and she's gonna make Sunday morning breakfast and this is gonna get back to the way it was. And then she goes into a coma and then you're able to pray even harder because right, 'cause by now it's your fault, so you gotta pray harder. So she passes. Yeah, yeah. And you get through the first two, you know, it's two weeks to six months.

and the sun starts coming back out, how in the world do you pick up a relationship with a deity that you were certain was gonna come through? And I wonder myself, I wonder if I default to more of a cowardly path of it's probably all gonna fall apart as though I don't wanna lean my trust up against anything 'cause I don't know what I would do on the back end if what I come to really firmly believe doesn't hold true.

Maybe I'm too much of a coward to do that. Scripture says that he comforts all who mourn. This might be jumping to the punchline too quickly, but I don't believe we're going to receive the vastness of the comfort he offers until we fully enter the mourning process. So what I did is I remember, and thanks to my mom, I never staked the totality of my faith upon one answer to prayer.

That makes you unique. Really? Yeah. That's good. I remember, and I learned this from her, because my mom was a professional counselor who specialized in grief. Wow. So I learned a lot of these tactics, if you want to call them that, from her. I remember going to the Lord and saying, it looks like you betrayed me. Yeah. Where were you now?

Because I truly believe in what scripture says that he's not a man that he could lie. I did say to him, listen, I don't understand this. And so I'm not asking you for an answer to why this happened or why it didn't happen. I just need healing for a broken heart. Now, here's the key. I didn't go and dump my stuff and leave. I dumped my stuff honestly and brutally, not in a spirit of accusation, but of like, where were you? I was so mad, but then I waited.

And I waited. And then I felt his presence. I think maybe that's the key to reestablishing my relationship with him. You know, I've loved him since I was a little boy. And it was my honesty. Because if I would have hidden from him or said, you know, put on the cute religious packaging of prayers, he would have been like, I know what's in your heart anyway. Right. Will you tell me what's in your heart? Right.

And it was that willingness to be brutally honest with him. And maybe that's a key for all of us to understand is when I'm going to him with these huge questions, even if he would have told me why or why not, it wouldn't have changed the situation and I would still be left with a broken heart. And so therefore...

I write about this in the book as well. I have had to come to terms with in many areas of loss of my life. I don't know as the answer. I think it is so easy to put the Christianese, the cliche, the sugary stuff on. And I think the best answer is, I don't know. That was not an easy place to get to, but I went to him and I said, it looks like you betrayed me. It looks like, I was fully honest with him. And in that process of receiving forgiveness,

Peace from him that passed all understanding. That's when things began to change. I've heard it said this way that we'll receive the peace that passes all understanding when we give up our right to understand. And that's where I don't know and embracing mystery has been a huge part.

gift to my grieving in multiple losses of life. And that has been part of the freedom I've received is embracing mystery. I don't know. And anybody who says anything other than that, I don't believe is being honest. Correct. I don't know. Again, let's say the Lord would have said,

Chris, here's why she did pass away. Yeah, you're walking in the bathroom and all of a sudden like a... The writing's on the wall. It starts being on the bathroom mirror. Like, Chris, I got you. Heard you complaining last night. Here's what happened. It's not going to change the outcome. And so the greater need, and maybe this is the thing that would be a lifeline of hope to all of us, is the greatest need we have is not the answer to why, but that the sting of death would be removed. Mm-hmm.

and that peace that passes all understanding would be received and that we would receive the vastness of comfort when we mourn. Now check this out. I really believe, and again, we're both people of faith. I think I discovered and received aspects of his nature and his character that I wouldn't have been able to receive at any other point in time. And I went, whoa, I didn't realize he was able to meet me there.

I don't have even conclusive answers to your question, and maybe that's part of the actual answer. Like, I don't know. It is a relationship, and it took time to rebuild. Okay. All right. I look at it like this. Like, hearing you talk through it is a similar place where I've landed, which is, I think, depending on how you're raised and what stories you're told, you're raised with a...

The idea of this healer, right, who's basically like a cosmic janitor who flies around and cleans up these messes that happen everywhere. And if you pray the right prayer, then just show up.

And I'm brought back to a loss that I had and a guy showed up and I think I've talked about this on the show, I don't remember. But he's a rancher, big tall, he's way taller than me, cowboy hat, the whole nine yards. And I was sitting by myself in the waiting room while my wife was in emergency surgery. And I was confident she wouldn't make it. I remember seeing the doctor's eyes being like, oh man.

And someone had come to pick up my son and somehow somebody had texted someone who texted someone. He just rolled in and I didn't tell any of my buddies I was there. I was just sitting by myself. And he walked in and he nodded and like kind of like out of a movie, like tips his hat and sits down, takes his hat off and he crossed his legs and just sits there. And I just nodded to acknowledge him. I wasn't in a talking mood and he could tell that and he's not a talker.

He sat there for one hour, for two hours. In my head, it's forever. And eventually the doctor walked in and said, we lost the baby, but your wife's going to be okay. And I remember he reached over and I had my legs crossed and I was bouncing my leg. I'm just a jittery guy. And he grabbed my shoe and I looked at him and he had tears. He was crying tears. I didn't have yet, but he never said anything. And I remember thinking,

That's what that is. Like I'm never by myself. And I'm not, I'm entering into these grief spaces. For me, the faith, the belief is not that everything's gonna work out as I wish it is, as I scream for it to be. But no matter what comes my way, I will never be by myself. See, I'm so thankful you shared that story because in my life, what I had to realize as part of recovery, transformation, and now moving forward is that

My trust in him is not in the certainty of an outcome. Not in the outcomes. It's in the steadfastness of his character and his nature. He said, I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. And that doesn't mean you get everything that you want on the back end, even when it's your mom. Yeah, right. Exactly that. He promises, I'll never leave you. I'll never leave you. And now, listen, I believe in the power of prayer. I believe he does miracles still. I believe healing is something he still does.

But again, let's get back to this for anyone walking through betrayal in a relationship, stillborn birth of a precious child, the death of a spouse or a parent. This is where in serving one another, dude, this is why I love you so much as a friend. This is what you did for me. Presence over platitudes. Yeah.

I need to learn better. Too blessed to be stressed. I'm pretty terrible. My God needed another angel, Chris. I wouldn't say that. Listen, someone came up to me. No, they didn't. Someone came up to me and I wrote about it in the book and they're like, well, you know, brother, he moves in mysterious ways. And I said, that's my mom, bro. I said, God didn't say that. Bono said that.

I don't think people are malicious. They're not. People get awkward. Here's the thing. Presence over platitudes. And I think the greatest thing we can offer to folks who are going through the most devastating circumstances, like that man in the waiting room. Presence. I'm so sorry. And then like, you know, for me, I don't know why stuff happens. Embrace it. I think embracing mystery for folks joined with us that maybe are

I have a faith background. Cool. Embracing mystery is a critical component of our faith experience, and I don't think we're good at it. We're terrible. And it's circling back to original, your innate response to trauma, which was to tighten the grip even further. Yeah. The more you embrace the mystery, the more you just let go. And that...

That's belief. That's faith. That is... Faith is trust. Yeah. Faith is the absolute... It's not the constriction of every variable and the smashing of everything that you don't agree with. It is...

I'm good. Well, one of the key foundations that my mom taught my sister and me growing up was that he is, this is like Gore foundational truth is that he is eternally good. He is good. He doesn't just do good. He is good. And so for me, faith is trust in his power, his wisdom, and his goodness. Hmm.

which demands my willingness to embrace. I don't know when circumstances happen that I can't understand. Yeah. You know? And I've gotten to the point where any energy spent there is wasted energy. It's energy I could be using to comfort my kids. It's energy I could be used going to serve my neighbor or whatever. Or have dinner with Sheila or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Do something different. Yeah, yeah. That's right.

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You are just roundly known by those in the podcast space as the best question asker there is. And we'll obviously link to your show. I've learned about Anna Lemke from your show. I mean, I've learned some great guests. You've got this master class of people. You've been on six times. That's a lot. I love you for it. It's because you're hard up for it. So on air. Yeah.

What's a question you've got for me? What do you mean? Going all the way back to like when I first met you, you don't know this. When I first met you, when was that in 2019? Your entire energy was so locked. It was a very locked guy. And I don't know how to say another word. Oh, I'm curious. Say more. Very electric fence. Very locked. Ooh.

And the guy that's before me now, this many years later, is loose as a goose, man. Really? Yeah. I know you've got crap going on in your life. Right now? But your energies are so radically different. Is that good? I think it's remarkable. Really? Yeah. This feels like a well, Chris. Well doesn't mean everything's right, but well means I'm not swimming. My raft is going down the stream and I'm going with it. I'm not paddling really hard. Is that strange? Was there something going on in 2019? No.

I'm okay saying this publicly. I was still working out, do I need to perform well enough to be liked?

The event that you and I met at was for people who were all in this space. And I was like, I got to put on the shtick. And that's not me being inauthentic. No. I think. Trying to perform. Yeah. And I think if I'm being honest, there was and is still a level of healing happening in my life. Healing from these deep systemic shame narratives that say, if you don't perform well enough. Mm.

Because the core narrative in my life that I uncovered in the writing of that book was you are fundamentally, Chris, useless and stupid. Yes. So the uphill battle is always in play. You would ask me, what's a question you would ask me? Be as brutally honest as you want because you're a good friend and I love you. We've had some really awesome private conversations and you've helped me through a lot. What's something, what do you know about me that I need to know that I don't know?

Like right now to help me grow. Maybe this will help some other folks too. Yeah. And I think the exchange, I think knowing 2019 to 2023, so four or five years of knowing each other and phone calls, I called you in the middle of panic mode when I was in the middle of my book and I've called you during yours. I think the last vestitudes of still trying to control outcomes and still trying to control

The psychology data tells me that a job transition or unwanted job transition or anything that is as painful to your nervous system as death, as a loss, and you add on to that a caretaking role, whether you're a physician or you're a therapist or you're a pastor or whatever, and that gets removed or that gets changed or that gets shifted suddenly, it's...

right and so it's that same that same machine kicks back up again right i should have done this more i'm not doing this i didn't dance and sing like i should have which almost always kicks off into a all right i can you know i mean um and so i think for you it's like how i experience you is

Like I say, your energy is so dramatically different and maybe the context is so different. We know each other now and there's not 50 of us in a room like, "Hey everybody." But on this side of it is saying like, I've been in rooms with other people without you in there who talk so positively about your hospitality, how good you are at your job. I don't even know your day job, how good you are at the podcasting job that you have.

what makes you so amazing at the podcasting job is your ability to ask questions and go with where we go and being able to take that and apply it to your professional life. Take that and apply that to your relationship life. Like, I'm gonna show up and do the best I can today. That's powerful. And then wherever it goes. So knowing about you reading your story here in this book and then seeing you here,

The thing I want you to hear me say is, I don't think you're fully there yet with the letting the outcomes be the outcomes. Because the outcome isn't going to depend, isn't going to determine whether Chris was successful, whether he loved well, whether he takes care of people, whether he's really good at what he does. The outcomes are going to be the weather and the economy and what other knuckleheaded executive gets put in position and decides to do what they're going to do, right? But also, man, I'd love to see that. Hmm.

that, gosh, man, I wish my body energy was that different. I think I'm more wound up than I was. I was so clueless at that event, right? I was probably the opposite. Just like, because I didn't understand what was at stake. I was such an idiot. I didn't know anything about any of this stuff. Right, right. Thank you. How do you receive that? I do. I trust you. You have open access to speak to the recesses of my heart and I receive it. Dude, you're my brother and I love you. But how does that, does it sound right?

Yeah, it's scary though because the last 12 months have been so hard. It's like I don't want to tiptoe in this again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's scary. I receive it. It's hard. It's hard. I recognize an area of growth in my life that I still need and that is my willingness to go with the flow, isn't it? But kind of, right? Yeah, kind of. I think you add temperament by nature, routine,

stable, predictable, that kind of thing. I think some of the things in the life history creep up and say, we're still here if you want to fly this ship. I'm like, I don't want to do that anymore. Here's what I want to say is, I'm just willing to take the next step forward. That's awesome. I don't know what tomorrow is. And maybe that's the point. Again,

Maybe the advice that I give others is the advice I need to assimilate yet again, which is that transformation doesn't happen in one day. It's daily. And I can celebrate my wins today. Yeah. Meaning, you know, well, however that would play out. I receive it. I do. I got to process it. I got to think about it. What would you, what would you, if I called you and said, hey, this just happened, this just happened, this just happened, things are falling apart. Mm-hmm.

I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to do this. I need to do this. What would you tell me? Things are falling apart in your life? Uh-huh. I think my first question would be, what does today really demand? Yeah. Here's what. I knew you were going to say that. Really? Yes. Because you're so good at that initial response. And so I guess my ultimate challenge to you would be to let the Chris I know first talk to the Chris you know. I am learning how to do that. I'm not great at it. Yeah. None of us are.

A mutual friend of ours, Ian Simpkins said to me. Ian's the worst. The worst. He and I were talking last summer and he said something to the effect of, what would be possible if you were able to assimilate the same advice you give others? And I'm like, I don't know, right? I don't know.

It's interesting how that works out. But I also think, though, there's a part of this where we are wired to not be able to because then we wouldn't need the community. Yeah. So it's like I can pick up the phone or shoot you a text or him or anybody else and say, I am really hurting today. I'm really struggling. I'm worried about this. This just happened or whatever, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, seeing who you have become and how you're using that to serve people, I

not knowing this part of your story until I read this book, it's almost unimaginable. It's amazing. And for the whole arc of my career, I've been showing up in these moments and then I'm gone and I don't get to see the back end. Yes. And so watching your journey personally for five years, but reading about the arc, like you've got the academic knowledge obviously, and you've got the experiential knowledge as you walk along other people.

That third leg of that wisdom stool is watching it lived and applied is really amazing. So I'm proud to call you friend. Thank you, dude. This is awesome. Thank you. Just to watch it. It's much harder than I ever realized. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which you have used not to become hard but to become more compassionate, which I think is the path, right? Man, I got to tell you something. Yesterday flying down here, man, it makes me emotional to think about it.

I walked onto the plane and this precious middle-aged woman said, thank you for smiling today. I sat down in my seat. She walked up to me with a note. My dad survived cancer twice. And she said, he's at home and I am watching the cameras at the house from 30,000 feet because I'm so worried about him. She said, what your smile did today lifted my spirit. And I'm like, what? Maybe that's the point. That's the point. Maybe that's the point of...

Embracing I don't know because when we embrace I don't know we can slow down in attuned to people we can slow down and say I'm so sorry. Yeah, we can slow down and See someone in need or appreciate someone. I maybe that's the point I mean, I I couldn't believe that happened on the airplane yesterday She gave me a hug leaving the plane and I'm like what? but when when

when the world has gone dark you just look for one little glimmer of hope and you can use what's happened to you to get real hard and to become stoic and become a rock or i'm gonna exhale and as you mentioned i'm gonna go through this grief and on the other end of it i'm gonna be different it's a different world it's a different life different nervous system it's a different glass pair glasses i'm using to see the world

but I could see, or my body can be there for other people. I can show up, right? And give light. I think that's the point. Yeah. Bro, thanks for coming, man. Thank you. It's awesome. Love you, man. Thank you. I'm so proud that Thorne Supplements, my favorite supplements on the planet, have continued to partner with me and our show listeners for health, longevity, and just feeling good.

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All right, we are back. That was my conversation with my friend Christopher Cook. If you are interested in the book or following his podcast, we've got links in the show notes for all of that stuff. If you're struggling, if you're struggling with grief, if the world looks different than you hoped it would be, if the world feels different, if you've lost somebody, please make that phone call. Invite that person to coffee. Sit across the table from somebody. Look them in the eye and say, I'm not doing all right.

You love me and you see me. You're worth that conversation. Can't wait to talk to you soon. Love you guys. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Be kind to one another. We'll see you soon.