Transcript

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

Before we get into today's episode, I am so excited to let you know that my memoir, Breath Taking, is now available not only in hardcover, but also in audio and as an ebook, you can get it wherever you love to get your books. And I also want to let you know that if you're part of a book club, I would love to come join you for a discussion, either live or on zoom to discuss the book. 

Now onto today's episode. Many of us have rituals that ground us, whether that means going [00:01:00] for a morning run, having a Sunday family dinner, or ordering your coffee from a specific place in a specific way.

My guest today, Myra Sack, took ritual to a whole new level, one that honored and celebrated her young daughter's life and brought joy and even holiness into a life with, as she puts it, “one foot in the land of the living and one in the land of the dead.” Myra shares it all in her book, 57 Fridays: Losing Our Daughter, Finding Our Way.

Myra's life changed forever when her older daughter Have was diagnosed with a fatal neurodegenerative disease back in 2019. We spoke about the sacredness of her family's ritual and how grief and joy can coexist in the both and reality of parenting a terminally ill child. Myra's family's “no bullshit” zone shielded them from superficiality and her psychological Teflon protected her when she ventured outside of her family's bubble.

Myra is the founder of E-Motion, A nonprofit organization created to support community, [00:02:00] movement, and ritual to enhance coping and resilience. She's a certified compassionate bereavement care provider and holds an MBA in social impact from Boston University. Without further ado, I bring you Myra Sack.

Welcome, Myra. I am so glad to finally meet you. 

Myra Sack: You too, Jessica. Thank you for having me. 

Jessica Fein: We have been kind of circling around each other with books coming out around the same time, which have unfortunately so very much in common. And we know so many of the same people. So I'm so glad that we are here together today.

Myra Sack: Me too. Me too. What a gift. 

Jessica Fein: So let's start with the title of your book, because I feel like that encompasses so much. Tell us about 57 Fridays. 

Myra Sack: 57 Fridays came from this concept that evolved after our daughter, Javi, at about a year was given a fatal diagnosis of Tay Sachs disease, and we learned that she'd have a year or so to [00:03:00] live.

And in that moment, we moved into apocalyptic time. I think it's Kate Bowler who says, Apocalyptic time comes from the Greek root that means to reveal or lay bare, and it was really this moment where all of a sudden we were one foot in the land of the living and one in the land of the dead, and everything was open and raw and revealed.

And in that space, a space that I was so unfamiliar with, what came to me was this idea that I couldn't imagine Havi only having two birthdays on this earth. And I knew that we could rely on Fridays, which were Shabbat, for us in our household. And so my husband Matt and I sort of came to this notion of what if we combined birthdays and Shabbat and called them Shabbirthdays?

How many of those could we get? In Havi's lifetime, how many Shabirthdays could we honor with Havi here in the land of the living? And ultimately we [00:04:00] got 57 of them, which is the name of the book, 57 Fridays, and the way really we lived with that diagnosis from one Shabirthday to the next. 

Jessica Fein: I just love that word, shabirthday, and feel like that should be a word.

In my house, we have what we call shabba naps. Our shabbat nap is our shabba nap, but we somehow have extended the shabba nap. It might be Sunday and we'll be like, we need a shabba nap. So tell us, what did a shabirthday look like? 

Myra Sack: Shibirthdays were filled with all the things. So they were moments of incredible pain and lots of tears, and also evenings of like tremendous laughter and music and dancing and always blueberries as centerpieces because that was Havi's favorite food.

always a challah from Rosenfeld's, which is in Newton, here in Massachusetts, and became sort of the challah place of choice. Sometimes shabirthdays were filled with lots of people, like our closest friends and [00:05:00] family, and sometimes they were quiet, and really just the three of us. And they ultimately ended up marking this moment in the week where we got to be in conversation with whatever was most meaningful and most difficult and most beautiful all at once, and a moment of real pause, and a space where we tried to honor Havi as sacred and not scary, and we sort of only let people into that space who also could hold her in that way, and without saying a word, she could tell us whether she was in someone's arms who knew that she was sacred and her body would relax or her eyes would brighten.

And I think that sort of intuition became a really important part of what it meant to sort of be in that shabirthday space with us. 

Jessica Fein: So beautiful and I'm struck as you describe it by a chapter you have in your book called “both/and” and it [00:06:00] is this idea that we can be in this moment as you describe the shabirthday of pain and sadness and also joy and music and that both of these things can exist together.

And that's something that I discovered from being my daughter Dalia’s mother. And I'm wondering if that's something you came to as Havi's mother, or if that's something you knew all along. 

Myra Sack: I wonder if it's something that I cognitively appreciated all along, but in terms of, you know, the difference as we both know, the difference between like knowing at that cognitive intellectual level and knowing our different worlds.

And so I think, I can't remember who says it, but someone says, you know, the journey from the head to the heart is the longest one of all. And I think that that is how that both and concept has moved for me. It was maybe in my head. I appreciate it. I could talk about it. But in terms of feeling it, embodying it, honoring it, really believing it, it was only [00:07:00] as I lived it.

That I think now I really appreciate that we're sold this bill of goods in this culture, I think, that we can have happiness and joy without having anguish and devastation and hopelessness, but I'm not sure that that's really true. I think that it's really about learning how to inhabit peace. Both so that we don't operate from this muted effect, you know, where we're sort of somewhere living in this gray zone.

And I'd probably go back to that gray zone if I could. I mean, I for sure would in a second. 

Jessica Fein: Of course, we would so prefer not to know what we know, what we know in our heart. Right. But I feel like the kind of joy that I was opened to was because of living in this. horror, right? And so because those moments became so much more sacred, I experienced a different kind of joy that perhaps because it was connected to a kind of [00:08:00] holiness.

Early on in the book, you meet Blythe and Charlie, and that meeting changes a lot for you. Blythe and Charlie have walked a very similar path to you decades earlier with their child Cameron. You go to meet them, and it has a very profound effect on you as you describe in the book. Because what you say is, as you left, you realized, maybe we can do this.

Maybe we can be happy. Maybe our marriage can grow stronger. Maybe there can be a future with this reality that we're just beginning to understand. I think that's so powerful because, and of course they become such important parts of your extended family, but I think it says so much about connecting with people who have walked a similar path.

Myra Sack: It's funny because I didn't want to go that night, really, or I was sort of wondering whether just because we shared a similar experience and loss, whether they would [00:09:00] really be people who could see us and who could make us feel safe and hopeful. Ultimately, what happened that evening was, That they didn't, sort of, lecture or dangle this future in our face that we couldn't possibly touch.

Instead, they did the opposite. They held Havi. They looked deep into her eyes. They talked about the way that Havi and Cameron shared this similar love for light. And they saw us for where we were. Blythe, I think, said to me, I was your age. I was you. When this happened, she didn't say it in a way that was filled with pity.

She said it in a way that was filled with such compassion and grace and generosity of spirit that I think it's that that made us feel when we walked out like we were going to be okay. Because they didn't need to say anything else. We could see for ourselves that they were filled with such love and stability and [00:10:00] energy and what they showed us was that we weren't going to be alone in this.

And that's, I think, all we really want is to feel like someone's with us and someone's gonna be with us in a gentle, patient, nonjudgmental way. 

Jessica Fein: There was something else that you wrote about that you learned from them that night, and it really struck me so powerfully, which is Havi will tell you what Havi wants and needs and I'm getting kind of chills, even as I say it, because we had a similar experience one evening in the hospital with Dalia when she was nine and it was before her tracheostomy is a very pivotal point for us and I was sitting waiting for some test results with a very young doctor.

I think she was a student doctor, but we were sitting there in the middle of the night and I was so desperate and overwhelmed and not knowing what to do. And she said to me, Dalia will tell you what to do. What Dalia needs. And at the time, Dalia wasn't able to speak and wasn't able to communicate how she had been able to.

And I [00:11:00] thought, what is this person even talking about? Like, well, what does that mean? How is she going to be able to tell me? And it is something that I understood so viscerally over the ensuing years. Dalia lived to one week after her 17th birthday. And in those eight years when she couldn't communicate in the way we are accustomed to in society, she told us everything.

In fact, I even use that for my other two kids when their behaviors are their communication, right? And they can communicate in ways that are more traditional as well, but sometimes we can just watch them and understand what they need. And that was something that Blythe said to you, and you put into practice almost immediately, at least in terms of how it's written in the book.

Can you tell us about that? 

Myra Sack: Now I have chills. Yeah, I mean, they are such teachers and models for how to be in touch with really what's happening at the cellular level, I think. And I wouldn't have [00:12:00] believed it either. It initially maybe sounded hokey or something, if I'm being honest. What happened was, that evening when we came back from Charlie and Blythe's, we were deliberating how we were going to care for Havi in the year or so that we'd have left with her on this earth.

And I think we knew on some level that the hospital wasn't going to work for her. Tay Sachs is a particularly challenging disease for being in bright light or loud noises because there are characteristic sort of startles and sensitivities and we know that the hospital has lots of that. And we didn't really know what a different way would be that would sort of still be everything, would still give her everything. After we walked out of Charlie and Blythe's and they had described how they really followed Cameron's lead, we tried to do the same. And so we sat with Havi that night and we watched and we listened and we sat in quiet. We let [00:13:00] her tell us in this nonverbal way what she wanted.

And when I say it was so clear, it was so clear. I mean, the way her legs. Moved from these rigid sort of spastic movements into relaxed, settled ones was truly instantaneous when we talked about what it could be like to be at home and be with her aunts who she adored and her grandparents and the extended family.

And it was in opening ourselves up to the possibility that that communication is. more real than maybe we know, that this whole world of possibility, this reimagined motherhood and parenthood sort of just came into being. And that's sort of what happened next. 

Jessica Fein: One of the things that I was struck by as well was your decision to live in a quote, “pure, no bullshit zone.”

[00:14:00] A, what do you mean by that? B, did it work? And C, do you still feel that way now? 

Myra Sack: You are an incredible conversation partner, and your questions are so thoughtful and get at the heart and soul, and it's no surprise, as Dalia’s mom, that that's true. Um, my brother, Jacob, he calls himself the villain of the story, which is just not, it's not the case, but he and I have such a beautiful, honest relationship that I know that he could handle this scene and this conversation that I reveal where we talk about this no bullshit zone.

That came to me after Jacob and I are in an argument about the way he's sort of coming at the world, which was so fine. He was just living his life, and he was excited about a promotion for work. But I was living in this space that was singularly focused on Havi and how to live in a way that honored just how fragile life [00:15:00] is.

And so moving anywhere. off of that anchor was incredibly destabilizing and difficult. When Havi was here on this earth, what that no bullshit zone meant was really we didn't welcome superficiality, or small talk, or minimizing. what it meant to be living with a child who was going to die in a period of time that was so unfair, and that anyone who couldn't appreciate what it meant to bear witness to that just wasn't allowed in.

And so what that meant was we weren't in communication with people who tried to connect with us about things that didn't matter. I think the benefit of that was we held so true to those boundaries that then people who wanted in to the sacredness came in a way that was So beautiful and so [00:16:00] honoring of Havi and there was a real ripple effect to that and we got tremendous strength and conviction from seeing lots of people sort of dip their toes into what it meant to live with one foot in the land of the living and one in the land of the dead and what they got from being a part of Havi's bubble.

Now it's harder without her here on this earth. It's harder to maintain that no bullshit zone. It's harder to recognize when we're spending too much time and space in this sort of achievement oriented, fast paced, milestone based world that I know also has value and meaning. I know it does. And I know that I have to be in that space because I have living children and I have amazing friends and family and there is a reason why we miss them so much and it's because there's real richness here, even though sometimes it feels [00:17:00] superficial or silly.

And so I think now kind of learning how to toggle back and forth is a new challenge. Recognizing when the balance is off or the awareness isn't fully there is just a work in progress for me. 

Jessica Fein: For me too, and I love that you include in your description of the No Bullshit Zone, small talk, and I've written quite a bit about my own discomfort with small talk, which has stayed with me, and I just can't stand it.

The idea of just using empty words to fill the space, it seems like such a waste to me. I think the idea of this is going to be a no bullshit zone, I love it. I think that when we're deliberate about it and inviting people in, it's much easier because those people know, and as you said, opted to be part of that bubble.

How did you deal with when you were out and about in the world and people didn't know that you were living in a no bullshit zone and they thrust their small talk and superficiality and whatever [00:18:00] onto you because that's how people operate. How did you deal with that? 

Myra Sack: There's a term that our grief therapist, Dr. Jo, who features heavily in the book, introduced me to years and years ago that has stayed with me now, which is psychological Teflon. It's this notion that, you know, when we get up in the morning and we sort of imagine dressing ourselves in psychological Teflon, and Teflon, nothing can stop us, It enables us to exist in this world of unpredictability, superficiality, possibly harmful comments in a way where we're not knocked off.

And the way I've built that psychological Teflon is through self trust. is learning to know myself, my emotions, trust, my grief, my love, my connection to Havi, and when I know what I'm feeling, and really know what I'm feeling at the most specific level possible, then it allows me to dress [00:19:00] myself in that psychological Teflon and move with this self trust that if I go to the dentist, which I did, I think a few weeks after Havi died and I'm sitting in the chair and this hygienist has no idea that I've just recently become a bereaved mom, that I can sort of sit there and engage in a way that doesn't make me feel small or helpless.

It feels like I can be. And I think that comes from first a deep, deep self awareness that then allows us to sort of express and exist from a place of self trust that ultimately is what allows me to leave the house and exist in the world filled with so much other stuff. 

Jessica Fein: As I mentioned at the beginning, you and I actually live closely to one another and I'm hoping that we don't have the same dental hygienist because I had the same experience and I'm thinking, oh, maybe the dental hygienists just need to talk less because their small talk and their, “how's the family? Everybody good?” kind of questions were particular daggers for [00:20:00] me. 

I'm glad that you brought up Dr. Jo and I'm wondering if you can share some of the other big lessons that you got from her. 

Myra Sack: She's a traumatic grief scholar and grief counselor and has a therapeutic care farm out in Cornville, Arizona. That is really this beautiful sort of space for bereaved people that puts us right at the center of the universe.

That gives me a great sense of stability. I think her wisdom really comes from not trying to fix or cure or pathologize grief. It's about trusting ourselves that we can over time build the strength and the capacity to move with this pain that deserves to be as big as it is because it's a reflection of our love.

And so I think that's sort of foundational to her practice and her approach. And then she talks about sort of not distancing from pain that really it's turning towards the pain that enables us [00:21:00] to emerge as fuller people and mothers. And in that turning towards, we are often invited to explore aspects of our grief and our love that opens up new possibilities for living.

And that typically when pain is calling, it's an invitation. And she also shares this notion of there's no safe distance to loving. Which I think is just a different, really profound way of saying we can never get enough of our girls, and nor should we have to. And that trusting that instinct is ultimately going to be more helpful than these messages around the need to move on or move forward or create space from.

So I think those handful of sort of wisdom bombs are ones that I keep close. 

Jessica Fein: You write something that is about that very point, and I loved this passage so much. You wrote, quote, 

“If the world saw grieving people as beautiful, [00:22:00] sacred, and strong, instead of scary, weak, and sad, offering and receiving compassion would feel very different. Grieving, I am learning, is a way to continue to express our love and devotion to Javi, a way to keep her close in a most surreal yet completely natural part of parenting. Her death is anachronistic and traumatic and devastating. I hate that she isn't here physically. I want to actually go find her as I write this. And yet, grieving is my way forward. It is the way I transform my longing into some semblance of a new life. It is my way of being that is real and raw and enduring.” 

That is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and really expresses in such a gorgeous way what you were saying a moment ago. It is not about getting over, moving past grief.

It is about living with grief and that it actually is part of the path forward. We don't get through it. We bring it along with us. 

Myra Sack: There's two things that come to mind as you share that. [00:23:00] One is this notion of fear versus yearning. I think yearning gets a little bit of a bad reputation in grief work and I sort of disagree.

I think there is so much power and energy to yearning. It helps us continue to connect. In my case with Havi and with my grief and with my love and that yearning gives me energy and capacity to move and to move with and integrate versus this fear based energy which I think is paralyzing and yet yearning is pathologized.

If we yearn or pine or seek out for too long, we are considered somehow behind or disordered and I think that's problematic. Because it minimizes just how strong the energy is for them. And the second thing that comes to my mind is this integration that you named, which is, you know, the prefix [00:24:00] dis means to cut off or exclude.

And so when we disintegrate, we literally, physically disintegrate. And instead, we have the potential to live in integration with what is, lost in some way with what is not here physically. And that integration can take the form of so many things. It can take the form of someone ordering a coffee under Havi's name and sharing a photo with me.

It can take the form of shabirthdays existing well beyond her time on this earth. And those small acts of integration are ultimately life sustaining. 

Jessica Fein: Let's switch gears now and talk about E-Motion, because this is something that is part of your work. Now, when we talk about these grief beliefs and how we can change grief as a society, first of all, tell us what is E-Motion?

Myra Sack: E-Motion’s a nonprofit organization that is all about ensuring community is a right for grieving [00:25:00] people, and that came from the way I got to experience my devastation was that I was surrounded and sustained by a community of people who had the courage to show up. And stay with us. And I want that for everyone.

And yet I think we let community off the hook sometimes in grief because we talk about it as so individual and personal and unique, which it is, but it's also social. So emotion sort of has two primary program offerings. One is for grieving people who are looking for an experience that they can do in partnership or in community with others.

And that takes the form of what we call movement communities. Those communities are a 10 week long experience that is sort of a gently guided grief experience that combines the power of movement community and ritual. And those movement communities exist here in Boston. They exist now in Maine. We have a movement community in Los Angeles, and they're led by grieving [00:26:00] people who are trained in the approach.

And we're finding that those movement communities. are sort of like therapy on the go in some ways, but it's this sort of near peer communalistic healing approach that we're just trying to share with anyone who needs it. And then the second program offering from E-Motion are these grief literacy and training programs that anyone, any organization, corporation, team can ask for a basic or advanced grief literacy training and learn the language of loss.

And so E-Motion comes and does. anywhere from a 90 minute session to a multi day experience, and it leaves people with language and frameworks and tools that enable them to show up and support others who might be grieving. 

Jessica Fein: I'm really curious about corporations. You know, we spend so much of our day in the workplace.

Many of us do. And for grievers, that can be so disorienting. And I know [00:27:00] I experienced that. And people who are colleagues don't really know. They don't know what they don't know. And if they are attuned to it, they don't know what to say, even if they want to say the right thing. Have you found employers, corporations coming to you as a way to support their employees?

I mean, do they come to you and say, we either know that this person who's important to us as part of our organization is going through this, or we know that we will have people and we want to be better? 

Myra Sack: My hope was that this was going to be sort of a proactive, preventative strategy, you know, that people would see grief work as prevention for other future traumas and losses, but really, it has been a responsive strategy that yes, organizations are coming to us and saying, we've had multiple losses this year, and we don't know how to support our employees.

We don't know what practices we could put in place, what language, what sort of [00:28:00] ways we could help honor grieving people and help them get integrated. And so they come to us and say help, and then we partner with them. And sort of find ways to educate. It's actually a space that gives me tremendous hope that people want to be doing the right thing.

And yet they're either afraid or ill equipped or don't feel like they even know where to start. I think you're right. That so much of our time is spent in the workplace, that there's real opportunity there to make grieving people feel safe and seen. 

Jessica Fein: I'm so taken by the whole notion that community is a right for grieving people.

In reading your book, I was just blown away by your community. And some of that was people who became family, the Blythe and Charlie connection. Some of it was people who are family, you know, just people who got what was happening and became part of your bubble. But it struck me as not the norm to [00:29:00] have people in your life like that.

So for somebody who is going through this and maybe listening and thinking, okay, community is my right. I love that. It's my right. But I don't have people who are near to me, either physically, emotionally, whatever. How do I exercise that right? What do you say? 

Myra Sack: That's everything, right there, what you just said, and this feeling that so many people don't have even one person.

And I think that's exactly what we're on a mission to try to do something about. So I think what I would say is that first, you deserve someone to see you and be with you. And to trust the huge, pain and immense anguish that you're feeling and not let it get minimized or pathologized or forgotten or moved past because right now in this moment as you're listening to me, you don't have that person who can honor you.

But I think what I'd say next is that there are people who want [00:30:00] to walk along your side. And we may not do it fast enough or big enough, but we're after that. And so I think one thing is, of course, emotion is small right now, but reach out, please. We have near peers who are bereaved themselves and want to be a part of your life and your way.

And that there's lots of organizations who are doing this work so thoughtfully. Blythe at Courageous Parents Network is one of them. And that I think I was hesitant to reach out and connect and I'm not really a joiner. And so I think that for those people who aren't joiners to just trust that with one or two notes of outreach, maybe you'll find a person who speaks to you and sees you in a way that you deserve.

Jessica Fein: You have three pillars with E-Motion. Movement, community, and ritual. We've just been talking about community, but what do you mean by movement?

Myra Sack: Movement has always been a [00:31:00] part of my life, and I've trusted it, and now I appreciate its power in an entirely different way. And this work really comes from Dr. Bruce Perry, who wrote What Happened to You with Oprah. He is a neuroscientist whose work focuses on the regulating nature of movements, this idea that movement is this patterned repetitive rhythmic activity, and that patterned repetitive rhythmic activity comes from the deepest somatosensory memory that we have, which was when we were in our mother's womb.

And we were listening to her heartbeat. It's that patterned, repetitive, rhythmic activity that is ultimately the most regulating piece of us. And we can trust it. So when we move, we are activating that memory and it holds tremendous sort of buffering power. And so it's why sometimes when we're having a difficult conversation, it's easier to do when we're walking with someone than it is to sit across the table and have a coffee with them.

And [00:32:00] so we integrate movement in everything we do because it's regulating. And then the second component is ritual. For me, it came first from experiencing shabirthdays and then it really, ritual sort of has revealed itself even more as I've read and learned and understood that, as Suki Miller says, that it's the antidote to helplessness.

And I think it is that. Because it has this predictability and it has this sort of dosed element to it that allows us to interact with parts of us that are vulnerable or painful or filled with trauma. immeasurable love in a way that is safe and not overwhelming or severe. And so emotion integrates ritual in every session.

Every session begins in a sacred circle and not sacred in the religious sense of the word. It's just a five to seven minute circle. That's really the therapeutic dose that I think [00:33:00] sometimes we can handle, that we can't handle a 45 minute, or an hour long dose of it, but maybe we can handle a five to seven minute dose.

Jessica Fein: For people who are not connected to emotion and maybe aren't inclined to shabirthdays, what are some rituals that people might try to incorporate into their daily lives?

Myra Sack: My favorite writer, Anne Lamott, just wrote in her recent book, Somehow, she quoted her husband, who I think says 80 percent of anything that is true and beautiful can be accomplished in a 10 minute walk.

And so I think one thing I would say is that truly a 10 minute sort of walking ritual at any moment of any day is powerful. And it's powerful because it allows us to, in some ways, sort of make our self orientation. as small as possible and exist in the natural world or exist outside of ourselves that allows us to sort of [00:34:00] appreciate that we can connect at some larger, more universal level.

So walking has been a ritual for me that is different now. I used to just walk and be in my head and now I walk and I look for purple because purple was Havi's color. So we can find symbols on a walk that I think can be really healing. The second one that comes to mind is I make a blueberry smoothie every morning.

I make that blueberry smoothie because that was the way Havi had to eat. She couldn't chew, and so smoothies became a big part of our lives. So for me, hearing a blender is therapeutic. It's personal, and it takes 50 seconds, but yet that ritual is something that I count on in a day and in a week, certainly.

And then there are rituals that other people share with me. If they go to a beach or they're walking along and they can write Havi's name in the [00:35:00] sand or on the dirt. And they take a picture of it for me. That ritualistic act of naming and sharing back is so transformative for someone who's grieving and someone who's trying to show up for a griever.

And then there are the ritual that I referred to earlier, if someone orders a coffee under Havi's name and hears the barista say it out loud and sends a text message with a picture of her name on a coffee is game changing. I think there are micro rituals, as you say, for folks for whom the macro ones just feel like too much that can be really helpful.

Jessica Fein: And what I love about what you just said is it's not only a ritual that the person who's going through this experience can incorporate, but how others can show up and the naming is so important. And I think so often in society, people don't want to mention the name of our person because, you know, quote unquote, they don't want to remind us.[00:36:00] 

Right, and I love this idea, and I will tell you that my favorite name in the world happens to be Dalia, but my mother's name was Zelda, and that's a pretty awesome name, too. And I am going to make it my business to start ordering my drinks under the name Dalia and Zelda because I love that, and I'd love to hear their names said in that kind of public environments.

And I have to tell you that purple was Dalia’s color also, and so I think Havi and Dalia, there's some connection there. I'm so grateful for this opportunity to talk to you. It was such a beautiful conversation, and I hope our conversations can continue. And in the meantime, for everybody who's listening, you must check out the book.

You must check out E-Motion. It'll all be in the show notes. And thank you for spending this time with us today. 

Myra Sack: Thank you so much, Jessica, and I agree, Dalia and Havi are connected, and I hope everyone is reading your gorgeous book, and I'm honored to be on this devastating journey with you that is filled with a lot of love and life, too.

So thank you. 

Jessica Fein: Here are my [00:37:00] takeaways from the conversation with Myra. Number one, when we learn how to inhabit the both/and, we stop operating in a muted way. Happiness and joy can exist with anguish and devastation. Number two: People can tell us what they need in such powerful ways that have nothing to do with being able to speak.

Number three: A no bullshit zone might not be a realistic place to live all the time, but it sounds like a pretty delightful place to visit whenever possible. Number four: We can build psychological Teflon by trusting our emotions and knowing what we're feeling at the most specific level. Number five: Turning towards our pain can help us emerge as fuller people.

Number six: Community is a right for grieving people. And number seven, there is great power in ritual. And that doesn't have to be something big. It can be through small, manageable doses of ritual acts like making a special smoothie, taking a walk, writing a name in the sand, or ordering coffee under the name of somebody you love.

Thank you so much for listening. If this episode resonated, share it with somebody. Spread the [00:38:00] word about the podcast and I'd be grateful if you would rate and review the show. Have a great day. Talk to you next time.