What We Carry, Even When We Don’t Talk About It

This week always hits me harder than I expect. Four friends I love celebrate birthdays back‑to‑back, and then comes my mother’s birthday — the one day of the year that still stops me in my tracks, even more than holidays or anniversaries. Grief doesn’t follow logic, and it doesn’t care about time. It lingers, it reshapes you, and sometimes it surprises you.

In this episode, I talk about the strange ways grief shows up, the memories we carry from childhood, and why letting grief move through us is the only way it doesn’t harden inside us. I also share reflections from Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert — two people who speak about grief with honesty and depth.

If you’re grieving someone or something — a person, a pet, a moment in life you didn’t get — you’re not alone. Grief is universal, and when we allow it to breathe, we make room for joy too.

If this episode brought you a little joy, consider liking, subscribing, or sharing it with someone who might need it.

As always, it really is All About The Joy.

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Music By Geovane Bruno, Moments, 3481
Editing by Team A-J
Host, Carmen Lezeth


DISCLAIMER:  As always, please do your own research and understand that the opinions in this podcast and livestream are meant for entertainment purposes only. States and other areas may have different rules and regulations governing certain aspects discussed in this podcast.  Nothing in our podcast or livestream is meant to be medical or legal advice. Please use common sense, and when in doubt, ask a professional for advice, assistance, help and guidance. 

Transcript

Carmen Talk: On Grief

[00:00:00] I don't normally share this kind of stuff, and yet I'm in this place where I'm working on this book, and so all of these different subjects are coming up. And then I realized this is something I should probably share because I wonder if it might help someone else As I'm recording this in the following week, uh, it is June 2024, 20- That's how messed up I am right now.

It is June 2026. And I think I'm gonna leave that in. Um

Look it, there are times in our lives where we all deal with grief, and I think one of the things that I have learned [00:01:00] in my life is that if you don't allow grief to work its way through you, then it will hurt you. If you don't allow grief to become part of who you are, right? If you keep trying to hide it or not deal with it or not, um, admit it or understand it, if you don't deal with it every time it comes up, it will, it will hurt you.

And worse than hurting you is that it will inevitably hurt other people I'm bringing this up because, uh, this week, as I'm recording this, the upcoming week is June 2026, and, uh, this is always a tough time for me, even though most people don't [00:02:00] know this. Uh, so I have a stretch of time here where I have four friends that I love.

These are not just acquaintances. These are people I love whose birthdays are back-to-back in June. Like, it's on one day and then the next day and then the next day, and I love this about them. And they don't even all know each other. They-- like, they know of each other, but they don't know each other, and it's just, like, kind of the coolest thing that I have these four friends whose birthdays are back-to-back.

Uh, but at the end of that stretch, uh, it's my mother's birthday, what would've been my mother's birthday. And here's the thing that's so interesting is Mother's Day doesn't bother me. Christmas doesn't bother me. The anniversary of her passing doesn't bother me. Thanksgiving. None of these things affect me at all.

And [00:03:00] yet, for some reason, on her birthday, uh, which is June 12th For some reason, that is the day that, uh, kind of puts me in that space. And my mom passed away over 40 years ago, and yet on this day it Bubbles up. I am reminded. I am consumed by it, and it's not necessarily bad or good, but it is what it is, you know?

Uh, and this year specifically, it's, you know, this episode is going to be airing on Father's Day just 'cause it just happens to fall on this Sunday, and so it's kinda like a double whammy. Like, I don't have any grief or issues regarding a father because I've never had a father, so I [00:04:00] don't... I, I, I can't grieve something I've never had.

That's how I always say it, and that's no disrespect to all the wonderful men I have had in my life who acted as father figures, whether they realized it or not. Um, but i- if you've never called someone Dad or said, "That's my father" or had that kind of, um, connection in any way, shape, or form that was real, then you don't miss that, at least for me.

I'm not saying that for other people. I'm just speaking for myself. However, most people know that the things that make me so, you know, squirmy and, uh, tearful or whatever are, you know, anything to do with fathers and, uh, parents in general. But I mean, it's one of the reasons why I love the movie Field of Dreams, right?

People think that, uh, [00:05:00] that's about baseball or they hate Kevin Costner or whatever it is. I saw that movie because of James Earl Jones, and I have always admired him and loved James Earl Jones. I first learned about James Earl Jones because he was a stutterer, and somebody was trying to explain to me that you can make it in life even though I'm a stutterer, and I was really young when I learned about this, so I followed his career.

And one of the movies he's in is Field of Dreams, and if you watch that movie, that movie is not about baseball. I mean, it's about the Black Sox, but it's about so much more, and one of the things that it's about is, you know, fathers and, um, love and family and believing in yourself. And so the thing about fathers doesn't affect me in the same way because even though I don't remember my mom that well, I remember how she made me feel.

I remember, [00:06:00] uh, calling her Mom. Actually, I, I called her Mama, I think. I don't know. But I, uh... Mama? It doesn't feel right anymore 'cause it's been so long. And yet, uh, man, if I tear in this, if I cry in this episode, I'm not I'm gonna just cut it out. But I'm bringing this up because, um, one of the things about grief that's really interesting is that people are afraid of it when it happens, uh, for whatever reason.

Even if it's ... You know, I, I say this respectfully because we, we, we put such, um ... We don't value how we feel even when a celebrity dies. Like, we kind of all kind of mock people. Uh, Anthony Bourdain died June 8th, so it's that same week, you know? And I loved Anthony Bourdain. [00:07:00] And, uh, he was one of the celebrities that when he passed away, I was just drenched in tears and was so upset, and he is in this same week period, you know?

So, uh, grief, however it comes to us, it is something that pains us and that we need to acknowledge, and that we have to understand that we are all going through it. Everyone on the planet has had that experience of grief in one way, shape, or form. Grief is a universal thing that we all experience, and it's an interesting conversation that people don't like to talk about it.

I think this interview with Anderson Cooper when he started his podcast on grief is interesting

"Grief, when it comes, is nothing like we expect it to be." Joan Didion wrote that, and [00:08:00] boy, was she right. It's nothing we expect, and it's different for everyone. I've spent much of my career as a reporter in wars and disasters, stepping into other people's grief, but I've also spent most of my life running away from my own, and I haven't gotten very far.

For the last few years, I've been going through dozens of boxes of photos and papers belonging to my mom, Gloria Vanderbilt, who died in 2019, and to my dad, Wyatt, who died when I was 10, and to my brother, Carter, who died by suicide when I was 21. I'm the last one left from the little family I was born into, the last one who remembers our stories and the life we shared.

I found letters and journals, old seating charts for dinner parties, postcards from Truman Capote, even telegrams from Frank Sinatra, whom my mom was dating in the 1950s. Sifting through these boxes, these memories, it's been overwhelming and lonely, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with it all. I can't just get rid [00:09:00] of these things.

It's, it's all that's left of them, and I'm not ready to let them go. The truth is, none of us is alone in our grief, though it certainly feels like we are. The path we're on is well-traveled. The person sitting next to you on the subway or in a cubicle at work, everyone has felt the pain of loss or will. It is a bond we can share, but we rarely do.

Instead, we shroud our grief in silence. Why is it so hard to talk about? Why must we keep it hidden away, crying in private, speaking the names of our loved ones in hushed whispers only we can hear? I've done that my whole life, and the price I paid is high. When you bury your grief to mute your sadness, you mute your ability to feel joy as well.

You can't have one without the other, and I see that now. Talking about grief and hearing from others who are living with grief as well, it's the one thing I've found that's helped me feel less frozen by it and less alone in it. I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions, but this year I'm gonna try and give up carrying my grief in silence.

I've been doing that since I was 10 years old, and the weight of it is just too much to bear.

What anderson is talking about there is so [00:10:00] absolutely real, right? This ability to be able to let this process through you. Because if you don't let it process through you, it, it can hurt you. That's kind of what I was saying earlier. Um, and he is such a brilliant man, and it's interesting. It, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter how much money you have, it doesn't matter, um, what your profession is.

The way in which we all deal with grief, because we don't talk about it, because there seems to be some strange hush-hush about it. I can't even say that it's about shame. I don't think it's about shame. I think it's about if you can't handle it, somehow you're weak, maybe? I, I don't know what it is. I will say for myself, when I was younger, and I do not blame anyone for this, but this is just the way in which my life unfolded.

When my mom died, no one sat down and talked to me about it. Nobody, [00:11:00] you know, nobody put me aside and said, "This is what's happening," or whatever. I just saw that somebody put a Bible on my mother's bed, and I knew that something had happened. And I had not seen my mom for two weeks prior to this, because I had been on tour.

And when I came back, when we pulled into the driveway, there were all these cars and an ambulance. And what people don't remember, but I remember as a kid, is that my mom had died, like, twice before. And I say that because back in the day, y- if you were under a certain age, I think it was 12 or something, I don't know.

But if you were under a certain age, they wouldn't let you go into the hospital room of whoever was sick or whatever. You had to wait in the, in the lobby. And twice before, I remember this vividly, I had... They gave me permission to say goodbye to my mom, because they were giving her last rites. So as a little [00:12:00] kid, I remember this, and I remember her trying to write something.

I remember the tubes all in her. I remember, like, crawling up to say goodbye to her. Like, it's a, it's a vivid visual memory for me, which is hard, 'cause I don't, you know, I, I don't really have great memory. I have aphantasia, but I, I have that feeling, and I can, I can feel it so deeply. So when we pulled in, I was staying, um, with the Donnellys.

When the Donnellys pulled into our street and we saw the ambulances and the cars and the people, um We knew that my mom had been rushed to the hospital, but she had been sick for so long. She'd always been sick. But as a little kid, I was like, "Well, she'll be back. She'll be back. She'll be back next week, and then she'll be making me breakfast or whatever it is."

So when she actually died, which was that night, [00:13:00] um, I was fine, right? I was like, "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm good," you know? 'Cause that's what kids do. And the Donnellys, uh, Mrs. Donnelly, I'll always remember her for this 'cause she really was trying to comfort me and to walk me through. Um, but then she had to leave, and I remember being so alone and confused 'cause I was like, "What is the big deal?"

You know? Um, it was years later, sadly, that I understood that my mom had actually passed away. And I know for some of you, that's gonna sound really weird. But when you grow up in the '70s and '80s and you're a latchkey kid, you know, you didn't see your parents all the time. It wasn't like it was 24/7 with your parents.

And if you add that with my misunderstanding that she wasn't going to come back and never having a conversation with anybody about what death is, um, [00:14:00] I didn't really... I knew, but I didn't know. And I talk about how I understood death for the first time, which was when I realized a friend of mine, Charlie, had passed away.

Uh, not, not Charlie that you all know. This is a, a, a different Charlie. But My point is, is that my grief really started probably about three years after my mom actually died when it finally hit me, uh, that I understood it. And, and then it was a process of trying to understand it and why no one talked to me about it and why nobody helped me and who do I talk to about this or what does it mean, you know?

And you're in that survival mode. And again, I don't, I don't blame anybody for how things happened for me, so that's not what this is about. Um, because I think really when I look back on it, everybody lost my mom too. It wasn't just me. Everyone did. And my mom, from what I [00:15:00] can understand now, uh, was loved

I think that's what's so remarkable is that she was so loved and so missed by so many people. And I understand that. As I get older, I understand that, and I never blamed people for not doing right by me. I wish they had. I think it would've been easier for me. But that's not how life works. But when I started understanding what had happened and I started learning to grieve and processing through it, I realized that just as Stephen Colbert says, you kinda have to be thankful for it

You told an interviewer, uh, that you had learned to, in your words, "Love the thing that I most wish had not happened." Um-

I remember saying- You went on, [00:16:00] you went on to say, uh, "What, what punishments of God are not gifts?" Do you really believe that?

Yes

It's a gift to exist. It's a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. There's no escaping that. And I guess I'm either a Catholic or a Buddhist when I say those things 'cause I've heard those from, from both traditions. But I didn't learn it, that I was grateful for the thing I most wish hadn't happened, is that I realized it.

Mm-hmm. Is that ... And it's a, it's an odd lo- oddly guilty feeling, 'cause you don't- It, it doesn't mean you are happy this tragedy exists ... I don't want, I don't want it to have happened. I want it to not have happened. Right. But

if you are grateful for your life, which I think is a positive thing to do- Um- Yeah ... not everybody is- Right ... and not, I'm not always. [00:17:00] Mm-hmm. Um, but it's the most positive thing to do, then you have to be grateful for all of it. Y- y- it's, you can't pick- Mm ... and choose what you're grateful for. And then, so what do you get from loss?

You get awareness of other people's loss. Well, that's true. Empathy. Which allows you to connect with that other person. Right. Which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it's like to be a human being

Every 

time I watch this, it, it makes me, um, feel like I just wanna give Anderson Cooper a hug. But the thing that Stephen Colbert is talking about is so absolutely true. Um, you don't wish that the thing that happened happened, but for me, what I would say is that I find-- I have found the grace in it. I have found and understand fully and completely that this thing happened, that I am sad about it, that it will always be a part of [00:18:00] my life.

And now my job in accepting it is to love anyways, and to be the best person I can be anyways, and to acknowledge other people's pain, and to be able to see other people's grief, and to offer them comfort, offer them a hand, offer them something to let them know it's gonna be okay, right? So I don't hide my grief or my sad-- I mean, I'm, I'm tearing and crying during this.

But, um, when you can understand grief in such a way that you accept it, let it process through you, and you can grow in it, then you are able to see other people's grief and joy. When you can understand that you are not the only one [00:19:00] in pain, that you are not the only one that had the best mom, or the best dad, or the best sister, or the best...

right? Because it's all relative. It's all relative, right? For me, I didn't have my mom for that long. I don't remember much, but for me, she was everything. She was the best But you might have lost your mom too, and I bet she was the best for you too. And because I know grief and I understand it so well, I can understand you, and I can see your joy when you talk about your mom or your dad or whoever you have lost or whatever grief you're trying to process.

And so I'm, I'm sharing this today because, you know, we're gonna do a show on Friday on my mother's birthday. Um, and, uh, I will go through it, and I, I will not discuss this. And, [00:20:00] uh, but I know that when I do that show, it will be a little hard for me until it's not. Because I know grief, I also know joy. And so if you are someone who is feeling sad about someone that you have lost, um, or you've lost a pet, or you've...

W- w- it... The grief can be from anywhere. It can be anything. Maybe you've lost a, a job or you didn't get an opportunity you wanted or you didn't get a raise. What I'm trying to say is grief is universal. It is real, and you should definitely feel comfortable in knowing that you are not the only one, and that there are ways in which we can always talk to someone about grief.

Do not feel shame or sadness about feeling the way you feel, and understand that there is someone out [00:21:00] there that will talk to you about it or that will hear you or will understand. And even if that's hard, like if it's hard for you to wanna talk to other people, maybe just being kind to yourself and understanding that you are not the only person that is going through something might make you feel a little bit better.

I know it does for me. I know that for me, I, I understand that grief is something that we all process, and if we process it, if we allow it to process, then we can find joy as well. And the reason why my mother's birthday is so important to me, I'm gonna share with you guys this, is because, um, I imagine that when she was like 18 or 19 or 20 or whatever age and she was going to the club, because I, I found out that she used to go to the [00:22:00] clubs and she used to go dancing.

And of course, right, she was a woman. And, um, and I envision what her life might have been like, the good parts, the beautiful parts, the parts that make her fully and completely human, and I I just, I value that part of who she was even though I don't know that part of her. I celebrate her life. I celebrate her life, and I grieve that I didn't get to know her for longer.

Um, I grieve that I missed out on who she could have been as an elder, as a, as a older person in my life, you know? I, I grieve that I couldn't take care of her as she aged. Um, I grieve at the idea of all the things she could have accomplished. [00:23:00] But the thing that's great about celebrating her life and being so happy and joyful about her is knowing that she had me and brought me into the world and loved me.

And even if it was only for a short period of time, that's what carries me through. And I hope that whatever you're grieving or whatever you're going through in your life, that you find a way to walk through to the other side. Remember, Winston Churchill once said, it's one of my favorite quotes. You know what?

People say it wasn't him, though, but I'ma still give him credit 'cause that's where I learned it, but someone once said, um, "If you're going through hell, keep going." And I interpret that as meaning if you're in hell, if you're feeling like the world is just doing you wrong, don't sit there. Don't stay there.

Keep walking. Get to the other [00:24:00] side. Find that light. Find the joy. Thank you everyone for hanging out. Um, I appreciate you so much. Remember to like, share and subscribe, and remember, at the end of the day, it really is all about the joy. Bye everyone.