ghosts of grief

0:00You are now experiencing the Nectar of Time. I look at grief as almost a shadow of love, like love's shadow, or love's ghost. It is, yeah. And just as love is its own unique thumbprint, I guess so is grief, because it's just that reflection, isn't it? Yeah, like, as you said, every kind of imprint of love or experience of love is akin to every experience of grief. It is inherently personal, it is inherently subjective, and you can't tell anyone how to do it. They're going to do what they're going to do. Now, in particular, I remember you've said that death is psychologically just as important as birth, and like, it's an integral part of life. But surely it

0:49can't be like birth if it's an end, can it? Yes, if it's an end. And there we are not quite certain about this end, because, you know, there are these peculiar faculties of the psyche, that it isn't entirely confined to space and time. You can have dreams or visions of the future, you can see round corners and such things. Only ignorance denies these facts, you see. It's quite evident that they do exist and have existed always. Welcome to another episode of Nectar of

1:43Time. I'm your host, Tamir Barzilai. Today we'll be speaking with Mia Cosco. Mia is a research assistant at Harvard, where she works on psychedelic research. Specifically, her interest is in understanding how psychedelics can help with grief. Mia has hosted grief salons and cafes, as they're called, where she helps people manage and work through the emotion of grief. Today we'll be exploring the enigmatic nature of grief and death and the myriad of perspectives that surround them. Death is a foundational element of life, yet it remains a mysterious veil that envelops us, and it compels us to rationalize it. Mia and I are going to unpack it and work to elucidate what this all really means. Hope you enjoy the

2:32episode. Are we ready to take off? I think we're — yeah, we're ready to take off. It's been a long wind-up, thanks for bearing with me. Is there something hallucinogenic in this tea that I can look forward to? You know what, we're going to find out right now. This is the Purple Rain tea. The essence of Prince. I don't know what's in there really, but yeah, shout out to Prince. It's pieces of Prince's hair. Look at that, it's beautiful. That's pretty. Yeah. Well, Mia, welcome to Nectar of Time. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Purple Rain, for sure, that's nice on a rainy day in Vancouver. Can't ask for anything better than that. It's perfect. Today we will be talking about grief,

3:20the relationship of grief and death, and what I believe are many enigmatic ideas that are in its periphery, that excite me and haunt me simultaneously. I don't know if you want to say anything about that before the excerpts. Yeah, I like the terms used, juxtaposed together, exciting and haunting. Makes me think of how our brains can't tell the difference between being excited and being nervous. So please, I would love to hear it. There's a couple ideas here that I have. We'll start with Hermann Hesse. Hermann Hesse is a German writer. I've spoken about him before on the podcast. This is from his collection of poems, it's his famous collection of poems, and he has some

4:07interesting stuff in here. So this is his poem called "Childhood," and actually in this book you have the German on the left and then you have the English on the right. "My farthest valley, you are bewitched and vanished. Many times in my grief and agony you have beckoned upward to me from your country of shadows and opened your legendary eyes, till I, lost in a quick illusion, lost myself back to you, holy. O dark gate, O dark hour of death, come forth, so I can recover from this life's emptiness and go home to my own dreams." It makes me think of someone sort of letting themselves fade into, like, a peaceful, I don't know,

4:57induced dream or something, to escape some sort of clear loss. Indeed. I think it highlights a struggle, and that's, I think, a common theme that we'll go into, that struggle of your feelings. When you're going through all these emotions, you are faced with an adversary, and people use different tools to combat that, and Hermann Hesse obviously used these poems. This book is a book by Yu Miri. It's called Tokyo Ueno Station, and this book is almost entirely about grief. This is about a homeless ghost in Tokyo, that essentially all of his family has died, and he finds

5:46himself struggling to reconcile the point of his existence, frankly. Here's just one little excerpt. I don't want to go too deep into this, but these are all essentially vignettes, their perspectives on grief, and I'm sort of creating a little kaleidoscope here so that we have something to roll with. "Time had slowed to a sluggish crawl. I walked faster, but each step plunged me deeper into the depths of stillness. If time could pass so slowly that its passage was imperceptible, then is death where time stops and the self is left all alone in this space? Is death where space and the self are erased and only time remains? Where had my son gone to? Had he really disappeared

6:33completely?" So, you know, questioning what is that realm. Yeah, I mean, that's what religion tries to solve, I think, at the end of the day. Well, I would love today to talk about religion, at least to some degree, because I was telling Mia earlier, before we started recording, that she has the job, in a way, of a rabbi, of a priest, of an imam, but only the hardest part of their job. Not the job where she can, you know, prophesy visions of the future and excitement and success, but really the darkness and the despair, when a family member, a community member, comes looking for advice on how to reconcile with their loss, and act as a guide to the next world,

7:25whether it's through psychological means or beyond. Would you say that that is sort of a fair interpretation? Yeah, I mean, I really approach it in a humble way, because usually when people are grieving a close personal loss, that is a loss that, you know, no one else knows about as much as they do, or the person that, you know, can no longer speak for themselves. So you not only have to be completely compassionate and get super curious with someone about their intimate relationship that they've lost, to understand them better, but you also have to remember that, you know, again, you don't have all the answers. You're not

8:12speaking as some authority, and the best thing that a teacher can do — that has been shared before, these are not my words, obviously — is just to lead the student back to themselves. You're working with something that is a foundational problem of existence. I mean, it's just a derivative of the "what is the meaning of life" question. The fact that there are tools and mechanisms and strategies to combat that, to reconcile that, is in itself a miracle, I would say, that we can even come up with this, and it is a gigantic task to overcome. So, one more perspective, and then we'll get started. Listeners of the show know that Haruki

8:59Murakami is my favorite author, or at least in the top three, and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is — I mean, this book is about loss in particular. It's not about the loss of life, but it's about the loss of friendships, and it's about ghosting. It's about people that one day you're best friends with them, and then you leave town, you come back a couple months later, and they want nothing to do with you anymore, and they think you know why, but you don't know why they've assumed that. And he spends the next 20 years with this haunting memory of his friends, until one day there's a girl that he's dating, and he shares this with her, and she says, "You have to go, you have

9:47to go figure out what happened. I mean, this is your duty to go figure it out." And so the beginning of this book here is fantastic, and the reason why I'm bringing this into the equation is because, as you discuss in your content, grief is not just physical death, but you can grieve in a myriad of ways over a myriad of things. "From July of his sophomore year in college until the following January, all Tsukuru Tazaki could think about was dying. He turned 20 during this time, but this special watershed, becoming an adult, meant nothing. Taking his own life seemed the most natural solution, and even now he couldn't say why he hadn't taken this final step. Crossing that threshold

10:34between life and death would have been easier than swallowing down a slick, raw egg. Perhaps he didn't commit suicide then because he couldn't conceive of a method that fit the pure and intense feelings he had toward death. But method was beside the point. If there had been a door within reach that led straight to death, he wouldn't have hesitated to push it open, without a second thought, as if it were just a part of ordinary life. For better or for worse, though, there was no such door nearby. I really should have died then, Tsukuru often told himself. Then this world, the one here and now, wouldn't exist. It was a captivating, bewitching thought. The present world wouldn't exist, and reality would no longer be real. As far as this world was concerned, he would simply no longer exist, just as

11:24this world would no longer exist for him. At the same time, Tsukuru couldn't fathom why he had reached this point where he was teetering over the precipice. There was an actual event that had led him to this place — this he knew all too well — but why should death have such a hold over him, enveloping him in its embrace for nearly half a year? Envelop — the word expressed it precisely. Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, Tsukuru had fallen into the bowels of death, one untold day after another, lost in a dark, stagnant void. It was as if he were sleepwalking through life, as if he had already died but not yet noticed. When the sun rose, so would Tsukuru. He'd brush his teeth, throw on whatever clothes were at hand, ride

12:12the train to college, and take notes in class. Like a person in a storm desperately grasping at a lamppost, he clung to this daily routine. He only spoke to people when necessary, and after school he would return to his solitary apartment, sit on the floor, lean back against the wall, and ponder death and the failures of his life. Before him lay a huge dark abyss that ran straight through the Earth's core. All he could see was a thick cloud of nothingness swirling around him. All he could hear was a profound silence squeezing his eardrums." Yeah, that's really — that's a profound description of what it feels like to kind of feel stuck in

13:00grief, or to be stuck in — like, honestly, I hear a lot of depression in that. I was just actually talking about depression at a party last night, because that's what I do at parties. But yeah, it's interesting, because you said right before you read that sometimes we go from mourner to investigator. So sometimes when we're in the throes of mourning, we become an investigator. We become like Sherlock Holmes: "Tell me more about this person, I want to figure out." You know, he wants to figure out — his girlfriend is telling him that he needs to go and figure out why his friends ghosted him. And, you know, curiosity is an ascension from depression. Like, to have

13:48the motivation, the will to just go on, even if it's one more day, that is an elevation in consciousness. That is like a rising in consciousness, because even if you just have the motivation for, like, one more breath or one more moment, that's better than just being like, "I want to end it all." So there is a reason why they say curiosity killed the cat, because sometimes that curiosity leads you into a maelstrom of psychological pain and confusion, and it's a Gordian knot. It's something that sort of gets worse the more you look into it, especially if there's not a clear answer. I mean, in the

14:36case of, let's say — and at some point we will get to physical death — but let's say in the case of a departure of someone that you love, or love in your life, whether it's a friend, whether it's a family member, whether it's a significant other. There are instances where people up and leave and they don't give you that closure, they don't give you that conversation. I mean, personally, I think that should be a capital sin to do that, because it has such a huge impact on someone. But that curiosity, while useful, can also lead you to a very dark place, that is sort of just you chasing an apparition. So how do you reconcile that? I mean, yeah, curiosity does kill the cat, but sometimes you got to think, okay,

15:25what am I holding on to here? Like, what do I really want here? You have to really want the truth, and then again, what is the truth, right? Like, the truth of someone's perspective you're seeking. You have to be really clear with yourself: what am I curious about? Because some people, you know, will say, "Oh, I'm just curious, I need to figure this out so that I can get over it." I'm like, well, that's vicious, because what if you never get over it? Well, can you forgive yourself? Can you forgive that? Can you go on never getting over something? Closure is kind of an illusion, which is a terrible thing to say to some people, but closure is really an illusion. I find that what people are really seeking with closure is they're really seeking the power within to kind

16:12of just say, "Okay, enough, I'm done, I'm putting that to bed fully." Like, right, no more messages, no more thoughts, no more dreams, and getting it out of me completely. Interesting. Yeah. And I mean, is there a time limit that one should give themselves to, you know, go on this adventure and expedition, or is it different for every person? And if you met someone who you see is clearly going in the wrong direction, is taking this as, you know, a 20-year journey, and they're losing time, right, they're losing their life in the interim as this is all happening, I mean, isn't

16:59it your duty now to tell them, "Hey, enough is enough, you've looked at this for too"— It's like a business, for example. Like, if someone is working on something for so long and it doesn't materialize into meaningful progress, I mean, there's this dilemma of: you won't win if you quit, but at some point you have to quit and move on. Where do you draw that line? I only know how to draw that line for myself, and personally, it would be hypocritical for me to tell anybody else that there is a line, because for me, you know, I lost my mother when I was seven, and I still feel her with me. I still feel a pull, a connection to her, and, you know, whether I want to or not, I just

17:49do. I don't even remember the sound of her voice, the way she laughed. I don't know her favorite color. I know very little about her, actually, and her and I actually had a very brief connection. Besides her bringing me into this planet, I didn't actually know the woman very well. This is my own mother, right? So for me, I feel her so strongly sometimes, and it's freaky. Like, that is spooky, to feel someone who you barely know but did bring you into this world. It's like, well, that's just my experience, you know? Sometimes I just feel a connection to her. And I know some people, their moms are alive, they don't really connect with their moms. Their moms are passed away, they don't really feel a connection with their moms. They're like, "Oh yeah, she was just my mom, but we weren't

18:37connected." And I'm like, I do feel very connected to my mom. And, you know, people don't really die. So, yeah. So interesting. So when you say connected, and you say people don't really die, this is obviously spiritual in orientation. And so can you speak about that? Because I think, you know, that has to be part of your ethos in your practice as well. I guess if that's what you're teaching, you have to buy into that, and that is beautiful if you can, but some people can't. But I'm curious as to what your idea of that means exactly, that they're with us still. Yeah, I do. I have to preface this with saying that I do subscribe to

19:26— I think it's like the Oprah Winfrey belief — that if you want something, you can wish for it, you can want for it, but then you have to let it go, because, you know, similar to the saying, "A watched kettle never boils." The trick with getting what you desire and ending that suffering and craving is you have to just let the wanting rest for a little bit. And the wanting in this case is the desire to reunite with them in some way? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So in my life I've been through a lot of phases with my spiritual relationship to my

20:13mother, and this is largely based on just my current journey in life and hormonal phases and everything, whatever connects me to my mom. And so, for example, in high school, where we met, I was very angry at my mother most of the time. I was very angry with her. My anger was justified in the fact that — I mean, I was angry at a lot of things. Anger was becoming a very easy go-to emotion for me as puberty was happening, and for me, I was angry with her because I thought, how could she just give up? How could she give up? How could she be so weak, is what I thought. So I was really, really tuned into this idea of strong versus

21:01weak, as in, like, "I'm not going to do that, that would be weak. I'm going to do this, this is strong, this is brave, this is courageous." I mean, I was in eight school plays and modeling, and just trying to survive as a teenager without my mother, with just my father raising me, who was emotionally turned off from life in general. And I was just throwing myself into situations that were incredibly intimidating for the average teenager. Yeah, I chose to just go to auditions all the time and just constantly face rejection. Just constant. I was like, "Yes, give me more rejection, give me more rejection." I was just feeding off of it. Yeah, because I was deep in

21:50the anger stage of grief, and that's how you — I mean, that seems almost like a very constructive way to deal with anger. Yeah, I'm definitely — like, it was like an "I told you so" type of anger. It's a very, yeah. And sometimes I still tap into that anger, but I know now just to be like, "Okay, Mia, I hear you, I get it." I just kind of talk to my teenage self, and I'm just like, "I hear you, I get it, and, you know, what are we here to prove? Are we proving ourselves to other people, or are we proving ourselves to the version of us yesterday? Like, who are we trying to win against? We already know we're a badass. Why do we have to prove it?" Yeah, or, like, badass being subjective. Yes. Like, you know, it's not about, like, putting down the ego. So

22:37psychedelics really helped me in my journey. Like, I would not be the person I am today without psychedelics. Well, certainly. So this is interesting, how the ego is connected to dealing with pain, dealing with grief, and how it has a role, and it's a very destructive role, or a counterproductive role, that it plays, and you have to put that aside, especially if you've dealt with pain and grief, in order to move forward in a healthy trajectory with your life. I'm curious, because for me it wasn't psychedelics that broke my ego, but it was just, like, I had ill health for a while, and I had to drop out of university, and I just, you

23:24know — I've told the story, I think, on the podcast before — but you just look in the mirror and you realize that you're not all that, and you don't like that person, and you have to be very honest with yourself, and that in its own right is very painful. And, you know, through the sickness and then the recovery, something dies in you, and you can use that to dissolve that ego and destroy it and build something new. Of course, the ego always regenerates in a new terrible devil, but going through it is useful. And so for you, it sounds like psychedelics played a part in that. For sure, yeah. Like, psychedelics — yeah, at the risk of sounding cheesy, psychedelics have really helped me with my whole personality. We were talking just before this podcast

24:12about neuroticism, and I joked about how my partner and I are both neurotic, and you said, "Yeah, but that cancels each other out then." Yeah, I mean, in that kind of love you get radical acceptance taking the place of two people who are just neurotic as hell. But yeah, I was an incredibly — like, as a child, how I coped with my mother passing, in my pre-high-school years, from age seven to age, yeah, 13 or whatever, that was me just becoming incredibly OCD. Like, my family, without knowing the words for it, they would just observe me oddly planning every minute of my day. I would just get so into my structure. I was the ruler of my life. I was the master

24:59of my domain. I parented myself. I was the woman of the house. And I just, like, I thought I knew — I wanted to know everything, and I thought I knew a lot that I didn't actually know. So there was some ego there, for sure, but it wasn't totally visible. But I was incredibly narrow-minded, and I was incredibly interested in control of my environment. And this is all a defense mechanism for dealing with what needs to be dealt with internally. Yeah, yeah, because, yeah, I mean, I'm not living in a family of psychologists. I'm just coping with this. Well, even if you were, arguably you'd be worse off. It's like too many cooks in the kitchen. A lot of my friends are psychologists, and I hope they're

25:49the first people to admit that they're not at all saints. Well, I think we study what we're interested in, and just because we study it doesn't make us perfect. There's doctors that go and smoke after, you know, a surgery. Everyone has their self-sabotage, and their career vocation is not an antidote against it. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I hope we all study what we're interested in. But for me, I mean, I was very linear in my thoughts. I thought life should only go one way for me, and I didn't know how destructive that was. Like, I found out in college quickly how destructive that was, because I was having panic attacks, and I had, like, a history of self-harm as well in my life, because I

26:38would feel so much emotion I didn't know what to do with it, and there was nobody telling me, like, "Okay, just have this healthy outlet." You know, there was no rage room or anything. I had, like, a school psychiatrist, but I did not connect with them. It's very important that I tell people: if you don't connect with your psychologist, that's not your problem. You know, you don't just get a psychologist, you don't just get a therapist, you have to also connect with the therapist too. I mean, you're sharing all of your deepest, darkest — hopefully you are — you're sharing it with them, and so they need to be trustworthy. And it's like, yeah, can't just be a random person from the Yellow Pages. Yeah, in many ways you open up to them sometimes more than your spouse, or at least your boyfriend or girlfriend. And so, anyways, yeah. So, you know, after that time of kind of figuring things out

27:28with my psychiatrist, I was actually able to, what can I say, just open my mind to being like, "You know what? I'm not here to figure everything out. I'm not here to figure out other people and why they're so stupid and why they're the problem and why they're weak and, you know, all this. I'm here to figure out me. I'm here to figure out why am I so angry, why am I so needing to be in control of things all the time, why am I driven by so much anger?" And as soon as I started asking those questions, that's when the real fun really began to start. And that was at what age? Oh, that was at age probably 18 to 19. Uh-huh. Well,

28:16interesting. So you became self-aware, if you will, or at least the first version of that self-awareness came about around 18, 19. Yeah, actually, you're probably right. I mean, I think I was getting glimpses of it in high school. Like, I would have little glimmers here and there of just like, "Girl, why you doing that?" Right? And then I'd just brush it away and be like, "No, no, no, but this movie said that if I do it this way, then I get the love that I want. This TV show said that if I talk this way, then I get that love that I want." You know, it was a lot of love-seeking, validation-seeking behaviors. It's so interesting how the mind increases its aperture, its capability to take in

29:04information over those years, where between 16 — like, at 16 you really think you're like, "I'm ready to be an adult already, I'm good, what is this high school?" And then when you get to 19, you just have access to so much more information. It sort of feels like when you get out of a body of cold water, whether it's like a cold plunge or a cold shower or something, and those years are just like, "Oh wow, there's all of this that I didn't realize." It's like the bandwidth of information that you're capable of processing increases significantly, and you just realize your folly, and you're like, "Oh no," and then you cringe so hard. I remember looking at Facebook

29:51posts, and I'm like, how on Earth did I think that was an appropriate — like, what was I doing here? And I thought I was cooking with it too. You thought you were doing something. Yeah, yeah. We can give ourselves some grace, knowing that we didn't know what we know now. Okay. And also, we as a collective human species, we are still, I think, in our infancy of knowing all that we can know and understanding mental health in general. Oh, for sure. I mean, it's the youngest of the medicines, almost, right? Like, we're not quite sure. Freud was not that long ago, Jung is not that long ago. Freud was a coke-head, and he's still the

30:40grandfather of psychology. Like, okay. Yeah, yeah, I mean, you're right, we're just starting. But here we are now, and we have AI and these neural nets and, you know, Neuralink. Yeah, we have a long way to go, but I think we're making good progress. But even still, take the brain aside, take mental health aside, and then just look at the philosophies of life and the philosophies of our place in the universe, and I think all of that is so intimately connected to pain, because every religion and every philosophy rationalizes our point of being here in their own way, and people seek those answers, because otherwise, truly, you

31:29might lose yourself. Because how on Earth can you rationalize our place here without some sort of guide? And it's just the other day — I'm quite fascinated lately with ancient texts, particularly the Gospels and Christianity, and I'm not Christian, but there's actually an atheist, Alex O'Connor. He's quite a famous guy, debates a lot of Christians. I find his work fascinating. He's on YouTube, and he has these incredibly academic debates, and he comes about it not from a point of persuasion. He's not trying to persuade anyone of his point of view, he's simply trying to lift all of the truth to the surface, in the same way Alan Watts was

32:16incredible at doing that with Eastern religions. He was never trying to convince you to become a Buddhist or to become a Taoist, but he would just beautifully show you what their arguments were, and he was quite learned in that regard. So I was learning about Gnosticism and Gnostic Christianity. And so in the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of the world, the world is perfect, we are to some degree imperfect, we have the spark of the divine in us, and we need to overcome the imperfection in order to unify with the greater divine intelligent force that exists. Okay. Now, Gnosticism is quite an interesting thought experiment,

33:02because their argument is — and their mythology is — that there does exist a perfect universe, but the Earth, the creation of humans on Earth, was a cosmic disaster, and that it should never have happened. And they have this — it's almost Greek in a sense, that they have these entities that have clashed with one another, and the goddess Sophia, which is related to the term philosophy, the love of wisdom, she is the god on Earth that's been trapped in our souls, and there is another god that rules Earth that is sort of trapping us in here, and it's our goal to escape, essentially, from

33:51this prison, from this flesh prison that we're in. And so I just find this so interesting, because imagine — I mean, death is this cliff, and we have to contextualize and rationalize it, and we choose a mythology, we choose a religion, we choose some belief system. And even from an atheist standpoint, you're still making a decision of what you believe. So you mentioned earlier that, you know, you help guide people through this. I'm just curious, when clients come to you and they talk about their grief, and you have these circles and these events that you put on, and people, let's say, come — one person is a Muslim, one person is a Christian, one person is

34:38this or that — how do you find the common thread to offer advice that resonates with people? Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question, and it requires somebody who has a keen sense of diplomacy, so somebody who is like an ambassador between countries, or a genuine diplomat. Somebody who can tune into the peacekeeper architect — or sorry, not architect, archetype. Someone who can tune into that archetype is well suited. Like, for example, I think a lot about Barack Obama before I go into a room where I'm talking to people from different religions, because I think Obama could do this. And, you know what, I'm just going to

35:26channel Obama right now, because we need to unite on something common, and if it's not hummus, then we need to talk about what happens after we die, and the fact that none of us actually know the answers. You know, I talk to Christians who say, "No, I know, I know God is there, I know he is there." And I'm not here to dispute your truth, like what you know. I'm not here to dispute that. That would be like trying to talk a woman out of her intuition, like a woman's intuition to know, for example, when someone that she loves on the other side of the planet is in danger or in harm's way, and she happens to be right. Like, there's no science for that, and I'm not here trying to figure it out or, you know, get in the lab with

36:13beakers and try to measure that. I'm okay with letting that be just enigmatic and mysterious and magical. But essentially, you know, when I feel challenged with people of different faith, so ardently rooted in what they think they know, I just sort of remember that, you know, in various ayahuasca ceremonies I've sat in, there were experiences that I feel quite convinced that I was communicating with my mother spiritually. However, I am a psychology student through and through, so for me it doesn't actually matter to me whether any of this is actually happening or really there. What does matter to me is that we're accepting that that may be

37:04the case. Like, we're accepting that we maybe don't know actually anything, which is crazy, because the ego right now is listening to me and thinking, "Girl, what are you on? Like, what are we talking about? We're supposed to know things." And it's like, yeah, we are supposed to know things, but we also need to know that we don't actually know things. Like, part of knowing is knowing what you don't know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And knowing that everything you may think you know can be questioned too. Yeah, that's science. Yeah. And it presents a sort of intellectual quandary, where you want to have conviction, but you also have the humility to know that your conviction could be baseless. But it's —

37:53but as long as it's based off of the truth that you know to be true, then maybe you can move forward. At least that's what I feel. I'm like, this is generally what I know to be true, so I'm going to move forward with that and be confident in it, knowing that there could be new information presented tomorrow. That's why I love science fiction, in particular first contact stories. Same. Because all of the religions are like, "All right, I guess God didn't let us know there's another civilization at Alpha"— sorry. Like, it puts everything in question. And I personally think that the biggest threat to any religion with conviction is first contact, because we're supposed to be the only children of God, not someone

38:43else. And so I love these black swan events, right, that just surprise you and totally break your frame of reference, and I actually enjoy them in my own life. Like, I hate when — you know what happens in self-help sometimes? If you've read a lot of the self-help books, everyone that has done that is like, "Oh yeah, they all kind of say the same thing after a while." And then what happens? That first time you were sad, that first time you were depressed, that first time you had this adversity, those books worked beautifully, because they just brought you up. But then what happens once you become jaded by them? You're like, "Uh-oh, this stuff ain't doing it for me anymore." But then eventually that's just the next peak

39:31that you have to — the next hump that you have to get over. And so, yeah, anyways, that's a bit of a tangent, but I just find that to be incredibly interesting. I want to take the conversation in a slightly different direction and focus a little bit more on the intricacies of grief: the levels of grief, the degrees of grief, the types of grief that you deal with in your practice. And just for reference, Mia reached out to me about a year ago to join an event that she put together, and you're responsible for putting a lot of these events together, and I forget what they're called, but you have these really cool names for what you call them, and they're very interesting. I would love to check one out at some point. I didn't have a chance, but it was an event about healing and dealing with grief.

40:20So can you explain a little bit what those events are, and what type of people come there, and what forms of grief and levels of grief you deal with? Yeah. So I was piloting last year my first iteration of grief support groups, and that is because I truly believe that grief and these heavy emotions — even though people are largely resistant to getting together with other people and talking about their innermost, say, nightmares or existential phobias, or, you know, just painful inner turmoil. They don't want to talk about that. It's kind of like puking in public. That's a bit much, you know? But I actually think that that is why we need to do it, and that's how I envision this work. Like, I envision doing this work in group settings, because we heal in kind of a field of connection. Like,

41:09there's really a field of healing that's created when people share in a group, and then people can make their own friends and have their own little side relationships there, and I just love hosting that. I genuinely want people to make the most out of the connections they have in that setting. So I was piloting grief dinner parties last year, and I love hosting, I love cooking, and I love just making space for, you know, transformative conversations. So that was good to do. I really enjoyed that. And I was living in a big house in West Point Grey at the time, so it was perfect, like a perfect setting. And then, obviously, I moved to Boston in the past year, so now I've been working to pilot death salons, or death cafes. You call it death salons, death cafes? Did

41:59you come up with that term, or is that around? Okay. No, no, I actually talked to a therapist practicing out in New York, out in Brooklyn, and she and I really hit it off, and I told her the next time I'm in Brooklyn I'm totally coming to one of her death salons, because she said that she hosts them, and she and her co-, I guess, practice partner, therapist person, they host these together. And they just gather people together and talk about grief and death and loss. They share maybe book excerpts, like we're doing now. They share poetry, and people can kind of, you know, shift to acceptance, even if just for like an hour. Like the feeling of feeling accepted. Yeah, the feeling of being accepted in a group setting with complete strangers, over some things that maybe you've never

42:47shared with anybody else in your life. That's truly transformative. And someone who can accurately hold the space for that, who can carry that and really just be that clean mirror, really cleanly reflect that, instead of being like, "Oh my God, really? No way. And didn't that make you feel terrible?" It's like, no, they're just being there with you and just listening and observing and asking questions. That is truly transformative space held, and people often don't get that space afforded to them. People outsource their therapy to their hairstylist or their Uber driver, or whatever, skin aesthetics, or just their family members, and these people are not designed, often, to hold this space for these emotions. So people are not often met with the acceptance to, you know,

43:34really move through things, right? So you're giving them this arena, this venue, that they can be safe in, that they can be very comfortable in. But what types — like, I'm curious, what are people coming to you with? What have you seen? Can you share any examples of things that caught you off guard? Yeah. It's often, I will say, the quietest people who can really shock me the most. Like, genuinely, I can have a pretty pristine kind of feather exterior, but I can be ruffled inside by what some people have shared with me. So, you know, I've had people come and they're going through a divorce, and they actually bring their ex-wife, and we all discuss in a group, and sometimes there's tears, and

44:21sometimes there's people who scream and yell. And I knew that I was meant for this work, because my entire life people have been looking at me and saying, like, "I feel really safe and comfortable and just vulnerable with you." And my community strategist, she says to me, she's like, "You evoke so much safety for people. People just feel really safe with you." And I'm like, I think it's because I've done a lot of work on my own, on feeling safety in my own skin. I know I wasn't always like that, because pre-2019 I got a lot of feedback from people in my life that I was very defensive, and I was very on guard, and I wouldn't even hug properly. Like, I would hug in a way that was very distant and cold. I was called, like, a black cat by many close people in my

45:08life. So I actually had to work to make myself this person who is vulnerable and an open book and safe to talk to, but also, like, I am really non-judgmental, really compassionate with people, especially when they're coming to me and they're like — I've had people come to me and say, "Yeah, I just had both my parents die tragically, and now I'm an orphan. I'm an adult. I don't understand what's happening." And I'm like, "Okay, let's unpack that. Like, do you want to dance? Let's do this." And, you know, or just whatever energy they want to be met with, too. I'm totally open to chameleon with people, and just being more solemn with them. And I totally tell people, too — a lot of people come and they just don't say anything, and that's because — I say silence still means you're participating, because even if you're

45:57just energetically participating, you're still there, you're still present. You don't have to be saying anything to be present. But yeah, so I've had people bring ex-spouses. I've had people tell me that their parents just freshly passed away, and sometimes tragic deaths too. Like, some people tell me that, you know, someone they really love just died tragically in a car accident, or they were hit by a truck or something, and they're like, "I'm not only grieving the loss of that person, but also I'm so angry at how — it did not honor the greatness of this person." And I'm like, "I hear you, I feel you on that." And sometimes what I do — I have to mention with that kind of work, we do go a lot

46:44into how Tibetan lives are ended, because in — is that like the Book of the Dead? The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is actually the book I'm referring to, which is similar, but it really goes into the different bardo states. So what is that? The bardo states are really the states of — when someone dies, how their soul goes through these different states, because it depends on how you die, in the Tibetan culture. For example, you know, Tibetan monks, they like to be surrounded by all their family and friends, and they command their body to die. Like, when they're like, "I'm ready, okay, I'm going to die now," and they sit down and they pass, and everyone around them is just saying prayers, prayers, prayers, prayers, to literally ascend their soul to different

47:32bardo states. Like, "Don't put them in this hell realm. No, keep them up through this lesson." Or maybe lessons they needed to learn in life, they're like, "Make sure they learn this lesson. Okay, now they learn this lesson." And we don't do that here. We worry about the cost of funerals and wills, and we watch shows like Succession, which is a great show: "How much money am I getting?" And I'm like, guys, y'all don't know about Tibet. Yeah. Like, I think a lot of unprocessed trauma that manifests into addiction and, yeah, substance dependence, abuse, a lot of that, and, you know, even diseases and disorders that manifest in the body today, like today, in this part

48:19of the world, is because of unprocessed grief. Like PTSD: unprocessed grief. Like depression: unprocessed grief. Anxiety: unprocessed grief. It's just like, we say goodbye to things all the time, and we're not actually — are we saying goodbye? Are we choosing that goodbye every time? Are we actually saying goodbye, or are we just letting things happen to us? Are we letting ourselves be a pushover to life? Or are we in control of life, in a way that's not like you're trying to over-control life? You're just on top of life, you're choosing. You're saying, like, "And this I'm choosing, and this too I'm also choosing. I'm here and I'm choosing it." Interesting. That was a lot. No, that was really good. I find it fascinating, because in Jewish culture — and I mean also for Christians

49:07too — the Psalms, written by King David, there's sort of a group of Psalms called the Song of Ascents, like Ascension, if you will, and you recite those when someone has passed away, for about seven days, in Jewish culture, and you go to their house with their family and you recite those. So not quite what the Tibetans do, but I do feel like the death practices and rituals of religions do not have any analog or any version in secular culture, aside from perhaps just the funeral. There isn't really anything else to

49:56do. I mean, I know the Irish have a celebration of life, like they do a wake. Other cultures have celebrations of life as well, so they sort of flip it into a happy thing where we celebrate what they were and who they were. I've always found that to be very difficult to reconcile, because whenever I've been at a funeral, it's been a very solemn occasion. I don't know that I'd be able to turn that happy switch on. So it is very much a cultural thing, but we are missing that. So that's interesting, that you are giving people access to tools that they can go and do that. And so how much of this is connected to your research that you're doing at Harvard? Yeah, so basically the GRF methodology is a response to the five stages of grief, which we've known since

50:46at least the 60s. And so the five stages of grief being, as I alluded to earlier — well, denial is actually the first stage, and then anger, and then bargaining, and then I want to say depression, or bargaining, and then acceptance. So really, okay, so you have these five stages of grief, whether you resonate with them or not. Those are the stages. But also, it's not really talked about enough that it's nonlinear. So for example, you can go through denial for like five seconds and then spend the rest of your life in anger, or you can go straight to bargaining. Like, sometimes

51:33people who are very logical, very cerebral in life, who go to the mental fixing of things — So what is — maybe I'm just not well read on this, but what does bargaining really mean when it comes to grief? That's a really good question. A lot of people don't know what bargaining really means. And so bargaining is manifested in the investigator. So as soon as you start investigating and you start saying, "Why them? Why not me?" Or, "Okay, but what does it mean now that they're gone?" Or, "What did they want? What were their last wishes?" Like, when people dispute the will, it's because there's unprocessed bargaining going on. Like, people need to just understand that they're grieving. This is a symptom of grieving, and they need to chill out, because

52:22fighting over someone's will is like trying to figure out the mind of somebody who's no longer with us. You are unable to figure out what they wanted. Of course, you can try and, you know, understand, or decipher between the lines. But it's like, if someone didn't leave a will, for example, then, I mean, the best thing you can do is not fight with other humans that are currently living with you on this planet, in honor of them. Even, you know, it's up to you if you want to do as they would have wanted you to do, but honestly, that is the best way of honoring somebody, is to think about what would they want, you know? Yeah, bargaining can also look like sometimes people doing things they

53:09wouldn't otherwise do because someone has died. So for example, you know, you may have seen your friend in a relationship with someone for 20 years, and this partner that they're with might be like, "Yeah, I want to get married to them so bad. I want them to pop the question, I want us to get married." And this person's like, "No, I'm never getting married. Not happening." Suddenly their mom dies, their mom who always wanted them to get married, and they're like, "Oh, you know what, I actually decided I'm going to get married to this partner now." And this partner's like, "Finally! It's been 20 years." You know? Yeah, people act in ways they otherwise wouldn't. Is that lasting? Are those decisions lasting? Like, do people take that — you know, it's a healthy measure of self-awareness. If you're self-aware and

53:55you're like, "Hey, maybe I needed the courage of my mother passing away, and really just buckling down on what she wanted for me, and understanding that I'm going to honor her in this way, but I do want this that she did want for me." You know, it's a very complex, intimate relationship, right? So is it lasting? That depends on your self-awareness. It sounds like it could harbor a lot of resentment. Yeah, potentially, yeah. You're living for someone else's wishes. Exactly. I mean, people live for other people's wishes whether or not they're dead or alive. Yeah. Like, something that happened in what I felt like was my first spiritual conversation with my mom, when I drank ayahuasca for the first time, was one of the first things my mother said, that I felt like she said, was, "Let me go. You need to

54:43stop. You need to stop thinking about what I want. You need to live your life." And, you know, I think the reason why that was so hard for me was because I didn't really know who I was outside of the shadow of being the daughter of a dead mom. Like, I was just like, "My mom's dead, and that's the biggest thing that's happened to me, so I'm just going to live for her now." And even though that's noble, it's like, you do have to make your own decisions, and also you can't really outsource your responsibility for your decisions. Like, if you're somewhere, you're choosing that place that you're in. It's really easy to spot people who don't take responsibility when they say things like, "Oh, but, you know, they would have wanted it." And you say, "Well, yeah, but there is a part of you choosing it too.

55:31How aware are you of that part that's choosing it, outside of your noble sort of honoring of this person?" Right. Interesting. I know, there's a lot to break down, a lot to unpack there. Yeah, I know there is. It's a tough conversation. Honestly, on my way here to the studio, I don't know, I was listening to music, and the music was giving some emotional vibes, and I was thinking, we're going to go speak about grief, and it's such a powerful subject. And, you know, one movie that I think speaks to that quite a bit is Interstellar, because you have that father-daughter relationship over the span of time. You've lost the opportunity to see each other, there's this regret, there's all of these peripheral feelings that exist in and

56:19around grief. And I do find that, just in general, it's another manifestation of pain. I mean, pain really is the main — I don't know, they're sort of different entities, but they're obviously very intimately connected, because you can go through painful things, and that's just like, for example, a parent dying versus a parent being sick. Both bring with it their own set of — like, one is very final, but then one is suffering. And sort of this idea that there's a reason why torture is illegal as a punishment, in the Western world at least, but capital punishment isn't illegal everywhere. Like,

57:11torture is just something that you don't want to put anyone through. But then when they're both matched up together, it's like the ultimate tragedy. Yeah, right, which we find in many stories from the Holocaust, many stories from, I mean, all sorts of situations, from sicknesses. Those, I think, are particularly brutal. Would you say that that is maybe — like, what I'm trying to figure out is, is there a hierarchy of grief really, or is there no hierarchy at all, and it's truly just an individual level? Is there an objective hierarchy, or is it strictly a subjective hierarchy? Because, for example, you could have a car accident or a fire, someone passes away suddenly, that could be more devastating because

57:58one could argue that the suffering prior, let's say in a sickness, at least prepares you for the ultimate death that's coming around the corner. I don't know, as I'm thinking about all of this, it seems that there is a hierarchy, but you tell me. Like, grief — I mean, grief is subjective. So for me, like, you know, if, for example, God forbid, someone very close to you that you love dies in a tragic way, where they're raped and they're murdered, and it's in front of their whole family or something. You know, but say the father or mother of that person, they just don't want

58:45to talk about it, and they seem to just kind of gloss over their grief, and you might be looking at them thinking, "Cry! Do something! Sue somebody, I don't know, something," versus somebody who loses their pet cat or dog in a way where they just died of natural causes, and it's, you know, they're crying all the time, everywhere. So it's hella subjective. I mean, it is, isn't it? And people also — I recently talked about this — people grieve miscarriages too. Like, people that never even were, technically. Because what you're grieving is the hopes and dreams planted within that, you know, that child, and also that family that you want to create. So, you know, it's like some people might not understand that. They're

59:32like, "Well, it was just your pet," or, "It was just—" And it's like, no, no, no, it is not just that. It's like, even if that being cannot speak English, or even if that being never even was born, it's like grief is subjective, inherently. As in, however your connection was to that person heavily informs that grief, but also what informs that grief is biopsychosocial. So for example, you know, where are your hormones at when that person dies? You know, what's your mindset like when that person dies? You might have been a really healthy, fit, proactive individual, and then suddenly, you know, you became alcoholic or something, and then someone dies in your life, and then, you know, you just go over the edge,

1:00:20whereas maybe before, when you were younger, you know, you could have been able to pull yourself up better. So yeah, grief is just so subjective, and we really can't tell anybody what to do, as in, like, "You better grieve this," or — it's like, you can tell someone that, you can say, like, "You have to complete this grief, you know, you have to." But it's also like, I mean, what are you going to do? Like, how do you prevent someone from, say, killing themselves, right? You can take preventive measures, you can do, you know, risk prevention, all of that. But yeah, humans are going to do what they're going to do. And, you know, for example, when you're talking about torture and punishment, yeah, for me it's so interesting. Like, I go through life thinking, you know, I

1:01:08don't ever see myself killing anybody or torturing anybody willingly. I'm not somebody who — and I think, you know, that's how we're meant to be. Like, humans are meant to exist, and we're programmed to naturally not want to kill and torture each other. However, you know, then there's wars that have happened throughout history. So you're thinking, well, what is human nature? Is it to torture and punish each other, or is it to try to coexist in harmony? You know, what's going on? I still haven't figured that one out, but I am working on figuring that one out, specifically. Yeah. Well, what is human nature? I mean, it's likely to do with, you know, ego-related delusions, where you'd want to harm someone, most likely. I find that particularly interesting as well, because maybe it's just the privilege of living in the Western world,

1:01:57where you're like, why can't we just coexist, where you don't have that mortal danger. But yeah, it's obviously been around. It's a perennial feature of human nature. I mean, even in the Western world, it might not be on a large scale, but it's certainly on a smaller scale: stabbings, shootings, murders, so on. In fact, some of the murders that exist in the Western world are arguably more brutal and more intricate than the murders that exist in the underdeveloped world. I guess I just said Western world is modern, underdeveloped — obviously I don't mean it like that, but I mean the modern world versus underdeveloped nations, where they're in mortal danger, let's say, for political reasons and uprisings and so on and so forth. Just to clear that up.

1:02:46But yeah, all this stuff is just so — like, I look at grief as almost a shadow of love, like love's shadow, or love's ghost. It is, yeah. And just as love is its own unique thumbprint, I guess so is grief, because it's just that reflection, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Like, as you said, every kind of imprint of love, every experience of love, is akin to every experience of grief. It is inherently personal, it is inherently subjective, and you can't tell anyone how to do it. Yeah, they're going to do what they're going to do. Yeah, which again is another phenomenon of the unknown, where it's difficult to explain. Is this love spiritual in nature, which thereby makes the grief spiritual in nature, and

1:03:34overcoming it certainly a spiritual activity? C.S. Lewis, who is a writer, who's an author, and a particularly spiritual one, who wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe series. Yeah, I remember. We all know him. He's a phenomenal writer. I mean, a lot of his nonfiction work is actually incredible, and he wrote a book called A Grief Observed, and it was about his wife, who is the love of his life, and she passed away, and I don't really know the circumstances, frankly. This is sort of new, I'm just recently diving into C.S. Lewis. But I started with some of his sci-fi. I didn't even know that he wrote sci-fi. But then I went into his nonfiction, and so

1:04:20the opening line from A Grief Observed is this: "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one

1:05:07another and not to me." Anyways, I just found that opening line particularly — "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." Yeah, yeah. It's very — grief is crazy-making. So is love. Love is crazy-making. Like, at the risk of sounding like a pop song, it is crazy-making. Like, you do things you wouldn't otherwise do. Like, I'm in love with my partner. However, on most days with them, thankfully, it's a very securely attached partnership. It's like, you know, we say goodbye to each other, we give each other a kiss. We're very much compatible in how we like to show love, how we like to give love, receive love. We're very productive together. We like to go out and do things together. We like to stay in connection with our friends when

1:05:54we're — like last night, when we were at a party, you know, I talked to my friends the whole night, he talked to his friends, we mingled friends the whole night. You know, not once was I like, "Oh my gosh, what's my partner doing? What's he talking about? Where's he going?" You know, and if I do, I feel comfortable to say it too. I'm like, "Where are you going? What are you doing?" And they'll be like, "You know, babe, I'm just going to the next room," or whatever. And so we have that very compatible thing. But, you know, as soon as that is disrupted — for example, as soon as I feel like there's something being hidden, or there's something secretive — then, you know, that's when, for example, if he doesn't say goodbye to me in a specific way, and I can tell something's off, you know, I'll call him. I could call him like 20 times, you know, for example. Like, I could just be like, "I need to know." This is me going

1:06:41from investigator before I go to mourner, you know? This is me trying to safeguard the love. This is me trying to also make sure that I don't have a reason to go crazy. Like, is there something — you know, we've been through health scares together, we've been through this whole move together, we've separated ourselves from our friends and family, and it has been very hard. But it's like, we did it in the name of love, and so it's like we had love to kind of buoy us. But grief, in many ways, too, is crazy-making. You know, it's common to see in movies, too, someone will lose someone, and, you know, they'll start trying to search for them in all these ways, where it's like they know that they're dead, but they'll try and find them, like, at

1:07:27the subway station, or at the park they liked. Or like, "Oh, if I go there, you know, maybe they'll be there." It's crazy, they're not going to be there, but it's like, how are you going to tell them that? How would you tell them that, you know? Or at the very least, like, reincarnation, where they think that this person has now taken on the soul of that person who has passed away. It happens a lot with families and whatnot. And I mean, sure, you could say that, but we know that that is an unprovable thing. So yeah, my family had my mom's clothes hanging up in the closet for, like, you know, at least 10 years, untouched. That's grief. That is a physical depiction of grief. That is, like, you know, knowing cognitively that she's not going to come home one day and just put on new clothes. It's

1:08:16just, like, honoring her or something, and it's just — it's like, okay, this closet could be cleaned, could be dusted, could be refreshed, new things could be put in this closet. But no, no, no. Like, altars could be seen as impractical and inefficient use of space, but no one's going to say that. It's an altar. There's a spiritual reason for this physical thing. There's something that needs to be done there. It's some portal. Yeah. And people see it as, like, "Yeah, I do want something tangible there. I want people to know, I want it to be honored, honoring in this way." Like, a lot of grief that's open and out loud is a way for some people to honor it,

1:09:03to be loyal to that person. Yeah, certainly. Certainly there's a lot of mechanisms that are in place to — I mean, all of the little accoutrements of religion even, it's sort of the same idea, that you're using these symbols to fill in a certain gap, or have a certain purpose that enhances the overall spiritual experience. Like lighting incense or something like that can enhance the spirituality. Having that altar for a loved one is just a way to — I mean, it's like a blanket, right?

1:09:51It's a comfort blanket, which makes sense. Yeah. And there's no judgment in any of this. It's just an exploration of all of the kaleidoscope that is grief. Yeah. Like, you know, wars over religion are really interesting, because, you know, however we decide to war, we're warring over a subjective felt experience, or prescription to, "Hey, I don't know why there's these random things that happen in the world, and random connections and random miracles and magical elements that seem to exist in our world, and I don't know what happens after we die, and I don't know what to do about that and reconcile that as a human being with ego, so I have to believe in something. I have to believe in something." And so we're warring over different things we believe in, and I'm thinking, guys, you're warring over grief. Like, what the hell is going on? Like, just respect

1:10:41that. It's like, what, disrespect? And, like, try to not make your religion about tearing down other religions, because that's weird. Well, it's just like trauma at scale. Oh, yes. It's not — it's the ego. It's the ego protecting everyone from having to face the truth, because having to face the truth is extremely difficult and will put you into potentially a downward spiral, but at least it comes with the hope and the seed of something beautiful and something new. But you have to be willing to be brave in order to make that jump. And so what is your goal? What is your vision for yourself, with your practice, with your research at Harvard? Like, what is your goal with helping

1:11:31people here? And obviously my prediction is your answer is going to involve something to do with psychedelics, but maybe not. Maybe not. It totally does involve psychedelics. I mean, depending on where this renaissance goes in terms of legalization, decriminalization, because we're still talking about illegal substances here, unfortunately, at least in some parts of the world. But yeah, I mean, where I see this going is, you know, working on my book. I'm working on getting it out there, getting it properly represented by somebody who's even more stoked about it than I am. That's really my dream. What book is this? This is the — this is, like, The Grief Trip. So it's like the memoir about loss and psychedelics, of, you know, loss of my mother and the psychedelic journey I had with that. And so that book is the centerpiece of everything that I'm doing. So that talks

1:12:18about the GRF methodology in depth. Like, the whole book, that's where it's unveiled. And so we can go through tactically the methodology, the practices, at a grief dinner party or death salon or death cafe, however. The book is where you can read more about it, with intertwinings of my story to kind of back up why I'm doing all of this, and then also exercises to do at home if, for example, you don't live where you can come to one of my death salons or death cafes. And so I'm working on making sure that book is out there in the world. Like, I say to every agent, "I'm never going to stop, so it's up to you if you want to represent me or not." But also, there's a lot of agents who are just

1:13:06very resistant to taking on a book addressing psychedelics. It's funny that it's taboo, because as a millennial I grew up being like, "Psychedelics? Yeah, like, whatever." But there are some generations that grew up with, you know, Reagan and the Just Say No campaign, and just government propaganda about psychedelics. Meanwhile, they're funneling, you know, crack into ghettos to try and imprison Black people. So, you know, drug history is really odd like that. But without all the propaganda, these are medicines of incredible transformation and potential. There — you know, currently, on, I guess, a note of grief, there are sessions and there are initiatives being taken to mediate conflict between

1:13:55Israelis and Palestinians with MDMA. That sounds like great news. No, I'm so stoked on that, because I kind of think — I know that won't change everyone's mind, but I'm glad that we're doing something about it, and that we're bringing psychedelic-assisted therapy to areas where there could be a lot of really awesome change. So yeah, you know, of course I'd love to have more out there, more known, like actual psychedelic-assisted therapy voyages for people in the name of grief. Because, you know, I can talk about anything with psychedelics. We can talk about the nature of reality, we can talk about books, we can talk about movies, we can

1:14:42talk about trauma, we can talk about eating disorders, we can talk about self-harm. The list goes on. But for me, grief is something that I know very well. I've walked with grief as a lifelong companion at this point. Unintentional, unplanned, but so was my mom's death. And so for me, I just happen to know a lot about that experience, and I've happened to live my life going through all the stages and coming to acceptance, and knowing how to move through them with the methodology that I research and study. So yeah, I still intend on doing this work, but for me, I'm a writer at heart. So even though I can hold the space, and I love being in community and hosting events and doing gatherings and even hosting retreats and everything, at the end of the day,

1:15:31I'm a writer, and the written word is my most potent form of communication and way of being. So if I could just write all my life, I would. I love that. Yeah, I love that. I mean, on the topic of writing, obviously this podcast, Nectar of Time, we like to highlight works of fiction, because I believe in the current era that we exist in, there's a huge tendency, when someone is looking to improve themselves or get over something, or whatever objective they have, they move to the nonfiction section or the self-help section of Indigo or Chapters or, you know, wherever you're listening to this, whatever major bookstore there is, because that's how they feel they're going to find the

1:16:19tools to overcome their particular issue that they're facing. And I agree with that, that is a correct approach, but I do disavow the neglect that people have, and the way they just brush off fiction. I think a lot of these authors are absolutely brilliant. They distill all of these feelings, emotions, in a way that empathizes so sincerely and so effectively. And I'm just curious — like, for me, fiction is a tonic for empathy, and it's a tonic for any emotion that we choose to identify with. And I'm just curious, you know, have you had that experience with fiction? Obviously, Mia and I, we

1:17:07originally met in high school at a play, and we were both in the same play, so we're obviously very fond of, you know, fiction and storytelling and all of this. So I'm just curious if you've had the same experience, how fiction had a huge impact. Oh, for sure. Like, I'm really glad that you say that, and it does break my heart to hear the undermining of fictional, you know, narratives, as opposed to, you know, nonfiction narratives or memoirs or something, as if it's less serious or something, which is not true at all. Like, you know, tell me that Walter Isaacson writing books about Elon Musk and Steve Jobs is better to me than Paulo Coelho writing The Alchemist. Like, no. Yeah,

1:17:55like, I'm sorry, but, you know, humans are great, but also, The Alchemist is a complete work of art, and it's been timeless. And also, Paulo Coelho is an author who wrote The Alchemist, he was rejected, like, a million times. There's no one who wanted to represent him or look at his book or anything, and he believed in it so much, and that to me is the real story. Like, he believed in his book, which is — it's not even an ego trip, it's just like, "No, no, this is a message, guys, I'm telling you." Like, imagine this guy at parties for 20 years being like, "No, no, no, this book is the thing," and everyone's looking at him like, okay. He's not so crazy. It's an amazing book, and people understand that and resonate with that. So anyways, not to at all undermine or compare anyone, but to me, fiction

1:18:45has really informed me. You know, as a writer, I'm an avid, copious reader, and I've always been, actually. And so it's kind of crazy, but I like to be reading three books at one time. So I'll have an Audible on the go, I'll be reading a paperback, and I also take books from the library, because I rent books from the library, obviously, because I'm a big fan of libraries. I just like to support them. And so I will always have a book from the library. I don't know, I just love being in libraries too. And then I'll also be reading a book sometimes on an e-reader, or I'll just have a book in my personal collection that I need to read or reread. But one of those books is usually fiction. So for example, I really resonate with the Dune movies. I love the Dune world. Yeah, I'm like — I don't know, I'm just really into it, and it's kind of obvious. Like, it's very —

1:19:32they all — like, wars are fought over the spice, which is basically a psychedelic, hallucinogenic thing, and there's wars being fought over it, and I just think that's so funny and cool and awesome. And the books — I just recently finished Dune by Frank Herbert, which is known as, apparently, well, maybe to some people, maybe not all, the pinnacle of science fiction, like the science fiction book. And yeah, this guy wrote, like, six books of Dune. You know, he really loved the Dune world. He believed in this world so much he basically coexisted in it. And I'm reading the book, and you learn so much about cheat codes to human psychology, you learn about philosophy. Everyone just believes in magic, and I just love that. I love visiting worlds in books where people

1:20:20are suspending beliefs, that, you know, like, Earth can feel kind of boring sometimes, with people just wanting to play games they don't actually want to play, or existing systems and paradigms and matrixes they don't actually want to subscribe to. Sometimes the world can feel very Big Brother-ish, the world can feel Orwellian, and yeah, it's nice to take a break from thinking about mortgages to reading a book like Dune, which is awesome and inspiring and cool. And you learn about, you know, emperors who are slaying their sons, or fighting for their galaxy, and I'm just thinking, like, you learn so much about philosophy. And I think someone who really articulates that, and honors fiction well too, in his sort of mental, cerebral way of being,

1:21:08in his fan base, is Tim Ferriss. He really loves fiction, and comic books too, and, like, yeah, loves the fictional universe. Well, stories are useful, and in particular, novels are portals into the multiverse. You have different timelines. I mean, I ditto your sentiment on libraries, because libraries truly are portals. They are these places that you can go to any time in history, or any time into the future, and any world into the future, or any world in history. It's this time machine. And imagine that your problems in your life have already appeared to other people before, and they have overcome it, and they can give you strategies and tactics and tools, and can liberate you from the burden that you think is so

1:21:56unique and so your own, where in fact there's nothing new under the sun. Yes, your love is unique. Yes, your grief is unique. But ultimately, it is a function of human nature, and that human nature is discussed almost ad infinitum in terms of what's available out there for you. You're never going to be able to read all of the books and all of the stories. And speaking of Paulo Coelho, imagine all of the manuscripts that people have that never made it to that level of the mainstream. And so I always recommend to people that even if a book doesn't have a ton of reviews, doesn't have a major publisher, if you find something interesting, that's something that a human wrote from a different perspective. And, oh, you don't like the writing?

1:22:44That's okay. You can read writers sometimes that, like, that isn't the ideal writing for you, but sometimes the messaging there can still offer a jewel or a gem that you could take with you. So I'm totally in agreement, and obviously Dune is up there on the Mount Rushmore for sci-fi, for sure. But yeah, I am happy to hear that you're a fan of fiction. Big fan, yeah. Sweet. Well, where can people find more about you? Just regular social media? Do you have anything coming up? I'm pretty unabashedly out there on social media, primarily on Instagram, just because that's kind of where, yeah,

1:23:33that's where the audience has really resonated with my stuff, which is cool. Yeah, that's probably the best way. When do you think your book is going to come out? As soon as you get a publisher? Yeah, as soon as I have an agent that I know is, like, the one, right? And yeah, my ideal is to work with a Big Five publisher, just for sheer reach, and also as a personal challenge to me. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Well, this has been awesome. We've learned a lot about grief, and frankly, while we've talked for over an hour, we haven't even scratched the surface, I feel, of what we could talk about. But I think this is a very useful conversation.

1:24:20There's a lot of valuable stuff. Really appreciate everything that you shared, and I encourage anyone who has questions about their own stories or issues that they're facing to reach out to Mia. I think she's definitely open to hearing what you got to say, and she's clearly very passionate about this subject, so go for it. And we'll see you on the next one. Thanks, Mia. Thank you.