Gina Moffa, MOVING ON DOESN'T MEAN LETTING GO: A Modern Guide to Navigating Loss
[0:04]Welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Be Books with Zippy.
[0:07]I'm the host, Zippy Owens.
[0:09]I am an author, my latest is blank, pub date March 1st and novel.
[0:13]I'm also a podcaster, obviously, a publisher, a bookstore owner, and so much more.
[0:18]If you love books, you're in the right place.
[0:21]In fact, we call it the Zippyverse, or really, the LA Times called it the Zippyverse,
[0:25]and we're going with it.
[0:27]Go to Zippy Owens.com to learn more and follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens.
[0:32]Gina Maffa is the author of Moving On Doesn't Mean Letting Go, a modern guide to navigating loss.
[0:39]Gina Maffa, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker in a private practice in New York City.
[0:45]In the field for nearly 20 years, Maffa has helped thousands of people seeking treatment
[0:49]for grief and trauma.
[0:50]This includes work with Holocaust survivors at the 92nd Street Y, an international non-profit,
[0:54]as well as being a clinical director for Mount Sinai.
[0:57]Maffa has extensive training in grief work, trauma, cognitive therapy,
[1:01]dialectical behavior therapy, internal family systems therapy,
[1:04]and mindfulness-based relapse prevention for substance use disorder,
[1:08]as well as depression.
[1:09]One of Maffa's clinical passions is helping people navigate their healing from loss and grief
[1:14]in a way that empowers them to find a new sense of fearlessness,
[1:17]understanding and meaning, in the face of unpredictable grief.
[1:20]The majority of her practice consists of people seeking support and guidance for a major loss
[1:24]in their life, whether through death, divorce, or an unwanted life transition.
[1:28]Her book offers a heartfelt practical map through the dark terrain of loss.
[1:32]Welcome, Gina.
[1:33]Thank you so much for coming on Monster and have time to read books to discuss.
[1:37]Moving on doesn't mean letting go a modern guide to navigating loss.
[1:41]Thank you.
[1:42]Oh my goodness.
[1:43]Thank you so much for having me.
[1:45]Loving being here.
[1:46]Oh, good.
[1:47]Me too.
[1:47]Loving having you here.
[1:48]Your book was so great for a couple of reasons.
[1:53]One, it gave a new framework for something that everybody experiences at one point or another,
[1:59]and you just twisted it enough to make people think about it differently, which I love.
[2:03]And two, you interspersed your own story.
[2:06]So we couldn't help it root for you.
[2:08]And as you went through the loss of your mom and everything else,
[2:12]and the two things combined made this particularly powerful.
[2:16]And the way you speak to the reader, you're like, it's as if we're in a session with you.
[2:21]You're like, okay, we're going to do this.
[2:22]Like, okay, I just need you to do this.
[2:24]I need you now.
[2:25]We're going to, it's just, it was so comforting.
[2:28]It was just so comforting.
[2:29]Oh, thank you so much.
[2:30]I'm not even in grief technique.
[2:32]You know what I mean?
[2:33]Like, I'm not like in a cute grief or anything, but for anyone who's lost anyone ever,
[2:37]I feel like it's really helpful.
[2:39]I so appreciate that.
[2:41]Yeah, you know, I felt like after the pandemic,
[2:43]people were experiencing grief in so many different ways.
[2:47]And there was just no access to grief therapy or grief support that felt specific enough.
[2:53]And so I really wanted to, I mean, my aim was to write a book that could speak to
[2:58]kind of the entire modern grief experience outside of death, but also, you know,
[3:03]bring it to a place where I wanted people to feel like they were sitting across from me.
[3:08]You know, everything can be so either authoritative or prescriptive.
[3:12]And it's, and it's hard to sort of take that in when you're in a place of trauma or fresh grief
[3:17]because you don't have the brain cells for it.
[3:19]But, you know, also sharing my story felt near, it felt like it had to happen because I'm,
[3:25]I'm there.
[3:26]I understand those moments and, and I don't know that I would have written this if I really
[3:30]didn't go through my own huge grief fall too.
[3:34]Yeah, grief fall.
[3:35]That was one of my favorite terms.
[3:36]Tell everybody about grief fall and how you came up with when you started specializing,
[3:42]like you tell us all the narrative in the story, but how you came to be an expert.
[3:47]And then when you coined some of these phrases or realize that they were so useful,
[3:54]both grief fall and also how you talk about, what is it grief, not grief transition?
[3:59]What was it at the end, grief integration?
[4:01]Integration.
[4:01]Yeah.
[4:02]Yeah.
[4:02]Yeah.
[4:03]Which I also love.
[4:04]I love it.
[4:05]There's four questions in there.
[4:06]So I'll start with, I can just talk the rest of the time.
[4:10]I'll take my date off.
[4:11]No, we need you.
[4:13]Yeah.
[4:13]So I graduated from NYU back in 2004 when they did not have any classes on grief.
[4:20]And so at that time, when I first started graduate school and ended my undergrad,
[4:25]I was studying psychological terrorism and it's, and it's aftermath.
[4:30]And so I decided to specialize in trauma.
[4:33]And so for many, many years, I worked in the trauma field and I worked with Holocaust survivors
[4:38]at the 92nd Street Y.
[4:39]We did a lot of projects with them.
[4:41]And in hearing the stories, there was so much grief that wasn't really being amplified.
[4:47]It wasn't being heard and it wasn't being tended to.
[4:51]And so it really started for me, the beginning of my journey of really unfolding and specializing
[4:57]in both trauma and grief, but also how they relate to each other and where grief lives in trauma.
[5:04]But also the stories that we tell and how many layers of grief we all have, you know,
[5:09]I hear all the time, you know, there's so many different things that people lose transitions along
[5:13]the way that we just don't give enough attention to or we don't engage with enough.
[5:18]And we don't honor.
[5:19]And so that sort of started it for me.
[5:22]And so I realized that there were just no grief group in the summer time.
[5:28]It was like people don't want to talk about grief at the beach, you know?
[5:31]And it really dawned on me that grief was a topic that people shied away from more.
[5:36]If they didn't want to talk about, they felt it was contagious in some ways.
[5:41]We don't understand it.
[5:42]You know, I say all the time we're a grief illiterate society.
[5:45]And yet we are all going to, you know, go through it at some point in some way.
[5:51]If not, we already have just without acknowledging it.
[5:54]And so that's sort of how the journey began and really wanting to teach more about grief,
[5:59]but teach about it in a way that felt approachable.
[6:02]And really tap into the thing that we can all identify with, which is sort of what brought me
[6:06]to the idea of the grief fall.
[6:09]And, you know, because it's such a visceral and visual word, you know, when I,
[6:13]and I talk about this in the book, you know, when I got the news that my mom died,
[6:17]I had just left her.
[6:19]I just had to do one thing at my job.
[6:21]So I took the train down from the Hudson Valley and I really just needed the morning and was
[6:27]going to take an hour and be right back on that train.
[6:30]But as soon as I called my dad and, you know, checked in and said, I'm going to be on this
[6:34]next train, I'll be there in another hour.
[6:37]He called me right back and said, when I answered the phone, you know, it could come in,
[6:40]you know, to talk to you, she died.
[6:43]And I just stopped and everything fell.
[6:46]It just felt this, you know, my stomach fell, you know, it was everything stopped in that moment.
[6:52]And it was this defining moment for me.
[6:55]And it felt like just, I was in this free fall without any understanding or knowledge or
[7:02]experience in it.
[7:03]And I didn't know if I would land where I would land, how I would land, feeling like I would
[7:08]hit all of the sides, the jagged edges of loss on the way down.
[7:12]And I was terrified and also shocked because I am a grief therapist.
[7:17]And having all the tools, having done this for quite a long time and feeling like I was
[7:22]completely unprepared for my own loss.
[7:26]And so I thought this is the moment everyone can relate to because everyone has that one moment
[7:32]where nothing is ever the same, that one moment where they get a diagnosis or the news or
[7:37]they have a visual, right, holding your pets poth.
[7:40]You have to put them down.
[7:41]It's this one moment that is a portal.
[7:45]It is a doorway.
[7:46]It's not grief itself.
[7:47]It's what leads us there.
[7:49]And some people don't get to that grief part yet because they're still in that fall.
[7:54]And it could be through denial or just living in that loss because they don't want to be away
[7:59]from what they've lost.
[8:01]Everyone who's listening could think of that one moment that everything changed.
[8:06]And I wanted to honor that because we just don't, we tend not to.
[8:10]That's so true.
[8:12]You know, for me, it was losing my friend at 9.11.
[8:15]Like I still, like I'm writing a new novel and like in it popped, right?
[8:21]Like that wasn't even in the outline, right?
[8:23]But now little do you know, like it comes out and you realize like all this stuff,
[8:28]it just stays right in there, whether it's top of mind or not.
[8:31]Like once your subconscious gets going, that's like behind the curtain.
[8:36]Yeah, it's always there because it's been imprinted, right?
[8:39]That's a trauma.
[8:41]Anybody at least who lost someone there or watched it or was a part of it or lived in New York,
[8:45]you know, like us.
[8:47]And it's imprinted in our nervous system.
[8:50]And it's just waiting for something similar to bring it right back up.
[8:53]And that's what we don't, that's kind of what we don't acknowledge a lot of the time with
[8:57]our big life events, especially hard ones, right there.
[9:00]I don't know if you saw and this will come out a little bit after, but there was an article
[9:05]in one of the papers today about the events of October 7th versus 9-11 and how 9-11 was so horrible.
[9:14]But the next day we all sort of united and collectively picked ourselves up and helped each
[9:21]other whereas this is still ongoing like there was no resolution to what happened and worse than
[9:29]that people became so fractured about it.
[9:32]So it's like still going on even though it's months later and how to process the grief from
[9:38]both of those things.
[9:39]Did you see that?
[9:40]I didn't see it yet, but I'm going to.
[9:42]I saw it and then I didn't read it yet.
[9:43]It's been kind of nutty over here in LA.
[9:46]But yeah, because in a way, it's, it's, they're both ambiguous losses, right?
[9:50]There's no real closure happening.
[9:53]But with this one because it's really ongoing and as opposed to a kind of what
[9:57]seemingly was a one day event.
[10:00]It sort of riles us up and and I think that nobody knows, you know, nobody knows how to feel even though you kind of should because life is life
[10:09]But yeah, it isn't ambiguous loss and I think when people don't know what to do when there's no closure and
[10:15]So they either create their own narratives around it or they choose sides or they create villains
[10:22]Just to have a semblance of control and because this is something that very few people outside of like top leadership
[10:29]Really have control over and that makes it so much more unbearable
[10:32]But yeah, it is and it's a big loss. I feel like people though
[10:37]Don't allow themselves to feel loss whether it's that or something else or even like a loss of a
[10:44]Celebrity you feel like an attachment to like feel like well
[10:48]This is ridiculous. I shouldn't feel upset. I have no right to feel upset or I didn't lose anyone
[10:53]So I shouldn't be grieving or I shouldn't be all these shoulds associated with loss
[10:58]I think it's so in the way of
[11:00]coping with it and overcoming it
[11:03]Yeah, I think we get really self-protective a lot of the time because it feels so outside of our control
[11:08]And I think that's what makes grief and loss so terrifying is that there's nothing we can do about it
[11:14]And it's final in a lot of ways outside of you know the ambiguous losses that we have no, you know, closure with or whatever
[11:21]It's still ongoing, but I think that
[11:24]The Western world especially is really obsessed with control and the need to have you know everything in a very
[11:32]Point little box that we can contend with in our own ways and I think this makes it really much much much harder
[11:39]So but I mean we have relationships because people have meaning to us whether their celebrities are not they affect us in some way
[11:46]Whether they're people we know or not their stories can affect us in some way
[11:50]And I think that it shows that we're all connected in all of these different ways even if we don't want to be
[11:56]How do you deal with your own emotions and the toll that it takes to sort of hold the heavy stories every day?
[12:03]I was just asked that question yesterday
[12:05]I hate asking the same questions as other people. That's so annoying. I'm sorry
[12:10]You asked it in a different way
[12:12]But it's so funny because and I only share that because it's such a hard question because there's so many different answers
[12:18]Right I say as a therapist as therapist me I couldn't do this work if I didn't see change
[12:25]Try I'm healing, you know the the
[12:29]Over arching kind of place that we can get to when we integrate things into our life and make it a part of who we are to move forward
[12:36]I don't know that I could do it if I just saw darkness and death and grief every day
[12:42]there are these glimmers, you know and and I also don't you know
[12:46]I sort of see myself as this vessel in some place, you know and
[12:50]Really allowing the stories to come in and through me and as a sieve
[12:55]to sort of hold the good treasures and let all of the other stuff fall away and
[13:01]And that's how I survive it for 20 years
[13:04]But I would be lying if I didn't say it affects me a lot, you know
[13:07]Especially lately there's there's not just individual grief
[13:11]But there's collective grief and there's so much to hold right now and there's so much to
[13:16]Sort of I guess continue to sift through time and again because there's so much
[13:21]There's so much coming at us. It's so many different, you know varying rates and how do we believe it? What do we hold on to?
[13:29]How do we how do we comfortably
[13:32]Bit in the news or the collective trauma and grief while not taking it totally and to destroy us, you know because it's hard
[13:40]It is hard. Oh my gosh, you talked in the book about
[13:44]The getting to a place where other people feel like it's time for you to like move on and get over it and yet
[13:49]You're not ready to do that at all and in fact
[13:52]You're never going I mean, that's like the title of your book right
[13:54]Never going to totally get over it
[13:56]You're you're going to find a new way to live with this new piece of yourself and yet
[14:01]Others feel the need to like speed it up and like get you back on your feet and you know
[14:06]They try to say like well it wasn't this it wasn't that like come on just do it
[14:10]I mean, I'm just hypothesizing here
[14:13]You sound like you sound like all the people saying those things. Yeah
[14:16]You're society. I am I'm in the kingdom at large. Thank you. I will wait for my Oscar
[14:23]What do you do about that? Why do people do that? What do you do?
[14:26]I mean, I know it's like the same need for a control. You'll probably say but
[14:29]Like what is it that makes people want to speed it up other than the pain of watching someone else and what do you say to people when
[14:38]In when you're in those situations
[14:40]I think can I blame capitalism this time blame whatever you
[14:44]We won't tell
[14:46]We won't tell I mean, obviously there's great things about capitalism
[14:50]However, you know when it comes to the understanding that people suffer
[14:54]You know, this is where we don't have time. We have to be productive
[14:58]There's a lot of pressure on being winners and keepers and you know doing and producing
[15:04]And I think that you know when I say this for mostly any mental health challenge that society doesn't have patience
[15:11]For something that it doesn't understand and something that doesn't have a proper time limit
[15:16]And because grief doesn't have a timeline and because it's messy and because it's non-linear
[15:21]You know, there's no patience for it because we don't understand it and because everybody's you know
[15:26]Has everyone has a unique and individual experience with it. It's kind of like okay
[15:31]Now what what do we do then but the truth is is that we're just a grief illiterate society
[15:36]More and more and more and we seemingly have a shortened attention span for suffering and yet everybody is suffering in some way
[15:44]I mean look look at the statistics millions of people are suffering with depression at the very least and so you know
[15:50]I say that it's because we haven't been taught how to grieve and therefore
[15:54]We haven't been taught how to support people in grieving and and that goes from corporate to education to health care
[16:00]You know, look at for even leave policy people get to tell you, you know, how long you have to take care of you know
[16:06]Your grief for your loved ones
[16:08]Funeral, you know, and God forbid it's a pet
[16:11]You know, you get no time off, you know, they get to prioritize society gets to prioritize who's the most important loss
[16:18]And so when we look at it that way where's it trickles down to society?
[16:21]You know through communities and through families and we just have these unspoken expectations
[16:26]I think some of it is discomfort some of it is fear
[16:29]But some of it is just that we haven't been taught how to do it right
[16:32]We haven't been taught how to be there for one another and how to hold space for one another
[16:37]Or even more importantly
[16:38]How to do ritual with one another and be really present in that place
[16:42]Because so much of the eastern world has these beautiful rituals around death
[16:47]That it makes it
[16:49]I guess more accessible right it doesn't push away or stigmatize deep emotion
[16:55]You know, we can't whale here
[16:58]United States like that's like a big no
[17:01]And so, you know, people are acting crazy quote unquote and having extreme emotional responses to something that they should have that with
[17:09]Their, you know, look down upon is crazy. Maybe they need medication. Maybe they need hospitalization
[17:15]But really this is a deep human wound the deepest human wound is loss
[17:19]And we just don't have the space for it
[17:22]And so I think that's really where we're at and that's what we have to change
[17:25]How can we show up better for one another in this place and in this way?
[17:29]So maybe it won't have to be so hard. Wow. That was beautiful. Oh, I've noticed through our mutual friend Megan. We're in Jarvis. Oh, love her. Love her so much
[17:40]She's been so helpful over so much time. I'm so glad I met her when I did in my book club and of course now
[17:45]She went book with me too
[17:47]A beautiful book
[17:50]But with Megan, you know, and with what you were saying about your own mom, there's no
[17:56]Protection if you know it and I've realized two things about grief counselors
[18:02]One when something happens to you you feel
[18:06]Protected and yet you're not because it's like a skydiving instructor who's like never actually jumped out of the plane
[18:11]But has watched a thousand videos and coaches people but then it's like yeah
[18:15]But also that there is like this incredibly tight knit really fun group of grief people out there grief
[18:22]experts are actually
[18:24]Not actually I shouldn't say actually but
[18:26]They're not they're a group that loves to come together and very supportive of each other
[18:32]And like a whole thing so I didn't know that before tell me about that
[18:37]Well, you know what I didn't know that before yeah, I didn't know that before either
[18:40]I was just this isolated therapist and private practice and
[18:45]Then the idea of writing a book came about and it was you know
[18:49]Kind of out of nowhere
[18:50]You know recommended by my clients like can you just write a book because we love what you're saying
[18:55]And then because of that I wound up meeting so much of the grief community and Megan who's the ultimate connector
[19:02]She's I color the connective tissue because she really brings us all together
[19:06]You know, I got to meet people whose book
[19:08]I recommended, you know, Claire goodwill Smith, you know, or David Kessler, you know
[19:13]A lot of really wonderful people doing this work with immense heart and and I think what I love most about it
[19:20]Is that we're also clumsy who and we're also human in it and there's so much acceptance around that and support around that
[19:27]That it's a gift that I didn't see coming
[19:30]And so you know even though and it's funny because even though we all work with kind of the same people and the same types of populations
[19:38]It's all really different, you know
[19:39]I work with a lot of younger people emerging adults, you know people on their 30s
[19:43]You know at this point
[19:44]I think it's kind of the most 30s and 40s and yet, you know
[19:48]It's and it can be a really different grief experience
[19:50]You know depending on your age and depending on where you live and all of that and so I love that we each kind of have different
[19:56]Different people and different, you know experience
[20:00]experiences with you know the people that we work with and and yet I love that we are able to be so
[20:06]honest and authentic with each other because we do need it you know just this morning I was
[20:11]talking with Barry Liner Grant I think you know and so memory circle an amazing friend glad I
[20:17]reminded you of something all right sorry sorry oh my gosh my yeah okay we're doing an event
[20:23]with her soon okay I just forgot to send an invitation I love her and you know it was kind of the
[20:28]same thing it's an I said listen you know I think I'm going through Perry Menopause or something
[20:33]soon and I may need some help you know I feel crazy you know it's it's a it's a weird thing you know
[20:39]and I'm going through a new phase of life without a mom and you know this is the time that we need
[20:44]our people we need people who can just be there and nurture and kind of remother in a way
[20:50]and and or be a big sister and so you know I really needed it and be the way that I can reach out
[20:57]and the ways the ways that we can show up for each other is is truly a gift that I really
[21:03]I don't take a second of it for granted it's really beautiful and humbling too so I'm grateful
[21:08]for our community and more ways than I can say amazing and what about just deciding to write a book
[21:16]crazy and then like it's beautiful hardcover and you know Lupita
[21:22]having pronounced it Lupita Nyanga yeah Lupita Nyanga and I didn't even know I was like oh my goodness
[21:28]some friends sent me this sent me her reel and I was like oh that's so wonderful that she's got
[21:33]these great books on here and I didn't watch it all the way through and I was like oh it's so
[21:38]she has great books wonderful my friend you know it was like wait a minute did you see did you watch
[21:42]until the end and I had it and mine was the last book and you know the way that you I you know of
[21:47]course I analyze it and I'm like oh the way that she so tenderly looks at it when she puts it down
[21:52]and I'm just little me you know I'm just this grief therapist in New York who just wanted to
[21:58]have a soft place to land you wanted to provide you know as grief informed you know support as
[22:03]I possibly could but it was a wild ride you know and it was very quick I had a four month deadline
[22:09]to write this book while also working full-time and kind of dealing with some health challenges and
[22:15]so you know it's to me it's it's such a vulnerable piece because I share things in here that I
[22:21]don't share in my practice you know it's always a funny position to be in when your therapist
[22:26]sharing something and you know and and so some of my book where I do share I'm like oh boy like
[22:32]this is a lot I would never do this in my real life but you know you take a chance because you
[22:37]hope that the authenticity will be relatable and make you a real person and you know give you more
[22:43]dimensions because I've been around the block too you know and and it's it's hard and yet there's
[22:50]something behind that that can be an offering and that that is my deepest hope you know
[22:55]and there's so many beautiful books out there on grief you know and and everyone has a different
[23:00]voice in a different way of looking at it and being a you know being that sieve you know of holding
[23:06]the treasures but my hope in writing this was just to be a part of the conversation you know just
[23:11]to have a seat at the table and be a part of this with with the community you know and I'm so
[23:16]grateful that that's where we are right now so and even being here with you you're like
[23:22]you're at the table what are you talking about this is such a gift I mean it's such a gift you know
[23:28]and I don't have to go on and on about you know how wonderful you are and all of the things you
[23:33]are doing and building but it is and I don't want to keep using the gift but it really is a
[23:38]treasure that gives and gives and gives and so to be a part of this and for all you do for your
[23:42]community I tell you that a lot but it's thank you it bears repeating that this is wonderful
[23:49]and all you're doing and I'm just grateful to be a part of it thank you so whether or not you're
[23:53]on the podcast you're a part of it anyway you know it's it's the podcast is only one entry point
[23:59]into you know the zippy verse as it was as it was it is a verse I wrote I wrote the wormhole
[24:07]from from a hushed over here you know but it's all a family you know and it's really about
[24:15]the connectedness and and getting our messages across and the best way possible to reach people
[24:21]and and reach hearts because that's really the hope at the end of the day so so thank you for
[24:26]doing that oh thank you for saying that do you have any advice for aspiring authors my advice is
[24:35]make sure that you create a support system ahead of time because it is hard and you will have
[24:42]imposter syndrome and you will doubt yourself and you will wonder if you're doing it right you
[24:46]will beat yourself up you will wonder why you want to just snack and sew holes and socks instead
[24:52]of right and you will need people to say you can get through this I am here I will send you
[24:58]chocolate and you know and I think for me it was sort of be learning as I went along and and sort
[25:04]of having to accept the loneliness of it but I would say that you know the support system is the
[25:10]biggest biggest thing and to keep doing it you know to keep remembering that you don't have to
[25:14]worry about being a bestseller you know there's so much competition and there's so much
[25:19]compare and despair with authors and everyone wants to write a book and everyone wants to
[25:23]be a bestseller but that's not what it's about it's really about who can I reach how can I
[25:28]best reach them why am I the person to do it and how can I be heard without having to worry
[25:34]about the ego part of this and also how do I do it without doubting myself every step of the way
[25:40]and that's through people people who love you people who cheer you on people who will tell you to get
[25:46]over yourself and and to keep going and those are the gifts those are those those gardeners that
[25:52]we get to have in our garden and so that would be my advice I love compare and despair that's
[25:58]awesome I mean I've never heard that but yes don't compare and despair it should be like on a
[26:04]author contract or something yeah I think on every page of it yeah every page is yes
[26:11]start to finish you start to finish but yeah I mean what you do is so much you really give
[26:17]to your authors and I and I think that's unheard of in a lot of publishing worlds
[26:22]oh my gosh stop with me stop stop stop stop stop I mean I tell I mean if you get but it's true
[26:28]you know being an author in the everyday publishing traditional publishing world there's a lot you
[26:34]do on your own and that's why I say you need to support you need to support but if you're
[26:38]you're in the zippy world you do you really hold hands you really set up people for success
[26:45]and and that is something that I think you know I have envy of I tell Megan all the time
[26:52]like how did I how can I I didn't write a memoir why my god in zippy's world of course obviously
[26:59]being privileged to even get a book deal and be in this world of course of course but you know
[27:04]but it is about being set up for success and so how do we set ourselves up for success is really
[27:08]the support that we put around us and how we create that ourselves if we don't have zippy
[27:13]because it is easy to compare and despair for sure well that's great advice thank you for
[27:21]this ego boost of a podcast for me I'm here for sure to see are you accepting not asking for
[27:30]myself are you still accepting clients now these days or no I you know I wasn't but I have just
[27:36]I'm sort of trying to open up space I had all of this time set aside for writing and marketing
[27:41]and PR but you know the truth of the matter is as I miss you know I do I am I still have a full
[27:47]client load but I but I do miss you know meeting new people and having the book be something that
[27:53]brings people to me so so yes not a lot but maybe a few few spaces but absolutely good to
[28:02]and I love it yeah so reach out otherwise I'm just gonna hang on the floor with with the labs
[28:06]I do
[28:09]dream is to just hang with the dogs
[28:14]that's enough therapy when you said that part of the beginning about like holding a dog's
[28:19]paw I was like oh my gosh don't go there just don't know I'm sorry no no no no it's okay
[28:24]but the truth is is not enough people give enough credit for how devastating the loss of a pet
[28:30]can be and and it's so hard so yeah just putting that out there for people who don't feel like they
[28:35]get enough attention or care around pet loss it's hard sometimes more hard than other people in our
[28:42]lives yeah I mean that's what so much love so much love and routine oh I can go on about dogs okay
[28:51]if you're next up your next book or something you know right about you know dog loss anyway
[28:58]okay thank you Gina this was amazing I'd love that you made time at the last minute I have to
[29:04]put a picture of you with this necklace that matches perfectly you should sell the necklace
[29:08]with the book oh my goodness no it's gorgeous it's exactly colors what are the eyes so
[29:14]appreciate I mean honestly it wasn't planned this was a for everyone this was a last minute
[29:20]but that up here but but even they listen the row behind you and you're in a hotel I mean
[29:25]I was going to say this came with it I know it was meant to be with meant to be and to me
[29:31]this wild ride that is flooding LA right now so I'll hang in there don't go anywhere
[29:37]yeah right it's movie day but anyway thank you so much and thanks again for all you're doing
[29:43]and listen I want to be a part of it so here I am great okay please include me you're a part of it
[29:49]I just made little membership cards I'm gonna start sending them out not even kidding oh my gosh
[29:54]I love it well I'm not too far from you when I'm in New York I'm on the other west side so my
[29:58]all this and everything is on the upper way
[30:00]side. So great. We'll have to do an event or something. There are so many books I've read lately
[30:04]that I'm like, oh, like the person who wrote that memoir should really talk to Gina.
[30:08]You do. So I'll keep here. I am.
[30:12]Anyway, thank you so much. I love this. This was amazing. And I'm just happy that we're connected.
[30:18]So thank you. Thank you. So you take care of yourself. Stay well.
[30:22]Okay. You too. Okay. All right. I'll talk to you soon. Okay.
[30:28]Bye. Bye. Bye.