Getting Through Grief — with Humor and Heart

[1:19]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to totally booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at zibby owens.

[2:02]Guest: I really enjoyed talking to Angela Nissel about Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom is Dead. This book, as well as an episode I filmed with Leslie Harderberg called You're So Strong on Grief and Letting Go of My Favorite Compliment, make a really interesting duo episode. They both talk about grief in different ways. They use humor more so than in lots of other books. They really take us into scenes from their life, how they got through this time, and how they dealt with all the other issues and ways of just being a woman in the context of insane grief. Angela Nissel is author of the bestselling comedic memoirs, The Broke Diaries and Mixed. In addition to books, she is a prolific TV writer on Scrubs, The Boondocks, and Ginny and Georgia among her credits. Leslie Harderberg, who I interviewed live at the Whitby as part of a Totally Booked Live series, is the owner and creative director of Harder Creative. She's also founder and executive director at Vids for Wids. Her book is You're So Strong on Grief and Letting Go of My Favorite Compliment. She lives in Vancouver, Washington with her husband, spoiler, Solomon, and three sons. And the two of them should be friends. I have to introduce them after this. But in the meantime, I've picked some of the most compelling parts of both of our conversations so that you can hear what it's like for both of them, how they can help you or your friends or anyone you know through this time, and basically just how these two really awesome women got through really awful times. Welcome, Angela. Thank you so much for coming on Totally Bugged to talk about Good Grief. Pass the bread. Mom is dead. Congrats. Thank you for having me. This is awesome. I appreciate it so much. Aw.

[3:49]Zibby Owens: Well, your memoir was so funny, but also heartbreaking. It's almost a, you know, a coming of age for you in a way and an introduction to your mom and how amazing she was. I feel like I totally know this woman so well. And isn't that just the craziest thing about memoir? You just bring people back to life. It's amazing.

[4:10]Angela Nissel: Yes. And I'm also like, oh god. If my mom were alive, she'd be like, what did you learn? What did you think? I

[4:17]Zibby Owens: think my daughter made me look a little bad in some places. Yeah. I'm not sure she'd be so happy that we were sitting here talking about her today, but here we are. Exactly. So tell listeners a little more about the book. Well, the book is,

[4:31]Angela Nissel: spoiler alert of the title, my mom dies in the book. But it's also a journey about how much I didn't know about caretaking, cancer, grief, and how life just goes on when you're going through these things. Like, I was severely unemployed. I had been unemployed for about a year when my mom passed. And going to job interviews while your mom is sitting at home dying and they ask, you, you What's your greatest weakness? You would have been like, Then I have five days left with my mom. Like, what? Everything that we do in this modern life seems so crazy when you're dealing with caretaking and acknowledging that someone you love is at the end of their life. And so it's navigating for me a lot of those day to day things that we kind of put on autopilot. And there's also a weird subplot about my mom marrying a preacher who ends up suing me and me trying to start a commune with my brother. So it's like a bunch of weird stories that will hopefully let people laugh at me because I wanna make people laugh.

[5:38]Zibby Owens: Well, as much as you can laugh when someone is writing about their mom dying, you know, as much as and because

[5:45]Angela Nissel: when things like this happen, you have to hold both. Like, you can't just sit in the sad because it would be impossible. You have to add that kind of gallows humor to it to to survive. 100%. And I I took fifteen years after my mom died to write it, and I was the first one of my friends who lost their mom. I was 35. And now I see other people going through it, and I realized some of the things I did. For example, my mom had breast cancer, and she told me it was stage four. And I got on the internet, and I saw one of those doctors don't want you to know this about breast cancer. And I'm like, might as well give it a shot. Me going to an oncologist and saying, you know what, you didn't do your job, but I've got these crystals. And so that seems insane to people who aren't going through it, but I did it, you know, and so many other things that you think you won't do. Who am I to tell an oncologist I know better than him? It's so embarrassing looking back at that. It's not because you were just trying. You have to try everything. You have to throw all the spaghetti against the wall or whatever all those expressions are. Like, you were in a way, it's out of desperation. It's like, look.

[6:57]Zibby Owens: I did the research, and you showed up with your binder and everything all prepared. You know, you were ready to go. Like, let's talk about it. What else can we do? And oncologists, you know, they're not exactly looking for alternatives. They're go they're going by the scripts that they know.

[7:13]Angela Nissel: Exactly. But I also wish that I wasn't so focused on doing and curing. Like, I had such a short amount of time, and we all do when we think about it, with the people we love. Should have sat there and read some books together, you know, instead of making it People frame cancer as such a battle, and I went in with that mindset. It's like, yeah, it's a battle, but it's also a deadly, horrible illness. And to make people feel like if they don't fight and they're not a survivor, they're not good enough. That is one of the pitfalls I think I fell into, and that I was a failure. No one says I was a cancer succumberer. Like, it's all about surviving. So I didn't understand that at some point, not everyone can survive it. And so that was a tough lesson for me to learn. Everyone talks about the youth being addicted to social media, but I know so many people in their sixties and above, my mom was 64, who are lonely and don't wanna tell people they're lonely. They're empty nesters. And I can actually say I have about three now, people whose parents fell in love with someone from overseas or just, you know, are sending money to someone. And we have no idea. So I'm like, man, we gotta take these phones away from our elders. But it's also, loneliness is such an epidemic and I would have never thought my mom was lonely. I didn't look at my mom as anything other than mom. I didn't even think that she wanted love like everybody else for some weird reason. She was just mom. And to find out she met a man, I won't spoil it, but in a way that No, I would not no, in a way that I wouldn't have met a man. And the things that he did, I just thought, my mom's smarter than me. She would never get caught up in something like that. But love and the want for love makes us do some crazy things, which ends up getting your daughter sued. So Oh

[9:15]Zibby Owens: my gosh. Wait. So, Angela, share about your Hollywood experience because I found that interesting. You didn't go into it too too much in the book, but tell me a little more about that. And we you know, we got you after the success, and you you do talk about it. But talk about all of that and what happened after the book until now. Like, how is that all going?

[9:36]Angela Nissel: Well, I was a staff writer and a producer on TV shows. And for a while, it was going great. And then we had a strike, not this recent strike, but I was involved in one before then. And corporations are going to cooperate, and they just cut back. They were like, Hey, you guys don't want to write? How about some good reality TV? And so I found myself doing all types of odd jobs I could find and just selling things on eBay, but literally was just at the brokeest of my most brokeest moments. And I wrote a book called The Broke Diaries. Was very it also made me realize that once my mom passed and my career was still in the dumps, I had to reinvent myself because to be honest, I don't want to I lived by what people thought about me and what my the good job I had. And I worked on Scrubs for seven years, but I didn't care about that. None of that mattered because honestly, these jobs in Hollywood will take so much out of you that you don't have time to spend with the people that you love. And I realized I've even quit jobs since then, and I would have been too nervous to ever leave a job. But I just losing my mom gave me so much perspective on how I want life to be. And not stressful in Hollywood, not Hollywood choosing when, you know, I get a paycheck. It's more about just making time for the people in my life and somehow finding a job that can fit around that. And so to me, that's success. And I wish my mom were around so she could see this version of success where I'm like, No, I have a lot of friends in need right now. I can do something part time, but I can't, you know, and even living beyond my below my means to make that happen. So to me, that's what a good life is, not having people who want to invite you to parties because you're on at the hottest show. That all ends. Yeah. Do you still write for TV? I do, but I have taken I'm doing more development now, which is you can stay home and you can write about what you want and you go out and try to sell it. But the biggest thing for me right now is family. And I realized that I'm now the matriarch of the family. And when people say things like, Where are we gonna have Christmas dinner? I'm like, Oh, shucks, that is my responsibility now. And I want to be able to carry on those traditions. And I married a man who has a three year old grandson, and his wife passed away. So I'm the only person that little boy calls grandma. And that makes me happier than anything I've ever done in life. So it's I'm organizing my life now after the book comes out so that I can spend more time with him up in cold Minnesota and with my mother. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. It makes me pretty happy. Aw.

[12:33]Zibby Owens: So why write the book in the midst of all this? Because I remember

[12:39]Angela Nissel: trying to read so many grief books when I was in grief because I was broke and I didn't have any health insurance and I couldn't go to a therapist. And a lot of times they just made me feel worse. Like, I wanted to commiserate with other people's grief, but I also wanted to know how do I get through this day to day BS of just living and having to make small talk with people and having to go into a supermarket where the guy asked me if I wanna donate Roundup for breast cancer, and I wanna say, F you, no, don't. It didn't save my mom, you know, just this anger. And so I wanted to really write something for people who are in the depths of that anger and rage at the way we deal with cancer and illness in this society, and just to make them feel validated. And to even seriously laugh at me because I was trying to escape a psych ward without shoelaces. So it's like, is nothing that you can say that you've done that will, like, that is embarrassing once you read this book, hopefully. Because, I mean, I just kinda put it all out there.

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[16:33]Zibby Owens: Welcome, Leslie. Congrats on your book. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I I wanna be like, yay. This is so exciting. But the book is on a sad topic, but also it's funny, but also it's inspiring, and it has, like, a happy ending if you can say that when you have floss. I don't even know. Yes.

[16:54]Guest: Yeah. It's not a fun book always to talk about because it is about my husband Ryan dropping dead, basically, on our vacation. He was 34. I was 30. We had a three year old and a one year old, and we did everything together. Our lives were very merged. We ran a company together. Everything was together, and then suddenly he was gone. And I felt like a half person trying to figure out how to live life and continue to step forward. But like you said, it is also a fun book, and there is a lot of humor in it because what I found when I was grieving is that I was still laughing too. Weirdly, there's still moments where you kind of step outside of yourself and you see the absurdity of it. You're still very human. And so the book really honors that. I want people who have gone through grief to feel less alone knowing that, oh, my experience is not just sad. Right? And so I hope that the book does that. So you I hope that you're laughing and crying at the same time because isn't that life? Isn't that the way that it works? It's not just one thing.

[18:13]Zibby Owens: Well, the way you told it, putting us really in the room with you as everything happened to Ryan that day after after just surviving a trip to Disneyland and, you know, being by the pool and then being in the hospital. Anyway, you throw us into that, but also take us with you through the ups and downs of everything to follow. And one of the things that really stuck out to me that you said about grief is that you're a kind you're the kind of person, like me, who likes a syllabus. Like, you like to know what's coming in class. And can I just read this little passage you wrote? Is that okay? Yeah. Sure. Because this totally resonated. It says, this longing is perhaps best explained by my unwavering jealousy of children on their first day of school. I am not jealous of their collagen or their abundant energy. I am jealous of the smell of fresh erasers, the decorated binders, the brand spanking new white shoes that give you blisters, the new teacher who spent all August preparing for your arrival. Desks aligned and squeaky clean. Do these kids know how good they have it? But I am most envious of one first day of school item. There is one I truly long for, the syllabus. And then you go on and talk all about the syllabus and just how much, you know, you wish that there was a linear thing like this to help us through grief, and yet there isn't.

[19:30]Guest: Yes. That is really a core part of my personality. I want to know what do I need to do. You know, I wanna know how to do things well and especially in the way everyone expects of me. And so it wasn't surprising that when my husband died, I asked a lot what should I be doing. And I asked my therapist. I talk about that in the book. And he was like, what do you mean? I was like, where's my homework assignment? Where is my syllabus that shows me how to grieve well or shows me what others expect of me? And that is really where the title of the book came from because a lot of people were saying, you're so strong, and they were it was a beautiful compliment to give someone, but they were saying it before I had even done anything. And so in that compliment, I sort of found my syllabus. Like, oh, this is what I need to be doing. This is what other people expect of me right now. Got it. I need to be so strong. I need to grieve well. I need to inspire

[20:35]Zibby Owens: others. I don't know. No one was really assigning this to me, but I needed something. Yeah. But by the way, your therapist did not assign this to you. In fact, he just told you to try to do one thing a day. Like, just try to do one thing.

[20:47]Guest: Exactly. He was like, take a nap. I was like, what? That is not homework. I was afraid that, you know, my bed would swallow me whole if I'd I'd chose not to get out of it. So I kept getting out and making my bed and just kept going and going. And I really had to learn to fall apart and to let go of that compliment, to let go of the need for a syllabus or for grief to look a certain way because, wow, does it not? There's a lot of whiplash and grief, and it changes minute by minute. It's still changing. You know, I'm seven years out almost, and it still is with me, and it looks so different each day.

[21:28]Zibby Owens: Wow. Well, there is no such thing as a type a griever. Right? I mean, you can't you can't get a good grade on grief, which I think is is sort of your point. And if you if you just kowtow to expectations, like, where does that even leave you? Does it leave you any better off? If you pretend to be strong all day, do you feel any better? No. Because it's like, how can you what does that even mean?

[21:52]Guest: No. And maybe it will help other people feel better if they see you doing better. And I think that's that's what I had sort of convinced myself. But what I found was that the people around me weren't doing well a year out. I love it. And they were also grieving.

[22:10]Zibby Owens: And so, yeah, it's interesting the things that we put on ourselves that no one is actually putting on us. I found that I'm glad you brought that up because I also found that super interesting that took a while, but after a year or so had gone by when you checked in with everybody else in your extended families, you felt that they had been treating this sort of hierarchy of grief a certain way, that as the widow, you got, like, primary dibs on the grief. And as even secondary, even though they're not really I mean, you know, as a sibling or as, you know, whatever else, they had to hold it together around you in deference to your grief. And in fact, if you had known that they were all falling apart too, perhaps it might have helped.

[22:53]Guest: Yes. Maybe we could have all cried more together and lamented more together. I mean, there's something so beautiful when your grief aligns on the the road together, you're both sad at the same time. But, yeah, my family, they really held me up. And they they watched my kids so that I could go to therapy. Right? And they they cooked for me so that I could phone it in. And so while they were doing that, I think this happens a lot with those on sort of the outer circle of the grieving person, the main griever. You know, they their grief kinda takes a back seat and becomes a little bit more complicated, takes a little longer to become uncomplicated. You know, they they feel like they can't cry about it as much and or just sit in it or phone it in as much as I could. And I I saw that, but it took me a while to see. I saw on the one year anniversary that those around me that I loved so much weren't doing well. And I they needed to know that their their grief mattered too. And so I hope that part is really a love letter to anybody who has walked through grief with a widow or somebody who's lost a child or who has experienced some big loss, but they've been really close to it. I hope that when they read that part, they know that, like, they have feel like, oh, what I was feeling was grief too. Mhmm. And, yeah, that part means a lot to me because I I love my family dearly. Not all of them have read this yet. Oh, interesting. They read that part, they feel a big thank you. I didn't write any thank you notes. You know? Was giving a lot of support. So this book is a big thank you note to them.

[24:39]Zibby Owens: Aw. Can you talk about what exactly happened with Ryan that day? He was sitting by the pool with you. Do you mind just telling listeners the story? I know I obviously read it, but to give more context on the loss, even though it's not about the loss, it's about you and your processing of it and how great a guy he was, and we learned so much about him as a person, which was lovely, but just for curiosity's sake. Yes. So he we were in Palm Springs. We had just done the craziest trip in Disneyland,

[25:07]Guest: and we were finally relaxing. And sitting by the pool, I had just put my toddler down for a nap, and he said, Leslie, something's wrong. And me and my sister who was on the trip with us and her husband, we rose up. The kids are swimming in the pool. There was we had a teenager with us, so she was able to kinda play lifeguard. We ran into the kitchen with him, and his face was burning. His head was burning, he was saying, and he was just describing pain. And I my first reaction was that it was a panic attack because Ryan had his own grief. He lost his parents. And so that's where my brain went, but my sister went into action. She was like, Leslie, look at his face. His face was drooping on the left side, which as most people know that that means a stroke, and we had seen that before with our grandpa. And so she call she's like, you need to call now. So we called 911, and my brother-in-law was just, like, holding him, and they got there so fast. Our Airbnb was so close to the Palm Springs Hospital. And right when they got there, they just started treating him for an allergy. And I'm like, he's not allergic to anything. He had just taken an allard like, an at home wellness test to see what he was sensitive to, and he got green beans. I was like, mildly sensitive to green beans. Like, I was like, nothing that he ate. They were looking at the smoothie. They were pumping it with Benadryl, and I was like, they're not they're missing it. The next par the paramedic came in. So it was like the firefighters and then the the ambulance worker came in, and she was like, look at his face. We need to go fast. When she said that out loud, that was just a sinking feeling in me knowing, oh, this is serious. She said that there wasn't room for me to go on the ambulance. So she said that, you know, Rory had woken up at this point. And so she said, you're gonna have to follow behind. So I was like, okay. I'll nurse my baby. I'll follow behind and be there. And he said, like, get my glasses. I gave him his glasses. He he said, like, everything's gonna be okay. I said, well, I'm gonna be right behind you. It's gonna be okay. But he was not feeling well. He was throwing up. It was not good. Anyways, when I my brother-in-law takes me to the ER. When I get there, I'm, like, in the waiting room for so long. No one's telling me anything. And then finally, a social worker comes out and says, Leslie, do you wanna be with your husband? He's getting CPR right now. And I walked into the room. It all just happened so fast, and I feel like I know every story of things turning out, and that's where my brain goes. I'm like, oh, my grandpa survived his stroke. Oh, we know people that come back from CPR, but I go into the room and there's, 13 people. He's flying off. I'm alone because they had to be with all the kids. So my sister, my brother-in-law just dropped me off. And they're one by one telling me, you know, this he's probably not gonna make it. They're saying things like catastrophic and brain bleed and all that. And I just start immediately trying to call somebody to pray. I'm like, I'm trying to call my dad who's in Romania. And they were like, what? They brought in a chaplain, and I just wanted to be able to lay with him. But, basically, he was by that point, they got him stable. They had to intubate him, and he was in a coma. And it was really then up to me when to take him off of life support, but they don't really make that clear. So that's in the book a lot where I'm just, like, very confused. It's forty eight hours, but it felt like years. And people flew in to say goodbye, and family is coming. And I am just with Ryan, but he's not able to talk back. And I had to we had to sort of decide when to take him off and when to kill my husband. It was it was very strange to have, like, that power and to just not be able to oh, if I could have just had five minutes, you know, to say something. We really that that little moment as he was going into the ambulance was our last words together. And so I flew home from Palm Springs. We flew home with all these little kids, and we were so shell shocked. And we were navigating traveling with kids who, again, don't care. Like, a toddler doesn't know what's going on. And we've I, you know, I flew back as a widow and a single mom and a solo business owner and a half person. It was it was truly strange. And walking through my house for the first time, you know, a lot of people were like, at least you didn't die at your house, so you're not traumatized at your house. But when someone dies suddenly, it it takes a long time for your brain to catch up. But when they die suddenly on vacation, like, in a place where you don't do life, it just all feels very surreal. So it it took a while for my brain to catch up. And I think a lot of sudden death widows, like, rehearse the details over and over again. You're trying to remember, like, what happened in those forty eight hours. And so I think that's why it was very easy for me to write an account years later of what happened because I have rehearsed those scenes over and over again. And when I talk to other sudden death widows, it's not like they went numb and it blacked out. They're trying to always actively put the pieces back together of like, someone can just disappear? That's what it felt like. I always say he he went poof. It feels like he just was there, and then he was gone. Truly shocking.

[30:47]Zibby Owens: Ugh. I can't believe you had to go through that. I'm so sorry. I'm just so sorry. I'm sorry you had to go through it. I'm sorry so many people have to go through this. And somehow then we all just, like, what, get up and blow dry our hair? I know. What? Right? When, like, all the people we love could suddenly drop dead at any moment. Right? And yet we pretend that, like, it's all about what we're having for lunch or, like, all the little decisions we make every day.

[31:10]Guest: It's mind blowing. And it's I remember, like, the moment where I started caring about little things again Mhmm. And felt like I was back in, like, stressing about work and stuff again. And I was like, woah. I I have these sudden moments still where I just put myself back. Like, remember how these people might be gone? Like, I'm on a commercial set today, and now I need to go remember to hug everybody and touch everybody. It's like, remember them while they're warm. They're here, and it's a miracle.

[31:39]Zibby Owens: Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.