Episode 267: Grieving Under Capitalism with Nicole Chung
“It was destroying me to not have time or space to grieve.”
- Nicole Chung
Kate determines she does not care for tutorials and Doree wakes up with a center part she’s not mad at. Then, Nicole Chung, author of A Living Remedy, joins them to talk about caring for herself through feel-good TV and therapy, navigating grief and anger simultaneously, and what the phrase “the common American death” means.
Photo Credit: Carletta Girma
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Transcript
Kate: Hello and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Kate Spencer.
Doree: And I'm Doree Shafrir.
Kate: And we're not experts.
Doree: No, but we're two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Kate: Okay, here we go. Just put on your safety belt because here's the biz coming at you. Fast and furious.
Doree: Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready.
Kate: Our website is Forever35podcast.com. Our Instagram @Forever35podcast. You can find the Forever35 Facebook group where the password is serums. We have links to our favorite products at shopmy.us/Forever35. We have a newsletter that comes out twice a month-ish at Forever35podcast.com/newsletter. Sign up there, please send us a voicemail, a text message, a song (781) 591-0390. You can email us at Forever35podcast@gmail.com, who we also merch, which you can find at balancebound.co/shop/forever35. We have a giving circle where we are fundraising for the state of Virginia and we're doing a live show, which you can find out more about and buy tickets at moment.co/forever35.
Doree: Wow. Kate, you really nailed that.
Kate: I'm about to just give my social security number while I am at it.
Doree: Bank account info,
Kate: Shoe size. Just have it all. God have all of it. Ooh, Doree. Hello.
Doree: Hey.
Kate: Hello. You know what? I bought a hair tool. That I want to talk. I want to talk about. Yes. Okay. I have a real problem with the way in which the internet would have you believe it's easy to do your own hair.
Doree: This is true.
Kate: I'm fucking sick of watching TikToks of get ready with me and I'm going to do my hair, and then this person perfectly coughs their hair and are like, it's so easy. Here's my tutorial. And then I try to follow it and it's like it doesn't happen. It's not real. I think tutorials are one of the greatest scams of our time.
Doree: Wow. You are coming in hot.
Kate: I'm tired and so I'm angry today. Look, I have never watched a tutorial and then successfully done the thing I was tutorialed.
Doree: Okay. All right.
Kate: I don't know, maybe it's just me. People are always like, I learned this from a YouTube tutorial that it does not, that's not me. That is not how my life has lived. I have never fucking successfully done a cat eye no matter how many times I rewatch TikTok.
Doree: I disagree. I have seen your cat eye efforts and I think they've been successful.
Kate: I guess what I'm saying is I just have never seen a thing that looks really good on the internet by a quote, regular person. I'm sure they're an influencer, whatever, and been able to emulate it. We under, we've like intellectually understand that celebrities are presenting themselves in a way that is unattainable, but I also feel like the regular people we see online there, things are often also unattainable. And it's not their fault. It's just not realistic. I don't know what this soapbox is, but I, my feet are glued to it right now.
Doree: I mean, I'm into this, into, for you,
Kate: This is all to say, the reason I am Yes. Is because I have had it trying to figure out how to create waves in my hair. I, and I think my rage at the tutorial comes from how many times I have tried to use a flat iron to wave my hair and I, it's never going to happen for me. I'm just accepted the fact that this is not, it's not there. Maybe it's there for everybody else, but I'm not going to get there. My sister-in-law can do it. My sister-in-law, I was like, did you do that with a flat iron? And she was like, yeah. And look great. Not me, it's not over here, but I found a thing that wor, and I can't even use a curling iron Doree. I cannot even, sometimes I try a curling iron. It doesn't curl. And you know what I'm going to get, since I'm really ranting here, I'm going to say something else controversial.
Doree: Wow. Okay.
Kate: I don't like the Dyson air wrap curling thing.
Doree: Okay. Okay.
Kate: Doesn't work. Okay. I feel like I'm in therapy.
Doree: Wow. Okay.
Kate: So I don't know. I started to get angry about this and I was like, I, I'm going to try one more thing that I've never tried a wand. I'm going to try wands. And then I went and started looking at them and everything about every wand comes with a glove because people burn themselves.
Doree: Yeah, I had a wand for many years.
Kate: And did you burn?
Doree: T3 wand. I did burn myself. I got rid of it. I personally do not love a wand
Kate: To each their own.
Doree: Because you love a wand.
Kate: Well, I only have used this wand once.
Doree: Okay. But it was so easy and effective that I was like, I think I can talk about this now. I want to just with the caveat that if I use it again and I hate it, I'll let you all know. But I bought the Kristen Ess soft wave titanium pivoting wand.
Pivoting wand. Wow. Wand technology has really advanced
Kate: Doree. This wand bends in half.
Doree: What?
Kate: Yeah. Here I'm going to send you a link to, so you can see what this wand looks like. But basically the wand twists, so it becomes almost, it takes on a right angle, if you will, if I remember geometry correctly. Okay. Here's what it is. So the wand, you can twist it so you see it and it's straight, but you can twist it and the heated part bends down so you can hold it differently. I don't know if you just click through some of these pictures.
Doree: Okay. Let me see. Huh?
Kate: Do you see the pivot?
Doree: Okay. Oh, I do. Wow.
Kate: So I ordered this in a fit of hair curling rage. It's $70. I ordered it from Target. I got the one and a half, one and a quarter inch barrel, and I waved my hair this morning with it and it's exact, it did exactly what I wanted it to do, and I was able to use it without any, having to look at any instructions. I just took it out. I turned it on and I was like, I think I know how to use this. Wrapped my hair around the thing and it waved it and that was the end. There was no drama. There was no me trying to create a wave and it just was like a stick straight crinkle, nothing. It just did what I wanted it to do. And the pivot, the way you were able to literally bend this item in half and hold it in a different way made it so much easier to use. So
Doree: That is so interesting.
Kate: I'm a fan.
Doree: Okay. Okay. I mean, I've never seen something like this, so thank you for bringing this into my life.
Kate: You've never seen a pivoting hair tool?
Doree: No.
Kate: I feel like I saw Think the shark knock off of the Dyson also does a pivot. I think it also also kind of bends, which I think is a really cool feature. Yes, it does. The shark flex style hair. Blow dryer does a similar thing. I think I'm looking at it now. It kind of looks like it does, but maybe that's just the way the little extensions go onto it.
Doree: Wow, Okay.
Kate: Anyway. Oh no, I'm seeing other pivoting. I'm seeing other pivoting products. Looks like sharks pivot anyway. Anyway, is, so this where I landed, so I feel like I had some success after just so much frustration.
Doree: Wow. Yeah. I'm right there with you, Kate.
Kate: I know social media can be really wonderful and make things more accessible and make us feel more, we're just getting information from regular folks, but I also feel like it's made it worse for me.
Doree: Okay. That's fair. That is fair.
Kate: Okay. Deep breath. All right. How are you doing over there? Did I just set things off on kind of a heated tone?
Doree: Well, Okay. Something really funny happened this morning. Was it this morning? Was it yesterday? No, it was this morning. I don't know. I've lost track of time. I woke up and my hair was kind of parted in the middle.
Kate: Okay. Speaking of hair,
Doree: Do you see where my hair is parted right now?
Kate: Okay. Hold on. Oh yeah. You never part over there?
Doree: I never part over here.
Kate: That's nice.
Doree: Thank you.
Kate: Okay, now what are you about to tell me?
Doree: Well, It was just weird because I feel like I've tried to do a kind of, I mean, this isn't dead center because I have a cowlick, I have a widows peak dead center, so it's kind of hard to actually, but it, it's pretty centered and I feel like in the past I've never been able to part my hair in the middle. It just hasn't worked. And then suddenly I just woke up with my hair parted in the middle. I dunno. It's very strange. It's very weird.
Kate: And you like it?
Doree: I do like it.
Kate: Wow.
Doree: I don't know. Kate, is this the new me? Maybe
Kate: I like it.
Doree: Maybe the universe is finally Okay, fine. Here you go. You can part your hair in the middle.
Kate: I would love it if the universe was also a hair stylist and they were like, I just got to get down and just show Doree. The way to do it is enough of these side parts,
Doree: right?
Kate: Yeah. I mean, maybe Look, it looks great, so just roll with it.
Doree: Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, I guess I also had a hair related update today.
Kate: Yeah, you did. It's like you knew I was going to go on this rage fit.
Doree: I know. I know. I know. It's like
Kate: Did you wear it like this out in public today? I did choose to enter the world. Okay.
Doree: I did. I did. And no one gave me funny looks.
Kate: No, why would they? It looks crazy. I mean, just kidding. Just making sure. That's crazy.
Doree: Excuse me. Yeah, so that's pretty much everything that's going on in my world.
Kate: You magically woke up with a middle part.
Doree: I Magically woke up with a middle part after 45 years of my hair being parted on the side.
Kate: And you sometimes having bangs like you have.
Doree: Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I mean, as everyone knows, I tried to have bangs. I guess it was pretty much exactly a year ago, I think. And it just didn't work. I don't know if my hair texture has changed since I had a baby or what has happened or my lifestyle's different, but I was just not able to do bangs anymore. It just didn't work. So, here we are.
Kate: You know what did work. What does work?
Doree: A middle part.
Kate: Yes. A middle part.
Doree: Thank you so much, Kate. All right. Well we should introduce our guest because she's a repeat guest.
Kate: I love a repeat.
Doree: I love a repeat. Our guest today is Nicole Chung, who is the author of the new memoir, A Living Remedy, which came out at the beginning of April and the national bestseller, all You Can Ever Know, which came out in 2018. And that was when we first interviewed her on the pod. And all you can ever know was named a Best Book of the Year by over 20 outlets. It was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle Award It. It was honored up the wazoo. She is currently a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She's a time contributor. She's a slate columnist. She's born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and she now lives in the Washington DC area. And her new book is about grief. Her first book was about finding her birth family and kind of about adoption. And this is more about grief, about the deaths of her parents.
Kate: That's such a great book.
Doree: and it's really moving and really good. And it's not depressing. Did you find it depressing?
Kate: No. I mean, but I love reading about grief, but I found it to be really unifying. I don't know if that's
Doree: The right, nice way of saying it,
Kate: The right word, but it felt,
Doree: I like that.
Kate: It just felt very, it's an extremely human read about an experience that we most of us will go through in some way that is still not talked about. And I think one thing that Nicole does so well in this book is really kind of weave back and forth between the individual experience and then the systemic reasons of the way in which illness and death and grief, the ways in which they're impacted systemically by the structure of our society. And that I think is really fascinating and I just loved it. It's just such a thought. She's such a beautiful writer and a thoughtful writer. It's so great and a fun person to talk to.
Doree: Totally. Totally. Alright, so here is Nicole.
Kate: Welcome back Nicole. We're so happy to have you back on the podcast.
Nicole: Thank you. I'm thrilled to be back.
Kate: It's wild to think you were a guest on the show in 2018 because that's when all you can ever know came out.
Nicole: Yes. Yes.
Kate: And that was the first year we were doing Forever35. That just seems like it's wild how,
Nicole: I was going to say it's a testament to your show, just that you're here and going strong five years later.
Doree: Oh, thank you.
Kate: Well, that's so nice of you. Well, and it's a testament to your work as a writer that you have released another book.
Nicole: Thank you. It feels, I know five years is not actually, it sounds like a long time, but in book terms, it feels as though I've been either writing or publishing or promoting for that whole time. So to me it feels close.
Kate: Yeah. Well, and you've also been experiencing so much of this during so much of what you talk about in a Living Remedy, your new book you've been experiencing over these last five years, which we will get into. But Kim, may we start just by asking you if you have a self-care practice that you are currently enjoying that you might want to share with our audience. That can be look like anything for you. But what is self-care in Nicole's world?
Nicole: I have to give a shout out to therapy. I have been going since my father died, or at least a few months after he died, I realized I'm not doing okay. Yeah. I need more support. And that's been just incredibly helpful. Smaller things, I think I actually do a decent job now at carving out time and protecting, I guess what little free time I have, whether that's evenings with the family or weekends. A great thing I started doing for myself when my mother was sick was massage therapy. So every now and then, I had done it before, but I found, especially in flying back and forth to see her before the pandemic made that impossible. And the fact that I carry all my stress in my shoulders and neck. I was having chronic pain, which I'm kind of still dealing with. And a combination of PT and massage therapy is really what's been helpful. And it's obviously not cheap and I'm really privileged to be able to do it, but it has kept me going and kept me able to work. So a variety of therapies and then just, I don't know, some of the everyday things I think everybody does where I try to get enough sleep, I try to give myself space on the weekend when I'm not working. I watch a lot of Comfort television and just, yeah, I dunno. I wear many more soft clothes than I did before the pandemic. I have to say. I feel I've done an okay job sort of leaning into the need for comfort and self-care in a bunch of different ways.
Kate: What is your comfort TV of choice?
Nicole: Oh gosh. I mean it does tend to be somewhat escapist. I mean, I've been watching and enjoying Ted Lasso since it's back. I don't know, I really enjoy only murders in the building, so the lighter stuff, but also, I don't know, I watch a lot of masterpiece and I started watching All Creatures Great and Small, the remake, the Reboot during the Pandemic. And I don't know if either of you watch, but I call it basically it's anti anxiety medication in the form of a TV show. I just start hearing the theme and my body relaxes. And so I do watch a lot of things like that. I'm trying to think what else. My mind always goes blank when I have to come up with shows and books. I mean, I watch a lot of Star Trek, which tends to remind me of my dad, whether that's older episodes that were on when I was a kid or the recent shows, strange New Worlds and Discovery. So that's like a sampling, but it just kind of depends like what's on and what's what I'm caught up on.
Kate: This all sounds fantastic. I first just want to pull back and just note how, I love how you are both doing physical release and also the mental care. I think those two go hand in hand. Especially, I don't know if this has been part of your grieving experience, but the ways in which we physically carry grief in our bodies. That really shocked me when I first really experienced grief for the first time. And I don't know if that's something that has been part of your experience, but the physical release was as helpful as also kind of the verbal and working it through in therapy.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, just in general, I carry the memories of that time in my body Right now. It's spring, everything's blooming. We may is a hard month for me, my birthday, its mothers day and it's the month my mom died. So what used to be my favorite month is kind of a really hard one now. And all I have to do is step outside and physically I am back in that time. I just remember everything looks and smells and sounds the same, and I'm back in the spring of 2020. So I think what you're saying is definitely true, and I have found both physical and mental self-care to be really important I guess while grieving. Not that it's not important to everybody all the time.
Kate: Yeah.
Nicole: But it has been really essential for me in the last few years especially.
Doree: Well, let's talk about your new book, A Living Remedy, which Kate and I, Kate, I don't mean to speak for you, but we
Kate: No, speak for me.
Doree: We talked about this.
Kate: Speak for me. So good.
Doree: I feel okay speaking for you. We both really loved and it's such a beautiful book and such a wonderful companion to your first memoir. But for the benefit of our listeners, could you just tell us a little bit about the book and I guess also how you came to see your parents' deaths as part of a larger issue of systemic inequality, especially with regards to healthcare?
Nicole: Sure I mean. So for readers who aren't familiar, which I assume might be most with my first book, I mean it was very, all you can ever know was very focused on my adoption story growing up as a translational adoptee and my search for my birth family and what I discovered in that search. I don't think of a living remedy as a sequel, but I think you're right that it's a companion story. And initially the book has changed so much since I first sold it. At the time I sold it, my mother was not only still alive, but she did not have a terminal diagnosis yet.
Doree: Wow.
Nicole: And so I envisioned this book as focusing on my grief from my father and also my mother. That story, it was going to be a story that was really about our shared grief and about some of the things we were grappling with, which included anger and just deep sadness about how and when and why we lost him because his death was really sped by financial precarity, by lack of access to healthcare for many years. So I did already even at that earlier stage, envision it as a story that was going to have to confront healthcare inequality. And it was part of the reason why we lost him at 67. But I didn't know that my mother was going to get a terminal cancer diagnosis a few months after I sold it. And when she did, everything changed. And it feels a little strange to say everything changed for us because it did. But of course the world also changed because she was battling cancer had actually just started, made the decision to enter hospice care when the pandemic hit. And during this time I was not writing and I was unsure I would ever be able to get back to the book or finish it at all. It was really not top of mind. It wasn't a high priority at that time, as you can imagine. But when I started working on it again, and it was probably a good six months after she passed away in the spring of 2020, it was really daunting to think about obviously writing a book about losing both of them because I had not imagined that would happen. And I had not imagined that I would be trying write about it when it was still so fresh. And at the same time, once I was able to write again, I think in some ways I wouldn't say it was therapeutic. I don't really find writing to be therapeutic or cathartic, particularly when it's for public consumption, I should say. I journal. And that is very much for me, and that can be really cathartic. But a book is something very different. I was curious to see if I could write a story about my grief that really took these issues head on the systemic issues that you mentioned in the book, and that could maybe matter to other people, particularly other people grieving because it felt like everyone I knew was grieving at that point in the pandemic. And I mean, to some degree it feels like we still are. Whether we're grieving someone or something, there was so much loss and there was a lot of disappointment and in some ways it can feel unacknowledged or unseen. But I honestly didn't know I could write it till I just started again and I started from the beginning with my mothers and my relationship really at the heart of the book in a way. Well, it always had been, but I think it obviously changed a lot from what I initially envisioned. So this isn't the book I thought I would write, but I think just by giving myself a lot of care and time and patience, it became the book it needed to be.
Kate: Ooh, wow. I have so many thoughts, so many follow up questions and things that are standing out to me from your book. I wanted to kind of touch on a moment where you have a friend after a few weeks after your father died, a friend who calls your father's death a common American death. And that has really stayed with me. And I believe in the context of the conversation, they were speaking about one of their parents also, that they had both had this kind of experience and I interpreted it as they weren't talking about the illness, it was the way in which financial insecurity and the lack of access impacts our health in the ways in which illness has the outcomes of illnesses. So I wanted to get your perspective on this. How did you hear it when your friend mentioned this and how did this idea of a common American death kind of resonate with you or guide you writing this kind of larger story?
Nicole: So it was interesting because as soon as my friend said that, and I didn't write this in the book, but she kind of saw my face and apologized. I think she thought, she worried she'd hurt my feelings and she didn't. It was actually one of those light bulb moments for me. Not to put it too simplistically, but I was really struggling in the wake of my father's death. And I was wrestling with a lot of self blame because in this country, speaking of systemic issues, basically we're all kind of left on our own with whatever resources we have or don't have to meet these types of crises and these medical emergencies, not just when they happen to us, but when they happen to people we love, there's this real focus on individual responsibility. And I know as an only child and only daughter, I felt a lot of that and a lot of self blame for what I wasn't able to do. I could not save my father. And I've been wrestling with that for weeks. And when she said it's such a common American death, it wasn't that I hadn't thought about the systemic failures. It wasn't that I hadn't thought about the many points at which my parents tried and failed to access some kind of safety net, whether that was healthcare or other forms of public assistance. But it was just a crystallizing moment. And I think it actually helped me begin to stop blaming myself for these things that none of us really had control over in the end. Because unless you are fantastically wealthy in this country and you know, live maybe near your parents or can move them to you, and everybody is insured, unless all of these things fall into place, this is how we're forced to weather emergencies. This is the system we're left with. Yeah, I knew I'd grown up in this family where it was depen, our stability was dependent on everything going, and I saw what happened when things began to go wrong. But there was still so much responsibility I felt as my parents only child, as someone who loved them of course, and wanted things to be okay. So that moment was actually huge for me. And I don't know if it's when I started thinking about this book, but I know when I was working on the proposal, it kept coming back to me. So it was just a really clarifying moment in terms of figuring out what this book would be and what issues it had to tackle. I knew it wasn't just a grief story, even though it is very much that there was this other part that I really couldn't avoid even if I wanted to, because it was bound up so closely in my grief from my father, in my mother's grief. For him, it was going to be something that I would need to talk and write about.
Kate: Okay. Well let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Doree: You know, you alluded a little bit earlier in our conversation to having anger. And I'm wondering, could you talk a little bit about how to navigate grief when you also feel anger?
Nicole: Such a good question and it's such a hard one, and I know it's probably different for everybody. In my case, I expected anger to be part of grief. I mean, everyone talks about it as a stage, right? But I hadn't expected to feel so much anger with myself. And then even when that began to lessen, I'm still living with this rage at the systems that failed my parents. And not just because they failed them, but because they have failed so many and they continue to every day. We have seen every day of this pandemic. And that's just a truth that you can't get away from. So it is hard because I don't see it. We don't see the change, we don't see people getting what they need. We don't see people getting the support and the resources they need and not being betrayed or abandoned by these systems. And it is, it's extremely hard, I think to process as part of my grief. I don't want to say it helps to know that it's a common story because of course I wish it weren't. But at the same time, just realizing that this is a systemic problem in this country that we of course weren't the first to experience it and won't be the last. It's not reassuring at all, but it has helped me see again, these things are not my parents' fault. I'm not responsible for what they were up against. It is still, it can be our job and our responsibility and our privilege even to get to try to take care of ourselves and our loved ones despite these failing systems. And I suppose what I'm left with is I don't see their story as hard as it is as some American tragedy. That's not how I think about their lives. When I think of my parents, I think of their story as one of resistance and one of resilience and one of love. And so I try to remember that too, that is part of this. Even if I wish that things had gone very differently for both of them, even if I wish I'd been able to do more, I know their story is also more than a tragedy. And the same is true of everyone who gets sick or dies in this country without the help they need and deserve.
Kate: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that because I do think, I know personally, I can get very bogged down in my own anger about the ways in which the healthcare system and the inequity on all on so many different systemic levels impacts not just our survival, but our access to grief in many ways. And that's something I was left thinking about a lot in reading your book, is that grief is this really vital thing that we have a right to access. And oftentimes I feel like the kind of systemic issues prevent us from getting there, or it takes almost longer to get to our grieve or not. I mean, we can grieve at the same time, but there's a lot of obstacles that are set up in our way.
Nicole: Yeah, no, that's very true. I mean, I have this line in the book and I didn't know it was going to be quoted so often, but I keep seeing it show up in coverage. It's just like after my father's death, I'm back at work after a week and trying to keep all the balls in the air and also do all the parenting things and the volunteer things. And the line is something like I'm an expert at grieving under capitalism.
Kate: Ooh, Yeah.
Nicole: And the truth is, it was harder than I even realized at the time. It was destroying me really in many ways to keep going to not have time or space to grieve and in a very different way. I remember feeling that when my mother was sick, and there was of course this focus on helping her and helping her manage her care, but also anticipatory grief because I knew she was dying. I knew we weren't going to have much longer, and I remember wanting to take family leave and realizing there's no way I could possibly take unpaid leave right now because I was also financially supporting my mother. She couldn't work and social security was not going to cover all of her living expenses. And so I was so grateful to be able to do that for her. But I mean, there was no way for me to take a break, even as managing her care became kind of another job. And I just remember feeling, again, this is something I'm just going to have to kind of like it's you white knuckle through. But I knew it wasn't good or healthy. I knew it wasn't ideal. It wasn't what I would've chosen, but it was our reality.
Doree: I read a piece you wrote for, I think it was Harper's Bizarre about allowing your children to feel sadness. And it really spoke to me and I was hoping we could talk a little bit about why is it important to allow them to have those feelings and why does it raise all these complicated feelings in us.
Nicole: Yeah. So I started thinking about that, that Harper's piece because I have a teenager who asked to read my book and she's read a lot of things that I've written, but I found myself hesitating and I realized it was because there's this one particular chapter where I write about my deep depression after my father died. And I was just like, I don't know, that's going to be so much for her to read about. Not that she doesn't know about depression, not that she doesn't know about mental health struggle. It's something we've talked about a lot, I think, especially during the pandemic. But to take it and make it very personal and to read about your mother being so despondent, I was really worried about, and it made me think about and realize I do have this tendency as a parent, despite my better intentions when they're sad, I find myself wanting to of course, comfort and maybe sometimes offer advice or just think of something that we can do together. I want to reassure them. Sure. And that I understand that's maybe it's an understandable instinct. I think it's when a lot of parents feel that urge to comfort and protect, but there are so many things in this world that they already know about and are already dealing with that we can't protect them from. And what they do need to know is it's okay to have their feelings, even really hard feelings, and that isn't something they need to protect us or other people from. So that's where that essay came from was just like, I think I knew this intellectually, again, thank you therapy, but having it actually play out in with my kids is hard because I still, especially after three years of pandemic, of course you want to comfort, of course you want to protect and you want to assure them it's all going to be all right, but that's just not something that is always true. What is true and what's valid is how they feel. So that's something that I think I'm still really working on as a parent. It's just balancing that urge to protect with honesty, emotional honesty.
Kate: Yeah.
Doree: I mean that feels like one of the fundamental challenges of parenthood.
Nicole: Yeah, sure.
Kate: It also reminds me of a moment in your book where it kind of dawns on you that your mom is trying to protect you as she's dying. And just that parallel of being a parent and being the child and have, having those things kind of happen, those roles play out simultaneously. That's an and really profound, I it, it almost sounds like you were experiencing similar instincts at the same time from your positions as a parent. And that's just, I dunno, blows my mind.
Nicole: One of those things that I thought would be an important thing to include in the book is as you grow up as a child, you sometimes step into more of a parenting or at least a caregiving role with your own parents, but you are still their child and it's actually can be a very hard adjustment for them and for you to figure out a new dynamic. And with my mom and me, we were still muddling our way through after my dad had died. She was diagnosed a year, year and a half after he passed away. And we hadn't yet really figured out what that relationship was going to be when she got sick, so we're trying to figure out and have these hard conversations and talk about hard but necessary things, her advanced directives and her final wishes and her will, these things that of course neither one of us wanted to talk about. But it was still so important to try while we could. And it was a really hard thing to negotiate. And I do think one time, one of her closest friends in Oregon said to me, well, you're still our kids no matter how old you get and we still want to protect you. And I realized that was some of what she was doing. Some of it was being overwhelmed, some of it was her own fear, and that's totally understandable. But some of it was like, I think her not wanting me to be the person who had to deal with it, even though I was the one who was left. And I was the only person really who could deal with some of it. And I wanted to be able to do that for her. But I think it was hard for her to have me step into that role, a new role when she still saw me fundamentally as her child.
Kate: Yeah. That really, that kind of shift in relationship is really challenging to navigate. And I have a lot of peers who have found that kind of conversation with their parents to be really challenging. A lot of our parents don't want to have these conversations about advanced directives and what happens and how we're going to their finances and all these things. It helps hearing that perspective, thinking of it from their perspective, because I only see it as the adult child now, but this is tough stuff to navigate.
Nicole: It's really difficult. I mean, I don't know if this is getting too in the weeds, but I remember when I was trying to convince my father to have advanced directives and he was very ill for years, it was extremely important that he had those. I tried to set an example. I was like, look, I'm doing my advanced directives. I'll update them later. You can always update them. But I was like, this is a thing that is good to do even before you get sick or before you get old. It's important for anyone. And I don't know, I did the same thing with making a will. He did not want to do that. It's not that I was also doing it because I genuinely think it's a good thing, but I was trying to show this isn't just because you're sick or I'm not trying to interfere or nag, but I think these are good things for anybody to be doing and better now than if you do get some kind of terminal diagnosis. As I saw that later with my mother, it was just really hard to have those discussions when we were living with this knowledge that she was going to die soon. And I kept thinking how it would never have been easy, but God, it would've been easier like five years earlier or 10 years earlier to have these things done. But she was an adult and it was her decision to engage with that or not. I understand. It was really hard to have to do it under duress.
Doree: Yeah. I'm just thinking about that. There's that really poignant moment after your grandmother dies and your mother is kind of like, I wasn't ready for her to go. And your grandmother was 96? I mean she was objectively old, but I think that was just really struck me because your mother by that point was pretty sick and was also mourning her mother and yeah, it was really powerful.
Kate: I went through a similar experience, Nicole, where my mom's mom died six weeks before she did at 92 or 93 and was mourning her. And I was just, it's such a fucked up thing to watch your parents. Grieve their parents while you're grieving your parent who's dying. And yes, you're like, what is happening? But I think that actually that must happen more than I think I've realized.
Nicole: That's why I remember telling her, she was like, I guess this is how you feel. And I was like, she was 96. I'm way more pissed, I think, than you are. I mean, not to compare. It's obviously a very deep grief that you're feeling and I get that and I share it. But I mean, the other thing about losing a grandparent right before a parent is that it's very hard for me to separate. Sometimes I feel like I didn't get to grieve my grandmother at all because I was entirely wrapped up in my mother at that time. But it felt so wrong because my grandmother helped raise me. We were very close. And yet because she died four weeks before my mom, and also because she died in April, early April, 2020 when we couldn't have any funerals, nobody could even be present at her burial. That was the stage of the pandemic we were in. My mother and her sister got to visit her grave after and leave flowers and that was all they could do. And I just feel like there's all this unprocessed grief that I know I feel or felt, but it just, it's impossible to separate it from the grief from my mother. And it was something we didn't get to experience as a family together because of the pandemic.
Kate: I want to be conscious of your time, but I did want to just ask something. I wanted to just note something that I really stood out to me in the book and just get your thoughts and the experience you were discussing your parents'. Faith is big part of their story, I think. And I thought it was really interesting how you noted how even though your relationship to your own faith and religious upbringing had changed, how it could reemerge and reappear in ways that you didn't expect or didn't even plan on having almost like it was laying innate and then would kind of pop up. And I think that must be something that is very relatable for many people. And I just wanted to hear a little bit more about that experience for you.
Nicole: Sure. So I mean there's this moment during my father's funeral and burial, which because it was 2018 and not a pandemic, I was able to physically be there. And I mean, my mother was incredibly devout and she said something to me, I was crying when we went up to say final goodbyes. And she said, don't despair. This is our hope in the resurrection. And I was not, at that point, had not been a regular church goer for some years. I have a pretty complicated sometimes fraught relationship with my childhood religion, but it's still, I cannot deny there is some sort of hold. It will always have on me. I think because I associate it so strongly with my mother and how she raised me, her teaching me to pray the rosary when I was growing up and her saying, if you're ever anxious, you just pray Hail Marys I, I'd still do that. Yeah. And I don't know, these things are just deeply ingrained. It's somewhere deeper even than it almost doesn't matter what I believe because it's so ingrained. But yeah, I don't know. So I was just a little bit surprised. I can't pretend I know where my parents are. I was not comforted in the way my mother was after my father died. She was just very sure that he was in heaven and she would be with him. And I was so glad she felt that, and I didn't know how I felt, but there was still, her faith was somehow still a comfort to me, if that makes sense. And I realized if I could, I'd really want to be as sure as she is. I understand why. It's a comfort. And I guess another reason I wanted to write about it in the book, despite my general trepidation about writing about religion at all, I just feel I don't have any answers was because I saw how much their small religious community really meant to them. They stepped in and became their family in so many ways. They were able to be there at times. I couldn't be everything from when I wrote in the book, when my father's mobility declined. It was a parishioner who was a contractor who made their home accessible. He built ramps and put in railings, and the same person made my father's casket after he passed away and wouldn't let my mother pay him. Everybody brought a dish to share at his reception when my mother was dying, she was visited really faithfully by some of her best friends and her priest and everyone would come masked, but they came and it was just hugely important and it would've been so much harder for her and for me if she hadn't had that community. So yeah, nobody referred to what they were doing as mutual aid, but I mean that's what it was. Even when my parents were struggling financially, it was their friends who took up a collection for them because nobody had a lot and nobody had what they needed, but everybody had a little to give. That was very moving to me. So I was really so thankful that even though I couldn't be with her due to the pandemic, she was never alone unless she wanted to be in her final weeks. So I felt it wouldn't have been right to not acknowledge that and what her community did for her.
Kate: Wow. This is such an important book and so personal with your story, but I think just connects to what so many of us have experienced and will experience. So I know it really resonated with both of us, Nicole. So thank you for writing it. That's really wonderful.
Nicole: Well, thank you both so much for spending time with it and inviting me back. I'm really glad we got to talk today.
Kate: Likewise. Where can folks find you and find your work? A Living Remedy is out now, so they can get that anywhere. They get books as well as your first memoir. But where else can we hear from you?
Nicole: So I am still on Twitter, although the reason why, I mean, it just seems stranger to me every day. So I'm on Twitter and Instagram and pretty much every other platform actually at the same handle, which is NicoleSJChung. And yeah, I mean, those are probably the best places to connect with me online. Oh, I'm also in the middle of a book tour, so if people want to check my website for upcoming events, I would love to see folks that in person or virtual events.
Kate: Well, thank you so much. It was really great to get to talk to you again.
Nicole: Thank you. This was my pleasure.
Kate: Well, I really loved our conversation.
Doree: Me too.
Kate: And I love mean, guess. It's weird to say I love talking about grief, but I'm just so glad these conversations exist, that people are writing these books and reading and receiving them. And it just feels like even 16 years ago when my mom died, I don't remember these kind of books existing. So I'm just so grateful. Well, I did intend this week to sit in the outdoor world.
Doree: And how did that go?
Kate: I did do it. I did read a book outside.
Doree: Okay, Look at you.
Kate: I know. It was great. And now it's going to rain tomorrow, but that's okay still. And I also went through, the other thing that I'm trying to do is also remember to care for my outdoor space. So I went and filled all my bird feeders and I watered my outdoor plants, and I just kind of said hi to everybody on the patio.
Doree: I love that. I love that.
Kate: And this week, my intention is something that just kind of happened organically yesterday while I was playing. I was playing pickleball. My, I take a lesson with three other people once a week and I love it. And I just decided, as I was playing yesterday, I decided I'm good at this. I just decided that's going to be how I think of myself now is that I'm good at this because I am in every corner of my life filled with negative self-thought. Like I'm a big negative self talker. I'm a big putter downer. I'm a bit big self-deprecate. Look, we've dealt with this before, and I was kind of like, what if I changed my perspective? And it wasn't like I'm new and learning and I don't know what I'm doing. And I make a lot of mistakes too. I'm good at pickleball. Like, oh, I made a mistake. No. Oh, well, it doesn't matter. I mean, I'm good at it. So whatever.
Doree: Yeah,
Kate: I don't know. I Doree, I had this weird moment where I was like, this is just,
Doree: Oh my Gosh,
Kate: A decision I've made. I'm good at this. So now I'm going to try to apply that to other parts of my life.
Doree: I love that.
Kate: I'll keep you posted on how it goes because dot dot dot seems like easier so than done. But I'm excited to try.
Doree: I'm excited for you. This is so cool.
Kate: All right. You've been decluttering up a storm. That was where your intention landed last week. Talk to me about where you are.
Doree: Yes. Okay, so it's going really well. I did, I got a rolling three drawer plastic thing to keep art supplies and some other stuff in. And I don't know if I love it. I might be rethinking what I put in that corner and how I have him store some art stuff and some other stuff. I've seen some other storage solutions that I think might work better. So I'm going to explore that. But it's going really well. I think he's much happier. I'm going to tackle his bedroom this week, but that is not my intention. So this is airing on May 10th, which is my sister's birthday. Happy birthday, Karen.
Kate: Oh, happy birthday, Karen.
Doree: And my birthday is airing, my birthday's airing. My birthday is the day before our next episode airs. So my birthday is in this week, within this week of intentions. And a, I'm just going to try to kind of roll with it.
Kate: How are you feeling? How is the birthday stuff feeling?
Doree: Well, I'm throwing myself a little party.
Kate: Go on.
Doree: I'm feeling good about that. I believe you're coming.
Kate: I'm going to try to make it, I feel like I can just see what else is on my calendar and then decide if that's like where I want to be.
Doree: Wow, okay.
Kate: I'm there with bells on, with big old bells.
Doree: Yes, Big old bells. So yeah. So I'm looking forward to celebrating my birthday with some friends. Henry also knows that it's my birthday coming up.
Kate: Oh, no. That's going to be so cute.
Doree: Which is really cute. And he loves birthdays and they like play birthday at school and they, they're very into birthdays. So I'm curious to see how that goes. So yeah, that's what I got going on this week.
Kate: Well, happy birthday to you, my friend.
Doree: Thank you so much.
Kate: I am excited to celebrate you.
Doree: Thank you.
Kate: And of course, we're going to be celebrating you at our live show.
Doree: Oh yeah. Duh. I hope everyone can come.
Kate: Let's not forget,
Doree: Let's not forget
Kate: Were going to, let's we're going to, going to birthday Toast Doree.
Doree: Ugh. Thank you, Kate. That's exciting. All right. Well, Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Kate Spencer. Produced and edited by Sam Junio. Semi Reed is our project manager, our network partner is Acast. And I'll talk to you soon.
Kate: Thanks for listening.
Doree: Bye.