Own Your Grief with Marianna Torgovnick

Ian Hawkins 0:02

Are you ready, ready to release internal pain to find confidence, clarity and direction for your future, to live a life of meaning, fulfillment and contribution to trust your intuition again, but something's been holding you back. You've come to the right place. Welcome. I'm a Ian Hawkins, the host and founder of The Grief Code podcast. Together, let's heal your unresolved or unknown grief by unlocking your grief code. As you tune into each episode, you will receive insight into your own grief, how to eliminate it and what to do next. Before we start by one request. If any new insights or awareness land with you during this episode, please send me an email at info at the and Hawkins coaching.com. And let me know what you found. I know the power of this work. I love to hear the impact these conversations have. Okay, let's get into it.

Welcome, everyone, and welcome to this week's guests. Marianna De Marco Torgovnick, Marianna how are you?

Marianna De Marco Torgovnick 1:11

I'm fine. How are you, Ian?

Ian Hawkins 1:13

Very good, thank you. Now you've written a lot of books. But at the moment, you've got a Well, you said it's probably been out for a little while now. But you've got a new book, which is where this conversation was instigated because it's very much around elements of grief. Right? Crossing back. Right? Love the title crossing back books, family and memory without pain. Yes. Tell me a little bit about the book. Sounds amazing.

Marianna De Marco Torgovnick 1:39

Yeah. Well, it actually is a sequel to another book that I wrote, when I was quite a bit younger in my early 30s, mid, maybe mid 30s. And I was writing about having grown up as an Italian American woman in Brooklyn, that may not mean much in Australia. But in in, in New York, it was a specific kind of social coding and Italian American women were not expected to have professional ambitions and were expected at most to be typists or receptionists. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But there was a kind of funneling. And the book is about ending up as a college professor. And doing that, in part by marrying into a Jewish family, which had a very different set of values. And not that I wouldn't have become who I became without them. But I entered it a sort of a different social media. So this that was a book about crossing from one social class to another social class, one kind of social status to another social status, one psychic status to another psychic status. And it was also about the death of my first child in infancy when I was directing my first job as Professor Williams College, kind of very Tony, New England College. So as I was finishing that book, my father died. But that was a coincidence. So my son's death, my father's death. So I suppose it wasn't it wasn't a memoir about grief. But it was a memoir about life transitions. And so when my mother died, and that was it, it was just it was it took me by surprise, how. And I wouldn't say I was in grief, I'd say I was in denial of grief. For for a while. And it was it wasn't denial that she had died. But I was fine. I was just, I was just. But I was also I also moved like three times. In two years. I was fighting with my husband a lot. And we'd been married a really long time. I was just like a restless soul. And I didn't know what that was about. So I started writing a little bit about it. I started reading books, because that's the kind of person I am, I was reading classics. But at the time, I thought I was writing a book about reading the classics. And then I say no, but she kept talking about me and my mother and my brother who died within a year of my mother. And you know, what was that about? And as I began to put it all together, I realized that it was narratively a little bit of a mess at that point. But also, then the thread was crossing back, and it was a sequel to this earlier book. And once I got hold of that, and eliminated all of the extraneous material, I'm a writer, so the form of the book began to emerge. And that was it. And I still didn't think of it as a grief memoir. But I thought of it as a book about some things I had learned in the process of Have of owning grief. Since I did not want to own grief, I'm Italian American, I thought it was shameful to own grief. But in the process of owning grief, I discovered some things and I thought that I wanted to pass them on. So that was the origin of this book, which is, it's a, I hope, a very accessible book. It's written in chapters that can be individually digested. And you know, it refers to a lot of other books, but it's not in an academic way. It's in a very person to person kind of way.

Ian Hawkins 5:38

Love it on. Personally, I find those the easiest reading books. Yeah, yeah. There's so much to unpack there. And we'll get through all of it. The bit that I'm just drawn to then. Like, it's got so much personal meaning through this book, like, and you talked about, I wanted to pass it on. So is that part of the passion around the book is to be able to share that knowledge for people who are going through similar experiences?

Marianna De Marco Torgovnick 6:04

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I didn't, I thought about, I thought about is this a self help book. And I didn't really think it was a self help book, it was a book for me. And writing was helpful for me. But at some point, I became aware that what I had to say might be helpful to other people. For example, one of the things that I talked about quite a lot in this book, and it rubbed one particular reader the wrong way. And I thought, Oh, that is you're wrong to be rubbed lady. Like, I talk a lot about yoga and meditation. Now, I had done yoga for a long time, physical yoga. But after my mother died, I one of the crazy things I thought of because you do think of crazy things. Oh, what do I do, I say, I'll move three times is one of the things I do and what I've one point I thought, I'm sorry, I have short arms, I have short legs. I'm not a yoga body. But at one point, I thought, Oh, I'll learn I'll do teacher training and yoga. And I was I was writing something in my mind that was called The Reluctant yogi. And so and that wound up getting folded in here. But one of the things I do in this book is to describe some yoga techniques of meditation. I mean, this is not a book about how to do physical poses. But there are some meditation techniques that are talked about, which I found very helpful. And after my mother and brother died, I started meditating, pretty much 18 minutes every day. And it just changes your perspective. I understood why. Because it's putting in the same way that the other things I was doing, was putting you in a long perspective, which made you get out of your own perspective, and made you realize that not so much that this has happened to other people before, although it certainly has, but that there's a, there's a kind of context, it's not just you. And it's not just this moment, and you can observe yourself in the moment. And there's something not inherently comforting about that. But it's a start to be able to look at it. In yoga, it's sometimes called the witness mind. And it detaches you from your grief doesn't tell you, you're wrong to grieve. But it gives you an angle on your grief that you might not have had before.

Ian Hawkins 8:28

Love that. Yeah. So that being able to detach yourself from the grief is so powerful for me, meditation was like a lifesaver for me going through as well for exactly what you just said, you're able to detach from it long enough to be able to get some make some sense of it and some awareness around it. So can you explain a little bit more about how that played out for you? Because I know there'd be other people listening? Who might have thought about meditation, they're not sure of it, but haven't really seen the benefits of it.

Marianna De Marco Torgovnick 8:57

Yeah. Well, it's the, the first key to it is breathing, and recognizing your breath. And I teach college. And I sometimes do this with students when we're in a stressful moment. And you know, just the simplest thing is to just breathe in really, really deeply, really deeply, really slowly through your nose, and hold your breath. And then breathe out very, very slowly through your nose. And if you repeat that twice, you immediately begin to understand that there's a kind of calming function that goes with the breath. In the yogurt, I talk a little bit in this book about different yoga traditions. And I'm not big on a B, in part because I'm not physically adept at yoga. I'm not big on traditions like Ashtanga where you have to be very buff to do it. I do do physical yoga every day. But for me, the most important part of yoga is the meditation. So you do the breath you And then if you continue to do the breath, and you can just focus on the breath, and you can do it just for a couple of minutes if you want, that's it. Or you can imagine, some traditions like to imagine a candle in front of you. And imagine that you can actually have a candle in front of you if you'd like. The tradition I use, does mantra of which are sound things, very simple ones, you can do just ohm Shanthi, we're just ohm or nothing, if you want. And then it's like, the effect is a little bit like for people who pray in church, it's like praying in church or chanting or Gregorian chants. After a while your mind begins to steal. And when your mind begins to steal, it just opens up and you begin to connect to larger perspectives. And that sounds very mystical. And people don't believe it. But I've gone to a lot of yoga classes, a lot of meditation classes, and one of my favorite stories. There's, it's this is not my major studio, but there's a school called integral yoga, which is very, very gentle and very, very, on egotistical. And they had a studio which has since been demolished. The ever present New York condo, but we did a yoga session, we came with a meditation session, we came out of there, and there was a guy who had never been there before. And he said, Man, that was weird. It's like my grandmother was there. She probably

Yeah, I think it's important to mention at that point that not everyone's first meditation experience is like that. But I think the you touched on something that's really important for people just starting out is the breath,

the breath, and you have to you have to kind of relax into it. My first meditation experience was by accident, I got the time of a regular classroom. And I went and I was listening to his yoga teacher. And I thought, oh, yeah, oh, sure. And then he came around, and you know, put his he put your hand over your forehead to sort of intensify the medication. And I started crying. And I wasn't in especially in a grief moment, then I started crying. And that doesn't usually happen. But it sometimes does. And you know, you just don't know. But I know I think meditation is a really, really major tool. Yeah, for anyone really, but especially in grief situations.

Yeah. 100%. Well said, Thank you for sharing that part of the story. So this, this current book, I think a lot of us when we start that intention of helping people, we may not, depending on how we come out, we may not realize it, but ultimately it ends up being very cleansing for ourselves. So is that being the case for every book that you've written? Because how many books have you written now?

I have to count, I would say I've published about eight. Yeah, I have two that are sitting in my computer right now. And they're both novels. So that's another new departure for me. Yeah. But that eight, and one very kind critic a while ago now said that my describe one of my favorite books, which is called Gone primitive, as a as a kind of gift to my own culture. And I guess I, you know, whether it is or not, I really valued that. And I thought, Man, that's great if you can give a gift. So I've always kind of had that in the back of my head, that, you know, academics can write books for each other, but why bother? And so I've always tried to write for some kind of general public and I enjoy it when a book gets the attention in the world.

So we use a bit more specific around crossing back your most recent book, if you like, if you're looking at it from that perspective of being a gift, what what are some of those moments that you talk about in there that are from a very personal nature? And how what what are you able to learn through that process that that you can pass on to other people about about dealing with that sort of grief? Yeah, but particularly what you said about your mom about that been quite a shock to the system.

Yeah, that was a shock to the system. My mother was had that was one of these women who was so strong, the word always used about my mother was strong. And when she was 90, she, there were very sudden, very subtle signs. Like she didn't want to cook three courses of Sunday dinner anymore, no things like that. And by 91, it was clear she was anemic. And then of course, it turned into colon cancer. And she was still extremely healthy and very vital. They did surgery for colon cancer, and she had a stroke right afterwards. And it was a short period, maybe three, four weeks of the the aftermath of the stroke, which is a very emotional thing. So if you hear a motion in my voice, it's because it'll be It's an emotional thing. And then she died. And it was it was my mother died. And how could that be? And here's the moment of, you know, oh my god, I guess that means I'm next in line as people cheerfully tell you on these occasions. But also, I there wasn't was there unresolved stuff with my mother. I guess there was I like many people, I took her for granted. You know, I did my weekly phone call, I kind of call mom and how my mother was Italian about how the tomatoes this year, you know, cooking and a house, house house and this house and that. But the deeper conversations rather rarely happened with my mother. And there was deep stuff in her life. I can come to that later. But the one of the things that I think would be useful for your listeners, is that I learned that it was not just my mother's death. And not just my brother's death, I had a much more ambiguous kind of relationship with my brother. But it's, again, it's a shock when your only sibling dies, because now your birth family is gone. Oh, my God. But I also learned that I had never really processed my infant son's death, when I was quite a bit younger. And, you know, life had gone on, I had two daughters, I had a career I still married to the same man. It wasn't something that I thought about all the time. But it was also something I had never processed. And so it was like all this stuff was just kind of sitting in my, in my psyche, waiting to overtake me. And it did. And so I writing about that you have to, when you're writing, you're kind of you're putting together the pieces you're detaching the strands. So, I mean, something that people do is to write, whether they're not going to publish, whether they're going to publish it or not. And just doing just the act of detaching the strands, whether mentally or in words can be a very helpful thing. Because it can help you see where some of this is coming from. Now with my mother, I had a certain amount of guilt as well that to say guilt, oh my gosh, guilt. When my mother was going to have her colon surgery, I hope I don't get checked out but it's on not you're not gonna see me crying, folks, you might just hear a little choking up in the voice. The when my mother was having her colon surgery, my mother's internet is 90 English now young woman. I had I was supposed to be giving a keynote address at a conference in Bologna. And that was that very day, that very day. And my brother didn't want her to have the surgery. Her late life partner did want her did not want her to have the surgery. My sorry, my brother did want her to have surgery. My her late life partner did not. And it would have been more convenient for me if she didn't, but I said oh, no, she has to have the surgery because my brother said so. And then it had these really disastrous consequences. I told myself, I wasn't going to go to the lung. She said I should go. Just come back. You know, when when, you know, three days later, no big deal. She said I should go. And I persuaded myself that it would be a sign of bad faith if I didn't go. And so I you know, she got through the surgery, I saw her in recovery. I talked to the doctor, I took the taxi to JFK airport, I got to Bologna, I think there was a message from my husband saying my mother had had a stroke. You know, man, so there was a lot of guilt about that. And also, while I was gone, my brother, let them start giving her a feeding tube, which I knew she wouldn't have wanted. And I had, in fact written of late an end of life directive for her and my father, which my brother didn't know about. And had I been there, I would have said no, she didn't want that. And the whole thing would have been over more quickly, which I think is what she wanted. But you know, again, so there was guilt. And you know, you have to you have to

you know, you can't control things. And when you're a writer, you can control what's going to come out on the page, you can edit it, when you're a podcaster you can control how it comes out, you edit it, life does not allow those that editing it just

100% and I think well, no, I think I know that no matter what circumstances there's always an element of guilt. There's always a part of us that has that feeling like well, what if I did this differently? What if I said this? Or what if

a parent? I mean, my mother was a woman who was born in the United States and then sent back to rural Calabria where she lived until she was 16. And we're gonna she didn't she didn't really read English. She didn't she never really um, she spoke English very well. But she never she never. She never she, she she still when she was going to have surgery. She asked my brother, what do you think, you know, so what we said really counted for her. You know?

I'm drawn to that. When they call I'm gonna do the name wrong, blue, blue sky blue spots are something different parts of the world where, where people live to an older age, and there was a particular Italian community in the US. Rosetta, I think it was. And they were talking about because the prioritizing family unit prioritizing community so that what they ate had less of an impact than then that sense of community. So, to me, what that says there is that strong sense of community from your mother was no coincidence that she's lived to that age, if that was kind of a big driver fee. Yeah, well,

there was a lot of longevity in her family, her father had lived to 105, all of her siblings lived into their 9697. So you need to kind of assume, Oh, well, this will go on forever. Which is why it was kind of shocking when my brother died at 63. We both thought we had these longevity genes, but maybe not.

Yeah. You mentioned something there that that I really want to highlight. And not just because you're a writer, but because I just know the power of it. Now, I'm a massive proponent of journaling, because I know the impact of getting the thoughts out of your head. And for me, it was writing as well as like, that's where all my unresolved stuff came to the surface was like I was going through this process that I'd been taught by a mentor at the time, like letters of forgiveness around just getting all that stuff out. And for the for the listeners, if you're going through, or still going through any sort of grief or guilt or shame, or either things that Marianne has mentioned, taking pen to paper is such a powerful act. And who knows, maybe, maybe it does turn into something bigger if if, if it lights a fire within you as well. But ultimately, the main thing is around the healing process that you described. So yeah, thank you so much for sharing that because it is it is something that I know will be beneficial to many people. So you start getting it out, you start to realize you've got all this other stuff going on. That's below the surface. You mentioned your, your infant son. So how old were you when that happened? And like you said, like you didn't really like what many if you could share a little bit about what that was like if that's okay.

Because it was, it's interesting, because I got married very young. And I, my husband, I did not have children immediately. And then when we decided to have a child, it was very easy conception. And, you know, first child was a boy. And everything seems to be fine, except that he had a heart defect. And they they diagnosed it maybe on the third day that he was alive. And there again, there's a little bit of guilt because I kind of pointed out to their spine, these heartbeats really fast and loud. And she said, Oh, baby's heartbeat, but then they did further tests. And there was a what they thought was a hole in the heart, which was turned out not to be the case. At any rate, I was 28, which in retrospect, seems young, but I felt like oh, my God, when he died, like, oh, like life is over. And then of course, I couldn't conceive and I just, I just couldn't conceive because I was so stressed out and had a miscarriage. And then finally had, like, my daughter was born. But you know, it's painful to those children.

I can't imagine how tough but I have spoken to people who have and, and it's it's just something that the sense I get is it's something that's not meant to happen. You're not meant to outlive, you know,

I mean, but still, you know, you can't you can't I mean, I know that the United States we seem to be specialized in in mass shootings these days. But the the mass shooting in Texas, I you know, I wasn't the only one who was dissolved in tears, but my tears were very, they felt very personal. Yeah, poor parents, not only this thing, but then the new cycles, we're putting through this stuff over and over again. It was just it was awful. Just awful.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can hear the emotion in your voice is it's, again, a credit to you to allow yourself that space. Because it's, it is important for us to be able to let it out even if we're triggered by like, random events, like we were talking about before we jumped on like how, you know, I was telling you about the, you know, specialize in the unresolved and the unknown. And you said, yeah, it's a long process. Yeah. Yeah, randomly, you'll have things come up that the trickier.

I mean, to give you an exact my typical, like, it typically takes me and these are dense research. They're not back and they don't read densely. They're, they're very readable books. But a typical book for me will take three to five years. Every 12 years. It's very, it's slender. It's very shapely. It's almost poetic. But it took me 12 years because I just couldn't get it right. But I also couldn't leave it alone. So I put it aside and I pick it back up. And I try again. I couldn't let it go. And then finally, I just started whacking everything out of it that I couldn't make work. And then there it is got a shape that's gonna form. Wow.

I'm curious. This just came to me, you while you were talking? Is there an element of when when a book project is finished? Is there an element of grief because you've just dedicated your heart and soul to this thing, and now it's over. But that's

one of the one of the things that many people say, I'm not sure I would call it grief. It's, for me, it comes out as restlessness. I mean, it's like restlessness until until something else begins to inspire that kind of dedication. Some people compare it to childbirth. But I think that's a facile kind of comparison, because, but the, but I think I think some people do experience a kind of postpartum moment with books. And just there's, there's both the exhilaration of it's finished. And then there, there are many mundane tasks that have to then go into, you know, having it come into the world. But this one took a very long time. And that was part of the story for me, why did it take so?

Yeah, I guess also talking about the phrase that you before we were we the the taping started the memory without pain idea. But I think the goal of working through grief is to arrive at memory without pain. I mean, you wish to be able to think about this May this may sound strange, one of the joys of losing someone if there is such a thing. But one of the joys of losing someone is that they no longer exist at that last moment that you remember them with the last year that you remember them, they have become detached from time. And so you can tap into different moments of your acquaintance with them. So one of the bits of publicity this book got was in the Los Angeles review books larb in a section called avidly and the editor there asked for some photographs. I sent her a photograph of me, I must have been eight years old and I was playing the banjo, my brother was on the drums. And she she loved the photograph. And she ran it and I thought it was that stupid, it doesn't belong with this. And they don't share it does, you know, because again, this the the family relationship becomes detached from time and you can tap into it at different moments. And the goal is to be able to do that and not to have it be a wrenching kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that memory without pain concept, for a lot of people, I don't want to lose the pain because there is a comfort in it. And it connects them to that person. But you touched on something, which I think is probably the pivotal part, when you are ready, and you can find the joy in it, then that's when everything changes. And yes, that can sometimes be a longer process, because you're like, How could How could anything from this be possibly good. But but when you find that, it's it is, it is what it is, and I've got to keep living. And when you find that joy, that's, to me, that's just a, it's a transformational process. Because you're able to, like you said, you can find a space for the memories without pain. And in fact, you can start tapping into more of those joyful memories. And start bringing more of that into your life, which just creates such a, an increased your well being

one of the exercises I did because when you're a writer, you sometimes do exercises, as you probably know, as well. And one of the exercises I did when I felt I was arriving at that point was to recreate a memory for each of the beloved dead. So a memory about my father, a memory about my mother, and memory about my brother, and a memory that I had to have for the infant because the infant didn't have a memory. And doing that was just, I mean, it was just it was an exhilarating essay. And when I did that, I realized that once again, there was a kind of connection to the experience of meditation. Because you kind of I mean, your body is it you live in your body, you know, you aren't just your body. And when in the same way accessing memory is a is a is a larger than body experience, and it doesn't depend on the existence of a living body. So anyway, there was a very, I'd say it's actually one of my favorite essays in this book. It's called it's but it's the last essay and it's kind of a long one. But it was a very, very important one for me. Funny, I can't remember what I called it. Because I was talking about food family, my mother's recipes. Oh, yeah, that's this essay was called Real Estate on real estate. And the real estate is the memories that we have, yeah, you have a portfolio of memories, it gets bigger, right? And then the unreal estate are these memories that kind of float free and exist for you. And in the same way, our bodies are real estate rental. That's all we got rental. But, but we're also you know, obviously real, too.

Yeah, 100%. I'm just trying to a conversation I had with with another woman, Karen chased. And she lost her son when he was 20, or young, young 20s. And, of course, incredible pain. As she went through her grieving process, she came to the acceptance that she described it like this, my son, and May, we sat down before we came into this world, and we talked about this is going to be the journey we're going to have and this is why and now, there might be a completely different experience for you. But how have you been able to resolve that relationship with your son that was so brief? And like, how have you made sense of that in your mind?

Well, I haven't actually, certainly love when there's, there was no time to work out any kind of agreement. I remember when I was back then. Oh, we're gonna get emotional back then what people say to you, when something like that happens is why you, you know, and I be there was a woman in the, you know, the, the period of doing lavas. So you did these birthing classes with people. And there was a young woman, she was such a, you know, she was such she said she didn't want to be pregnant. You know, she just yeah, you know, one of these, one of these people, and the the birthing teacher came to see me and she said, Well, why not her? Yeah, I just, you can't think that way. Why? Why are you? Why are you it's because it was, you know, that's just the way it was. For me, I had more children, and I sort of concentrated on that I had, I had two other daughters, two daughters, and I never, I never really came to terms with it. Now. I don't know if that helps or not, I really never did know, it's

more like, again, like I said to you before we jumped on, it's like any any wisdom that you can pass on to other people.

There are certain situations in which life like, you know, life gives you a lot of abundance, and oh, well, okay, now, here's, I think this maybe is helpful. There's a play that was making the rounds in New York, and I still get to produce in some places called Next to Normal. And again, I took a class of college students to see this play. And after the play was over, it was pretty much an emotional wreck, for different reasons, because it touched different psychological vulnerabilities in everyone who was watching it. But the mother in the play, loses a child and can't love her other children because she lost the child. And let us say that that was a that was a possibility that never occurred to me. And I think it's a very sad possibility. And it's a very sad possibility and plays well. So, I mean, that was, I guess, one possibility. And, you know, I remember at the time, some quite a bit older friends who had an autistic child, saying to us, you know, this can tear couples apart. And it didn't tear my husband and I apart. But we also were aware that you had to, we had to have made certain decisions. We had to go to there was surgery involved. We had to make certain decisions, and we couldn't look back on them. We couldn't say, Oh, we shouldn't have done that. Because that would just you just couldn't do it.

Yeah. I imagine you must have incredible strength and resilience from going through that and everything.

I don't even know I mean, I think they'd most people have strengthened resilience. There's a lot to go through. I you know, I've never really I actually don't consider life a process of one grief after another. It's just that there are certain moments in life where grief has come to you and you'd have to take it. It's it's not gonna, it's not gonna say, you know, it's okay to give it up. You have to take it. Yeah,

yeah, absolutely. I mean, I like the idea that It's, you know, we come into this world with the intention of continuing to heal whatever needs to be healed for our soul. And if that's the journey we're meant to take, then. So be it and do our best to resolve

the books. Part of this was I thought going to be the heart of this book and turned out not to be the heart of this book, but it's still important. One of the things I learned, and again, I'm an English professor. So when you're in grief, what do you do you read, and I started reading the classics, and I did it in a very methodical way. And, you know, started with the Greeks, just coming forward. Because it was and then I realized that that was part of why people read the class, I discovered I was not unique, I thought I was really being very discovered. I'm not unique, a lot of bookish people do read the classics at a time of grief. And then I realized that it wasn't so much the classics, because they're not wise. And people are always told that these books are books of great wisdom. They're actually not. They're, they're books of great sadness and great frailty, great mistakes and great grief. And I think that's why we read them to be reassured. Normal, but the real reason I think we read them is that there's a specific order and doing them. So it's like meditation. First, you do this, then you do that, then you do this. And anything that gives you a sense of order, I think in a grieving process is really, really important and really helpful.

Oh, yeah, that's great point. Because so often, it feels like everything's been ripped away from us. And we're left sort of dangling without anything to hang on to and bringing the order and structure. Yeah, so powerful,

sometimes just one step at a time. Take that step.

And actually, my thoughts go here. So the order that came to after my dad's passing was there was a couple of weeks there were spent a lot of time with my siblings, and my mom and and there was certain comfort in like that sort of routine. But then eventually, everyone has to go back to work and get back to their lives. And to me, that's when that that sense of structure actually disappeared. Even I was going back to work. It was like, well, like now what was that? Was that an experience for you?

No, I think that I think that's a very common experience. And I think the problem is, it all starts to seem very insignificant.

Yeah.

What do you know why, why should I be doing this? And then at some point, you realize you're doing it because you really actually want to do it too. But it's really hard to, it's just hard. It's just hard. My father, my father's death was easier for me, because my father was, there was a more of a process, and we got to talk about it as it was happening. But I remember when, when the less time the less set of times I saw him, I was also going to an academic conference. And what are you talking about? Why are you talking about this? You know, let me out of here. But you know, that at some point, that, of course, that that kind of went away too. But it's very hard to face the everyday task, when in the grief process, but it's also somehow essential to face the everyday task.

Yeah, it is. Absolutely. You mentioned before that sense of restlessness when you when you finish a book, I'm curious, do you take the time to actually celebrate anyway, like intentionally celebrate when a book goes out? I know, you said there's some, some smaller tasks that unnecessary tasks that need to happen once you finish. But there, is there a place of pause where you go, wow, like,

oh, yeah, there's a great if this was a visual, I just sort of show you moments when the book comes, and then the cover is fantastic. And yet, you're so excited to hold it in your hands. And now, this is something this is a loss, the pandemic, one of the many losses that the pandemic has inflicted on people. You know, and I think everybody's kind of gradually coming to terms with the construction, I guess, is what I call it. But one of the things that used to happen was you'd go on book tours, you'd give readings in bookstores, you meet people, you date, you have that kind of pleasure. And that's not happening. It's just not happening. So I'm the the way that my life has evolved, there are fewer reviews that appear and it's so so all things come and go with with with less fanfare and and notoriety. But notice that's that's a boy. That's a great feeling when that happens, but I think my favorite thing is when you're obsessed about a book and you're talking about it, and people are giving you material And the book one book, which is very successful, called God primitive about the way that people in the Americas and in Europe regard tribal peoples. And that was a book where everyone was giving me 10 bits, it was great. It was like, you know, kind of, there was not a dinner that was had that I didn't walk away with something that could go into the book. So I kind of like that. This book was a little bit like it, because, you know, we get older people die. And and you know, it's almost everyone is a lot of people are losing parents now. You know, and friends, a good friend of a good friend of mine is dying from pancreatic cancer, which is what my brother died from. And a friend of his who's my friend to one said to me, we need younger friends. And that's part of the answer. But it's also that again, it's just part of the experience, you just have to take it for what it is. That's been hard, because my friend is making some of the same choices that my brother did. And I think they were the wrong choice. So it's hard to see him making wise choices to button again, but his choices he needs to make.

Yeah, that's a hard place, isn't it? Particularly? It really is. Yeah. But again, you raise a great point that's letting people have their own choices is is challenging, but freeing,

it's totally not my business to tell anyone else what to do. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. How do you feel that whole? When you get the restlessness? How do you get yourself back into a space that you're ready to write your next book? Or is it or is the restlessness eventually lead you to go I need to get get back on the horse, so to speak.

Oh, I gotta give her two minutes thought. I mean, I suspect there are different ways. Well, one of the things that happens is you start other books in between, and sometimes those books don't happen. So that after I finished the books on primitivism, I wrote one sequel to it. So that was good. But then after that, I thought about writing a book on sexuality. And the sex surveys were very big. And I was kind of interested in the Kinsey reports how they had functioned. And there were a series of other reports that were coming out in the first part of the 21st century, and I was interested in that. And that didn't go anywhere. And then I got interested in urban destruction narratives. So I started a book on that, and that didn't go anywhere. I'm laughing because I it's not that I write easily, but I don't have writer's block. So I'll get like 125 pages into insane. It's not gonna work. And just it just let it go. So that's sometimes what happens, sometimes the transition to one. I mentioned that I've started writing novels. And the first novel came to me, I was just, I was walking through the forest with my husband. And this line, this paragraph was coming into my head, I said, what is that? Who is that? And I've taught novels and novelists say that characters talk to you. And I never believed that I thought this character was talking to me and this and she wrote the first version of the book, I mean, just like sit down 50 pages, here we go. So it was like, great. It was just like a transcendent experience. My agent at the time, didn't like the book. So I rewrote the whole thing. I should have just left it because that's how she wanted the book. But anyway, so the so yeah, sometimes you just wait for the inspiration to come to you. As an academic, sometimes you have to make a willful decision. But I've written enough books that I don't feel that kind of pressure, I can do what I want to do. Which is which?

Clearly, as you said, Without writer's block, you can, it's not like you have to go. But what if I can't get another idea? You said like, you've got so many ideas swimming around? No, I

have a lot of ideas. What are the things again, for any of your audience who are writers? One of the things that I think is hard now for writers and I think to some extent, it is a matter of grief. Is that the there's so much chatter online, so much chatter online, so much chatter online, that you find yourself working on something and I'll be darned if somebody else isn't doing the same thing. That that never used to happen. That never used to be they happen. People might be working on similar topics, but it wouldn't be coming out along the same lines at all. But because we're all you know, getting the same materials via the media, there's much it's much more likely that somebody will be doing pretty much exactly what You're doing interesting. And that's, that's hard. I might the one like that, for me was right after the Oh, a financial meltdown. I started reading a lot of books about the Great Depression. And then I became interested in depression, entertainment, movies, songs, games. And again, I wrote like about 150 pages. And then somebody who I actually knew, came out with a book was it was not the book that I was writing. But it made me realize that there wasn't room for two of them. And he had run into the same problem I was running into, which was summarizing 1936 movies, because people haven't seen anyone. So things like that. And was, is that a grief? It is because it's a it means that the conditions of writing which I had loved, were no longer in existence, or have changed, and needed to be adapted to, and I guess, the larger grieving messages, things have changed. They need to be adapted to.

I've got to be honest, I'm really curious to read your book, because the one that you haven't finished, because to me, that was such a pivotal moment in my life to was that that crisis, because it was like it had me thinking about life and my future in a whole different ways. Because I was like, Oh, why don't like your your financial future is at the mercy of of a whole lot of things out of your control.

Yeah. I mean, we maybe we live experiencing that very soon again, because I think that the conjunction of circumstances right now, I mean, well, it's obviously unprecedented. When was the last time the world experienced a pandemic, which threw a monkey wrench into everything? Well, if that was, that would have been the end of World War One, that's a long time ago. So we may be experiencing that again. But again, I teach college and those kids, the kids, when they're 19, or 20, they remember vaguely the unsettled feeling in their family after that, and now, you know, I don't know how it was in Australia, but in America, the classes went online for about a year. And I do the online classes, and I, you know, I always talk to them. And the the seniors would say, Oh, it's terrible to be a senior during the pandemic, and the juniors would say, Oh, it's terrible to be a junior during the pandemic, you know, and so it would went and you had to say, Yeah, it's pretty bad.

Yeah, the people I felt awful like my both my children were not were in high school. So they were online, they were fine. But the parents of those younger children, that that had to be more interactive in their classes, I think people got a whole new appreciation of teachers. Suddenly, they're having to do do some people with Yeah, absolutely challenging time. But I mean, like, what we know is that these moments will continue to happen through history, the ups and the downs. And they all bring more grief, I think what you described now, I get the sense of how, like, the interactions I've had is, now does very much feel like the end of a war. There's a lot of confusion, there's a lot of tiredness. There's a lot of residual frustration and all sorts of stuff going on for people. Yeah, it will be an interesting little time as people make sense of what they've just been through.

It's one of the questions for me, and I think it's an open question is whether people are going to makes sense of what they've gone through. I'm in New York right now. And one of the things I've noticed is a the population is younger than it used to be. A lot of people have left the city and it's the summertime. So people do leave the city in the summertime. But the population is very young. And there's a kind of it's not desperation, exactly, but it's a kind of over exuberance. You know, we are having fun. We are having fun. And there's there's a real there's a real kind of determination. I do think I think that's actually a very apt way of putting it. I hadn't thought of that. But is it a little bit like after a war with it's a mess? And you know, and some things are not coming back and some things do we just accept that? Do we try to make them come back? It's been it's interesting to see how people are behaving. I drove through Chinatown yesterday. And in Chinatown people still wearing masks being part because it's part of the Asian culture to wear masks when their sickness around in most New York.

No, yeah, it's it's fairly similar here. Most have moved on but I guess it just depends on like your own personal circumstances. And I've had conversations with people and it's like, you choose what's right for you like

it's become a kind of choose your own adventure thing is really. I guess that's the way it needs to be.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I like to ask the question, will will will people deal with it I think everyone will deal with in their own way. It's just how how well gets paid at any other point in the journey, how much they're prepared to, to process it will determine how well they come out the other side.

Yeah. But I'm, I'm very struck by the numbers. And in the United States, I didn't even know what the latest numbers are. The there was a lot of publicity around 1 million dead. I suspect it must be more like 1,000,001, maybe 1,000,002. Now, that's a lot of people. I stuff a lot of people.

Yeah, I can I come back to the same place, which is like the actual numbers of people dying year on year hasn't increased significantly. And that doesn't make it right or wrong, or anything else. It's just like people die. People leave this world constantly. Like, we need to make sure we're making sense of it for all of our own personal circumstances. best we can, because it's just a part of life. Yeah. And I think that's like you can get caught in like the magnitude of it, or you can go to your own place of what you need to resolve through it, which is going to be the most powerful act. You mentioned when you are writing that that walk through the forest and that the character is speaking to you directly. I'm, to me, that sounds like being in the zone from my from me from a sporting background. It's like that moment where everything just unfolds automatically, effortlessly. You know, what's coming next that just seems to flow out of you. Do you have any thoughts on

is totally the way to go. If you can get there doesn't realize, you know, it doesn't happen all the time. But one of you do it regularly. And then sometimes your best writing takes place in one day. And that's that's it, that essay comes out, it is perfect. And you came you change a comma, maybe you change a word and that's it. And that's a great, that's just a great feeling. But I actually think that does not so easily happen in grief, I think your your your have to be in a more relaxed and you have to there's a metaphor which I like of attunement, you just have to be in a state of attunement, with with everything around you in the universe for that to happen. And then it does,

yeah. Oh, I love that. Because I'm going to ask you about finding the zone because having that repeatable process for me is one of the great joys, I'm by no means at an extensive author, I've offered two chapters to those joint publication books. The first one was like pulling teeth, it took me months to write and I'm still not happy about without the other one I literally wrote in two hours in two to one hour setting where it just rolled out. And like you described, it was like the only the editors changed some punctuation. But apart from that, and I was like, How do I do more of that? Yeah, so So do you have any, any processes that you use to try and stimulate that zone? Or is it more just that happens at different times? It doesn't it

happens at different times. One of the things I do and I don't think this is unusual, either, I find that there are certain for me, I have to know how something started. I just have to know how it's going to start. So I could be driving along. And if that beginning sentence comes to me, I pull over, I write it down? Well, I have I have started books on backs and checks and you know, I read back the receipts and that kind of thing. But when I'm feeling a little more organized, I have a notebook, and I put it down in the notebook. And sometimes it changes because one of the things that writers usually love for me anyway, what begins as the beginning can become the end, and vice versa. So, and actually, as a writer, I've written about how narratives and and when you write about primitivism, you're writing about how things begin. So I've always been interested in beginnings and endings. So for me, they can flip. But it's very important to be able to capture the words when they come to you.

Absolutely. Now again, I'm comparing myself to a very, very different

what is your sport?

To sport, I played all sorts of sport, played soccer, football, cricket, which you probably less familiar with. But I'm a big supporter of a lot of different sports as well. I'm fascinated more these days will actually not these days always have been about the interactions between the different teammates, how you create that unity to for the higher goal.

The equivalent of that in writing is to have a rightist group which is working great guns. And I was very lucky to be in a Writers Group, which was like that for 11 years. And it was like ah, it's just like getting in a warm bath with your fellow writers and casting them. Absolutely. It was just terrific.

Yeah. I think one of the fields you're in having that comfort of, of a, of a team where you feel Yeah, like you described row like warm bath feeling where you can just talk about anything and feel like it's been received in the right way. So important. Just want to ask one more question if you've got a little bit more time before we talk about some of your things you've got going on in the future, and also tell people where they can find the book. You mentioned that that concept around being a Italian American and grief being shameful sort of two part question like having that particular cultural experience, then shifting into a new cultural experience where you married someone from a different background? And then a concept of shame coming into all of that, like how, how deep rooted is that and how you're able to change your beliefs and actions around that?

Well, again, it's a real question whether you ever change your beliefs, you can change your actions or whether you change your beliefs is something else. The concept in it Italian culture is called La Bella figura, which is which essentially translates as the beautiful figure or looking good in the eyes of others. And the desire for love Bella figura it's very deep in Italian and Italian American culture. It's it also appears in southern culture, because I teach in the south, I see it there too. And, you know, just it's, it implies a certain amount of repression and, you know, denial, just forgetting. And, I mean, denial and forgetting are important mechanisms to in grief. I mean, I think we, we, our culture tends to emphasize awareness. And rightfully so. But there's certain things you actually do have to just move on from and we're not in repression, it's probably not so good. But just move on, you know, just just move on. So other there is that? It also, I, you know, I It's hard to describe, but I saw it in my, my nephew, when my brother was dying as well, of the feeling that somehow there was something wrong if you weren't doing well. And when somebody's dying, you're not doing well. Yeah, that's just that's just it's easy. And you have to there's not there actually, is this that it's, there's there's no fault in it, but you know, the but there there, it is hard for certain cultures and certain personalities to accept that. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it probably shows up in a different way. But I'd say that's true for a lot of Western cultures, it's like, the comparison or the the judgment from

the old the Puritans that you know, they that if you were if you were profitable in the world, you were a righteous person, you know, and Providence had favored you. It's it's a version of the same thing a little less materialistic. Or, that's more materialistic than when I'm

Yeah. Mariana thank you for sharing so openly. There's so much gold in there for for people who have gone through any of the experiences that you described, losing people and, and the other elements, particularly the writing. Thank you so much for Sherry, for having me. You're welcome. Now, we'll put the link in the show notes for how people can find access to your most recent book crossing back books, family memory without pain, but also your your other books because you said this is a sequel, and you've got some other ones which I'm already fascinated with, particularly the primitive one that you mentioned. But you've also got some new projects coming up.

Yeah, okay. So I have I have two novels. So if anyone out there is, is interested in helping with novel publication, by all means, get in touch. One is a fictional biography of Georgia O'Keeffe or the American artist, and it tries to capture her before she became the austere artists that we know and was a somewhat more insecure person who whose future did not look quite as clear. The second one is a novel about World War Two. And it's it's a time travel I'm not sure where that came from, but it did. It's really good and it draws upon my novel of of World War Two and it's a kind of romantic novel. And I guess I mean, it's not Outlander, but it has a little bit of Outlander spirit in it. So I thought I'm hoping I'm hoping it makes its way into the world. But you know, again, I enjoy writing and the pleasure of writing is very real for me.

Well, they both sound like they It'll be movies or series hopefully not as dark as Outlander. I said hopefully not as dark as Outlander.

Well I want to do is I mean, it's not that dark. It's pretty. It's well, I don't know.

Maybe it's just the, the, my less tolerance for gore and, oh, and human denigration perhaps that's where I to where I say dark.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty. It's pretty. It's a it's a good read and a pretty good television show.

Well, both of those things fascinating. Thank you. And is there somewhere where people can find you on social media or website?

Yeah, I have a website, which is my name Mariana Tor Gulf, Nick. Oh, you see it on the screen, or you'll see it on the podcast. And then I also teach at Duke University in North Carolina. And so you can find my name there. But the website is Mariana target, ethnic, very original.com. And then the books all my books are on Amazon and available in Kindle. And yeah, I've got my books are very readable, meant for people like you. And I hope I hope you dive into them gone primitive is one people love. Crossing Ocean Parkway is one people love and then the sequel to crossing Ocean Parkway is crossing back.

Excellent. Well, after talking to you, I imagine there'll be very readable because I've really enjoyed this conversation. It's been quite easy and flowed really nicely. So thank you so much.

Thanks. Good night.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Grief Code podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please share it with a friend or family member that you know would benefit from hearing it too. If you are truly ready to heal your unresolved or unknown grief. Let's chat. Email me at info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com You can also stay connected with me by joining the Grief Code community at Ian Hawkins coaching.com forward slash The Grief Code and remember, so that I can help even more people to heal. Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform.