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Description

Author and comedian Rebecca Soffer desperately turned to the internet for help when she was in her early 30s after her mother was killed in a car crash and her father suddenly died of a heart attack. Nothing she found was helpful for her, so she made something new: Modern Loss. Claire sits down with Rebecca to talk through the many ways the internet can change the way we grieve, and how Rebecca found support, expressed herself, and created community in her life — on and offline.

Resources from the show

• Check out Rebecca’s book, “Modern Loss: Candid Conversations About Grief. Beginners Welcome” and the handbook, “​​An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Resilience

 

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Claire, Rebecca Soffer

Claire  00:09

Welcome to NEW DAY. Hi, I’m Claire Bidwell Smith, and also a grief expert, personally and professionally, not exactly what I thought I’d be when I grew up. But in my personal life, I go back to when I was 18, and my mom died. And then again when I was 25, and my dad died. Those are the experiences that propelled me into specializing in grief and loss professionally. Today’s guest can pinpoint the exact moment she became a grief expert 12:13am On September 6 2005, Rebecca Soffer lost her mom in a car accident, about an hour after her parents left her apartment in New York City. And then in a story that mirrors my own in some ways, Rebecca’s father passed away four years later. And she devoted her life’s work to grief and loss, and creating the content that she needed. But that didn’t exist when she was heavy in her grief. What she created is modern loss, a community devoted to helping young adults move through loss. It’s funny, irreverent and super helpful. There’s a website, a book, and now the modern loss handbook, an interactive guide to moving through grief and building your resilience. If this book had existed when my parents died, what a difference it would have made. I’m so grateful that Rebecca created modern loss for everyone out there. Grief is never great, obviously, right? It’s never something you want to experience. But it’s an inevitable part of life. And Rebecca is out there making grief and grieving better, and I’m so appreciative of that.

Claire 

Hi, Rebecca.

Rebecca Soffer 

Hello, Claire. I’m so happy to see you.

Claire 

I’m so happy to see you.

Claire

Well, I mean, on this note, I start every episode of this podcast asking my guests How are you doing? But how are you really doing?

Rebecca Soffer  02:05

Oh, my God. Okay. How am I really doing? Do people give you like honest answers? Yeah, I’m okay. I mean, you know, I think that my new answer is I’m okay-ish. You know, and I think honestly, that that’s totally fine. Because how can you be like, your best possible happiest self during a time like this? I mean, it’s like, let me count the ways of the overlapping, you know, […] Venn diagram that we’re all dealing with right now. So, yeah, I’m okay-ish You know, like, I’m, I’m healthy. Thank goodness, I’m upright. I started running again, after like, 10 years, by the way, I hate running. I’m a cyclist, but I was like, maybe I’ll mix it up a bit. Because I’ve realized that we can only control so much. I can’t control the spread of COVID. I can’t control what Putin decides to do. I can control whether I want to vary up my physical activity. So yeah, I’m okay-ish. I am. I am.

Claire 

Well, for listeners who aren’t familiar with you, Rebecca. You know, I know that you’ve worked in television and with Stephen Colbert, where you’ve written books, your mom, you’re also a grief expert. And whenever I am, called a grief expert, I always have this moment of like, God, that is not what I thought I would be when I grow up.

Rebecca Soffer 

Did you see my face, I don’t know if you saw my face when you say grief expert.. And I was like, oh, I am.

Claire 

Yeah. So tell us how you became a grief expert. I would love to really hear your personal story, but then into where you are now a little bit.

Rebecca Soffer 

So I guess that I became a grief expert. I guess that that doctorate started at about, I don’t know, like 12:13AM on September 5 2006. That’s when I began my degree. Because that’s around the time that I found out that my mom had been killed in a car accident. I had just gone on a camping trip with her and my dad, I was 30. And after that trip, they dropped me off in my apartment in New York City. And we had lots of hugs and kisses and then an hour later, I got a call that there had been a really bad accident on the New Jersey Turnpike. And that I really needed to get down there. And when I got to the hospital, I found my dad in a bed. And the first thing he said was, you know, Bec, I’m so sorry. She’s gone. She’s gone. And so that’s, you know, that’s when my, that’s when my expertise in grief began. And then it really continued. I got, you know, a PhD, MD, I guess let’s just tack on the letters. I only have like Nobel Prize after my name, I got a Nobel Prize in grief. It’s more like I when you graduate from good journalism school at Columbia, they give you an MS for some reason. It’s called a master’s in science. And so like, even though I just know how to string words together, I’m like, I’m an MS. I’m a master in science. I’m literally so not. But let’s just say that yes, sure. I got the Nobel Prize in my own personal grief expertise four years later, because my dad died. So that was the interesting quota to the, all the stuff that I had, you know, started four years beforehand, my dad had a heart attack while he was traveling abroad, and he didn’t survive. And I found out in the very same apartment that I had been in when I found out that my mom died. So by the age of 34, and you know, this feeling. I had two dead parents, and I had to navigate a world without them. And everything that that meant, in terms of my past and my present and my future. So yeah, I guess I am a grief expert, just like every single person who has grief, is a grief expert.

Claire  06:14

Yeah. I’ve heard you tell this story multiple times. We’ve worked together in so many capacities, but it always makes me teary. I just, it’s so much. It’s so hard.

Rebecca Soffer 

You know, I never thought in a million years that I would be, I guess, like unwittingly signing up to tell that story all the time. You know, it like it gives me no great pleasure. And you know, you’re an author, you’ve written a million books, you’ve done a lot of press, you’ve done a lot of interviews, and you’ve had to tell your story so much. And like, I just want everyone to know, every time I tell it, it sucks. Like, I literally hate it, I hate telling that story, I get no pleasure from it. It’s not like a line, it’s not a presentation. It’s like the active, you know, choice to enter the DeLorean time machine and go back to those, you know, in my mind it to make it a little bit cool, you know, and go take myself back to the feeling of learning about each one of their deaths. And honestly, it sucks every time. Every time I tell it.

Claire 

I’m with you. I’m with you. It’s a strange thing that we do in the world these days. And in telling these stories over and over, it’s never not difficult and hard and sad. And, you know, just I still have moments where I’m like, really? This is my story. So you now have really made your life’s work about creating the kind of grief support and language and conversation that was lacking when you went through this. Can you speak to that a little bit what there wasn’t what you’ve been working on?

Rebecca Soffer 

Yeah. So when my mom died, I was a single 30 year old woman living in New York City. And I also was working in comedy. So that was really fun when I was having very active trauma and memories, and like, going home, being terrified to go to sleep, because I didn’t know what I was going to see in like, my mind’s eye from my mom’s accident. And I still had to navigate the world, you know, just like everybody does, I was just another person who had to deal with her stuff. But I was, you know, a person who realized very quickly that it’s not like, I could sit back and make sure that like, there were all these systems to catch me. I wasn’t a child. So there weren’t, hopefully like systems in place that were legally supposed to catch me, like, you know, like, structures in place that were really supposed to look out for you. And you know, I wasn’t like 97 years old. And probably like, knowing lots of people who read the obituary for fun, you know, or just at least out of like, personal curiosity. I don’t know if it’s ever for fun. First thing in the morning, and, you know, I was 30, I had to go to work, I had to think about my future, I had to think about how I wanted to build my life, I had to think about all the build phase that I was in, and then I was also suddenly in the loss phase. And it just felt like this really weird position to be in. I was like, how do you do both? It’s like a paradox. Like I don’t understand. So like, if I’m losing so much. And then I’m trying to build does that mean that I’m just like, inert? Like, I just like, get to like the point each other out? Yeah, like, I just cancel it out. And then it just like sit still for 60 years. And I realized that I didn’t want to sit still. And I didn’t just want to go forward. Because I wanted to bring my parents with me somehow. And I didn’t just want to live in the past because I didn’t think that I would be able to build a life like that. So I was like, Well, how do you navigate these two things? And like, where’s the conversation? Should about it. And it turns out that I personally had trouble finding that conversation. You know, I would look online, this was 2006, I would look online and there were lots, there’s always lots of areas where you can talk about grief. Most of them online were either extremely clinical, you know, that had me like literally self-diagnosing, like, when I was like, I’m a megalomaniac, because all I can think of is like grief. And, you know, I’m like, Oh, my God, I who knew there was this much wrong with me like, and then there were a lot of religious, you know, conversations, which I’m a very proud Jew. I’m speaking to you from the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I had a bagel and lox this. I’m like a walking caricature right now. But I don’t automatically go to religion to find all the answers and all the direction.

Claire  10:51

Yeah. And then there’s also like a lot of schmaltzy cheesy stuff, right?

Rebecca Soffer 

A lot of schmaltzy cheesy stuff, there were a lot there was just like so many sites that I would just say, like, either they purported to have the answer the fix the solution, or just like the platitudes, or you know, and I’m like, I don’t want to like, I’ve like never seen a dove in my frickin life. You know, like, Why do I want to look at a dub now, you know, like, show me that dirt? Show me the pigeons in the middle of like Broadway, you know, that are like pooping on people’s heads, like, show me what the real experience of grief is. Right? I want to see the mess because I need to know that I’m not the only person in the mess.

Claire 

Yeah. Also your age, you know, and I went through this to losing my parents at 18 and 25. And there wasn’t really any grief support for younger people, you know, yeah. There were kids. And then there was like, people over 50

Rebecca Soffer 

Yes, yes, I went to the I did go and I love the place, I’m actually launching my book there. I love it. That JCC Manhattan. It’s a huge cultural hub, on 76 in Amsterdam, and I love it so much. However, when I was scrambling that first year, I did go to a support group for people who had lost their parents. And I was the only person who was under probably 60, actually, and I was just like, you know, I, there’s really like, I hate when people say things with all due respect, but literally, truly with all due respect to their own grief, which is enormous, because my mom lost her own mom when she was, you know, 63. So I understand like, a mom is a mom, as a mom, let’s like just get that out of the way. But I also needed to be around people who understood what it felt like to have a mom die in a really bad accident. You know, who I didn’t get to say goodbye to. And to also was just like spinning out of like orbit, because she felt like she was four years old. And she still had to, like build up a life like she, I felt like I was just starting out in life. Yeah, you know, and then all of a sudden, I didn’t have like, I didn’t have the memories. I didn’t have her to guide me, I didn’t have so many of the things that I kind of, you know, I was really aware of death my whole life, because my dad, just like your dad was older than my mom. But we really assumed that he would die first. And so it’s interesting. I was really aware of death. Like I was like, oh, and we would talk about my dad’s impending death, as though like, it’s so like, it’s actually kind of funny when you think about it. It didn’t bother him. We were just like, very matter of fact about like, so when dad dies, like, you should really downsize now. I’m like, that’s like sitting there. He’s like, just like eating like a golden burger peanut too. And he’s like, yeah, you know, we should downsize before I die. But, you know, like, then it was my mom who went first and the joke was on us. And I was not Claire, prepared for that one.

Claire 

Yeah, me neither.

Rebecca Soffer 

And I just was like, oh, wait, this is really, really, really isolating. And I need to talk about this and not feel like I’m walking into work. And no one knows how to talk to me because I’m the weird girl whose mom died and then whose dad died? Like, I need to know that there are people I can talk to. Because if I don’t have that, then I’m not going to have anything to hang my sanity on. That can get me through the workday or whatever. Like if I don’t have a conversation to go to where I know I’m continually welcome and people who are willing to like show me what they’re going through. So I can learn from them. Then like I’m screwed.

Claire  14:30

Yeah, yeah.

Claire 

So you started with the modern loss website.

Rebecca Soffer 

Yeah. So my friend Gabi Birkner and I we started the modern loss website. In November. Yeah, it was, yeah, November 2013. I was nine months pregnant with my first child. I like literally was, I mean, I gave birth the next week. It was a very active month for me. We primarily went online because it like, and Gabi. was pregnant too. Not as far along, but we it hit me. I was like, Oh, wait, oh, like I’m having a baby, we should probably figure out how you put a website online. And that’s literally why we launched then. And, you know, we launched with many, like dozens of first person essays.

Claire 

What was the goal, like when you and Gabi sat down to talk about, saying like, what was your plan?

Rebecca Soffer 

The goal was like, you know, Gabi, I think that the conversation about grief sucks, I’m really sick of it. I don’t have the energy anymore to pretend like, I need to don’t need to talk about this stuff. It’s literally taking more energy to pretend like, I don’t need this than to admit that I do. And if I do, then someone else must. And you need it too, you know, because her dad and her stepmom had died. So that’s how we became friends. And that’s where we found like refreshing conversation and connection. And I was like, God, I mean, like, other people must need this. There needs to be like a white space that’s filled in this conversation that has room for like, people who aren’t therapists who are like peer to peer support, you know, members who want to talk about grief in all of its messiness. And I’m talking about the underbelly, no doves, the pigeon, dirty, nasty, like avian flu pigeons that are flying around, you know. And so like, we really realized that the goal was threefold. And it was to A, you know, provide a platform for people that was a very, you know, Gabi and I are, we’re serious, like, we’re not, this isn’t like a blog, or like our listserv. This is like, you know, it’s a publication like we’re editors, and writers and publishers. And we also work with the writers, and they don’t have to be professional writers, they just have to be people who have something, they really need to say, everyone has something they really need to say, but they really need to want to say it. And we help them to tell their stories. And so that’s like the first goal with modern loss. And the second goal is to create community to make other people reading those stories feel seen and heard and validated and acknowledged in their own grief experiences. Because, you know, maybe my mom died in a car accident, and maybe you had a stillbirth. But maybe we can still connect over the feeling of jealousy after loss or, or struggling with parenthood or something, it doesn’t, we don’t have to lose the same person in the same way to build connections with each other, you know, and so we really want to pull people in and make them feel connected to each other. And then the third goal is to just really teach other people who don’t get it yet. What it feels like, through what is really inherently just really good storytelling. You know?

Claire  18:08

Yeah, I can’t imagine if I had something like this when I was in my 20s. You know, I just felt like the only person who had gone through what I went through, and there was nothing, you know, I mean, this is back in 2000, early 2000. So there really was nothing that was like some dusty books at the store. It’s such an incredible resource. What was the response when you guys launched?

Rebecca Soffer 

Well, so the response really took us by surprise. It felt like we were boiling a very large cauldron of pasta, and then throwing that pasta against the wall to see if even one strand would stick. And then I got an email. It was from somebody at Slate, Amanda Marcotte, I think, at Slate Magazine, and she was like, I’m reading a piece on your new site, Modern Loss, and I was like, how is that humanly possible? Like, it’s literally.

Claire 

Because it was so needed.

Rebecca Soffer 

Claire, but it was the same day I think that the site had been online for two hours. And we’re like, how does that even How do you even know that a thing is out there. But I think that Gabi and I had both posted a link on fate we’re like, hey, this thing is live and then people started sharing it. And we have a very specific about us page on the site, which outlines what you will get and what you won’t get and I think that in some ways the what you won’t get..

Claire  19:28

What’s on the what you won’t get.

Rebecca Soffer  19:31

Judgment, platitudes, you know, assurances, excuses, you know, all of those things, you know, because I think that I know, you’ll agree with me, that there are so there’s no one there’s no like, right things to say, when you’re talking to somebody who’s grieving like there are a lot of right things that you can say. But there are definitely some wrong things that anybody who has our mindset and you’re that person would agree that there are some things where I would be shocked if some of those things had ever helped a human being, you know, and so we’re like, we’re not going to give that to you here, go somewhere else, if that helps you, and that’s fine. If you’re looking for a religious conversation, that’s fine. We’re not your ladies, you know, like, that’s cool. Like, we’re the additive. We’re the thing that’s meant to fill in, we’re the thing that’s meant to help you build community and feel seen and worthy conversation that is going to add to your therapy experience, you know, that help you think? And then maybe you have new conversations and therapy because of what you’re reading here. You know, but we’re not your clinicians. We’re not your rabbis.

Claire  20:42

Yeah. And this was also refreshing. You know, I mean, the grief world 20 years ago, it’s changed so much, there’s so much more now. But it was run by, you know, like everything, a lot of old White men. And a lot, Elisabeth Kubler Ross a woman but you know, just like a kind of lot of old school thinking about grief, old models, old kind of timelines, different things like that. And it’s yeah, it’s been really shaken up over the last 20 years, which is so important. Where are you guys now? 10 years, almost 10 years, next year will be 10 years since you launched. What’s has Modern Loss turned into?

Rebecca Soffer 

Yeah, and what’s been interesting is that I literally couldn’t have told you again, it was a very, very foolish business decision, because the site doesn’t take ads. I mean, every piece of content is free for everybody. I do not get paid to write content for the site, I work on it. So it’s like a silly, silly business decision. But what it has turned into is, I honestly believe it’s turned into a global movement that’s solely aimed at eradicating the stigma surrounding this topic. And you’re a part of that movement as well, like we all we each have our movement, they’re the same movement, you know, same goal, same mission, and modern loss has, I think, accomplished, you know, or at least made strides, you know, but through the website, which has now published more than 1000 original pieces, and many of them are by, you know, well known writers and have been shared by like Judd Apatow and Charles Straight, you know, it’s just like, it’s really become like a respected publication, which the writer in me is very proud of, you know. And then separately, besides the events, yeah, like, so. We had one book come out a few years ago called Modern Loss.

Claire  22:34

I have it, I recommend that all the time. But you have a new one coming out. Tell us about that one.

Rebecca Soffer 

So it’s called the Modern loss handbook, an interactive guide to moving through grief and building your resilience. And I solo authored it, and I wrote it, I wanted to write it before the pandemic came very close to writing it before 2020 Actually, and then, just certain things in life happen, you know, like work and family stuff, and whatever. And, you know, you know, you do all the things, Claire, you can only do so many golden tickets, qualitatively. And I was like, okay, like, the time is not like today. And then COVID hit. And I found myself in a house with my husband and my two very young children. And two of those three people had COVID, the very first week in March 2020. And it was scary as shit. And I still had a community of people who needed to be served at modern loss, and they were being triggered by everything. And they had resurfaced grief and like the needs of the community, were ballooning. And I found myself needing to pivot everything to online and do virtual sessions. We did virtual, you know, sessions with therapists and yoga for grief and mindfulness. And that’s what we do. We still have that.

Claire 

you and I were in the weirdest positions when that pandemic Oh, like, we it was so weird. Like, I felt like I had a lot in place, but it was like, step up. And like, help, you know?

Rebecca Soffer  24:05

Yeah, oh, and by the way, and, and step up without any extra childcare, or like, and also you’re going to be like a virtual kindergarten teacher and preschool. Yeah. And also, like, your husband is gonna, you know, be sick for a while. I mean, it was just, it really was, and I don’t write about that in the book. Because, you know, not like, who cares? But like, you know, who cares? Like, that doesn’t make, you know, no one, I think, cares whether that was my, my reality. But that was my reality. And I think that sometimes knowing the context behind where things generated from Yeah, can make you appreciate the more and so this book was really written in like the darkest depths of the pandemic during a winter in Western Massachusetts. Not in Mill Valley. Not in Sunshine in like it’s getting dark at 1:45PM, felt like it was such a hard awful winter last winter with COVID With darkness with everything. And that’s primarily when I read the book and it just came out of me.

Claire 

I’m so proud of you. I was just paging through it before we hopped on and it’s beautiful. Like, it doesn’t look like your regular boring grief book, like, describe what it looks like and like what we can find inside? Like, what are some of the various sections or chapters people can expect? Because it’s not your average grief book, you know?

Rebecca Soffer 

It’s not, it’s not your average grief book. It’s not. So it’s, it’s completely illustrated, the publisher is running press, which is such an amazing publisher. And they’re known for like they do like the Bob Ross recipe book. And they have like, literally, I mean, they have like a golden girls like calendar. And then it’s like grief books. So if you can imagine a grief book published by people who also published like the Bob Ross recipe book, it’s kind of awesome looking. And they really, really got behind my conviction that it needed to be completely illustrated in full bleed color, and bright and loud. Because not everything with grief has to be like beige and black, you know, and dark blue. I don’t believe in that. I think you should still be able to like call up and design. Maybe there’s like a dove in there. Maybe even I don’t know. But there’s also like, there’s also like a poop emoji. So you know, very high low Claire. And so the books goal is threefold, right? It’s to help you stay connected to your person. So there’s a whole multiple sections that fall within that umbrella. So there’s a big section and this is a big interactive section. It’s not a workbook like Okay, here you go, just work on it. It’s a totally written book. But it also has sections that you can write in. So the part about staying connected to your person has a lot about like prompting memory, you know, remembering things that you want to remember, and maybe also remembering things that you would rather not remember. But you’re gonna remember anyway, so you might as well process them. Maybe it’s something that you want to go to your therapist and talk through more.

Claire 

I love that. That’s so important.

Rebecca Soffer 

Yeah, cuz, you know, it’s not just about like..

Claire

There’s a lot of shit you don’t want to remember but you have to deal with.

Rebecca Soffer 

Exactly. It’s not just like, what was the magical thing they cooked for you. It’s like, what was the time were like, they really fucked up. And like, they maybe didn’t apologize. Like, what was that like, you know, like, dare I say, I’m not the therapist in this conversation, as we both very well know. But dare I say, I think sometimes being aware of that stuff is even more powerful than remembering the magical thing the…

Claire  28:06

Absolutely. They were very human. All of the people that we’ve lost and yeah, lot of stuff to reckon with.

Rebecca Soffer 

I mean, it’s Gabi, my co-founder, she said, the perfect line months, she said, we are imperfect humans grieving, imperfect humans imperfectly. And I think we just sometimes forget that, like, Oh, they’re gone. Like, we just can only remember the good stuff. But it’s like, no, you should actually remember the bad stuff, because it can still teach you and you can still, you know, grow to have empathy for them, you know, as you move through your life, and as your relationship with them evolves, because it does evolve, you know, you still you still have a relationship with your parents. So and that is another part of that, that staying connected to your person, like thinking about ways in which your relationship can evolve, and thinking about ways in which you can create meaningful rituals. Not just like, Okay, what are you going to? How are you going to like rework Christmas, but like, are there certain holidays that you could just create for yourself? What kind of things I know that you love making? I know, because on Instagram every year, you make like St. Patrick’s that you make, like all this green crap in your kitchen? And I’m like, that’s so awesome. Because every year I’m like, I’m gonna do something like that for my mom. I’m like, I can’t really think of like Arbor Day. I don’t know what day I would do it. But like, I’m like Claire’s, she like goes all in. And it’s so awesome. Because you really are teaching your kids about her and you’re giving an activity, and it’s something that’s kind of quirky, and it just belongs to you. And then so cool, you know, and so there are so many ways in which you can do that. And I think that people kind of get stuck in that they’re like deer in the headlights of like, I don’t really know what to do, or I’m like so freaked out that there’s a day looming and I’m just gonna, like, freeze or get really depressed or like you really anxious. And so like I give you a lot of really, I would say sorry, like wonderful ideas that are not just mine, but ideas that I’ve seen from them all. One last community, you know, I interviewed a lot of people about what’s helped them. And they’re really wonderful ideas.

Claire  30:08

I’m so grateful that you put this book out. It’s going to be so helpful for so many if I’d had a book like that when I was going through my initial grief, I would be a much better person now.

Rebecca Soffer 

I think you’re a pretty great person as you are, to be completely honest.

Claire 

Last question, what would your parents think of everything you’ve done and created and how you’re doing?

Rebecca Soffer 

Oh, my dad was a writer. And he was a very self-made man. He was very entrepreneurial. He started his own advertising agency that became an international ad agency. He was the wittiest writer, honestly, that I’d ever really known, you know, until his death. And I think he’d be really proud that I started something out of passion, maybe not out of business smart, because I definitely will not […] No, it was the dumbest business decision ever. But I really felt moved by it. And I really believed in it. And I really knew that somebody else needed this. I just didn’t know who they were, you know, I think he’d be really proud of that. I think he’d be proud that like, you know, I’ve written a couple books. Now, as he was a writer, he really believed that his daughter could do anything, you know, he really did. And he never got to see that. I think that my mom, you know, she would just be so happy that I have these two beautiful little boys. She would have loved being a grandmother. She would have loved seeing me as a mom, and she would have laughed her ass off, watching me get, like, just dragged by my kids. You know, like, whenever they’re having tantrums or difficult moments, because she used to laugh. Like, whenever I was like, not the nicest person when I was like a tween, she would laugh and she’d be like, one day you’ll see, and, and I’m like, I’ll see what and she’ll be like, you’ll see, and so she would have just gotten a real laugh out of, you know, my life as a parent and so much love out of it. And she would have really, I think been proud of. I mean, just honestly, just to be honest, like the commitment that I didn’t realize that I had tikkun olam, which is a Hebrew term for healing the world. And I don’t think I’m healing the world at large at all. But if I can heal, even a small part of the fallout of one of the worst things that’s ever happened to somebody, then I’m okay. like, that’s all I could hope for.

Claire  32:58

Rebecca, you got me. Tears in my eyes. Thank you so much for being who you are, and all the work you’re doing and being my friend. Thank you. I love you so much.

Rebecca Soffer 

I love you, too.

Claire 

I’m grateful to be doing this work together. I couldn’t do it without people like you.

Rebecca Soffer 

Oh, my God. No way. Literally no way. Literally no way. Thanks for having me.

Claire

Modern loss is such a great concept, isn’t it? The world is changing so fast and in so many ways. And so is our grief. Our understanding of grief and grieving is so different than it was even 25 years ago when my mom died. Typing up a Facebook or Instagram post about our loved ones passing didn’t exist back then. People couldn’t attend memorial services virtually. When Kurt Cobain died, everyone who was affected by his lost didn’t have a public space to mourn like they did recently with Taylor Hawkins. So thanks again to Rebecca for creating this awesome way for people to navigate their lives after her death. And thanks to you for joining me today. Make sure to check out all three new day episodes each week. On Mondays and Wednesdays I offer up a tip that you can try right away in your life. And I answer your questions. So if you have one for me, shoot me an email at newday@lemonadamedia.com. See you Monday.

CREDITS

NEW DAY is a Lemonada Media Original. The show is produced by Kryssy Pease and Erianna Jiles. Kat Yore is our engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. Our VP of weekly content is Steve Nelson. And our executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer, and me, Claire Bidwell Smith. NEW DAY is produced in partnership with the Well Being Trust, The Jed Foundation and Education Development Center. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Follow us at @LemonadaMedia across all social platforms, or find me at clairebidwellsmith.com. Join our Facebook group to connect with me and fellow NEW DAY listeners at facebook.com/groups/newdaypod. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium on Apple podcasts.  Thanks for listening. See you next week.