Grief: How to Move Through Losing a Friend with Sloane Crosley
May 30, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, Pod Squad, welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Today, we have somebody who I have admired from afar for a very long time.
Abby Wambach:
It is true.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s very true. And I’ve read every single thing that you have read. Well, first of all, I should tell them that you are-
Abby Wambach:
That she’s written.
Glennon Doyle:
No, everything she’s ever read.
Abby Wambach:
I don’t think so.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. Sloane Crosley is the New York Times bestselling author of the new memoir, Grief is for People, the novels, Cult Classic and The Clasp and three essay collections, Look Alive Out There, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, I almost start laughing just when I’m reading the titles, and How Did You Get This Number? She lives in New York City. Sloane, you are such a great writer.
Sloane Crosley:
First of all, thank you for having me, and thank you for reading the script that my mother wrote for you in advance to introduce me.
Glennon Doyle:
I was like, “How did she find our address?” Okay, we’re going to talk today about Grief is for People, which blew my little mind, I loved so very much. I read it a long time ago, before it came out.
Sloane Crosley:
Oh, thank you.
Abby Wambach:
Oh, in Galley, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
In Galley, yes. And then I have just been rereading it this week. It’s so good, Sloane. It’s so good. It’s almost annoying.
Sloane Crosley:
Oh, that’s my second goal. The first is to move people and then the second, if possible, is to irritate them as quickly as possible.
Abby Wambach:
Well, because Glennon is the reader and I’m the listener of books, in my experience, she reads five books a week.
Glennon Doyle:
We call it dissociation. My therapist calls it dissociation.
Abby Wambach:
There are maybe a handful of books a year that she gets annoyed that she didn’t come up with it. And your book is one of them. So she’s like, “It’s annoying that somebody else is that good at writing.”
Glennon Doyle:
But Sloane is actually impossible to be envious of because she’s so original.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I’ve actually never once thought, “I wish I thought of that.” Because I could never think of it because your observations are so deeply specific and personal, and that’s what makes it so good. So let’s talk to the people about what the book is about. You said that Grief is for People was about what you called your first experience with a particular brand of grief. Can you tell us what was this brand of grief? Just take us back.
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah. And I will say also before I let the river of compliments just flow by me without saying anything, I assume you’re not jealous necessarily of the events that took place in the book, which I will now explain.
So what happened was on June 27, 2019, I left my apartment for one hour, I actually went to get a hand x-ray, which is only relevant because I have a line in the book where I say, “Luck is a dirty thing when you’re out of it,” because I took all my rings off knowing I would have to put my hand in some sort of MRI-esque machine. And it was during that hour that someone came in through my window and stole all my jewelry, and I was burglarized and came home to discover that.
And obviously this was very traumatic, upsetting, but even at the level of a felony, you know how it is when you’re writing something that’s your story, you’re always trying to move beyond the cocktail party conversation, always trying to move behind to figure out the larger point of the story. So even at the level of a felony, I’m like, “Eh, I’m upset, but I don’t want to just complain. I want to know what the heart of the story is.” And usually that happens naturally. And this time, I bit off a little more than I could chew. So a month later exactly, on July 27th, my dearest friend who I’d just seen three nights prior, died by suicide. And so this compounding loss, these concentric circles that got a lot bigger and obviously blew the first one out of the water, was a kind of grief I had never experienced before I lost people in different ways, but never, never known someone who died by suicide who I was this close to.
Glennon Doyle:
And that two stories running alongside each other about your desperate need to solve the jewelry heist, is suicide one of the deaths that you experience it as a mystery you might be able to solve?
Sloane Crosley:
Yes. The way I describe it is it’s this strange math that you work backwards instead of forwards. If someone is diagnosed with a disease… By the way, this isn’t a competition. It’s all terrible.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s all terrible.
Sloane Crosley:
Everyone has been touched by it in some way, grief and loss. But there’s a preparation, which is terrible in its own, but it’s Matthew work forwards, you know what’s going to happen, which doesn’t necessarily mean you can gain grief in advance, but it’s less shocking, it’s less frustrating, that feeling of I don’t know what happened, I want to know what happened, I’m retracing my steps, I think you only really get with either suicide or a very sudden death. And so the burglary was like that. It created this structure for me to tell that larger story. I always feel the need, this pressure, to let people know if they haven’t read the book, that I’m not equating these two losses, but one serves as the container, the setting, if you will. I’m sorry, that was so cheesy. The jewelry for the larger loss.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I just appreciated so much the insistence on talking about it, about talking about suicide. And I’m going to actually have a therapist I know listen to this after we record it, just to make sure that it feels healthy the way that we talk about suicide for other people. So don’t worry, I always vet myself before I put myself in the world.
Sloane Crosley:
It’s good. I worry about offending people who have been touched by suicide all the time, and I’m one of them.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Sloane Crosley:
Nobody knows how to talk about it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, and yet I feel I have had a lot of experience in this realm, and I feel frustrated and afraid by the absolute terror that people have to talk about it. It feels like people think… Actually, all grief, if we don’t bring it up, no one will think of it.
Sloane Crosley:
That works somewhat for certain closets in my house that are overstuffed, but it doesn’t actually work for mortality in human life, even then it doesn’t work so great. But I feel like there’s a strange… I think people are scared, which makes sense. It’s petrifying. We have all agreed, whether you’re a religious person, whether you’re not, doesn’t matter who you are, we have agreed on some baseline level that we’re all going to live through this thing together and it feels like this frightening breach of contract and it feels like, “Did I ever really know that person?” And then you have so much ego involved in it. It’s just this swirling mix of all the worst emotions. And so people are just scared to even discuss it. I think it’s getting better. This isn’t the 17th century. We are allowed to discuss it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, we are allowed.
Sloane Crosley:
But it’s still taboo.
Glennon Doyle:
We sat at a dinner table a while back, a few weeks ago, and everybody at the table just started talking about death and suicide. And it was a three-hour conversation and I just felt this relief afterwards and this deep feeling of oh, nobody’s alone in this because we’re scared to talk about it because we’re angry and confused at people who do it. But I also feel like some of us feel very alone in ever even having those thoughts because that’s a different brand of being afraid to talk about it. And so at this table, somebody was brave enough to bring it up and then several other people were like, “Actually, I have had doubts of that.” And somebody else was like, “Actually, that’s always on the…” And these are friends that I’ve had for a long time and didn’t know. And I remember thinking, “God, I wish everybody could hear this.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, something that you said during that conversation that blew me away, Glennon, it was against our untalked about contract. I didn’t know you said, “Yeah, I’m conscious that there’s an exit door. I know that some people take it and some people don’t.” And logically in my mind, I know that there is a door, but I never ever consider it or think about it or I pretend it’s not there. There’s so many of us-
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I always do. I’m like, “Life is a movie theater and I’m not going to pretend that the red exit thing isn’t there.” I could pretend it’s not, but I know it fucking is.
Abby Wambach:
I know. But it was important for me to hear this conversation, to understand you better and to understand the people sitting at our dining room table better, but also to understand my own relationship because I have a fear of death. That’s probably why I am like, “Nope, the lights on the exit sign are not on, they’re off.”
Glennon Doyle:
But you said suicide is a tax on human consciousness and part of the de-stigmatization of suicide is not framing the desire or the flirtation as exceptional. Can you say more about those things? How is it a tax?
Sloane Crosley:
It shares a border or dovetails with exactly what you’re saying. I think people are afraid to talk about it because the only way we have gotten better at bringing out to the open, but it seems to me at least, that the only way I experience it is in the extreme. So when people say, “I’ve had suicidal ideations, I have known someone, I’ve attempted,” they have these extreme scenarios where I think, “Okay, well that is okay to talk about because mental health. That’s okay.” But there’s a road to get there for a lot of people. This is a horribly crass analogy for it, but it’s like a perfume. This smells a little different on everybody. And sometimes there’s a history of going in and out of therapy and it’s really obvious and sometimes it’s just who we are.
And I feel like if you look at it, it makes it, like anything, it takes the fangs out of it or it helps feel it a little bit and it makes you feel less lonely. And for this specifically, it’s helpful to feel less lonely. So if you have a problem, I’m just going to go ahead and say, with your GI tract, it’s not going to help your GI tract to feel like you’re talking to other people about their problems. This will help though. This is the actual heart of the matter. It actually really does help to talk about it.
A very quick weird analogy that’s springing into my mind that I’ll try to go through fast is I once did this piece about the Grimms’ Fairy Tales where I retraced the actual original setting in Germany. And there is a Cinderella’s castle that you can actually go to. There is Rapunzel’s Tower, a little Red Riding Hoods woods. It’s all very strange but beautiful. And I met this German kid who said how great the Grimms’ Fairy Tales were because they’re so violent in the original ones. The Disney ones are very watered down. There’s a lot of blood and guts and crime. And I was like, “Why do you think that is?” And he goes, “Well, because if you’re scared sometimes that there’s a monster under the bed, it’s helpful to know what his name is and what he looks like.”
Abby Wambach:
Whoa.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly.
Sloane Crosley:
And I’m like, “Listen, German child, full of wisdom.” But I thought about it in a lot of different contexts, and I’m obviously thinking about it now in this moment, in this conversation where it just helps to say this is the shape of the thing. This is what it looks like and to talk about it. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s pressure on people to talk about it if they don’t want to, but they should know that the option is there without being judged for being different.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. And everyone who’s talking about it by default is someone who has not done it.
Sloane Crosley:
Good point.
Glennon Doyle:
So when I’m talking to people about it, what they’re talking about is their terror and their fear and the difficult nature of it, and also all the reasons they decided to survive anyway. When we’re talking about death, we are by default talking about life, why we chose to stay.
Sloane Crosley:
And that’s how, I think, Russell, my friend… I always put it is I didn’t feel particularly… I don’t know, it’s all guessing, right? I wasn’t there for the last moments and you don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors between two people or one person, if the case may be. But whatever happened, he didn’t feel compelled to stay here. And I think about it a lot in terms of the fact that the second I found out, I think what was scary about writing the book is to say the words I immediately understood and I immediately forgave him because weirdly, because I’m still here, people are apt to look at that. I know it’s scary to say that and say, “What do you mean you understand? How much do you understand? Are you in danger too?” And I’m like, “I just want to say that I get it and I understand my friend. That’s all.”
Glennon Doyle:
Oh God, that’s so beautiful. It’s like people feel like they need to distance themselves completely by saying-
Sloane Crosley:
Not me, don’t have it.
Glennon Doyle:
And that was wrong. And this is right. And I love that loving container of holding all of it because you have a beautiful part where you say, “Do you have to forgive a person who dies by suicide? To be gobsmacked by suicide, to consider it in need of forgiveness is to deny what the world is like for others to decide that darkness exists in service to light, that darkness is the glitch, and lightness is the control because that’s how it is for you.”
Abby Wambach:
So fucking good.
Sloane Crosley:
Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
When I read that, this is so ridiculous, but I kept thinking about how everyone gets pissed off when somebody doesn’t stand up for the flag. And I’m like, “You’re pissed because when you see that, something wells up in you that feels like it should because of what it stands for for you and you’re mad because you think they’re feeling that and not standing, but they’re not feeling that.” What it means to you is not what it means to them, so I just appreciate that take.
Sloane Crosley:
Thank you. Well, because I think that in a way, I guess a reductive way to say it is more to say that it doesn’t mean you’re not a citizen of the country, of the life, of the friendship, of anything if you don’t express it. It’s like a dictatorship, what you’re describing, and it’s almost an emotional dictatorship is what it feels like when people are like, “This is how you grieve, this is how you love, this is how you express this.” And I’m thinking, “I don’t know.” But I think the reason why you write anything, as you know, is because even if it’s very specific, as you were saying, you have this faith, I’m like, “I cannot be the only one. I’m going to tell the specific story about my friendship and I’m going to tell the specific story about this wildly generous and funny and great and behind the scenes in the arts and really inappropriate man who I love so much.”
And I’m like, “Somebody will get it. Somebody has lost someone in this way and thought nothing is speaking to me.” Maybe not the self-help books and maybe not Durkheim and Kant or Joan Didion or whatever it is. I just wanted to write something that was like him, if that makes sense.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh yeah.
Sloane Crosley:
Sorry, that was a babbly answer, but it ended well because it’s true. It was just something that he would like. He probably wouldn’t adore reading a book about himself being as inclined as he was towards self erasure at the end, but eventually he’d get around to it and I think he’d like it.
Glennon Doyle:
It would’ve been right next to his computer with his little letters and emails where people verified his-
Sloane Crosley:
Well, maybe I should say a little tiny bit, where-
Glennon Doyle:
Please do.
Sloane Crosley:
He was my old boss in publishing, and he was just very frank with people, but he also expected people to be frank with him in return, so it wasn’t like an abusive kind of cruelty or frankness. And he had this one woman who came in for an informational interview who said, “I can’t figure out why no one’s hiring me.” There wasn’t a position open. He was just helping her out. And he said, “Well, you’re very well-read and you’re qualified.” He’s like, “But you’re not fun.” I’m like, “Oh no.” And then he’s like, “It’s a small department. Ease up. Just be a little more casual. You’re not applying for a job in academia. It’s a job in book publishing. It’s in publicity. You have to talk about books with enthusiasm and animation.” And years later, she wrote him a thank you note thanking him for this life-changing candor, and he always would point to it every time he was accused of being too gruff or too mean. He’d be like, “Talk to the note.”
Glennon Doyle:
Talk to the note.
Sloane Crosley:
I’m like, “Dude, that’s one person. That is one lady who’s not mad at you.”
Abby Wambach:
That was the checklist. He was like, “I’m good forever. I’ve got my affirmation.”
Sloane Crosley:
I was like, “This isn’t like predestination now.”
Glennon Doyle:
It was generous.
Sloane Crosley:
But the thing is, it’s still so hard to see it clearly. It’s so funny. I don’t know those people you were talking to at dinner when they had their various thoughts, if they have them all the time. It was hard to know when to write the book. I still feel like the book is about really as much as it is an elegy to him, a struggle to figure out, to have this ongoing process of how I think about his death because I’ve talked to people, of course, many people whose loved ones have died 20, 30, 40 years ago and it still hurts like it was yesterday if it’s this way. And I feel like such a plebe now.
Glennon Doyle:
Your friendship is so beautiful, and I loved him as I read the book. I just loved him. I wonder is part of the difficulty, I don’t remember if you read this or I thought this, I don’t know, but you guys were so close and your takes on the world were similar and you’re just doing it together. It reminded me of the friend that you’re with when you leave the party and you had all the same judgments of everyone, and you just know that the other person’s having the exact same experience as you are. And you actually can’t wait to leave because the debrief is going to be better than the thing.
Abby Wambach:
So good. That’s how I feel about you.
Glennon Doyle:
Same. Yeah, the other day our daughter said we need to stop talking so much shit every place we leave. She said that to us.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, we’re going to work on that.
Abby Wambach:
I don’t think that we’re necessarily talking shit, we’re making observations.
Sloane Crosley:
I think they’re clear eyed.
Abby Wambach:
But I think it’s a rebalancing of being out in the world. We have to prove that we need to go home.
Sloane Crosley:
I completely get it. As long as it doesn’t sink down to the root system. I think your daughter is basically like, “This is going to make us negative people when we go in.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, that’s what she’s saying.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right.
Glennon Doyle:
She’s like, “Look what you’re modeling for me now. I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. Thanks a lot.” Is part of the resolution of the grief, which I don’t even know if that’s a thing, but admitting to yourself, deciding to yourself that you are different, that you and Russell were different? I feel like sometimes people don’t want to talk to me about the suicide thing because it creates a difference between us. If they’re like, “I’ve never thought of that…” And also people think of me as smart, so they’re scared that maybe I know something they don’t know.
Sloane Crosley:
The intelligence thing is really, oh God, that’s the scariest part to me. That’s the scariest part to me, even as someone who has experienced depression has definitely, as I say in the book, even in the most casual way, been standing on the subway platform and just, it’s not depression. It’s almost just fallibility that like, “Oh my God, there’s no guardrails here. Yes, jump.”
But of course, that’s not quite the same thing. It’s not even in the ballpark as being ready to do that or an overwhelming desire to do it. But it creates this barrier and it created a barrier between Russell and I. Yeah, I definitely felt that a little bit. It took a while for it to kick in, so immediately I understood. I say I never really went through anger. I think the book itself is angry in a way where it provides some of the engine for both the humor and the heartache of it, where I think I just got so mad at the idea that people wouldn’t know him. And I felt this not so fastness.
And I think that’s because, also, I think everyone feels that way about their loved ones who go. You want to take out the skywriting and it’s been wonderful to be like, “Let me talk about my friend.” But I feel like part of that is he worked behind the scenes in the arts and made other people famous, and I just wanted him to have his moment in the sun in a way. But I think the whole book was like… He didn’t get an obituary. I joke around that I got 200 pages worth of real pissed that he did not get an obituary. So I immediately wasn’t angry at him. I was angry at the world. I accepted that he had done this thing and then it took me months to be like, “Wait, but why?”
And to take ego out of it… He also has, it’s so funny has, had a partner in all this who I’ve been in communication with, his partner. And so that’s the other struggle where I’m like, “I’m the friend. I’m not the partner, I’m not the sister, I’m not the mother.” Those people all exist. But I was like, “It’s healthy in some ways to separate yourself from your friends.” You know what it is, even in relationships, it’s easier to talk about when it’s not life and death, when it’s maybe more romantic when you give too much of yourself to somebody else and you seed the entire crown jewels, just somebody. And I feel like I had almost done that with him. And then he took them, just to extend the jewelry analogy. It took me a long time, I think it took me a couple a year or so to be like, “I can’t believe it. It’s not this yin yang that I thought it was.” But it doesn’t mean it’s, therefore, without value.
Glennon Doyle:
No, the friend thing was an interesting part of it. I know that you say no one was trying to take your grief from you because you were just a friend and not a partner, not a child of this person, not a parent of this person, which I have heard from so many people. Losing a friend puts you in this category lists category. There’s no specific grief groups for you. There’s not a lot of path laid out on how you should do it or how much you get to do it, how much grief you get to have.
Sloane Crosley:
Yes, but especially now with everyone, I think it’s so easy to blame. It used to be easy to blame the internet for everything, and now we just can blame the pandemic for everything, like, “Well, post pandemic.” But genuinely, I do feel like people’s friendships, their relationships with their families and their partners as well are all pear shaped and weird. And it’s like this extra layer of struggle that seems… It just gives you this scrim where you just have to wade through so much more before you feel what you’re supposed to feel, where you’re like, “Wait, am I supposed to be feeling this? Where? How? Am I being one of those people that’s glomming onto a dead person?” There’s that death tourism thing that people do where they post pictures. The one time I ran into Bob at the supermarket in 1982, he was really nice to me. Here’s my Twitter post about it.
Glennon Doyle:
Totally.
Sloane Crosley:
The problem is also trying to hang up my spurs in terms of being a humorist at heart and someone who writes about etiquette at heart and not police people’s reaction about grief. Because unlike you guys, I leave the party and it’s like that’s when the fun begins. But it’s also, a lot of this book and this experience has been about opening myself up in a more genuine way to what this is like.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, there’s some kernel of the judgment thing that I felt… It’s weird that we were just talking about that, but it feels like an important part of the book and Russell’s life because if you are a person who is constantly looking at the world and judging everyone, which was part of the beauty of Russell, the friend you wanted to leave with.
Sloane Crosley:
If you don’t have something nice to say, come sit by me.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. But what that does over time, speaking from personal experience, is that you start to not feel like you fit in the world. Judgment by definition is a separation, a wall you put up between them and me. And Russell, it’s like we have this category of person, not that Russell is in any category, but who feels like the world is changing so much that they no longer have any part of it or they don’t fit in it anymore. And is part of that increased by being a person who is extremely judgmental?
Sloane Crosley:
Oh yeah. Well, because if you keep going, you keep drawing lines, cutting the paper in half, cutting it in half, cutting it in half. I feel like there’s a paradox or some physics thing that says you can never actually cut the paper entirely in half, but you can get it pretty small and cut yourself off the list, that self-judgment that you then start to have where you feel like you are not enough if you run out of people to be critical of. You look around the room, you can’t find the [inaudible 00:27:06].
Glennon Doyle:
God, it’s interesting.
Sloane Crosley:
He was a little bit like that, but I think so much of it was… One of my favorite authors growing up was James Joyce, not very original, and I think about The Dead, the famous short story, The Dead, and the whole theme of The Dead is essentially that this husband is alienated from his wife because she’s in love with this childhood boy who died for her essentially. And he can never compete with the memory of that person because the dead are perfect. This idea that the dead are perfect, which is different than not speaking ill of them and respect.
But that idea, I think, Russell took to heart in so many tiny ways that were really beneficial in life. He’s one of those people who loved old Hollywood movies. He got books back into print that had been out of print for years, and he loved the flea market. He loved old objects. He just loved the past. He liked history, things that we generally look around and think of as attributes, someone who has a sense of the past that they weren’t born yesterday. But he lived in it so deeply that this is a bit of a stretch because, again, it’s all conjecture, and like I said, it’s Matthew, you do backwards, but I think it somehow made it easier for him to join the ranks of other people. Critical of the people here on Earth, the dead are perfect. I’m not saying it’s why. I’m not saying if you read too many old books, watch out. But I just feel like it just created a slide for him that was a little bit easier.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
I have a question around your processing of grief. My older brother passed away a couple months ago, so I’m in the beginning stages of this thing called grief. And Russell having died by suicide, I would imagine you probably have been going over every detail of every last conversation you had and trying to understand. To me, that has been the most difficult thing is trying to understand not just where he went, where did they go, but how did this happen? I guess my question is, especially for anybody who’s going through grief or has experienced it, are the questions of needing to understand getting less as time goes on, or are they still ever present?
Sloane Crosley:
I am very sorry about your brother.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you.
Sloane Crosley:
For me, I can only speak to my experience and it mirrors other experiences in my life, which I guess I’m surprised by. We started talking about how I’ve never experienced a grief like this, which is true, but I’m still me. It’s the same prism of my own experience. And so when I think about other things where I’m like, “I have difficulty not writing the script for other people, I have difficulty not wanting to know absolutely everything.” Some of it’s curiosity, some of it is pathological, and I feel like the same struggles I have not to apply that to everyday human relationships I have to grief. And so for me, eventually what you have to do is just accept the stuff, and it sounds very AA Creed-o-ey, but accept the stuff that you don’t know, that I just cannot know and I will never know.
And the thing that I realized is it’s most healthy to let those questions go after a while, the replaying of the conversations. Because after a while, you actually let the analysis of the party cannibalize the party, not to shoehorn we were just talking about, but truly where I feel like my focus on his death on why and what I missed when other people missed, I think for me, the most heartbreaking line of the book that I have difficulty or had difficulty reading for the audiobook is the question of were we all the wrong people for you? Were we the wrong friends for him?
I realize it’s cannibalizing his life. It’s cannibalizing the friendship and it will eat your brother’s memory. Geez, that’s very hard to say. But it will start eroding if you’re so focused on the death. You don’t want to just dismiss it, but it’s a piece. It’s not the entire part of his life and your relationship and your memory. And so eventually, you let the questions go. I think, or I have found, I let the questions go in favor of a tribute to him, a more fitting tribute to him in my mind, but it’s really frustrating at first. It’s really frustrating.
Abby Wambach:
What you just said is so true. I’m only focused on his death.
Sloane Crosley:
Yes. But it’s also two months out for you. I don’t know. I think I’m in my plebe year and then I’m looking, I’m like, “Ooh.”
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Sloane Crosley:
Oh, just the second you said two months my heart sunk because I feel like six months is going to be really hard. It’s all very hard.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, yeah, it is. And there’s no way to go through it except through it. And what you just said is really healing to me in that we can get really focused on this last moment, this last thing, their death, and he was alive for 52 years. It’s so much time and memories.
Sloane Crosley:
Same age as Russell.
Abby Wambach:
So much time and love and memories and experiences that I want that to be the first. I want the death to be the last of what comes up first.
Sloane Crosley:
I think it is eventually. I don’t even know if I’m there yet. I go back and forth. I sometimes think that I am not unemotional, but especially with writing the book and promoting the book, it’s this weird surreal experience, and then something will happen and I’ll get so frustrated and have all these questions that’ll just come bubbling up again.
I feel like that it is just almost like a bad habit. I’ve tried to kick this habit of needing to know absolutely everything about what happened. And I know nothing about this extremely competitive and extremely I want to know. I just want to know the answer, and I want to get the A on the exam almost. I want to ace, what, the grief? What is it that I want? And I’m like, “It’s going to take however long it takes and it’s going to be weird shaped.”
The other day I had to send photos of him into a magazine, old photos, so I was digging through them physically in a shoebox, imagine if you will, up hill both ways. And I dug for these photos and I found one where I’m in a bathing suit and I’m 25 and it’s at night by a pool, and he’s jokingly pulling a towel off of me. And I think I had put all the memories in the book, and I had understood everything about the death, or I thought I had, and I remembered what he said when the flash went off, just the second I saw the physical photo, and it was regarding the bathing suit, but he said, “You’ll be so happy you have that one day.”
And here I was digging through a shoebox to try to find pictures for a magazine because he had died by suicide in a barn. And I know that’s not what he meant when he said it. And I was on the floor absolutely hysterical long after I wanted to stop crying. That’s the difference of grief, crying. It’s like, “I’m ready to stop. I’m good.” But there’s something where I’m almost looking in the mirror being like, “Stop it.”
Glennon Doyle:
Ooh, that is the difference.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Sloane Crosley:
I couldn’t stop it. And I was like, “This is insane. I’ve written this book, doing this press.” And I was so mad and I wanted to know everything, and I became so frustrated all over again.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, okay. Thank you for that.
Sloane Crosley:
So it’s going to hit you, but you just learn not to let it take over the whole life.
Abby Wambach:
Yep. Got it.
Glennon Doyle:
There’s many images from the book that stick with me. One of them I want to talk about is I know that we just finished talking about how it might be helpful to talk about it more, but let’s add that there are ways that people should stop. Okay, so I want to talk about not just this particular image, but what it was saying about how we should respond to people’s grief. The woman who called you right in the aftermath of hearing the news about Russell to offer her condolences, but what was she doing, re-potting vinegar or something that I even know people do? Tell us that-
Sloane Crosley:
Re-potting?
Glennon Doyle:
I don’t know.
Abby Wambach:
Re-bottling?
Sloane Crosley:
She was bottling, just run-of-the-mill bottling, just straight bottling.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, I don’t even know what that is, but can you just tell the story? What is bottling?
Abby Wambach:
People are bottling things, so they get stuff from their garden and they put it in bottles.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, that’s why I don’t know about it.
Abby Wambach:
She was making vinegar. You put vinegar in bottles because it’s liquid.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. But the point is…
Sloane Crosley:
My ideal is just actually sit back and have the entire rest of the conversation.
Abby Wambach:
About vinegar.
Sloane Crosley:
It would be a very detailed chemical breakdown of vinegar that none of us know.
Abby Wambach:
Exactly.
Sloane Crosley:
So this was a newer friend. It’s like when people say, when something horrible happens and they say, “I don’t have the words,” I always think, “Find them.” Find them or say nothing or find them. Go get them because even if they’re cliche, even if we’ve wasted, I’m so sorry for your loss on a pair of headphones or even a job, I’m sorry that we’ve wasted it now and when we really need it, but go get it. And it was almost like a half pierced ear where she did the first part of the gesture, which is, “I should call this person.”
And then while we were on the phone, it was so loud, it sounded like a cocktail party, but a cocktail party in which someone had dropped a tray full of warm glasses in an industrial way. It was so loud. And I commented at some point on it where I was like, “Oh, thank you. There’s a noise. I’m sorry, what is that? What is that?” And she said, “Oh, I’m bottling vinegar, a lot of vinegar.” It turns out it was for a larger endeavor. And I finally was like, “She’s multitasking a condolence call. I can’t do this. I can’t do it.” And I just hung up on her. But also, I did some stuff that was not… Again, I don’t want to police people’s reactions, but I just feel like you should say whatever you say and do whatever you do with great care and authenticity. So even if it’s cliche and even if we’ve used up all the words, just put the vinegar down and no one will get hurt.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah. Can I say the thing that blew my mind in the aftermath of my brother’s death? One of my friends texted me and she had lost her mother a couple of years prior, and it was very clear that she knew what not to say, and she also knew what helped her the most. And so she wrote me a text about a story about my brother, and it was this beautiful, lovely story and it just made me remember the beauty of my brother rather than being so focused on the death of my brother. And so I just offer that to folks. Whoever’s dealing with something similar to this, that there are words. You just have to sit and think about a story or just say you’re sorry. The truth is in grief, there’s few that I remember, I just remember that one beautiful story.
Glennon Doyle:
Sharing a story is a really good option.
Abby Wambach:
It was really beautiful and powerful. And so now, that’s all I do. A friend of mine lost her dad recently, and I just wrote this story about him. And I don’t know if it felt that good to her, but it’s a good idea.
Sloane Crosley:
But she can also keep it in her… The other thing is, even if that doesn’t work in the moment, and I think that’s so true, just almost declarative, less digging for how are you, which is always a nice question, but in that moment, if it’s too broad, it puts the onus on the grieving person. They got enough work to do already without having to formulate anything. But also, your friend will love it because then she can come back to it later. You can’t really come back to how are you in a few months.
Abby Wambach:
That’s right. Yeah, I’ve reread that text from my other friend 10 times.
Glennon Doyle:
It was an effort. It was like a conscious effort, and it was just a gift with no request of you, but also don’t multitask. I just think you can just say that.
Abby Wambach:
That’s tough.
Glennon Doyle:
You can just say that.
Abby Wambach:
She’s like, “Oh, I don’t know how I’m going to fit this condolence call in.”
Glennon Doyle:
She’s got it on her to-do that list. It says, “Vinegar/call Sloane.”
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah, I feel a little bit bad because A, she’s actually a really lovely person.
Abby Wambach:
Of course.
Sloane Crosley:
And B, has now gone on to… She has a vinegar business.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, that makes me feel a little bit better. At least she was working.
Abby Wambach:
It was for something.
Sloane Crosley:
It’s great vinegar, honestly. Also, the fact that it’s vinegar is hilarious, given the idea, the symbolism of it. The thing is is part of the book in terms of the honest things that I think that people don’t want to talk about with grief and with suicide is I could feel myself, the way I put it was that I was almost not to be trusted, that people actually, beyond the vinegar bottling lady, people were actually very genuine and very there for me. But I felt they had, as I say, committed the sin of not being able to bring him back. It was only on his side. So I only wanted the memorial service to be the way he would’ve wanted it.
He was supposed to cat sit it for me. And then as I say in the book, I texted the cat sitter and said, “Oh, actually, can you come because my friend can’t do it anymore.” She said, “Oh, what happened?” And I said, I typed to this very nice lady I’ve met several times, Well, the old cat sitter killed himself.” And you see the dots go up and down and up and down. And so to fix this ridiculous thing I’ve said, I wrote, “Just say you don’t want to do it. Am I right?” She’s like, “Oh my God.” I was like, “It’s so dramatic.”
I think it was just this constant push-pull, and it’s in my life. It’s in the book. It’s still exists of the cylinders of his personality and my personality. And I just still want to be like, “Isn’t this ridiculous? Look at this ridiculous thing.” Because like you said, he was that person I would leave parties with. And it’s not that I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore, but when we talk about this language of grief, sometimes I look around, not to turn this into a therapy session, but sometimes I look around and it’s not like I don’t have good friends, but I almost do this loose head count. I’m like, “Something is missing. I actually miss him. Something is missing.” This person that we both put that quarter of a century into each other basically in terms of our friendship, is gone.
Abby Wambach:
And what a weird thing, because when your family dies, you have to… Being in a family, it’s a have to, but being in a friendship, it’s a want to. And the friendships of the world, when you lose a friend, you don’t get the same kind of closeness or, I would even say, the ability to grieve that person even in the services. I don’t know if you were sitting up front with the family. I don’t know what your particular thing is, but friends, they don’t get the same kind of rights is what I’m saying.
Glennon Doyle:
And Sloane, you made such a beautiful case in the very beginning of the book. You said, when you were talking about Russell, you said, “The one whose belief in me over the years has been the most earned (he’s not my parent), the most pure, he is not my boyfriend and the most forgiving, he is my friend.” And I felt like that is right. And it was such a argument for, wait a minute, friendship is the most important. We do it with free will.
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Sloane Crosley:
Well, it’s how you say, it’s almost if you work it in reverse, the classic line, when someone breaks up with someone says, “I just want to be friends,” I’ve never understood that. Because I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s just so much work.”
Glennon Doyle:
Responsibility.
Sloane Crosley:
If I want to be friends with someone, it’s like saying, “I want to join this club and learn how to quilt with you.” It’s a lot of work.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a lot.
Sloane Crosley:
But I don’t know if it’s more. I feel like there is a certain baseline where my family is, they’re going to be my family no matter what and vice versa, but I feel like you still have to try with them. Those relationships require a lot of work. And in a way, because they are not voluntary and because they’re sort of assigned, it’s a lot of work you might not necessarily want to do. But I do feel like yes, there wasn’t that much where, again, we discussed no one was trying to take away my grief. But I think a lot of the book is for anyone who’s felt confused about if they have a right to mourn, which any therapist, my therapist, yours, anyone’s, would probably bristle immediately at that language, who says.
Glennon Doyle:
But it does feel that way.
Sloane Crosley:
I live in the world. I walk around, I see what the Hallmark cards look like, I say that it’s a struggle.
Glennon Doyle:
I need to talk about this one thing that you talk about, which I have never in my life heard anyone else talk about, but I have thought about every day of my life since I was maybe 10 when I heard this exercise. I don’t know where I heard this, but there’s this exercise where you imagine yourself, somebody puts you in a room and puts somebody you love in a different room and they say there’s a button. They sit you in a chair and there’s a button, is how I heard it, on the other wall, on the opposite wall. And over the loudspeaker, somebody says, “Whoever stands up and hits the button first will die and the other person will live.” Okay. I don’t know if I saw that on the Twilight Zone or some-
Abby Wambach:
So let me clarify, if you hit the button first, you die or they die?
Glennon Doyle:
You die and the other person lives.
Abby Wambach:
You die and they survive. Got it.
Glennon Doyle:
Sloane, you know how there was this thing going on? What’s your Roman Empire? What do you think about the most?
Sloane Crosley:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I think about it all the time. I do it with people. I can lay in bed and work myself up-
Sloane Crosley:
Abby, are you aware of this?
Abby Wambach:
No.
Glennon Doyle:
Work myself up into a sweat thinking about what if my sister and I were in both rooms, how would I get to the thing fast enough? Would that be the right thing? Yes, yes. Her kids are younger, okay. I do it with lots of people to decide what I would do in that situation.
Abby Wambach:
What would you do with me?
Glennon Doyle:
I knew you’re going to ask that. And then I always think I would have an advantage because I’ve been thinking about it for 30 years, and it would be new to them. So I would have the advantage.
Sloane Crosley:
Oh my God, that’s so wrong.
Abby Wambach:
It’s not new to me now. It’s not new to me now. Now it’s in my mind.
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah, you’ve given her the jump.
Glennon Doyle:
And it’s in your book, and the reason why it’s such an incredible exercise, it’s a brain exercise that helps you understand who do you love more than yourself? Who do you deem more vital in the world than you?
Abby Wambach:
That’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
How do you make decisions about when you put yourself first or someone else? And I think there’s a line in the book where you decide that you and Russell would hit the button at the exact same time.
Abby Wambach:
And does that save both people?
Glennon Doyle:
In my world it does.
Abby Wambach:
Okay.
Sloane Crosley:
In my world it does too. Can I say one thing though, which is that just so it’s not such a polarized choice? The umbrella of the scenario over the scenario is that if neither of you press the button within 60 seconds, you both die.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Sloane Crosley:
So someone has to do this.
Glennon Doyle:
Important part, important part.
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah, I’m trying to let you off the hook here a little bit.
Glennon Doyle:
Because otherwise you’d just sit there. You’re not trying to actively kill the person.
Sloane Crosley:
Right. I was like, “Um, maybe it’s good to say that just not having just all these thoughts all the time about everyone you pass on the street.”
Glennon Doyle:
No, you’re saving.
Sloane Crosley:
But also that’s that way when I… I think it’s bittersweet. I bring that scenario up. I think it’s from this pop philosophy. They sold it in CVS in the ’80s book called The Book of Questions. I don’t know if it originates there, but it’s one of the questions in the… It’s for road trips, The Book of Questions. And it’s stuck in my head too. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was, it sounds like the plot of Black Mirror or the Twilight Zone.
But I think I’d say, I think we would press the button at the same time, which is not part of the scenario in the question for the same reason that when Abby was asking about how do I outthink this? How do I find out the answer? And so it’s this bittersweet moment where that’s not one of the options. It’s just the option that I wanted. But it’s just not one of the options. But it’s a way of saying, “Yeah, I loved him very much.” But I also do the same thing you do, or I start doing weird rather morbid head counts of who’s in his life? Who’s going to need him? Who’s in my life? Who’s going to me? And I don’t really know if it’s the healthiest measurement in terms of-
Glennon Doyle:
It’s ridiculous.
Sloane Crosley:
I don’t walk around and think of people.
Glennon Doyle:
Sloane, I wake up and I’m like-
Sloane Crosley:
But it’s an interesting one.
Glennon Doyle:
I lay in bed and then I come to and I think, “I’m not in this situation. I don’t have to figure this out.” I know that you don’t do a lot of tips. There’s no interview that the person doesn’t say, “This is not a self-help book.” Every fucking interview-
Sloane Crosley:
Wait, with me or with everybody?
Glennon Doyle:
With anybody. It’s just like everybody has to say they distance themselves from self-help, whether it’s an interviewer, not you, the person who’s interviewing you. It’s very clear to say, “This isn’t self-help. I don’t read self-help,” whatever, which I have some feelings about because I know what everyone is saying. But I also know that there’s entire aisles at Barnes & Noble that are labeled self-help, and that’s where a lot of women’s books are. And then the exact same books that my male counterparts write are all under leadership. So I have some feelings about the separateness.
Sloane Crosley:
Oh, wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, of that. Anyway, I think there’s something gendered in the-
Abby Wambach:
Of course. There’s something gendered in everything.
Glennon Doyle:
Right?
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah. Well, because the suggestion is that women just need to be functional and okay because they are hysterical, best word ever And men need to excel. They’re already at the baseline.
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s right.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
They don’t need to fix themselves.
Abby Wambach:
They’re trying to go above baseline.
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah, they’re trying to go above.
Abby Wambach:
And we’re just trying to get there.
Sloane Crosley:
We’re just get out of bed, you poor girl.
Abby Wambach:
We’re just trying to get there, that’s right.
Sloane Crosley:
By the way, I distance myself from it, not out of any disdain for the genre because I don’t want to mislead people.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Sloane Crosley:
It’s not like I don’t have advice or things that I would suggest to other people. I worry that if you expect there to be a physically laid out chart or bullet pointed list of things to do, you’re not going to find it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, which is why it’s helpful. It’s so helpful because it’s so specific, but you said this was a tip. All right, listen, Pod Squad, there is a tip. You’re going to take this with you. Sloane Crosley, self-help author. I have read the grief literature and God help me listen to the grief podcast, which mean we giggle so much, which we’re doing now. And the most practical thing I’ve learned is the power of the present tense. The past is quicksand and the future is unknowable. But in the present, you get to float. Nothing is missing. Nothing is hypothetical. What do you mean? What does that mean in real life?
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah. When I say nothing is missing and nothing is hypothetical, it’s like I had this moment where I had this jewelry missing, physically missing from my home. It was very easy to point to that it’s not here. And Russell being gone, I couldn’t call him and talk to him. And all this terror or upset awaited me as the consequences of these things unfolded. That would be in the future. And he was gone in the past. And I think that I might’ve accidentally tripped into self-help, just face planted myself into it only because, to answer your question, I think that just being in the moment and breathing and just being 10 fingers, 10 toes. I still have the outline of my body. I’m still here.
And it’s related to me later in the book saying that so much of grieving and loss is about recognizing that not all your tissue got damaged in the accident, but it still hurts, but it’s not everything. It’s actually not everything. And in a way that’s horrible when you miss someone so much because you feel like it’s a betrayal of them or a betrayal of how much they meant to you to almost function in a way in those initial hours, but it’s actually a sign that you will be okay.
And so I feel like that’s what I mean by in the present, that people were like, “There was so much in the grief literature and the grief poetry even about the past and looking back,” or, “What are things going to be like and these are the stages of grief,” and all that stuff. And I’m like, “The only thing that helped is being in this one moment.” If I’m just here, there’s no such thing as a missing Russell or a missing piece of jewelry. And there’s no such thing as the pain. It’s just one second where I’m just here. I don’t know if that’s very articulate or not.
Abby Wambach:
It is. It’s like this moment of bliss.
Sloane Crosley:
Yes, and it’s a moment of just saying, “This is not too big for me.”
Abby Wambach:
Yep, and then your brain comes online and you’re like, “Fuck.”
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah, it doesn’t last long, but it’s just one of the things. It’s helpful. It’s not true because obviously, your entire past is contained within you, but it’s helpful in the moment.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s also helpful, you talked about a time when you decided to choose the living or to be on the side of the living.
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah. Well, to not text my cat sitter and just make jokes about death because I was not considering her feelings whatsoever. Funny, sure, but also probably not so great if you’re her.
Glennon Doyle:
But it was a loyalty choice too, right? Your insistence on staying with Russell, being with Russell, being with Russell was a loyalty to the dead.
Sloane Crosley:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
And probably felt like this loyalty for a while to enter, reenter the land of the living, like an abandonment almost.
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah. Well, I say that by living, I was by default leaving him. But also, I was saying before, part of the disconnect of realizing that being on the side of the living, realizing that we are not the same, is that ability to just untie the balloon and let it go. And it’s like you’re going to get carried away with it. And it’s not that I was necessarily in danger of what he was obviously in grave danger of, but I am not helping myself or helping him by not recognizing the people who are still here and still around me and the friends and the family that I do have. But it was scary to me because in those first few months, I don’t mean to do a button type of analogy, but if you’ve been like, “Oh, you can throw this person under a save your friend and bring him back,” I’m a little scared of what my answer might have been right away.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
That’s honest and fair. So I want to end with this because I feel like this is Sloane in a nutshell, and it makes me so happy. I’ve thought about this a lot and I feel like I didn’t know Russell. Based on what you’ve written about Russell, I think that he would appreciate this part of the book, but you said, “Rilke warned that we must learn to die. That is all of life. To prepare gradually the masterpiece of a proud and supreme death, of a death where chance plays no part, of a well-made and enthusiastic death of the kind saints new to shape.” And Sloan writes, “That’s nice, but it’s hard to throw together something like that at the last minute.”
Sloane Crosley:
Okay, so A-
Glennon Doyle:
I love it.
Sloane Crosley:
Obviously, I’m a fan of yours right back because I’m being a little more giddy than usual and I have been caught. Maybe you’re the first person of all time who’s gotten me to laugh at my own jokes, just humiliating, so thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
God, it’s so good.
Sloane Crosley:
Well, because I mean both. I’m quoting it because it’s beautiful and I mean it.
Glennon Doyle:
Exactly. And you would never do it if it wasn’t that… Because I trust you that much as a writer, and I appreciate that because you do a little bit of darkness and cynicism, but it’s only the true stuff, and then you also embrace the beautiful light stuff. You don’t shy away from that because it’s cheesy or it’s whatever. It’s like whatever’s true, but when I read your writing, I kept thinking about the vinegar lady. I was like, “If Sloane has a thing of lemonade, and she’s like, this is sweet, but she’s like, no, I got to add some fucking vinegar to this.”
Sloane Crosley:
Well, I feel like it’s how you get through. I think that you reach the most people that way too.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes.
Sloane Crosley:
How I describe things is through humor. I’m sure I cannot possibly be… I know you’ve had other guests that I’ve also been a fan of on this podcast, and I think when people cry the most at funerals or when things are terrible, someone makes a joke that cracks them open, that shows them this bird’s eye view of what they’re doing right now, which is, let’s say, crying on the kitchen floor, whatever it is, and that little piece of ridiculousness without mocking why you’re there, without not taking it seriously or not being formed by it, you’re still like, “Oh God, this is the scene where I do this, huh? Okay, great.”
Abby Wambach:
So good.
Sloane Crosley:
It’s so horrible, but also-
Glennon Doyle:
Sloane, you’re so good. The story is so good.
Sloane Crosley:
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. It does mean a lot coming from you. Thank you.
Glennon Doyle:
Absolutely beautiful. Everybody go get Grief is for People. Honestly, I just can’t wait till whatever you do next.
Abby Wambach:
Yep.
Sloane Crosley:
Thank you. Well, thank you so much for both of you. It’s a delight to talk to you both. And Abby, not to change notes too sharply, but I really am so sorry about your brother.
Abby Wambach:
Thank you so much. And at some point, I’m going to come back and discuss it on this podcast. I’m just not there yet. It’s been a wild, rough couple of months for sure. A lot of hard stuff, but also oddly a lot of beautiful stuff too, which is interesting to me. I’m a little confused by it. I don’t know. Thank you.
Sloane Crosley:
Yeah, you’re welcome. People will, by the way, before we trash all people and all parties, occasionally they will say the right thing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, and I feel like that’s the thing-
Sloane Crosley:
And whatever the right thing is to you.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, I don’t know. What I have felt, I give people the benefit of the doubt of not knowing and also the benefit of the doubt of being in grief and saying the wrong thing. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m not making you responsible in this moment.”
Sloane Crosley:
Right, exactly.
Abby Wambach:
My parents, they were saying a lot of stuff like, “Oh, well, at least he didn’t have cancer.” And I’m like-
Glennon Doyle:
It’s just at least, and then anything after that.
Sloane Crosley:
Exactly, exactly. It’s the framing, at least.
Abby Wambach:
I’m like, “Okay.”
Sloane Crosley:
It is possible to say the wrong thing. Get over it. That’s the wrong thing.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. I just don’t think anybody would say that quite yet.
Sloane Crosley:
They do.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay Sloane, go and do whatever you need to do next, but thank you for this offering and we love your work, and we will read every single thing that you do.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Sloane Crosley:
I am completely delighted. Thank you for having me.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, Pod Squad. Bye. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle. In partnership with Audacy, our executive producer is Jenna Wise Berman. And the show is produced by Lauren LoGrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.