How to Live After Profound Loss

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The Free Press

News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 7.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2023

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Colin Campbell says that the way our society treats grief—and people in grief—is cruel and backward, and it needs a radical reimagining. He, of all people, would know. Four years ago, Colin, his wife Gail, and their two teenage kids were driving to Joshua Tree, when they were T-boned by a drunk and high driver going 90 miles an hour. Colin and Gail survived. Their two children, Ruby and Hart, did not. How do you live after that nightmare? How do you support a friend, a colleague, a brother or sister, who literally does not know how to go on? Colin’s new book, Finding the Words, attempts to answer those unimaginable questions. It tells the story not only of his own pain in the weeks and months following Ruby and Hart’s death, but also breaks down our society’s misconceptions about grief, which he calls the “grief orthodoxy,” and it provides practical advice for a different kind of approach to grief—one that is more truthful, real, and connected. People say to the grieving “There are no words” because they’re scared to confront the hard conversation. As Colin writes, it “acts as a perfect conversation killer. This empty phrase immediately ends any chance of a dialogue about loss and mourning. It encapsulates all that is wrong with how our society handles grief.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Economist provides independent journalism for independent thinking and has been
0:05.1	championing progress for almost 200 years.
0:08.3	With the Economist, you gain access to fact-based, deeply researched expert analysis of world events and topics
0:14.3	ranging from business and culture to politics, science and technology.
0:18.2	Tune into the global conversation with reporting from correspondence around the world, available in-app, online, through
0:25.0	podcasts and print.
0:26.6	So for fact sake, search the economist.
0:29.0	I'm Barry Weiss, and this is honestly.
0:35.0	How many times have you not known what to say to a friend going through a horrible loss.
0:44.4	How many times if you found yourself saying the phrase to someone in acute grief, there
0:48.7	are no words.
0:50.6	Or perhaps worse, not saying anything at all,
0:54.0	because you just don't know what would be right.
0:57.6	I have a friend, not a close friend,
0:59.7	but a friend I really like,
1:01.4	whose husband, a man larger than life suddenly died and like everyone who
1:07.1	heard the news I was in shock and I'm really embarrassed about this I put off reaching
1:12.1	out to her because I simply didn't know what
1:14.6	to say. I wrote dozens of texts and deleted them before finally settling on something that
1:20.5	I didn't think was good enough. And I felt that anything I said would be inadequate
1:26.2	and somehow would add to her suffering. My guest today says that's all wrong. He says we have to find the words and that the way
1:36.6	our society treats grief and people in grief needs a radical reimagining. He of all people knows. Four years ago, Colin
	...

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