Embracing Pain and Beauty with Special Guest Myra Sack

I'm Michelle Lizenberry Christensen. Since 1997, I've been coaching powerful, purpose driven, world changing leaders who are ambitious.

In every area of their lives.

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Vision of love they see in their hearts to manifest every day in the ways they collaborate, communicate love and make love. Let's go. I am so excited about this episode today because it's one of the first ones. You know, I talked with my beloved meditation teacher Eric Klein recently and I'm just moving into doing interviews. I want to bring you people who can elevate your conversation with yourself because life's complicated and seeking a life of wild aliveness, of being fully authentic, fully connected to the divine and deeply rooted into your own body. And your pleasure takes some real discernment. It's a razor's edge we walk. And so today's guest is one of those people that I just want everybody to have the blessing of sitting down with. And not everybody does. So I'm going to share her with you because I get the blessing of having my resac in my life and she is just. I think you can relate to this when you're in the presence of someone who has a spiritual connection, a presence, a depth of intimacy with life. And I think of people as spiritual giants and Myra is one of those. I didn't know her before. She went through some of the things that we'll talk some about today. And I know that she has been forged by grief, but I think, I suspect that long before that she was already definitely a badass. She's an amazing athlete and scholar and activist and contributor. Just someone who serves. So I'm so excited to introduce Myra and we are just a couple weeks post release of her first book and so let's talk about that. So Myra, let's maybe start there because it's fresh and then circle back and talk about like who you've always been. But tell us a little bit about the book and the release and how that's going because that's, that's where you are today.

Well, Michelle, I'm blown away and deeply humbled and honored and I hope I am not a disappointment given that gorgeous introduction. So thank you. And the book. The book is called 57 Fridays, Losing Our Daughter, Finding Our Way. It's. Its foundation is based on the life and death of my first daughter Javi, who was born two years to the day of, of my husband, my wedding anniversary. She was born 9-4-2018, and she died January 20, 2021, and 57 Fridays. Tries is. It is a. Is an attempt at capturing the essence of who she is, and it attempts to be a companion for those of us who need real, raw, meaningful engagement with what is most painful and most beautiful in the world. And. And that's where I am today and where I hope to continue to stay, which is that we. We dissolve this intimacy barrier, which is obviously, Michelle, what you do so beautifully in your work and your being, which is to say, when we distance ourselves from intimacy, it takes a real toll. And I am after that sort of space between people that I think limits us in terms of how we show up.

Every word you speak is such medicine. You said the most painful and beautiful in the same breath, that the most painful moments are the most beautiful. And I have lived experience of that. But I think that just that message is so much of what I want people to get from this conversation and what I think people need to hear. Because somehow in our culture, we're pushing for beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, uninterrupted. And that means that when something's painful, we want to get away from it, or when something inside of me is ugly, I want to hide that from you, to protect you from it, so you can keep having beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. But then, like you said, that it pulls us apart. So there's just. There's such a poetry about how you just say anything that I love. And let's dig into that a little bit more. Say more about the intimacy you share in the book, the story of what happened, what you chose to do, and tell us a little bit more about that, but the intimacy that. That fostered, not just with Javi or between you and Matt, but with others as well.

We learned that Javi was going to die of a neurodegenerative disease called Tay Sachs, which my husband, Matt and I had both been tested for before Harvey was even an idea. Were both tested for these sort of cruel genetic diseases that the Ashkenazi Jewish population is more at risk of inheriting. But tragically, Matt's ordering physician had made an error in the carrier screening test, and he was misreported as not a carrier, when in fact, he was. And so at about a year, Javi was a year old, we embarked on a diagnostic odyssey to try to understand what was going on with her. And that was really the first moment in parenthood where we had to begin to reimagine this life that we thought we could possibly see unfolding, starting to unfold differently. And then three months into that odyssey, we learned that she was going to die from this cruel disease that we thought we had already prevented. And it was that moment where time collapsed and expanded all at once. It was like how. It was this moment of this deep, deep desperation and yearning for more and almost this denial of what was in front of me and this incapacitating pain that I had never experienced before. And in that way, I think I was thrust into. Onto sort of a new plane that was. That was going to offer me a way to be with this that I didn't really have a playbook for. And that was the moment when this notion of Shabirth days, which is where 57 Fridays comes from. Shabirthdays is the combination of Shabbat, the Jewish tradition. We celebrate the Sabbath on Fridays at sundown, and birthdays, which was. We weren't going to have more than two birthdays with Javi on this earth. And as a mom, I couldn't. I couldn't be okay with that. So this was almost an inner protestation. And. And so we decided if we combine birthdays with Shabbat, and Matt came up with the brilliant name of Shabirthdays, we could honor Javi every Friday. And we got 57 of them with her on this earth. But when we came to that idea, we were. We were. I can't exactly remember. We were told by. By someone who recommended this rabbi to us that we should chat with this rabbi. And we went to see this rabbi a few days after Javi was diagnosed. And I sort of proudly walked into her office and shared this idea of birthdays with her. And she looked at me and said, I don't think you should do this. I think this is a bad idea. And I was quiet, and I didn't fully understand where she was coming from, and I was hurt. And when we got back in the car, I looked at Matt and said, that was bullshit. We're moving ahead with this.

And.

That response from her, I think, is a reflection of this fear of society, this fear of culture, that we. We are so afraid to turn towards the deepest, most painful real reality, that we miss the opportunity to experience the deepest joy and the fullest love. And that's what birthdays became. It became these containers, these sacred spaces, these moments where we were only in conversation with what was most meaningful and who mattered and who could hold Javi and see her as sacred and not scary. And that became this. This bubble that really allowed us, as grieving parents, to move from one week to the next and to be in one week at a time. And I think that's the power of ritual.

Wow. That sends my imagination to the. The thought of how Sabbath has gotten so many people from one week to the next through unspeakable, unendurable, just bone grinding pain. You had one flavor of it. There are many flavors of it. And we can take ritual for granted until we really need it.

Totally.

I picture this wormhole or this crevasse right between two things that sort of seem impossible or right in the midst. So first you got the diagnosis and then you got the prognosis. And that had to have been like falling down the stairs with a ton of bricks on top of you. And yet you said within a couple of days you were like, here's what we're gonna do. So it's like something that brought you to your knees, also brought you to deeper wisdom and like, surrender. So how do you see that relationship working? Like, why. Why do you think that is?

I think that for me, the way fear manifests is in stagnant energy. And stagnant energy is paralyzing.

And.

I was there. And the only antidote, I think, strong enough to. To counter that for me is this insanely deep yearning for my daughter and for time with her and. And to be in and on the land of the living in a way that gives us a chance to. To soak in it. And that yearning is this eagerness and this activity and this almost craving. And there's a lot of energy in that. And I think especially in sort of the traditional grief world, or I should say, amongst some areas within psychiatry and the grief world, there is a pathologizing of that yearning. It's like if you are yearning for too long after too much time has. Has passed, you are somehow disordered.

And.

I think that that really undervalues the power and the strength that comes from this energy that keeps us moving and pulls us towards who matters and what matters and draws us again and again to those anchors in our lives. And so I think that was. That was happening, you know, those two sort of opposite feelings and experiences were colliding and trying to find their ways.

That. That feeling of the. The grief and its depth and fear, you said, not just, you said, you didn't say grief, you said fear. And so what arose was the fear and the hunger. So fear, like in your case, was it like fear of fear of losing her and fear of fear of the process or what. What do you think you were most afraid of? And what are some of the things you see other people like, getting caught up in when they find out that they're going to have a loss or after they've had a loss, you know? How does fear stick us?

I think at first the fear was not knowing how. Not knowing how I would exist, that I had just given birth, you know, she was just placed on my chest. I had. I had just labored, you know, I just looked at the clock and saw 12:28. And that she was strong and big, clear eyes, and that we were going to have this light, you know, this lifetime. Yeah.

And she was your first. Right. So you had just given up. You'd given up life with just you and Matt and totally, like, totally become a mom and we're all for it.

Yeah.

And now. Record scratch. Nope.

Yeah, exactly. And so I think this was. This was a not knowing that scared me beyond measure, and. And it was a fear that I was going to disintegrate and that everything around me was going to fall apart as well. And it was a fear of death and a fear of a life that I didn't want. And so many of us, I think, face those moments where we are so scared to try to imagine this different way, this different reality. And that is. That can be paralyzing, especially when we're not conscious, that the fear is. That the fear is subsuming us, you know?

Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. This is so resonant. Like, I. I remember it for myself being in the ultrasound room and the ultrasound technician. It was like a second ultrasound, I think I was 13 weeks pregnant with my second child. And ultrasound technician was like, the only problem is I can't find a heartbeat. I was like, well, can you go get the doctor and let them find it? And she was like, very slowly, I'm afraid that's not going to happen. I couldn't grok it. It just wasn't sinking in. You've seen ultrasounds before, Michelle. You know, they flash. The heartbeat is there and it's not there. Your baby doesn't have a heartbeat. And, yeah, all of your projections, all of your plans, all of your certainty about this is how my life's going to go get. Gets completely changed instantly. But the brain can't deal with that. The nervous system can't deal with that. And so it takes time for things to sort of land. And what I've seen, both with that and other losses in my life, but also with clients, when our plan doesn't work, there's the pain of the loss, there's all the rearrangement but also the ego can sometimes really have a hard, hard time with it. Like, what do you mean I'm not in control? What do you mean, my plan? Don't you know who I am? Like, we got tested. Did you and Matt just go, what the. Excuse me. No.

Yes, it's exactly that. It's not fixable. The first. Yeah, the first experience.

Fix. Fix this thing. Yeah. I'm smart, I'm hard working, I'm earnest, I, I do things right. Why is it. Surely it's fixable. No, this one's not.

What?

Yeah, so what. How did you. Like the way you speak about it now? It's so beautiful and like, I just want everybody to be able to walk over that bridge to that, to that place that you're able to stand in it. What was the hardest moment? Like, did you kind of shake the bars of the cage and be like, no, I refuse to accept this?

Yeah. I mean, so much of the first 24, 48 hours are somewhat of a blur, except that we had been in this diagnostic odyssey where we were walking this sort of harrowing path of, of seeing two different worlds unfold. We had about a month prior, gotten a cerebral palsy diagnosis. And that was, that was this moment where we watched our life as we imagined it with our daughter dissolve. But then we were able to recreate a new one in what felt like a beautiful way where we were starting to make new plans, we were starting to think about new schools, new neighborhoods, new resources. It was all within sort of the material realm of solvable.

And we'll adapt, we'll overcome, we'll improvise. Yeah, we got this.

This was crippling. And the way it manifested with me was, was, I think when you get a prognosis like that, as you said, a diagnosis and then a prognosis.

The.

Choices in front of us are straightforward. In some ways. You. There is not. There are not infinite choices. And that in some ways became a life raft for me in that it became very, very clear that I was going to listen, learn from, and follow Javi's lead. And I was going to let my self awareness cradle the pain so that it was softened. And I was going to be her mom for as long as I possibly could in the, in this way. And nothing after that was and is in my control. And it was so clear, I had so much clarity because the circumstance was so dire and fatal. And I think it's impossible to exist in that space all the time in our day to day lives when we're not facing such a dire, stark moments. And now I, I try to actually bring myself back to that space as often as I can so that I can see and exist with as much clarity as possible when I'm existing in the beautiful and everyday challenges that, that aren't really life and death. So I think that perspective now is embedded in a way that is impossible to shake.

And that's a blessing. Yeah, like, that's. I think I've been hearing a lot about Brioni Ware's, you know, the five regrets of the dying. And it's like when you can walk through dying of someone who you would gladly trade places with. Right. Like, and do anything to prevent Javi dying. But her journey out gave you that like, head start in a way on really knowing your priorities. But how did you get to that? Like, I hear that your values, who you know yourself to be, like the, the best in you was what was guiding. All right, here's how we're going to do this. I'm not going to do this from my fear, from my reaction. I'm going to do it from what matters. What helped you access that? You know, I'm hoping that this conversation can help people who aren't facing such a difficult prognosis, like, find that in themselves for like the decisions you need to make in your business today, the ways you want to show up with your partner when they're frustrating you.

Yeah, I think the first. Well, I think first my, my foundation, my kitchen table education that I grew up in and with and immersed in was my parents were kind of the. Were and are the ultimate embodiment of unconditional love, like to show up. And I didn't appreciate that as a, you know, 6 year old, 12 year.

Old, I try to remind myself they don't appreciate it because it's unconditional. If they can take it for granted, you're doing it right.

Right. And so that, that strength and conviction that, that who I am, as I am is enough, I think is. Is in me and, and actually was a buffer for doubt and guilt and self hate and these emotions that so often leave us, I think, struggling to figure out how to bring our full selves and our full light into situations where we know they deserve to be. And so that foundation, I think, allowed me to appreciate the real power of self awareness of what am I feeling in this moment and how can I be as specific as possible. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's research on emotional granularity and the more specific we are with what we are feeling actually the better able our nervous system is to, you know, help us manage and cope exist. And instead we often operate in these broad bins of I am good or I am bad, I am happy or I am sad. And that gives us no real data to know how to move with a decision or a moment. And so getting underneath what initially feels like envy and landing at anguish allows me to show up in a different way or to have a different kind of conversation with, in my case, a doctor, a family member, a friend, in other people's cases, a colleague, a family member, a friend, whatever it might be. That I think became a really essential tool for me to ask for what I need and only be in spaces and with people who could honor that. And being sort of an inherently accommodating person. That was a shift. That was a shift. And then I think from self awareness we can move into a place of self trust. And that self trust creates this psychological teflon that allows us to navigate a world that can be unfriendly or illiterate and we don't then get knocked off by harmful comments or ill timed gestures or whatever the thing might be. And I think from that place of self trust then we can move to this place of connection, to being with community and with people who ultimately lift us and keep us and sustain us and nourish us. And we all know that we're. That we need that connection so desperately. And yet among grieving people and all of us are in that category, we can so quickly get sidelined and marginalized because. Because we don't know how to be in relationship with each other when things are really hard. And so I think when we start from that place of self awareness and self trust, all of a sudden we can have this. These really relationally rich communities that ultimately is like. Is the way that, that I survived and continue to survive life without Javi on this earth and have. Have been able to expand my capacity for love and, and have two beautiful living children who, who are loved beyond measure, you know, and. Yeah, I don't know if that. I hope that answers.

Absolutely. It feels like a, like a primer. Whether what you're navigating is, you know, bears circumstantial similarity to what you navigated Myra, and still do or not. I just, I hear that, you know, I don't think like the experience. I know my parents love me deeply and what they were brought up with did have like a lot more conditional flavors on it, but I can absolutely resonate with that sense that it. The ability to be as intimate as you're talking about, as granular with your felt experience in the moment, it rests on a foundation of self love. And so either we learned that early on and we don't know any different, or we can learn it now. That's, you know, that's been a big part of my journey in adulthood is like learning to be like, you know, be that as it may, I'm, I'm flawed or I, I'm having big feelings and that doesn't mean I'm bad, I'm worthy of unconditional positive regard. And, and then what I heard that that did for you, you spoke of feelings like self loathing and terror. And so they still come up. Right. No matter how much self love you have or how much equanimity you have toward life in general, when life happens, you're going to have all the feelings. And so I heard you saying like start with the self love, then get as specific as you can so that you can metabolize those the more you can. Like right. Like that's how food breaks down into individual molecules and from, you know, further from there. And then you can engage with other people with some resilience because they're going to hit the spot and not hit the spot in meeting you. And I know when you're going through loss or I work with early onset breast cancer survivors and people who are going through treatment and that's a place where everybody says things wrong. The way people can be with you when you're young and facing a life threatening illness, people don't know what to do with it, don't know how to be with you. And so being able to navigate those things with self trust. I loved how you described that. But we can take it outside of these high intensity experiences and just like, yeah, like self employment or the choice to become a parent or not become a parent, all kinds of people are going to have all kinds of opinions for you, very few of which may be relevant.

Yes.

And so you can let people be people and love them anyway is what I'm hearing from you. And that's a great segue because I wanted to hear more and let our listeners hear more about like what happened with the birthdays and the people around you and that recognition like oh no, we can't at this time. We cannot have people here who can't hang. If you can hang, you're valued but you're not invited. And I think for all of us, our lives can be that. Calling in the people who truly nourish us and letting go of the accommodating everybody's everything, but also calling people up and inviting people to be their. Their best selves so we can all rise together.

Yeah.

Tell us more.

Such a beautiful. The way you just frame that is so beautiful and powerful. And I think what happened was we, we started to have these birthdays where we would, we would dress Javi up and we would order a lot of food or make a beautiful dinner and we would dance and we would cry and we would laugh. And there started to become, there started to become certain symbols or certain sort of rituals with micro rituals within the broader shibarthe ritual that we started to count on. Like, it became very clear that blueberries were Avi's favorite food. And so there was always a small dish of blueberries. And if we didn't have it, someone would send, you know, would send blueberries and they would land on our doorstep. Or as she lost the capacity to, to chew and to chew, we would start turning blueberries into blueberry smoothies. And, and so that would be sort of like an after dinner treat. And people within our family and the broader Javi Posse, as they came to be known, would, would just find these really sort of special and personal ways to make us feel like they saw and loved her and they wanted to be a part of her orbit because that was what was best for them too. That there was this authenticity in the engagement. And the love, I think is so egalitarian and really different from pity. And I think we know that like pity is the near enemy to compassion. And so that sense that we are both, we are both better for being in each other's presence was such a thread to birthdays and, and has become an element of friendship that, that has, that has become more important for me to recognize and appreciate because we, we never want to feel like we are inconveniencing someone or we are putting someone out in a way that makes us feel less than. And instead there can be this really egalitarian relationship that allows us to sort of bring our full, our full broken, battered, big beautiful selves into spaces all the time. And in a non judgmental way that's back to sort of that unconditional love that, that we were talking about. And for me, unconditional love now really exists as, as non judge, as non judgment because I now sort of see the sharp edges of judgment in a way that I, that I don't think I fully understood until I really needed non judgment in my relationships and my interactions. And so I Took us on a little. A little ride there, but. But sort of back to the shebirth days. What started to unfold were these really gorgeous Friday evenings that at the end of them, Matt and I would alternate who would write to Javi, and each entry would start with Dear Beauty. And we would tell her about the week. We would share what came up for each of us, sort of from a feelings perspective. And it became a way for us as partners, actually, to get insight into how the other was experiencing or feeling in a way that I'm not sure we would have known or noticed had we not used writing in that way. And that those journal entries evolved into a caring bridge where that we would share those entries with our closest people. And then those entries became the foundation for the book. 57 Fridays. So now today, we still honor Shabirth days with. With our living children, Kai and Ezra. And. And that ritual has remained sacred and takes a different form now, obviously, Kaya. Kaya, our second daughter, thinks that you light the candles and then she likes to blow them out right away, which obviously makes sense.

So, obviously there's a lot.

There's a lot of lighting and blowing and, you know, all the things.

So. Oh, gorgeous. Gorgeous. Yeah. There's so much there that. The intimacy and that. Yeah. Use the phrase egalitarian. And, you know, in the couple's work that I do, we talk about, you know, going kind of one up or one down. And it's always tempting because, you know, we almost live on a teeter totter even, like, if I'm being virtuous or thoughtful, like, my ego would like to make that, like, here's me being good, but you're not being quite as good. Right, right. Or, like, do you know, it would be so much more relational if you would do this. It's very relational, you to say that that way, Michelle. Wonderful. You know, so, like, it's. That's. That's the. The beautiful thing. And it does seem like there's something about when we're truly vulnerable in that way that you've been talking about, like, where it's undeniable that I'm out of control here. This is not fixable. Then we let ourselves be vulnerable. Then we'll do a caring bridge site and we'll talk about how the week actually went, what was easy and what was hard, and, you know, where the beauty was and where the brutality was. But when we're not in that situation, I think we tend to go back to, like, I'm good. How are you? And one up and one down and. And a little bit walled off and guarded and trying. I love how you put it, like, the. That self love and self trust. Like, if I really trust myself, then I can be less guarded with you, more. More vulnerable. Show what I really have, not bring what I don't have. Kurt and I started a tradition. We lost it somewhere along the way and have yet to pick it back up. But soup night, which we defined as, like, the minimum viable social event, we will make soup. We don't know if there'll be enough soup for everybody because everybody's invited. And you can come early or you can come late, and you can bring people or not bring people. You can bring something else to eat. And if you want something other than soup, you're probably better, but you don't have to bring anything ever. And it was, like, always magical combinations of people and food and everything. It worked perfectly because we weren't working at it. No apologies, no performances. We just wanted to see our people, whoever could come. We did it regularly enough that you could not come this month or knock them for three months and then. And then show up and it would be delightful. And, you know, we just thought, like, what are the conditions under which the most effortless, juicy available kind of thing happens? And it sounds like your birthdays had had many of those qualities, but also that. That heightened sense of, like, let's just be ourselves. Let's just be adequate to the moment, because we are.

I love soup nights. I love that so much.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. That's really, really cool to take. Take those things off. Right? Take all the. All the other requirements off. I want to go back to, though, to. Because, you know, this is a podcast about intimacy and. And you said judgment is. Is right there. And I sure know, you know, that's a big part of, like, my conditioning and. And what gets between us and other people. So what do you know about that? Like, how does that. You know, what can you speak into people listening in their most intimate relationships? What have you learned from this experience?

I think that Matt is this brilliant, high achieving, humble, exquisite human who. Who had never experienced sort of being on a path that wasn't moving forward and up very, very quickly. And for him, Javi's diagnosis and death shattered him, as it did, and does me. And I think he was in a world where there was a lot of judgment, evaluation, criticism, the sharp edge of curiosity around who he was becoming as he was grieving and changing. And I watched the ways in which that shattered him in exchanges and in. And in experiences.

And.

By contrast, I felt the way people were allowing me to become the new person or to allow parts of me to expand and change and evolve and for those parts of me to be honored and elevated. And that was because I was being told that it was okay to feel or grieve or change directions professionally.

Or.

Write about something in a way that challenged the status quo or made people uncomfortable.

And.

I felt free to do those things. And I think contrast is always really revealing and helpful. And I think the. The sort of witnessing of Matt struggle to exist in a. In a life that wasn't really making space for who he was becoming became just so clear that that was really about judgment, that that was really about someone imposing what they believe to be a better, A better way. And it's so simple and yet it's so painful to receive. And it's really quite powerful in its impact, I think, on how we navigate the world. And it really challenges our self trust which back. Which require. Which is why we have to know ourselves so deeply to. To not get totally sidelined by. By judgment that. That really has. Has no right. And, and.

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't serve our unfolding, but also doesn't serve the judgers either. Totally. I. I mean this is so poignant for me. It's. You didn't say it this way, but I'd love to. I'd love to hear if you agree it's gendered. This is. We're talking about patriarchy's pressure on men to have it together, to know, to have a plan on whatever day in the past that continues to work regardless of what the unfolding circumstances are. You know, I think which general said, you know, the plan never survives contact with the enemy. Life is the enemy of your plan. And, and so yeah, I can imagine. And Matt's what, like a double PhD, like super smart, super accomplished man. And I imagine everybody around him, men and otherwise, looked to him to be like, stable, reliable, do what you've always done, be how you've always been. If you're changing, what does that mean for me? That's terrifying. And wait, if you could lose in this way, if your plans could go awry in this way, what about mine? I'm not okay with this. Don't do this. Like he could help it. And I think that men and women alike, like round each other up and go like, no, no, no, come back to the fold. We're going to keep doing things the way we've been doing them. He's like, no, I'm Actually being forced to evolve. I got kicked out of the shell. I have to fly because, yeah, my. My plan did not work, and I've reckoned with that. I see that you haven't yet. And you're trying to tell me to navigate in some way that presumes I have control, but I don't. So. And this is more. I mean, that's. There's something so deep here that, like, life wants more for us. And I think that's the reason that a loving universe would bring us such devastating loss. To let the light come through to. You know, what I see in you and other friends who have lost children is just a radiance. It connected you. Of course, you would never choose it, but it connected you to something so beautiful that then you can be that lamp for the rest of the community of, like, hey, folks, none of us is in charge. None of us is. This can. Can really map everything out flawlessly. We're all going to lose something and. And let's live like, control isn't really the name of the game anyway. Yeah, but. But so with. For. For men, I have a vision that intimacy, that sexuality, that marriage and partnership and how we do the emotional labor and the mental labor of creating a life that men can have access to the same freedom you described so beautifully, Myra, that we get to unfold, we get to change how we do things. We get to be more intimate with other people. And men have to declare independence from the community of men to do that. But the moment you stop kowtowing to others judgments is the moment you become a leader. Right. I imagine that Matt has heard from some people in the intervening time that they inspired him, that he inspired them, that he brought something that they might have not have been comfortable with initially, but that fed them in some way.

Yes, yes. And he had this beautiful. And we have this. But he has this beautiful friendship with Charlie, this man who lost his middle daughter from Tay Sachs 19 years prior at the time. And we, the four of us, kind of fell in. His wife, Blythe and Matt and me, we fell into this friendship that. That really continues to sustain us. And Charlie was, as you say, a beacon, a model for. From that in a way that I think every person deserves to have. You know, every person deserves to have a Charlie. And. And you're so right. I think the way you describe that makes me think of this sort of depth deprivation. I think it's. Richard talks about that, but it's why we resort back to these just superficial niceties. And it's why we get so uncomfortable when someone moves from pleasant happy to devastated and anguish filled. And I think if we could stay in those spaces with people, it would. It would break this, like, totally deprived culture that we sometimes experience of just this lack of. This lack of depth and superficiality that's so boring. I remember speaking of Charlie and Blythe, I remember Blythe telling me two ways in which she was changed by Cameron's life and death. And I. I thought they were going to be these, you know, totally esoteric changes. And she said, one, I only give real, full, long hugs now, and two, I can't stand small talk. And I really appreciate those two sentiments, and I think they sort of sum up a lot. A lot of this.

Yeah, yeah. Ain't got time for that. None of us have. Right? And, I mean, that's something that in other conversations with you, has been really nourishing for me is just like that, the recognition. We've been talking about it the whole time today, but we haven't really said it like death, having death be present. And I know I shared with you. I lost a friend last summer. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The diagnosis didn't come until there really wasn't a whole lot to be done, and so she just didn't have that long. And all those same feelings, like somebody goes from kind of cool, like life's working, to like, she's dying, or when someone's going through a loss, whether that's a divorce or a job change or something deeply devastating like your child. Yeah. We kind of want to look away from the raw, gaping wound of that. And yet those are the spaces where the most beauty lives, has been my experience and all of that. There was a question in there, so I wanted to ask you. The death side. This gave you a different kind of relationship with death and. And those who have passed. What do you want to share with us about that?

I'm continuing to learn so much about death, really, through the eyes of Kaya, our second daughter, who's gonna be four at the end of June. And I start with her because.

A.

Few nights ago she said to me, you know, I'm gonna keep Javi extra snuggled into my heart tonight. And, you know, I started to choke up a little bit, and I was about to lean over and give her a kiss, and. And then she said, and now I'm gonna tuck Javi into my tissue box with all of my other special things. And it was this incredible moment where I saw through the eyes of a three and a half Year old. The way they experience death, which is that there is still so much life in there and they haven't been totally screwed up and turned upside down by all that happens as we get older and, God willing, become adults. And the way that our aversion to death in this culture really impacts how we experience it. And so now I feel like I am less afraid of talking about death. I appreciate. I appreciate the tremendous permanence of it. And I hold on to this belief in maybe. Like, for me, maybe is a better word than hope. I think hope, maybe is some combination of hope and mystery. Like, so I. I lean into moments of maybe in terms of how I experience my eternal relationship with. With Javi, that maybe we will find our way to each other. And for now, we are constantly in relationship, although it's nowhere close to the. To the one that I wanted, and I would do anything to have it. Have a far less sophisticated understanding of death than I do now if.

If I could have her back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so poignant.

Right?

There's a. There's a level on which I feel it. Like, I haven't lost the people, but we lost the time together here and we lost. Right. The memories, the experiences. My dad died when I was 19 after, like, eight, nine years of dying from a brain tumor, which was really ugly. And, you know, it's times with my kids now, my milestones, that he didn't get to be here for and. Yeah. And that, you know, that baby that I didn't. Like I said at the time, I was like, if you're going to lose a baby to a heart problem, in utero is the time to do it. Like, you know, thank you for the lightness of that loss relative to really knowing somebody and having all those hopes embedded the way that you did. It's. But. But that's like, we don't get to. We don't get to play here on Earth with them, as is the big difference, I feel, you know, like, yeah, all my grandparents are with me in so many ways, but. But they don't get to see it. My kids don't get to hug them. And. Yeah. Yeah. And that just brings back up, like, these bodies. This is. This is the fun. This one.

Totally. And I think you're so right that that highlights. I mean, part of what makes it so hard to not have them all here is because this life, these bodies are so beautiful and so fun, and there's so much here. And that's. And that's why it's devastating that they're not here. And holding and leaning into the beauty and the joy is a big part of continuing to stay firmly planted and engaged and to try to be as generous as we can with this time, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And those, those full body hugs, bone on bone. And I mean, and that's why I venture into this. I don't want to talk about taboo things like death and sex, but that's where it's at. Right? Like that's the aliveness. And so let's, you know, like, we should probably wrap up at some point, although I would love to talk to you all day. The, the let's, let's close out with that, you know, like, what do you. I know that you've been an athlete all your life and, and the body and movement are, are big for you. And how does, how did your body walk with you through this? And, and how do you work with the body and grief with other people?

Movement has been, has been life saving, I think it always. And I feel really grateful that, that my body can move. And so pretty immediately after Javi's diagnosis, it became clear that Matt and I needed walks and runs as time, intimate time together to be with what was most difficult. And, and so that led me to really trying to understand at a deeper level what is the power of movement. And that sort of brought me to some of Dr. Bruce Perry's work on what he calls this patterned, repetitive, rhythmic activity that is so that comes from the time in our mother's womb when we were listening to her heartbeat. And that regulating patterned, repetitive, rhythmic behavior is a somatosensory memory that is stronger than any traumatic shard that we experience. And so it's no wonder when we are in motion with ourselves, with someone else, that we can be with things that we can't when we're just sitting. And that body of work and my love of, of movement sort of helped me to create what is now this new organization called Emotion that combines the power of movement, community and ritual through these movement communities that allows people to gather and essentially experience therapy on the go in some ways in a non clinical setting. Now I continue to rely on and learn from the power of movement and think that it could be a really interesting way to introduce more of these kind of near peer, communalistic healing approaches into the world so that we can all walk and talk with someone when we, you know, when we need it.

Oh, brilliant. I mean, that's, that's the medicine, right? And that's the word I use. You know, you said like Therapeutic. But in a non medical medicine, medicine is what we all need. Medicine is what we all are. And certainly with, with couples. My husband and I never attempt to talk about anything that might be activating without, you know, we're like, do we need to take a walk around the block? We definitely this calls for some bipedal movement and that's what I recommend for every couple is. Yeah, give yourselves that physiological ballast for the heaviness trying to do. Yeah. It only makes sense that we need that. So I know that people will be intrigued and want more of that medicine. So we'll make sure to put in the show notes where you can find Myra and all of her many projects and especially this beautiful, lyrical book. I know you can tell by talking with her that the ways that she thinks and feels, I almost can't, can't disentangle those. And then the, the facility with language that she has lets her heart come through the page. And I think you'll love the book. So I'm so grateful for this time with you, Myra and thank you for listening listeners. And please reach out and connect with Myra if you feel called to and I will look forward to seeing you next time.

Thank you so much, Michelle. You are the best.

Thank you, darling. I wish I could hug you right now.

Thank you.

I'd love to hear what you're going to take away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? Drop me a DM on social media anytime. Links are in the show notes. You know, reviews are really what help others recognize how this podcast is different from other relationship and sex podcasts. So thanks in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app before you move on with your day. And hey, have you subscribed? Hit that subscribe button in the app so you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for being here. I'm Michelle Lisenberry Christensen and this has been Sex Love Power. I'll see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.