INBOUND Bold Talks: Melissa D'Arabian "Lessons From Loss: What My Mom's Suicide Taught Me"

Thanks so much. Absolutely. Ah, thank you. Wow. I'm sure a lot of you are envying my spot right about now. Yes. So today we're going to talk about lessons from loss. What I lost, what I've gained from my mom's suicide. And here's a little bit of what the agenda is going to look like. One, I'm going to tell you a little bit about why I'm here and who I am. Then I'm gonna tell you a story. Spoiler alert. My mom will die in that story. And, wow, this is gonna be a tough crowd. And then I'm gonna share four lessons and I hope a little bit of hope and positive outlook. A lot of people know me from Food Network, and a lot of people think that I'm in the food business because I cook on television. And I'm here to tell you that I'm not in the food business. I'm not even in the television business. I'm in the trench buddy business. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. And never has trench buddy business been so important than it is today. I believe that life is so rich and beautiful and wonderful and fabulous. And if we can just open up our eyes to the gifts that we are given, even on a cloudy day, even on a day when things don't go our way, life is rich and gorgeous. But I also know and believe that life is hard. It's hard because we receive phone calls from doctors that we don't want to receive. We receive news about family members that we don't want to take in. It's hard, even with the small stuff, for the days that we don't get the parking spot when we're running late for an appointment. Life is hard. And I think at the end of the day, we all want to know two things. We want to know one, that we are enough. We are enough as we are alone today. And we are enough as we are collectively today. How we are today. We want to know we're enough. And the other thing we want to know is that we're not alone. I think we all have plastered on our forehead, tell me that I am enough and tell me that I am not alone. And that's what I think a trench buddy does. I think a trench buddy gets down there in life with you and is in the trenches of life and has your back. A trench buddy reaches out to the stay at home mom who is up to her eyes in diapers and is wondering how she's going to get dinner on the table. On a Tuesday night. And she just needs to hear, I've been there. You're not alone. I have four daughters there. 11, 10, 9 and 9. So trust me when I say I have been there. And trust me when I say you can't get pregnant when you breastfeed. So, just something to think about. I'm going to take you back to a story, a day in 1989. April 12th. April 13th. You'll see why I can get those dates confused when I tell you this story. April 13th. I was a junior in college and I called home for a very mundane basic request. Very typical of a 20 year old girl calling home from college. I needed money. I wanted my mom's credit card number so that I could sign up for a GMAT prep course. And when I kept calling, I kept getting the busy signal. Now, for those of you who are under the age of 40, a busy signal sounds a little something like this. That's what we used to live with when I was growing up, right? That and phones that did this. So I kept calling all day trying to get ahold of my mom to get the credit card number. And then finally, that evening, finally that blessed sound of the went through. And my heart leapt. And then someone picked up. And it wasn't the voice of my mom. And I did not get a credit card number. It was the unfamiliar male voice of some guy from the Montgomery County Police Department. And we had a very short conversation. But it's one that I, even now, 27 years later, can replay in my head over and over again. And yet, still 27 years later, I have never spoken and I have never written, not even to my husband. But the gist of that phone conversation was that my mom was dead and that she had died by suicide. And that moment, not only did everything fall apart, but the very scaffolding of my entire life caved in. Spiritually, emotionally, financially, logistically. Everything caved in. And that led to what I call a ten year spiritual and emotional winter. Yes, a ten year winter. A decade long winter. Ten years sounds like a really long time. And it is Four years sounds like a really long time. Ten years is a really long time. But here's what I know about tragedy and about winters. Sometimes the only way out is through. And I know that even the biggest tragedies have their gifts in them. So I want to share with you some of the gifts. My mom died when she was at the top of her career. My mom raised us. She was a single mom putting herself through college, then medical school. We had no money. We were on food stamps. Things were hard. And then she became a successful, respected physician. My mom killed herself when the rest of us would be saying, but you made it. We live in a society where we think that the next great thing is going to be the very thing that makes us happy. Fill in the blank, right? Getting the boyfriend, getting the big house, getting the car, getting the promotion. The next big thing bringing us happiness is a myth. One thing I've learned about my mom's passing is the difference between happiness, capital H happiness, and happiness. Small H happiness and small H happiness. That's the stuff that happens when you get the promotion, when you get the job, when you get all those things. Those are fun, wonderful, rich parts of life. But capital H happiness is big enough to house the sadness. It's the thing that keeps us going and gets us up in the morning despite fight our sorrows and live to step into another day. Capital H happiness has nothing to do with the circumstances around us. It has nothing to do with what we're looking at around us. Capital H happiness is the lens through which we see that stuff. Capital H happiness is not like a thermometer that just reflects the temperature of the room and tells you what's going on around you. No. Capital H happiness is a thermostat that regulates. And we raise our set point by being in relationship. And for me, in my faith. So I don't need a big car or fancy house to make me happy. That's the good news. Here's the bad news. A big house and fancy car can't make me. Capital H happy. Wherever I go, I take me with me. And that's a big lesson from my mom. My mom not having enough time on this earth has given me the gift of knowing what I want to accomplish on this earth before I leave it. That's how I reconcile that grief. I know what I want to do on this earth before I leave it. I know what to say yes to. I imagine a plate. Because we always talk about that. Oh, I have such a full plate. My plate's really full plate. Ping me next week. My plate is full, right? I imagine a plate and I imagine all this stuff on the plate. To get on the plate, you have to be part of my deepest yes, what matters to me. But here's the next piece of it. In order to get on my plate, in order to make your way onto what I'm going to spend my time and energy and resources on, something on that plate has to come off. So every time I Say yes to something. I know there's an implicit no. Here's the good news. Every time I say no to something, there's an implicit yes. So for those of us who have a hard time saying no, let's focus on the yes that's inside every no. So when I say no to selling brownies for the pto, it's because I know I'm saying yes to taking my daughter to soccer. So let's celebrate not only the no that's in every yes, but the yes that's in every no, and how important it is for us to know what is our deepest yes. When I was in college, I read a book called Getting Straight A's, which was catchy title, but you know, hey, listen, a clear promise. One of the great advice in there. So I recommend the book. One of the pieces of advice in that book was to sit in the front row of your classes because you miss less that way. And I will tell you, that's a great piece of advice because if you're sitting in the front row of the class, you can tell what's going to be on the test, which means less work for me in studying, you can tell by the professor, by their eyes. Do they light up when they talk about a particular topic. You miss less sitting in the front row. And the same is true in life. Sit in the front row in every situation. I think to myself, how can I sit in the front row of this? Because if I'm dedicating my time to any sort of experience, I want it to be the richest, deepest, most inclusive experience. For me. Sitting in the front row of life is a gift from my mom. When I was little and we would go grocery shopping, my mom used to say to me as we would load up groceries into the back of our Datsun, this is back when Nissan was still Datsun, our little Datsun hatchback. We'd load the groceries and my mom would always say, go, take the grocery cart and go put it back into that rack, she said, because there are two types of people in this world, people who return their grocery carts and people who don't. And we are people who return our grocery carts. And now that I make my living practically at the grocery store, I spent a lot of time at the grocery store. And it's a great reminder to me that you know what? I own my imprint. I own what I choose to leave on this earth. I am part of all of this. I am part of all of you. And I own the air I breathe. And that's My reminder is my grocery cart. If you don't go grocery shopping, which I've had people say they don't. Okay, I don't know how you eat, but whatever. We'll talk later. But if you fly a lot. I remember when I used to fly. Well, I still fly a lot, but when I was a consultant years ago, I would fly. And I remember there was a sort of magic four seconds where we are pulling up to the gate and I can feel that it is actually safe to move about the cabin, even though the fashion seat belt sign has not gone off. And those four seconds were made for people like me because I could hop up, pull down my bag, and get a little bit ahead of everybody else in those four seconds. Guess what? Turns out the fasten seatbelt sign applies to me. We belong to each other. CS Lewis talks about his friend Charles Williams when he died, that he actually had a piece of his other friend, JRL Token, who died too. Why? Because not one person is big enough to draw out another. We need to know each other in community to be fully known. We need to belong to one another. We need to be each other's trench buddies. Thank you. Thank you for letting me be your trench buddy today. Excellent. Awesome.