This is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine. Each week we tackle big questions from advocates, therapists, and other professional helpers that let us explore how to show up after life goes horribly wrong. This week, it's all about doing work you love with all your heart, even if you wish you never had to do it. With special guest CNN National correspondent and Emmy nominated journalist Renee Marsh, we'll be right back after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note. While I hope you find a lot of useful information in our time here together, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related to your work friends, So to be honest, I didn't know this week's guest before I started learning about her in my research for today's show. I tend to read the news as a way to consume it rather than watching it, and I don't always see all the grief related work other people are doing out in the world. That means I wasn't aware of Renee Marsh in her professional role as an Emmy nominated journalist and CNN National correspondent. I also wasn't aware of her other roles in the world, that of mother, author, pediatric cancer advocate, and now a grieving mother. If you just heard those descriptions of this guest and reached for the next podcast button trying to back out of something that sounds terribly difficult to listen to and find something else, hold up a second. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. These are heavy topics. We can't just sweep the tough stuff under the rug. Though in her work as a CNN National correspondent, Renee Marsh focuses on these heavy hitting topics herself. Her stories focus on climate change, environmental justice, systemic racism, ethics, scandals, and to be honest, even when she's working on a less challenging story, moving through the world as a journalist over the last few years hasn't exactly been easy on that profession. Well, I promise you we are not going to find a solution for any of these things. In our time together. We are going to talk right into that deeply uncomfortable place. We're going to explore art and hope and advocacy and showing up for life's more difficult moments. I guarantee you, friends, that you or someone you know is wrestling with very similar things. So even though it sounds a little daunting, as they used to say way back when car radio has had dials to change the radio station, don't touch that dial. Rennee, Welcome. I am so glad to have you in the studio with me today. Well, studio Zoom, thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for being an advocate for people going through grief like myself. I mean, your books have just been so helpful for me throughout this whole process. So thank you, and I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So, there is so much we could talk about today, and in the conversation that we had before recording, we decided we were going to focus on a couple of scific topics. Now I know you know what they are, but for everybody, we're going to talk about the role of writing in coping with grief. And the second topic that we're going to get to in the second half of the show is navigating the realities of being an advocate. So before we get into all of that, though, would you introduce yourself to everybody, Renee, and maybe introduce us to your son Blake. Sure Renee Marsh. I'm a CNN correspondent. I'm based in Washington, d C. The nation's capital, and I cover environmental climate change issues for CNN. And on March four, two thousand and nineteen, the most transformational thing that has ever happened in my life happened, and that was giving birth to my son, Blake. And honestly, any mother knows how transformational that day is of becoming a mother. Blake was just an amazing and healthy baby boy who really kind of lit up our home and brought new energy to our family, and in my eyes, he was just perfect. And it wasn't until about nine months old that we noticed that there was an issue with Blake's I and I remember this day like it was yesterday. December twenty, two thousand nineteen. We took Blake to an emergency room and what would follow in the hours and days after that was the worst news that anybody could receive, and it was that our son, who's only nine months old, had a fast growing, aggressive brain tumor in the middle of his brain and they needed to operate. Uh. And that was how our journey into pediatric cancer started. With our son and what would follow would be brain surgery at just nine months, followed by intense chemotherapy treatments, followed by every thing that comes along with chemotherapy treatments, followed by multiple stints, and I see you Blake going into cardiac arrest as a result of a reaction to his chemotherapy treatments and being on life support for six days, to him recovering from that, to back to chemotherapy treatments, and this all continued on, including relapses and clear mr eyes for roughly two years, and then this fight that we were in to do all that we could to save our son from this ugly, vicious disease came to end on April fourteen of last year, and Blake passed away. And that was, you know, getting the diagnosis was the worst day of my life, but then losing my son was actually a trump that. And I find myself here today in this journey of navigating life without my precious son who was my world and my life revolved around him and taking care of him. And then one day all those tasks were no longer needed because he wasn't here. And I have channeled my grief, my heartache, my pain into writing. I've written a children's book and we can talk about that more later, as well as advocacy work for shining the light on the fact that there is such this just vast disparity in funding for research dollars when it comes to pediatric cancer. And I pivoted to that pretty quickly after losing Blake. And when I think about it, because I went back to my email trails to see, like, when did you really make this pivot, Renee, and it was literally five days after Blake died. I wouldn't necessarily say that that's like for everyone, but it was okay for me, and that's how I kind of was able to keep owing each day. The advocacy work was my one thing that I promised to do for Blake every single day, and that got me from day to day because, as you know, when you lose somebody and you're a caregiver and that's all that consumed your entire day. Because I was on leave from CNN, all of a sudden, you have nothing to do with that energy when you were doing so I kind of just transitioned to the advocacy work because I no longer was taking Blake to doctor's appointments. I wasn't like giving him meds. I wasn't doing regular mom duties. So this transition to advocacy was now my new way of mothering my son that I lost, and that is my story. I love the way that you talk about that too. You know, I've listened to a lot of your interviews in your media spots talking about your work and talking about your son, and I love the way that you talk about this is the way that I mother him now. And when we get into that question in the second half of the show about advocacy work, we're going to talk about that in our second listener question, but if it's okay with you, were first, I want to thank you for sharing that story. You and I talked a little bit before we started rolling here that as professionals were accustomed to telling really impossible stories about our own lives, and that the more times you tell that story, especially in a professional role, it becomes almost impulse. Is not the word that I want, but it's like a habitual recitation of a horror and that's a weird skill that as a professional storyteller you're sort of asked to step into. I want to get into that professional storyteller a bit, And I mean, as you said, as a correspondent, you've been writing and telling stories for nearly two decades, and not easy stories either. We talked to a little bit about that in my introduction of you, of like the kinds of stories that you tell, and I'm wondering about the role of storytelling in your personal life. So is it okay if we talk a little bit about when Blake first got sick. Yeah, were you writing in those early days, like personal writing different than your professional work. Yeah. I mean, I keep a journal, and it's funny I should do this more because I always think that it's such a good exercise to look back at what you wrote. But when I was pregnant with Blake, I was writing. I was writing letters to my son that I hadn't yet met. I was writing about anxieties that I had as a mother. I was about to be a mother responsible for a life. And when I go back to look at what those anxieties were, they pale in comparison to what my reality became. You know, being in the news, you cover all of these sort of worst case scenarios, stories of school shootings and police brutality and you know, all these other things that happened within our culture. And as a mom of this little boy who was going to bring into this world, I had this protective energy and I actually went back and I saw some of those letters that I wrote to my son, uh, and that lessons I wanted him to know and learn about the world he was coming into. And again, this is when I was pregnant, and yeah, I continued this sort of writing about this journey as a mom even once Blake arrived and into this just nightmare scenario of I think you might have said this, forgive me if this wasn't you. But like when you get some news that kind of shatters your world, it's like somebody has opened the trap doors from beneath you and you just fall. And that's how I felt the day that I got the news. And yes, I've chronicled all of that for myself because that, in many ways is my therapy just for myself, just having that release of writing what I'm thinking and feeling. And I think that there's also some benefit to kind of revisiting some of those emotions and feelings once in a while to see number one, how you've progressed, Because I think sometimes we don't give ourselves credit for how far we've come, and sometimes it's hard to gauge how far you've come when you feel like you're still in the middle the wilderness, you know. But to answer your question, yeah, I I've always written in a journal, and that includes during the time when we got the diagnosis. So what do you think about the way that your relationship with those storytelling and hope has changed. I'm glad that you asked that question, because I do feel, like you know, that's what I do every day at CNN. I am a storyteller on whatever the major issue is, I find a story to tell it and the people that's impacted. And I actually feel as if my life circumstances has very much changed me as a storyteller just overall, because, as you have said so many times, there's certain deaths that reorder the way you see this world, and Blake's passing has absolutely done that for me, and so my approach when I go into any story now, like let's say, professionally at CNN, I am so much more in tune with the human element of stories, way past the luck the level than I ever had been. Of course, I've told people centered stories before, but there's a certain awareness that you have about underlying sort of emotions or circumstances that impact people that you're just so much more in tune with. And as I've said before, my heart feels more supple to suffering than ever before because I am there right now. And so when I meet someone who may be the subject of my story, who is suffering some impact from something somehow, my connection with understanding that pain or that struggle is so much more intense than it ever would have been had my life not hit rock bottom. And so that is how this situation has changed me as a journalist as far as my personal journaling. And with that, I don't know that I necessarily told stories in my journal as much as I just authentically wrote down what I was feeling at the moment. Some days I was hopeful, some days I felt challenged in my hope. Other days you would see that I'm struggling to find places to kind of read up my hope. And that's what I mean by harvesting hope, because I found that throughout my entire situation with Blake, hope is very fleeting. It doesn't stay. You have it on Monday, you don't have it like ten hours later, and so you constantly are looking for places, signs, conversations, interactions with people to kind of red up your tank when it comes to hope. And I was always looking for that because if I was hope less, I would be giving up all my son. And there's no way that a mother who loves their child is willing to give up on their son. So I had to find hope no matter what, go out into the field and find it and be open and keen to noticing it. For the sake of my son. I was not going to give up on him. Because I've read your book and listen to you speak about it, and listeners everybody. I'm going to link to some of the media appearances where Renee talks about her book and obviously let you find her book. But the way that you talk about that harvesting hope is like I will find a beautiful sunrise, I will notice the awesome jacket that person is wearing, like I will get ferocious for moments of beauty, and and for me, that sort of really intersects nicely with like my concept of hope and my understanding of hope. If I sort of translate what you just said to the way that I look at things. It's like, you need those touchstones, you need those anchors of beauty in order to show up and face what you have to face today. It's not so much hope in I hope this works out this way, or I hope this works out this way, but like, what can I sink my claws into today so that I can show up and continue to advocate for myself and my child and believe in the good in the world in the way that I need to. And I love that you talked about how that has reverberated into the human centered stories that you do as a journalist. Right, It's not that it made you a better journalist. We never want to be like this was a fair trade to make you up, Like, no, absolutely not, but that the you can't not be changed by what you know. It's funny that you brought up sunrises or sunsets, because I actually remember, like oftentimes i'd wake up before Blake. We'd sleep in the same bed in the hospital because he liked the cuddle with me at night, and I would wake up to these beautiful sunrises. My sun got treatment at John's Hopkins, and we had these big windows and you could see the sunrise. And even though like this was all such a terrible challenging situation, when I saw that sunrise, I knew there's more to the world that I don't understand. And because of that, I have hope. Seeing this beautiful thing that's been burning for five billion, you know, decades, there's something about that that kind of like speaks to your spirit that there's something more, there's more to what I understand, there's more to what I know, and knowing that there's stuff that I just don't understand, I'm going to have hope. And it's that needing to lean into something larger than yourself. Yeah right. And some people would call that faith or religion or quantum physics whatever, but there there really is that sense of there is something neutral and impassive about the larger universe, in the larger world, and we are this one little marble in a great sea of vastness, and we have no idea what else is out there. Like that can either seem really bleak or really comforting to know that there is something bigger than you and that you don't have to understand. You have this moment in this bed and this sunrise, and it gives you what you need to be there for five more minutes exactly, so you're ready for our first listener question. So this listener writes, I've been a writer my whole life, journaling the occasional short story, that kind of thing. It is mostly me talking to myself. These last couple of years have been a lot, and I don't want to get into all the specifics. But my question is it doesn't matter writing out all of the horror. Oh I cry every single episode, but usually the listener questions that get me everybody, The question is doesn't matter writing out all of this horror? Can you talk about the benefit of sort of writing myself through things when there isn't a solution. We're going to get into Rene's answer to this question right after this break. I think that for me, the process of writing actually leads to some Eureka moments that I may have. When you go went through grief, it's such a complicated basket of emotions sometimes, like I say to my husband, like I feel cranky, like a baby who's unable to say what is wrong. I just know I don't feel good. I'm not feeling good. But this process of writing and also therapy helps you kind of peel back the layers of the onion to understand what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? And for me, it's just a release. It's the same sort of comfort that I get if I sit and talk to my husband about how I'm feeling or that I'm really missing Blake. And I think that there's some real value in that. I don't write to find a solution and I'm still trying to get comfortable with this idea and I'm not there yet, but there's just some things will never know and understand, and that's gonna include the death of my son to such a terrible disease, so trying to figure that out. But it definitely helps us to understand what we're feeling. So I do think for that reason, getting stuff off of your chest and that's beneficial. Yeah. There, It's like the the notebook is a neutral observer. You don't have to worry about hurting in the notebooks, feelings, hurting your journals, feelings like it's a place where you can tell yourself the whole truth about what's actually happening, and maybe it helps you get to a place writing into that horror, as this listener mentioned, like it, it helps you get to a place where you can identify what you need and maybe you can ask for it from your your people or your dog or whatever. Like there is an understanding of yourself and your own needs that you sometimes only get when you're allowed to be horrified and angry and terrified and all of those things that for me, journaling lets me do. Right. It's the passive receiver that I don't need to worry about hurting its feelings if I say what I'm actually thinking right now, And I love that you actually said earlier a few minutes ago, about you go back to your early journals sometimes one to see how far you've come. And also like there's there's something that I've talked about before, where like you right in the moment to leave your your future self a map, there are insights that you have or things you want to remember about yourself, or a really beautiful sunrise that meant something to you in this moment. And just because life keeps happening and the memory library gets full, like you might not necessarily remember the things that you want to remember, but as you write you sort of leave yourself a map to get back into that sunrise, to get back into that moment, to get back into the way your kid smells when they got out of the bath after this specific shampoo. That you wrote that down and you gave yourself an entry point to come back to. So yeah, that also brings up another point. You know, in the early days after losing Blake, I got probably what was some of the best advice from UH colleagues, parents who lost their child to a different form of cancer decades ago. But he said this to me, and I was like, oh my gosh. Uh. He said, write down everything that you currently remember about Blake that is fresh, because as time passes, you're going to forget. And that was so heartbreaking to me, the idea that the things that are like right front and center in my mind that one day would become fuzzy or gray or just totally not be top of mind. So that was another reason why I started writing, because I didn't ever want to forget any of the special aspects of Blake. You want to give yourself a record of that. And also, you know, I think there's a lot of anxiety for people when they won't be getting any new memories with their person. There's an anxiety that I'm gonna lose details, I'm gonna lose my memory, I'm gonna lose this or that, and and that is a valid concern. I love the idea of writing things down. Actually, in the writing your grief course that I do, there's this I want to remember I need to forget prompt like writing into that sort of stuff. And the other thing I remember in my own early grief, I was terrified that I would forget certain things about my life and about Matt. And brains are interesting, right, Like you know, the sense of smell will trigger something. You know, it's been twelve years since Matt died, and I can be walking down the street and smell something I'm like, where is he? Or it kicks off a memory in me. And so if you're if you're finding yourself friends panicking that you're going to lose your memories, you're gonna lose your person. Your brain library stores memories way better than you can kind of force yourself to remember, so you will not forget everything. Yes, right, to leave yourself a map and to remember those beautiful things and give you those entry points back in spend some time journaling about I remember this day, right, any of those really cool? I mean, I'm a writer. I can't not give you creative writing problems. But also, like trust your brain library, right, it will serve up things that you can't go looking for, but it knows where they are. Yeah. I want to sort of close out this part of the listener quest and by going back to something you mentioned a few minutes ago about how this experience has changed the way that you understand human centered stories as a journalist. I'm going to link these two things together here because but we just answered for this listener was like, there is actually something beautiful and hopeful about writing honestly about horrible experiences. It sounds like one of the things that has deepened for you as a journalist is your ability to allow the people at the center of your stories speak the truth about horror in a way that it sort of offers hope alongside of it. I don't know that I'm saying that very clearly, but I think about what happens when you really understand the human at the center of a horrible story. It's only in allowing people to tell the truth about how bad things are that they can actually access a real hope or a real path ahead. I think you're right, And then I think that the stories that at I tell it's all about you know, we sometimes get caught up as journalists sometimes like the who what when we're why the facts of the story. But what has changed in me is giving a little bit more space for the emotional sort of story of that character. It's not just the facts of what happened to them, but how they feel about it, and giving that more space that maybe I have in the past. You know, just like we're on autopilot sometime and we're on deadline, so we just throw the facts in. We do have this element of storytelling around a character. But what I'm saying is where I'm at now in my life and my life experience, I feel like I'm more compelled to give more breathing room to the emotional side of these news stories that I'm telling for these characters. So, you know, if it's okay with you, I'd like to jump into our next listener questions since it is a big topic. So ready up, ready, Okay, listener question too. I am so glad that you're talking to Rene as someone who works in a related cancer advocacy position. I wonder if you can address what it's like to navigate your personal feelings and the red tape of this work. I feel like I have to mama bear everything to get through the politics and the policies, and at the end of the day, I just want my friend back. So look, there's no doubt that I realized that this space of pediatric cancer research and getting more funding is like this huge mountain. So there's no way that I go into this knowing that all the work that I'm doing will change the world tomorrow or next month. But what I am committed to in honor of my son, and as as I said before, because of the love that I have for my son, is work in my space of the planet, my space of the world, and do what I can do and really give it my one and then you know, I will be able to say that I have done a proud or I've done what I can do. But the thing is, no one person is going to solve some of these very complicated red tape issues. But I do my best to find allies like you, Megan, willing to give a platform to speak about what's wrong with the world. And how we can fix it, and the rest of it is kind of out of your hands. But as long as you know that you're giving it your best, because I think if we're all doing our best in our own corners of the world, we'd be amazed at how much we can accomplish. I want to be impactful, and I work to be impactful in Blake's name, and that is all that I'm concerned about. I remember when I was when I was preparing for this, I was thinking about God decades ago. Now. I was at a conference on resilience and Dr Linney's Bias was the keynote speaker, and she was speaking about her advocacy work around gun violence and drug addiction and all of these things, and she was on a roll and then she just kind of broke character for a minute, like I'm your keynote speaker, and just started stomping on the ground and saying, I want my son back. I don't know if any of you know who I'm talking about, but I'll put in the show notes if you want to know more so we don't get derailed here. But like, there is that reality that for a lot of people who work in advocacy you just wish more than anything that you didn't. Honestly, you have any skin in this game, like you didn't. You don't want to know this about what it's like to lose your two year old to cancer. Yeah, you don't really have a choice around that stuff. You do have a choice about the life that you build after that. Before and after point, I was talking to another mom who also lost her child, probably like ten or eleven years ago to brain cancer, a different form of brain cancer, and she said something which reflects why I do what I do, And she said that she still wants to create a world that her son could survive, Like I still want to create a situation where have we turned at the clock if he gets this terrible diagnosis, which I wish he wouldn't at all, but if he did, he could actually survive. So even though he's not there, I'm still working to create this world in which he could survive if he was still here. And that is really my priority, um. For you know, I'm a mom who didn't win this battle for her son, but there are many other mothers like me, fathers like me, who are going through this in real time, and I know the pain of this. I will probably live it for the rest of my life. And there's no way that I could be so self centered to just not try to help somebody else who's actually going through this in real time, not trying to do something to help them so that their outcome is a happier ending than mine was, because I wouldn't wish this sort of life story on anyone at all, even a stranger. In one of the media spots he did to share your son and your work with the world, you said, I want to continue to fight for him even if he's not here in physical form anymore. This is my mothering now that connects so beautifully to what you just said, Like you're still fighting to create a world that he could have survived in, right, So Like in this way, it's like, not only is advocacy a collective act and an act of love in the world, but it's also an act of time travel. It is it is you're you're working to build the world that you wish existed before this happened, and gave you the information you needed to help create that world. Like that is a quantum physics time travel conundrum, but it's it's time travel. It is it's time travel for the future, I oftentimes think, and I probably will for a long time. I you know, as a mom, I had such high hopes for Blake, and I just knew in my spirit that he was going to be a special young man that would have quite an impact on this planet, on this world, because I saw early indicators he loved to read books, but then he had this killer personality sometimes like you have this, but you don't have that. I felt like Blake had both, and I can only imagine, unfortunately, what he would have achieved had he been here to live out his life. But at the same time, sometimes I look at this and I said, had it not been for Blake, I wouldn't be doing this interview with you. I wouldn't be doing the work that I'm doing. And so in many ways, Blake is achieving such wonderful things. Um just by his memory. I wouldn't do any of these things if it wasn't for him. So so yeah, in many ways, he's achieving a lot, and I'm so proud of him. I I don't ever take the credit for the book for anything that I say, because I do this holding the flag of Blake. So I'm proud to be his mother. I'm proud of how he inspires me to exist in this world. I'm proud to fight for children who are in hot in the hospital with this disease and just need more funding to help find cures for this disease. And that's all Blake. I love that, And I love that his personality shines through all of the work that you do in the way that you talk about him, like he is present, not in the ways that we want him to be and dreamed he would be, and he is. Yeah. So as we sort of wind to close, I wonder about you. Know, as a journalist and as an advocate, you're really visible in the world. And what do you wish that other journalists knew about grief? Oh jeez, if you saw my book that I have, it's okay to not be okay, I've like written in it, have notes on the side underlined. But to steal what you have said numerous times is that grief does not exist or live in a distinct period of time. And I think that if you have not walked this journey of just traumatic, severe grief, you don't understand how long this will be your life, partner, and this really will be my life partner, And as you've said, it will exist in different ways, but it will always be a part of my life. And I think if you're blessed enough to not have an experience like myself, you probably don't fully understand how much it is so present in my life. Even today, we're getting close to a year. But people probably looking at me think Renee's looks like she's okay. Yeah, she's like fighting the good fight and advocating and doing all the good things. And she shows up and she does a good story, she's fine. Yeah. The thing is, sometimes it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to get there, and then some days I can't even pull it off. And thank God for our family and friends who are around me at those moments where my hope feels depleted, where I feel like I can't do today, I can't show up today the way I need to. I have a support system to kind of help me along on those days. But that would be the thing that I think most people don't know and I would like them to know, is that grief is here to stay and will likely be with me for a long time. And I said, I wrote this in my journal. I said, uh, and this was like a part of my self realization that if I survived this, it's not because like I found some great tool to survive it. It's I figured out how to position my stance to carry this load forever. That's how I do it. Just how do I? How do I need to be today? Do I need to be hunched over? Do I need to do I need the help of my has been to help me carry the load? I don't that which each day it's different, But you just survived by figuring out how to carry the load. And I love that you answer that question by talking about on the job and in the job right on the job as journalists really as any observer or bystander, to recognize that even if you have lost important people or things in your life, you don't know the depth of somebody else's story. And the best that we can do in that is acknowledge it to ourselves and bow to it and be respectful and gentle with what we don't know. And then in the job. I love that you brought in the job here because like on the job, but in the job is sort of our thing here on this show, like in the job, just because somebody looks good, and they started an advocacy foundation, right, and they're they're showing up to work in their articulate like the mental gymnastics that that takes like just like the culture has taught us, the messaging has taught us that grief is over at the one year mark and if keeps going, there's something wrong with you. And that is such a lie and it does everybody such a disservice. And you know, in other shows we get into like what do you do in the workplace where you're not really sure how to approach a coworker who you know something terrible happened to But just that knowledge, just that little piece of knowledge that like, no matter what you look like on the outside, you are still finding ways to carry this experience and this love with you and we can't judge the weight of that day from what it looks like on the outside. Yeah, that's really good, I mean. And the other thing that you said in the book that I know resonated with me is don't try to fix someone's grief. Just be there for them and just be there to listen if they if they want to talk about it. But just companionship is probably the greatest gift that you can give to a grieving person, But certainly do not try to fix it, because, like you said, it can't be fixed. And that's kind of a beautiful note for us to close up our time here together. Thank you so much. N I know we're gonna link to everywhere that people can find you. We're gonna link to where they can find The Miracle Workers. We can link to some of your media appearances where you're talking about the Foundation for Pediatric Cancer Research. Please let everybody know where they can find you, the name of your book, whatever else you need them to know. Let's lay it on them all right. You can find everything that you need to know on Renee Marsh dot com. That's r. E. N E. Marsh m A R S h dot com. The name of my new children's book is The Miracle Workers, Boy Versus Beast. It is a modern day David Versus Goliath. It is an inspirational tale for any child about the power of hope and faith when facing some of life's toughest circumstances. So a h of all of the profits and proceeds will go to pediatric cancer Research. Excellent. So we're gonna link to all of that stuff in the show notes you can find on Renee Marsh's book, The Miracle Workers on her website Renee Marsh dot com. We will link to some of her articles on pediatric cancer and advocacy work in those show notes too. Thank you so much, Renee. I am so glad you're here and in the world. Oh, thank you, Thanks so much for having me. You are so welcome. All right, coming up next, everybody, your weekly questions to carry with you and how you can send in your question for us to use on the show. Don't miss that part, friends, We'll be right back. Each week. I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. It's part of that whole. This awkward stuff gets easier with practice. Thing And as always, I want you to practice this week something special. I want you to take an action, any action, for a cause you believe in. As Renee said, advocacy is a collective act. I'm in a link to a couple of Renee's articles on CNN where you can find links to get involved with PD patric cancer advocacy if you would like to do that. But don't overthink this one, friends, that's the temptation in the face of emotionally charged issues like do I do this or do I do that? Just choose something you believe in and take one action, whether that's a small donation or signing a petition or something more, and then see how you feel afterwards. Did taking an action change your emotional state at all? What we're going for here is one yes, please, I wanted to go take some action for a cause you believe in, because, yeah, advocacy and direct action. But also we're exploring a theme here. These big issues are really emotional, and it's easy to feel helpless in the face of them. Sometimes direct action can change that feeling of helplessness a little bit, make it a little softer. So go try it out. I want to submit your question for me to possibly address on air. This show is nothing without your questions. It is literally a Q and a show. You can ask me anything you'd like. Bring me your work questions, your frustrations about the state of the world, the things that scare you. Ask me how to handle that one thing that always leaves you feeling like a deer in the headlights, and you really need a script for let's talk it out. Call us at three to three six four three three seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find that number in the show notes or visit Megan Divine dot c O. If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too, right on that website. Megan Divine dot c O. We want to hear from you. This show, this world needs your questions. Together, we can make things better even when we can't make them right. You know how when you're looking for a new podcast to listen to and you sort of scan through the tiles and the show descriptions and you land on Hereafter, and you think, I don't want to talk about that stuff. I assume that's what sometimes people do if they haven't started listening yet. So here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here we talk about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word about here After in your workplace, in your social world on social media, and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to the show, download episodes, and send me your questions. I want more Here After. Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life is full of losses, from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes. It's an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every human trying to make their way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at Megan Divine dot c. O Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Kimberly Cowen, Pranya Juhas, and Elizabeth Fosio. Edited by Houston Tilly, with studio support by Chris Yuran. Music provided by Wave Crush.

This is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine. Each week we tackle big questions from advocates, therapists, and other professional helpers that let us explore how to show up after life goes horribly wrong. This week, it's all about doing work you love with all your heart, even if you wish you never had to do it. With special guest CNN National correspondent and Emmy nominated journalist Renee Marsh, we'll be right back after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note. While I hope you find a lot of useful information in our time here together, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider or for professional supervision related to your work friends, So to be honest, I didn't know this week's guest before I started learning about her in my research for today's show. I tend to read the news as a way to consume it rather than watching it, and I don't always see all the grief related work other people are doing out in the world. That means I wasn't aware of Renee Marsh in her professional role as an Emmy nominated journalist and CNN National correspondent. I also wasn't aware of her other roles in the world, that of mother, author, pediatric cancer advocate, and now a grieving mother. If you just heard those descriptions of this guest and reached for the next podcast button trying to back out of something that sounds terribly difficult to listen to and find something else, hold up a second. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. These are heavy topics. We can't just sweep the tough stuff under the rug. Though in her work as a CNN National correspondent, Renee Marsh focuses on these heavy hitting topics herself. Her stories focus on climate change, environmental justice, systemic racism, ethics, scandals, and to be honest, even when she's working on a less challenging story, moving through the world as a journalist over the last few years hasn't exactly been easy on that profession. Well, I promise you we are not going to find a solution for any of these things. In our time together. We are going to talk right into that deeply uncomfortable place. We're going to explore art and hope and advocacy and showing up for life's more difficult moments. I guarantee you, friends, that you or someone you know is wrestling with very similar things. So even though it sounds a little daunting, as they used to say way back when car radio has had dials to change the radio station, don't touch that dial. Rennee, Welcome. I am so glad to have you in the studio with me today. Well, studio Zoom, thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for being an advocate for people going through grief like myself. I mean, your books have just been so helpful for me throughout this whole process. So thank you, and I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So, there is so much we could talk about today, and in the conversation that we had before recording, we decided we were going to focus on a couple of scific topics. Now I know you know what they are, but for everybody, we're going to talk about the role of writing in coping with grief. And the second topic that we're going to get to in the second half of the show is navigating the realities of being an advocate. So before we get into all of that, though, would you introduce yourself to everybody, Renee, and maybe introduce us to your son Blake. Sure Renee Marsh. I'm a CNN correspondent. I'm based in Washington, d C. The nation's capital, and I cover environmental climate change issues for CNN. And on March four, two thousand and nineteen, the most transformational thing that has ever happened in my life happened, and that was giving birth to my son, Blake. And honestly, any mother knows how transformational that day is of becoming a mother. Blake was just an amazing and healthy baby boy who really kind of lit up our home and brought new energy to our family, and in my eyes, he was just perfect. And it wasn't until about nine months old that we noticed that there was an issue with Blake's I and I remember this day like it was yesterday. December twenty, two thousand nineteen. We took Blake to an emergency room and what would follow in the hours and days after that was the worst news that anybody could receive, and it was that our son, who's only nine months old, had a fast growing, aggressive brain tumor in the middle of his brain and they needed to operate. Uh. And that was how our journey into pediatric cancer started. With our son and what would follow would be brain surgery at just nine months, followed by intense chemotherapy treatments, followed by every thing that comes along with chemotherapy treatments, followed by multiple stints, and I see you Blake going into cardiac arrest as a result of a reaction to his chemotherapy treatments and being on life support for six days, to him recovering from that, to back to chemotherapy treatments, and this all continued on, including relapses and clear mr eyes for roughly two years, and then this fight that we were in to do all that we could to save our son from this ugly, vicious disease came to end on April fourteen of last year, and Blake passed away. And that was, you know, getting the diagnosis was the worst day of my life, but then losing my son was actually a trump that. And I find myself here today in this journey of navigating life without my precious son who was my world and my life revolved around him and taking care of him. And then one day all those tasks were no longer needed because he wasn't here. And I have channeled my grief, my heartache, my pain into writing. I've written a children's book and we can talk about that more later, as well as advocacy work for shining the light on the fact that there is such this just vast disparity in funding for research dollars when it comes to pediatric cancer. And I pivoted to that pretty quickly after losing Blake. And when I think about it, because I went back to my email trails to see, like, when did you really make this pivot, Renee, and it was literally five days after Blake died. I wouldn't necessarily say that that's like for everyone, but it was okay for me, and that's how I kind of was able to keep owing each day. The advocacy work was my one thing that I promised to do for Blake every single day, and that got me from day to day because, as you know, when you lose somebody and you're a caregiver and that's all that consumed your entire day. Because I was on leave from CNN, all of a sudden, you have nothing to do with that energy when you were doing so I kind of just transitioned to the advocacy work because I no longer was taking Blake to doctor's appointments. I wasn't like giving him meds. I wasn't doing regular mom duties. So this transition to advocacy was now my new way of mothering my son that I lost, and that is my story. I love the way that you talk about that too. You know, I've listened to a lot of your interviews in your media spots talking about your work and talking about your son, and I love the way that you talk about this is the way that I mother him now. And when we get into that question in the second half of the show about advocacy work, we're going to talk about that in our second listener question, but if it's okay with you, were first, I want to thank you for sharing that story. You and I talked a little bit before we started rolling here that as professionals were accustomed to telling really impossible stories about our own lives, and that the more times you tell that story, especially in a professional role, it becomes almost impulse. Is not the word that I want, but it's like a habitual recitation of a horror and that's a weird skill that as a professional storyteller you're sort of asked to step into. I want to get into that professional storyteller a bit, And I mean, as you said, as a correspondent, you've been writing and telling stories for nearly two decades, and not easy stories either. We talked to a little bit about that in my introduction of you, of like the kinds of stories that you tell, and I'm wondering about the role of storytelling in your personal life. So is it okay if we talk a little bit about when Blake first got sick. Yeah, were you writing in those early days, like personal writing different than your professional work. Yeah. I mean, I keep a journal, and it's funny I should do this more because I always think that it's such a good exercise to look back at what you wrote. But when I was pregnant with Blake, I was writing. I was writing letters to my son that I hadn't yet met. I was writing about anxieties that I had as a mother. I was about to be a mother responsible for a life. And when I go back to look at what those anxieties were, they pale in comparison to what my reality became. You know, being in the news, you cover all of these sort of worst case scenarios, stories of school shootings and police brutality and you know, all these other things that happened within our culture. And as a mom of this little boy who was going to bring into this world, I had this protective energy and I actually went back and I saw some of those letters that I wrote to my son, uh, and that lessons I wanted him to know and learn about the world he was coming into. And again, this is when I was pregnant, and yeah, I continued this sort of writing about this journey as a mom even once Blake arrived and into this just nightmare scenario of I think you might have said this, forgive me if this wasn't you. But like when you get some news that kind of shatters your world, it's like somebody has opened the trap doors from beneath you and you just fall. And that's how I felt the day that I got the news. And yes, I've chronicled all of that for myself because that, in many ways is my therapy just for myself, just having that release of writing what I'm thinking and feeling. And I think that there's also some benefit to kind of revisiting some of those emotions and feelings once in a while to see number one, how you've progressed, Because I think sometimes we don't give ourselves credit for how far we've come, and sometimes it's hard to gauge how far you've come when you feel like you're still in the middle the wilderness, you know. But to answer your question, yeah, I I've always written in a journal, and that includes during the time when we got the diagnosis. So what do you think about the way that your relationship with those storytelling and hope has changed. I'm glad that you asked that question, because I do feel, like you know, that's what I do every day at CNN. I am a storyteller on whatever the major issue is, I find a story to tell it and the people that's impacted. And I actually feel as if my life circumstances has very much changed me as a storyteller just overall, because, as you have said so many times, there's certain deaths that reorder the way you see this world, and Blake's passing has absolutely done that for me, and so my approach when I go into any story now, like let's say, professionally at CNN, I am so much more in tune with the human element of stories, way past the luck the level than I ever had been. Of course, I've told people centered stories before, but there's a certain awareness that you have about underlying sort of emotions or circumstances that impact people that you're just so much more in tune with. And as I've said before, my heart feels more supple to suffering than ever before because I am there right now. And so when I meet someone who may be the subject of my story, who is suffering some impact from something somehow, my connection with understanding that pain or that struggle is so much more intense than it ever would have been had my life not hit rock bottom. And so that is how this situation has changed me as a journalist as far as my personal journaling. And with that, I don't know that I necessarily told stories in my journal as much as I just authentically wrote down what I was feeling at the moment. Some days I was hopeful, some days I felt challenged in my hope. Other days you would see that I'm struggling to find places to kind of read up my hope. And that's what I mean by harvesting hope, because I found that throughout my entire situation with Blake, hope is very fleeting. It doesn't stay. You have it on Monday, you don't have it like ten hours later, and so you constantly are looking for places, signs, conversations, interactions with people to kind of red up your tank when it comes to hope. And I was always looking for that because if I was hope less, I would be giving up all my son. And there's no way that a mother who loves their child is willing to give up on their son. So I had to find hope no matter what, go out into the field and find it and be open and keen to noticing it. For the sake of my son. I was not going to give up on him. Because I've read your book and listen to you speak about it, and listeners everybody. I'm going to link to some of the media appearances where Renee talks about her book and obviously let you find her book. But the way that you talk about that harvesting hope is like I will find a beautiful sunrise, I will notice the awesome jacket that person is wearing, like I will get ferocious for moments of beauty, and and for me, that sort of really intersects nicely with like my concept of hope and my understanding of hope. If I sort of translate what you just said to the way that I look at things. It's like, you need those touchstones, you need those anchors of beauty in order to show up and face what you have to face today. It's not so much hope in I hope this works out this way, or I hope this works out this way, but like, what can I sink my claws into today so that I can show up and continue to advocate for myself and my child and believe in the good in the world in the way that I need to. And I love that you talked about how that has reverberated into the human centered stories that you do as a journalist. Right, It's not that it made you a better journalist. We never want to be like this was a fair trade to make you up, Like, no, absolutely not, but that the you can't not be changed by what you know. It's funny that you brought up sunrises or sunsets, because I actually remember, like oftentimes i'd wake up before Blake. We'd sleep in the same bed in the hospital because he liked the cuddle with me at night, and I would wake up to these beautiful sunrises. My sun got treatment at John's Hopkins, and we had these big windows and you could see the sunrise. And even though like this was all such a terrible challenging situation, when I saw that sunrise, I knew there's more to the world that I don't understand. And because of that, I have hope. Seeing this beautiful thing that's been burning for five billion, you know, decades, there's something about that that kind of like speaks to your spirit that there's something more, there's more to what I understand, there's more to what I know, and knowing that there's stuff that I just don't understand, I'm going to have hope. And it's that needing to lean into something larger than yourself. Yeah right. And some people would call that faith or religion or quantum physics whatever, but there there really is that sense of there is something neutral and impassive about the larger universe, in the larger world, and we are this one little marble in a great sea of vastness, and we have no idea what else is out there. Like that can either seem really bleak or really comforting to know that there is something bigger than you and that you don't have to understand. You have this moment in this bed and this sunrise, and it gives you what you need to be there for five more minutes exactly, so you're ready for our first listener question. So this listener writes, I've been a writer my whole life, journaling the occasional short story, that kind of thing. It is mostly me talking to myself. These last couple of years have been a lot, and I don't want to get into all the specifics. But my question is it doesn't matter writing out all of the horror. Oh I cry every single episode, but usually the listener questions that get me everybody, The question is doesn't matter writing out all of this horror? Can you talk about the benefit of sort of writing myself through things when there isn't a solution. We're going to get into Rene's answer to this question right after this break. I think that for me, the process of writing actually leads to some Eureka moments that I may have. When you go went through grief, it's such a complicated basket of emotions sometimes, like I say to my husband, like I feel cranky, like a baby who's unable to say what is wrong. I just know I don't feel good. I'm not feeling good. But this process of writing and also therapy helps you kind of peel back the layers of the onion to understand what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way? And for me, it's just a release. It's the same sort of comfort that I get if I sit and talk to my husband about how I'm feeling or that I'm really missing Blake. And I think that there's some real value in that. I don't write to find a solution and I'm still trying to get comfortable with this idea and I'm not there yet, but there's just some things will never know and understand, and that's gonna include the death of my son to such a terrible disease, so trying to figure that out. But it definitely helps us to understand what we're feeling. So I do think for that reason, getting stuff off of your chest and that's beneficial. Yeah. There, It's like the the notebook is a neutral observer. You don't have to worry about hurting in the notebooks, feelings, hurting your journals, feelings like it's a place where you can tell yourself the whole truth about what's actually happening, and maybe it helps you get to a place writing into that horror, as this listener mentioned, like it, it helps you get to a place where you can identify what you need and maybe you can ask for it from your your people or your dog or whatever. Like there is an understanding of yourself and your own needs that you sometimes only get when you're allowed to be horrified and angry and terrified and all of those things that for me, journaling lets me do. Right. It's the passive receiver that I don't need to worry about hurting its feelings if I say what I'm actually thinking right now, And I love that you actually said earlier a few minutes ago, about you go back to your early journals sometimes one to see how far you've come. And also like there's there's something that I've talked about before, where like you right in the moment to leave your your future self a map, there are insights that you have or things you want to remember about yourself, or a really beautiful sunrise that meant something to you in this moment. And just because life keeps happening and the memory library gets full, like you might not necessarily remember the things that you want to remember, but as you write you sort of leave yourself a map to get back into that sunrise, to get back into that moment, to get back into the way your kid smells when they got out of the bath after this specific shampoo. That you wrote that down and you gave yourself an entry point to come back to. So yeah, that also brings up another point. You know, in the early days after losing Blake, I got probably what was some of the best advice from UH colleagues, parents who lost their child to a different form of cancer decades ago. But he said this to me, and I was like, oh my gosh. Uh. He said, write down everything that you currently remember about Blake that is fresh, because as time passes, you're going to forget. And that was so heartbreaking to me, the idea that the things that are like right front and center in my mind that one day would become fuzzy or gray or just totally not be top of mind. So that was another reason why I started writing, because I didn't ever want to forget any of the special aspects of Blake. You want to give yourself a record of that. And also, you know, I think there's a lot of anxiety for people when they won't be getting any new memories with their person. There's an anxiety that I'm gonna lose details, I'm gonna lose my memory, I'm gonna lose this or that, and and that is a valid concern. I love the idea of writing things down. Actually, in the writing your grief course that I do, there's this I want to remember I need to forget prompt like writing into that sort of stuff. And the other thing I remember in my own early grief, I was terrified that I would forget certain things about my life and about Matt. And brains are interesting, right, Like you know, the sense of smell will trigger something. You know, it's been twelve years since Matt died, and I can be walking down the street and smell something I'm like, where is he? Or it kicks off a memory in me. And so if you're if you're finding yourself friends panicking that you're going to lose your memories, you're gonna lose your person. Your brain library stores memories way better than you can kind of force yourself to remember, so you will not forget everything. Yes, right, to leave yourself a map and to remember those beautiful things and give you those entry points back in spend some time journaling about I remember this day, right, any of those really cool? I mean, I'm a writer. I can't not give you creative writing problems. But also, like trust your brain library, right, it will serve up things that you can't go looking for, but it knows where they are. Yeah. I want to sort of close out this part of the listener quest and by going back to something you mentioned a few minutes ago about how this experience has changed the way that you understand human centered stories as a journalist. I'm going to link these two things together here because but we just answered for this listener was like, there is actually something beautiful and hopeful about writing honestly about horrible experiences. It sounds like one of the things that has deepened for you as a journalist is your ability to allow the people at the center of your stories speak the truth about horror in a way that it sort of offers hope alongside of it. I don't know that I'm saying that very clearly, but I think about what happens when you really understand the human at the center of a horrible story. It's only in allowing people to tell the truth about how bad things are that they can actually access a real hope or a real path ahead. I think you're right, And then I think that the stories that at I tell it's all about you know, we sometimes get caught up as journalists sometimes like the who what when we're why the facts of the story. But what has changed in me is giving a little bit more space for the emotional sort of story of that character. It's not just the facts of what happened to them, but how they feel about it, and giving that more space that maybe I have in the past. You know, just like we're on autopilot sometime and we're on deadline, so we just throw the facts in. We do have this element of storytelling around a character. But what I'm saying is where I'm at now in my life and my life experience, I feel like I'm more compelled to give more breathing room to the emotional side of these news stories that I'm telling for these characters. So, you know, if it's okay with you, I'd like to jump into our next listener questions since it is a big topic. So ready up, ready, Okay, listener question too. I am so glad that you're talking to Rene as someone who works in a related cancer advocacy position. I wonder if you can address what it's like to navigate your personal feelings and the red tape of this work. I feel like I have to mama bear everything to get through the politics and the policies, and at the end of the day, I just want my friend back. So look, there's no doubt that I realized that this space of pediatric cancer research and getting more funding is like this huge mountain. So there's no way that I go into this knowing that all the work that I'm doing will change the world tomorrow or next month. But what I am committed to in honor of my son, and as as I said before, because of the love that I have for my son, is work in my space of the planet, my space of the world, and do what I can do and really give it my one and then you know, I will be able to say that I have done a proud or I've done what I can do. But the thing is, no one person is going to solve some of these very complicated red tape issues. But I do my best to find allies like you, Megan, willing to give a platform to speak about what's wrong with the world. And how we can fix it, and the rest of it is kind of out of your hands. But as long as you know that you're giving it your best, because I think if we're all doing our best in our own corners of the world, we'd be amazed at how much we can accomplish. I want to be impactful, and I work to be impactful in Blake's name, and that is all that I'm concerned about. I remember when I was when I was preparing for this, I was thinking about God decades ago. Now. I was at a conference on resilience and Dr Linney's Bias was the keynote speaker, and she was speaking about her advocacy work around gun violence and drug addiction and all of these things, and she was on a roll and then she just kind of broke character for a minute, like I'm your keynote speaker, and just started stomping on the ground and saying, I want my son back. I don't know if any of you know who I'm talking about, but I'll put in the show notes if you want to know more so we don't get derailed here. But like, there is that reality that for a lot of people who work in advocacy you just wish more than anything that you didn't. Honestly, you have any skin in this game, like you didn't. You don't want to know this about what it's like to lose your two year old to cancer. Yeah, you don't really have a choice around that stuff. You do have a choice about the life that you build after that. Before and after point, I was talking to another mom who also lost her child, probably like ten or eleven years ago to brain cancer, a different form of brain cancer, and she said something which reflects why I do what I do, And she said that she still wants to create a world that her son could survive, Like I still want to create a situation where have we turned at the clock if he gets this terrible diagnosis, which I wish he wouldn't at all, but if he did, he could actually survive. So even though he's not there, I'm still working to create this world in which he could survive if he was still here. And that is really my priority, um. For you know, I'm a mom who didn't win this battle for her son, but there are many other mothers like me, fathers like me, who are going through this in real time, and I know the pain of this. I will probably live it for the rest of my life. And there's no way that I could be so self centered to just not try to help somebody else who's actually going through this in real time, not trying to do something to help them so that their outcome is a happier ending than mine was, because I wouldn't wish this sort of life story on anyone at all, even a stranger. In one of the media spots he did to share your son and your work with the world, you said, I want to continue to fight for him even if he's not here in physical form anymore. This is my mothering now that connects so beautifully to what you just said, Like you're still fighting to create a world that he could have survived in, right, So Like in this way, it's like, not only is advocacy a collective act and an act of love in the world, but it's also an act of time travel. It is it is you're you're working to build the world that you wish existed before this happened, and gave you the information you needed to help create that world. Like that is a quantum physics time travel conundrum, but it's it's time travel. It is it's time travel for the future, I oftentimes think, and I probably will for a long time. I you know, as a mom, I had such high hopes for Blake, and I just knew in my spirit that he was going to be a special young man that would have quite an impact on this planet, on this world, because I saw early indicators he loved to read books, but then he had this killer personality sometimes like you have this, but you don't have that. I felt like Blake had both, and I can only imagine, unfortunately, what he would have achieved had he been here to live out his life. But at the same time, sometimes I look at this and I said, had it not been for Blake, I wouldn't be doing this interview with you. I wouldn't be doing the work that I'm doing. And so in many ways, Blake is achieving such wonderful things. Um just by his memory. I wouldn't do any of these things if it wasn't for him. So so yeah, in many ways, he's achieving a lot, and I'm so proud of him. I I don't ever take the credit for the book for anything that I say, because I do this holding the flag of Blake. So I'm proud to be his mother. I'm proud of how he inspires me to exist in this world. I'm proud to fight for children who are in hot in the hospital with this disease and just need more funding to help find cures for this disease. And that's all Blake. I love that, And I love that his personality shines through all of the work that you do in the way that you talk about him, like he is present, not in the ways that we want him to be and dreamed he would be, and he is. Yeah. So as we sort of wind to close, I wonder about you. Know, as a journalist and as an advocate, you're really visible in the world. And what do you wish that other journalists knew about grief? Oh jeez, if you saw my book that I have, it's okay to not be okay, I've like written in it, have notes on the side underlined. But to steal what you have said numerous times is that grief does not exist or live in a distinct period of time. And I think that if you have not walked this journey of just traumatic, severe grief, you don't understand how long this will be your life, partner, and this really will be my life partner, And as you've said, it will exist in different ways, but it will always be a part of my life. And I think if you're blessed enough to not have an experience like myself, you probably don't fully understand how much it is so present in my life. Even today, we're getting close to a year. But people probably looking at me think Renee's looks like she's okay. Yeah, she's like fighting the good fight and advocating and doing all the good things. And she shows up and she does a good story, she's fine. Yeah. The thing is, sometimes it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to get there, and then some days I can't even pull it off. And thank God for our family and friends who are around me at those moments where my hope feels depleted, where I feel like I can't do today, I can't show up today the way I need to. I have a support system to kind of help me along on those days. But that would be the thing that I think most people don't know and I would like them to know, is that grief is here to stay and will likely be with me for a long time. And I said, I wrote this in my journal. I said, uh, and this was like a part of my self realization that if I survived this, it's not because like I found some great tool to survive it. It's I figured out how to position my stance to carry this load forever. That's how I do it. Just how do I? How do I need to be today? Do I need to be hunched over? Do I need to do I need the help of my has been to help me carry the load? I don't that which each day it's different, But you just survived by figuring out how to carry the load. And I love that you answer that question by talking about on the job and in the job right on the job as journalists really as any observer or bystander, to recognize that even if you have lost important people or things in your life, you don't know the depth of somebody else's story. And the best that we can do in that is acknowledge it to ourselves and bow to it and be respectful and gentle with what we don't know. And then in the job. I love that you brought in the job here because like on the job, but in the job is sort of our thing here on this show, like in the job, just because somebody looks good, and they started an advocacy foundation, right, and they're they're showing up to work in their articulate like the mental gymnastics that that takes like just like the culture has taught us, the messaging has taught us that grief is over at the one year mark and if keeps going, there's something wrong with you. And that is such a lie and it does everybody such a disservice. And you know, in other shows we get into like what do you do in the workplace where you're not really sure how to approach a coworker who you know something terrible happened to But just that knowledge, just that little piece of knowledge that like, no matter what you look like on the outside, you are still finding ways to carry this experience and this love with you and we can't judge the weight of that day from what it looks like on the outside. Yeah, that's really good, I mean. And the other thing that you said in the book that I know resonated with me is don't try to fix someone's grief. Just be there for them and just be there to listen if they if they want to talk about it. But just companionship is probably the greatest gift that you can give to a grieving person, But certainly do not try to fix it, because, like you said, it can't be fixed. And that's kind of a beautiful note for us to close up our time here together. Thank you so much. N I know we're gonna link to everywhere that people can find you. We're gonna link to where they can find The Miracle Workers. We can link to some of your media appearances where you're talking about the Foundation for Pediatric Cancer Research. Please let everybody know where they can find you, the name of your book, whatever else you need them to know. Let's lay it on them all right. You can find everything that you need to know on Renee Marsh dot com. That's r. E. N E. Marsh m A R S h dot com. The name of my new children's book is The Miracle Workers, Boy Versus Beast. It is a modern day David Versus Goliath. It is an inspirational tale for any child about the power of hope and faith when facing some of life's toughest circumstances. So a h of all of the profits and proceeds will go to pediatric cancer Research. Excellent. So we're gonna link to all of that stuff in the show notes you can find on Renee Marsh's book, The Miracle Workers on her website Renee Marsh dot com. We will link to some of her articles on pediatric cancer and advocacy work in those show notes too. Thank you so much, Renee. I am so glad you're here and in the world. Oh, thank you, Thanks so much for having me. You are so welcome. All right, coming up next, everybody, your weekly questions to carry with you and how you can send in your question for us to use on the show. Don't miss that part, friends, We'll be right back. Each week. I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. It's part of that whole. This awkward stuff gets easier with practice. Thing And as always, I want you to practice this week something special. I want you to take an action, any action, for a cause you believe in. As Renee said, advocacy is a collective act. I'm in a link to a couple of Renee's articles on CNN where you can find links to get involved with PD patric cancer advocacy if you would like to do that. But don't overthink this one, friends, that's the temptation in the face of emotionally charged issues like do I do this or do I do that? Just choose something you believe in and take one action, whether that's a small donation or signing a petition or something more, and then see how you feel afterwards. Did taking an action change your emotional state at all? What we're going for here is one yes, please, I wanted to go take some action for a cause you believe in, because, yeah, advocacy and direct action. But also we're exploring a theme here. These big issues are really emotional, and it's easy to feel helpless in the face of them. Sometimes direct action can change that feeling of helplessness a little bit, make it a little softer. So go try it out. I want to submit your question for me to possibly address on air. This show is nothing without your questions. It is literally a Q and a show. You can ask me anything you'd like. Bring me your work questions, your frustrations about the state of the world, the things that scare you. Ask me how to handle that one thing that always leaves you feeling like a deer in the headlights, and you really need a script for let's talk it out. Call us at three to three six four three three seven six eight and leave a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find that number in the show notes or visit Megan Divine dot c O. If you'd rather send an email, you can do that too, right on that website. Megan Divine dot c O. We want to hear from you. This show, this world needs your questions. Together, we can make things better even when we can't make them right. You know how when you're looking for a new podcast to listen to and you sort of scan through the tiles and the show descriptions and you land on Hereafter, and you think, I don't want to talk about that stuff. I assume that's what sometimes people do if they haven't started listening yet. So here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here we talk about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word about here After in your workplace, in your social world on social media, and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to the show, download episodes, and send me your questions. I want more Here After. Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life is full of losses, from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes. It's an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every human trying to make their way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at Megan Divine dot c. O Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Kimberly Cowen, Pranya Juhas, and Elizabeth Fosio. Edited by Houston Tilly, with studio support by Chris Yuran. Music provided by Wave Crush.