Dementia means losing your person over and over again.
Margo Timmins and her siblings watched their father lose pieces of himself for years. They processed all that loss the way they always have: through music. The Cowboy Junkies vocalist joins us this week to talk about love, memory, and the ferocious beauty of turning towards what hurts.
*not sure who the Cowboy Junkies are? Google “cowboy junkies sweet jane” - I bet you’ll instantly recognize her voice.
In this episode we cover:
Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.
“Beauty contains death and suffering and outcomes you did not want.” - Margo Timmins
Related episodes:
The Grief of Getting What You Want: with Chase Jarvis
Follow our show on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok @refugeingrief and @itsokpod on TikTok. Visit refugeingrief.com for resources & courses
About our guest:
Margo Timmins is the lead vocalist of the Cowboy Junkies, an iconic Canadian alternative country/blues/folk rock band. Find their new album, Such Ferocious Beauty, wherever you get your music. And get into their oldies, too.
About Megan:
Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. Get the best-selling book on grief in over a decade, It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, wherever you get books. Find Megan @refugeingrief
Additional resources:
For dementia support, we love Dr. Natali Edmonds (@dementia_careblazers)
Want to talk with Megan directly? Join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A grief clinics: your questions, answered. Want to speak to her privately? Apply for a 1:1 grief consultation here.
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I think in order to see the hope, you have to see the pain. You have to That's what our music's about. I've always laughed because again when they talk about our music is a depression, and I said, yeah, but at the end of every song is hope, you know. I mean, maybe it doesn't wrap up in the song and then there's hope, but the result was hope. It's just implied.
This is it's okay that you're not okay. And I'm your host, Megan Devine. This week on the show, the lead singer of The Cowboy Junkies, Margo Timmins, joins us to talk about Grief, Love, Memory, and their new album Such Ferocious Beauty. Now, if you were not a young adult in the nineties, you might not recognize the name the Cowboy Junkies, but I am reasonably sure that you know their music. If you need to listen real quick, google Cowboy Junkies, Sweet Jane. Margo's voice is unmistakable, settle in everybody. There's so much good stuff in this episode. We are talking music, we are talking the interpretation of music. We're also talking about dementia and grief and as the title of their new album, says, such ferocious beauty. All of that coming up right after this first break.
Before we get started, one quick note.
While we cover a lot of emotional relational territory 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. We also discussed dementia in this episode, so check the show notes for some dementia educators that I really really like. Hey friends, So a few times over the course of this show, I have been able to interview some personal heroes of mine, and I seriously did not think the lead singer of the Cowboy Junkies would say yes to my invitation, to be honest. Their album, The Trinity Sessions came out the year I turned eighteen, just before I graduated from high school, and that music was part of the soundtrack of my life for so many years, through so many difficult periods, through so much personal learning, through so much growth.
There music has its.
Own little shrine in the library of my psyche, so to speak. So when I saw that The Cowboy Junkies had a new album out this year exploring grief and death and memory, I might have flipped out just just a little bit. As I said, I did not think that they would say yes. But as it turns out, Margot Timmins, vocalist for the Cowboy Junkies, knew who I was. What Margot knew my book It's Okay that You're not okay, and she loved it. I mean, I held it together through the whole conversation, but it was quite a moment for me when somebody that I had loved and admired for so many decades open our conversation by telling me what my work meant to her. This work, friends, this work has so many gifts in it that I didn't always expect anyway. The Cowboy Junkies have a new album out this year called Such Ferocious Beauty. It's a collection of songs that springs from their father's illness, his decline through dementia, and his eventual death. It's a meditation on grief, and like all of the Cowboy Junkies' music, it is intense and beautiful and poetic and freaking gorgeous. Always I did rain my fangirl in after I got it out of the way initially, but just kind of keep that in mind that my fangirling through this episode is under wraps with some effort, so I learned a lot about the sort of behind the scenes things, the way the band works together. Margo is the vocalist for the Cowboy Junkies and her brother Michael is the lyricist. So you've got one person writing songs about his father's illness and death, and then those lyrics are interpreted by the vocalist who is singing about her father's death but with her brother's words. As somebody who really likes the story behind the story. I loved this conversation so much. Margo and I also got into a discussion about whether dark music, music that explores difficult things, should really be considered depressing music, or if it's just music about real life. Now, surprising no one, Margo and I are both team real life. But I would love to hear what you think. Let me know in the comments on social media at Refuge Grief, or leaver re of you for this episode in your favorite podcast app or do both. I really like seeing them and I want to hear your thoughts on this amazing conversation with the legendary Margo Timmins. We were talking before we officially got rolling. How much I love you and your work, and I'm just so glad to have you here with me and with us today.
As I mentioned as we were talking earlier, this is a huge honor for me. I'm a huge, huge fan. I just think you're brilliant, So I'm very happy to be doing this.
There are so many peleases that we could begin our conversation, because I have spent the last two weeks in all things your family and Cowboy Junkies. We are definitely going to talk about music, and we're going to talk about grief, and we're going to talk about the new album, Ferocious Beauty.
But I would really.
Love to start with your dad. If that's okay with you, Could you tell us about him?
Introduce us to him.
Well, I'm one of six children. My father John and my mom Barb were married for I don't know seven years, and they had that relationship that we're all trying to have. They truly loved each other. We're best friends. That's not to say it was always easy, but they were a great couple. It's always been my joke that my dad, who devoted was devoted to mom, and not that he put on a pedestal or anything like that. But just you know, it's all about mom. I don't think he really knew where we came from.
You know, it's just like they just keep on arriving. Barb, you know, he was you know, a fifties sixties dad, so he wasn't this.
You know, he worked and he took care of Barb, and Barb took care of us. So we had that traditional family growing up. And I think in my dad's love for my mom, we found great security. We knew that they were okay, so we were okay, and I think that the six of us were really blessed with that, with this really strong sense that our world was solid because they were. And I didn't know that as a little kid growing up, just knew the sense of I'm okay. And it was always in their plan that my mom would live forever, including her plan. She was an invincible, really strong woman, fears in her doing what needed to get done, and a good friend, a loyal person, and a great mom. And she figured dad would die first and my dad was all okay with this and she would live on forever. My mom died first at eighty six, which was a very young age. In relative terms of old age. She died of a lung disease that they could never really figure out what it was because she never smoked and didn't have CPOCPD or any of the pulmonary whatever. And at this time my dad was beginning to show signs of dementia. And then when my mom died, which was mind blowing to him, he really went down. And he lived about another four years in in this increasing dementia world where he began to lose sight of himself, all of us, his sense of what he was supposed to do. Even we kept him in his home so that he would be familiar with what was going on and where he was. We all took care of him. It was during COVID, so that was another whole experience of trying to get help and all that. But basically, my dad lost himself and we watched that, and he lost us, and he lost my mom, which was really heartbreaking because as I said, she was a source of his strength. And then he died. You know, he died of old age. He was ninety four, so it wasn't this big tragic loss. He lived this great life, but those last four years of watching him was himself. It was quite a journey for all of us to watch this fierce man become scared and lost within himself, which is a pretty scary used to be lost in. So that's that's what Ferocious Beauty. A lot of the songs of Ferocious Beauty are about just that, that losing of himself.
Yeah, this is something that people who haven't lived through an experience of dementia aren't necessarily aware of.
Is that the the.
Grief arrives well before death arrives.
Yeah, it's true, and it you know, I can remember the first day my dad didn't know who I was. And you know, we'd had dinner. I'd made him dinner. We'd had dinner. They'd been a good dinner. He had gotten too confused. He knew who I was. We here talking about the things that he connected with me. And then I went into the dem to say good night. And I walked into the den and he looked at me and asked me who I was. I thought he was kidding, you know, what do you mean who? It's Mark? And I could tell on his face he really didn't know. And it's suddenly dawned on me that my dad was sitting in his living room and a stranger walked in. And imagine how frightening that would be. You know, you're an old man and some strange woman just walked into his den. And I realized then that, you know the best thing I could do for him wasn't to insist that I was marred, but was to act like a stranger and apologize for entering into this room and excuse myself and leave. You know, I lost my dad that night. I mean, I mean, you know, he remembered me again on and off. But what I realized that was the game we now had to play, was you know, if he didn't know where I was to go along with that and accept that it was hard.
The skill in that moment to recognize what was happening, think about his experience, center his experience, and know what to do in that situation, all in a very salking moment for yourself.
Well, you know, I'd love to think, oh, how clever I am, but I had been thinking about trying to understand what was going on in his brain for a long time and what effect that would have on him. He was often very angry. You know, Anger to me is something that comes from fear, nothing new, And I think my dad lived in fear a lot, and he would say things like I woke up this morning, which.
Is the opening of what I lost.
You know, And he would he said, I woke up this morning and I didn't know where I was. And we would talk about that, and I'd say, so when you looked around the room, Dad, what did you see? You know? So we talk about those things. He often has difficulty finding words, but we try to explore it as much as possible. So in thinking about that and thinking, Okay, how scary that would be to wake up and look around your room and not know where you were. That would be really frightening, or not know what you're supposed to do next. So I think when Dad didn't know who I was that night, I immediately went to how frightening this is that I'm a stranger and I've just walked into the room. And so I think I was not necessarily ready for it, but I had been putting myself in his brain for a while.
Yeah, so you'd been you'd been rehearsing it in a way.
Yeah, exactly. Rehearsing is the right word. And yeah, it was really hard. I didn't know once I left the room. I didn't know should I leave the house, you know, I mean caregiver was there. I wasn't leaving him alone. But should I try again? You know? I decided not just leave and try again the next day.
Yeah, it's those successive losses, right like, dementia is a series of It's like Groundhog Day, right Like, it's a series of the same goodbye over and over and over.
Yeah. You know that Anthony Hopkins movie The Father, I think it is. I don't know if you've seen it. All of my siblings watched it, and we all had different reactions. I found it really liberating. My sister really found it upsetting. I found it liberating in that I think it helped me try to understand Dad's brain, and that's always where I was trying to go. And in this movie, Anthony Hopkins has dementia, and you realize that one day he wakes up in his bed, and he's in his bed in his apartment that he lives in, and then he wakes up and he's in the apartment that he first bought when he was a young man or when he was a child, and this sort of shifting world of always his bedroom but you don't know which bedroom, and I found when I would talk to Dad that that sometimes helped because I would I sometimes think, yeah, you know, he's now in his childhood home, or he's now in his Montreal home. And so again, when he was trying to find his socks or something, depending on which room he was in what house, he would look for his socks in various places. It's fascinating when you think about it. But as I keep saying, you know, I think terribly frightening.
It makes me think of So the first song on the album is what I Lost Today, and it's literally this experience of your dad recognizing that he's losing track of himself and knowing what he's actually lost. And there was something that I heard you say in another interview specifically about that song. So for folks who don't know, so, your brother Michael is a lyricist, and I've read that one of your jobs as the vocalist is to interpret Michael's emotions and add your own experience to it. I completely butchered the paraphrasing there. But one of the things that you've said about that particular song is how hard it was to sing because you wanted to get your dad's perspective correct. This is a song about my father recognizing that he's losing himself and his time anchors and his relationship anchors. And I want to sing this and get his loss across in this song.
Yeah, if that sounds not about my loss, you know, I mean there are other songs.
The rest of the album is your loss.
Yes, another album, another time, but yeah, I think I wanted to get across that kind of fear and and anger. You know, there's a line in the song you know you ask me how I am? What am I supposed to say? When this is what I lost? And I think that's a brilliant line because to me, it says it all. How am I doing? I'm fucked?
Fuck do you think I'm doing?
So, you know, Mike took two parts of my dad's life that were anchors to his soul. So there's a verse that talks about My dad was a pilot and when we were growing up, there was this story of my parents' pre children. I think it was their first Christmas together and dad was on call. He was a pilot in the North and part of his job was delivering engine parts, food, oil, anything, up to these isolated villages or even cabins way up north, and he was on call and he had to fly out that night and it was their first first Christmas. So he asked his boss if he could take my mom. And in those days you could do these things. His boss said, shirt, you know, take take her. So my mom was in the co pilot's seat and they flew a night over the Quebec countryside. And so there's lines in the song about this, this story we grew up on that my dad loved to tell of them flying over. You know, it must have been a beautiful night. And then this is what I lost, you know, that story was what we lived on. And the other section of it was my dad was a love jazz, loved Oscar Peterson Monk, and there's a section of it, you know, the maestro hits the keys and we're brought to our knees, you know, and the music shakes me around. And he lost that too, He lost his love of music, these great joys. So in that song, I think I wanted to, as you said, portray his loss and his fear and the magnitude.
I'm remembering something that you said about your mom about her sort of fearlessness around emotions and confidence about herself, and how that intersects with both just the fact that you know or you knew to have these conversations. I think there's something in the atmosphere of your family. It shows up in your music. It shows up in the way that you talk about the relationships in your family, It shows up in the way that you talk about your mom. This lack of fear or resistance around the depth of life, right like the reality of life, and that you you don't dance around this stuff.
You meet it.
And I feel like that's that's shown up through.
Everything. Does that feel accurate?
Yeah? No, I think. I mean, I think that's what we do. And I think that's why we've had such loyal fans for so long. You know, we're not this big, huge band that's sold millions of records and you know we have, but we're still here putting out records and still doing what we do because of this fan base. And I think the loyalty of that is based on what you're talking about. Is what Mike writes about is just life. He doesn't We're not a political band where we don't have a stand. We're not trying to tell anybody how to think or what to do. We're just talking about our human nature what we do every day. We try to love people, we try to raise our children, we try to be good sisters and brothers and friends. And it's hard. It's really hard. It's filled with great joys, but life is hard. And that's not a depressing thing to me. It's not oh well, that's terrible. I know. I think it's just what it is. And my brothers and my mother and father would have agreed. I think, as a human I think what we need besides you know, oxygen and food, is we really need to be understood. I think we really need to be heard. I think we need to share. I think we're so a communal animal. And that's why there's so many books like Yours and therapy grooms, and because they're just tying to be met at the same level. And like I say, understood. And I think that's what art is. I think when you you read a book, like when I read yours, I heard my own voice. I heard yes, yes, this is this is me. You know you're excited that yes, you understands. And I think when you hear a song are you stand in front of a painting. I think there's just a human connection to two emotions, good and bad, and we all need to share them. And so I think in order to do that, you can't be afraid. I think when you were writing your book, you certainly weren't afraid. You went right deep. And when I I've listened to the audible book as well, and you're opening your heart and and and that's why people are connect And I think that gift, yes, came from my mom. My mom was fearless about any conversation when she was dying, and she knew she was dying, she didn't fox. You know, she talked about it, not all the time, but when she was needing to she would share it. And you know, we listen. And I've got to say, those were our conversations to talk about my mother's death to my mother. But they were also I don't know what the word is, but it's also an owner. You know, there's there's something beautiful in it, there's something Owner isn't the right word, and I should think about it more and find the right word, because to me, words are really important. But it was I have to say, as hard as it was. There was a gift and real gift to sit there and talk so openly, And it made her death a lot easier for me because I knew how she felt, and I knew how she what she wanted after the death, I knew how she felt about her life. There was no afterwards. Oh God, I wish i'd ask mom mess or why didn't you tell me that? I knew we had the time and we were brave to talk about it.
I love that you brought up bravery there.
I think.
I think one of the the worst, the worst goods we've been sold in this modern age is that like, the best thing you can do is be happy and make somebody feel better, And that goal makes us shy away from these deep conversations. Right Like the goal of brave conversations. The goal of honest conversations is not happiness.
It's relatedness, right.
It is the connection. That's all you want is to connect, is to be heard, not to be fixed, not not. I could couldn't fix my mother. I couldn't make her better. I couldn't I would have if I could. I couldn't make her less scared about dying or that sad, how frustrated she was so mad. Like I said, she thought she was gonna live forever, she was gonna be the last one on the planet. And it's all right, I couldn't do any of that, but that's not what she wanted. She just wanted me to understand all those feelings. I think she really wanted me to understand her pain, which was the hardest to hear about because you don't want to hear about it, you know. I don't want I didn't want to think about my mother in pain. But I think you're right. It's that's what we all want. It's just we don't want to be fixed. We just want to be heard understood, and I think I hope, and after thirty some odd years of singing, I think that's I think that's what our music does for a lot of people, not everybody, but for those who, as you say, get it, you know, and it's not depressing, and we're always labeled about being depressing. You know, it's not depressing.
It's just like, you know, yeah, you have a something you said in an interview. You said to us, it's very strange when people come up to us and say, y'all must be so depressed based on your music, and you're like, we don't consider it depressing, we consider it heartfelt.
Yeah, it's liberating in a way.
You know.
I've been asked, you know, especially with this album, I get asked a lot, how do you sing these songs every night on stage? And again when I'm on stage, A, I don't sing them the same every night. In that I might sing it the same as in notes and keys, but emotionally I'm in a different place every night. So if some nights I'm more vulnerable for whatever reasons, even lack of sleep, yeah, I might cry, but that that's okay, you know, that's and other night's No, I'm not going to cry every night. It's not it's not a play than I'm doing it.
So my voice will crack on exactly this.
Note every single time, exactly.
You know.
So, but to me, the ability to do that is, you know, it's therapeutic. I don't get off the stage feeling bad or sad. I feel good. I feel like I've had a good therapy session. I feel closer to my emotions. I feel that let them go. So yeah, I think it's healthy, not not the opposite, you know. To me, I'm I'm drawn to the sadder songs as a fan as well, because it's in sadness or confusion that I need understanding, not when I'm happy. When i'm happy, I'm.
Flying, I don't need anything, and I don't even know what happy means, but when I'm okay. So yeah, that's just what we do.
Yeah, I joined you in that love of the minor keys, right like that.
That is the good stuff.
Hey, before we get back to my conversation with Margot Timmins, I want to talk with you about exploring losses through creative practice, whether you're writing songs or you're just finding your way into your own thoughts. My Writing Your Grief course is a great companion to that creative process. With thirty prompts for thirty days, it is a fantastic way to start a writing habit, especially if you've been thinking I really want to write about this, but you just haven't gotten rolling. More than ten thousand people have taken the course so far, and it is truly one of the best things I've ever made for you. All of the details are at refuge ingrief dot com backslash WYG that is WYG for Writing your Grief, or you can click the link in.
The show notes.
I want to talk about the music for a minute, but of course because I'm me from a grief perspective.
So one of the things that.
I talk about a lot is how when one member of a family dies, everybody loses somebody different. One person died, but your relationship with your dad is a different relationship than your brothers and your sisters. Everybody grieves somebody different. So we take that fact, that emotional fact, and we overlay that on the relationship that you have with Mike as the lyricist. So, Michael writing these songs for this particular album, I'm going to project here, so you correct me if I have this incorrect. But like, he's writing these songs about his relationship with his father, So you are doing what you've done throughout the band's history as you're interpreting his words with your emotions. I'm totally not saying this very clearly, but it's clear in my head that like we've got those two interpretations happening at the same time, but this time it's with you're interpreting his grief into the music and also your grief at the same time. Like, what is that translation process? Like for you, if you have any idea the question that I'm actually asking you.
Well, as Mike and I as a singer songwriting team, I think the greatest part of that, the biggest strength of that team is that Mike as a songwriter, has never insisted on how I interpret the song. In his writing of a song, it's his expression of whether it's grief or loneliness, or happiness or you know, the joys of you know, he's adopted to beautiful girls, you know, and he's written songs about that joy and fear combined. You know. He's never told me this is the song, this is what it means, this is how you should do it. He's always allowed me to come at the song as a female, as a person with my own life experiences, my own needs. The things that I find sad are happier different than him, My fears are different than his. So I think the way he thinks about is when I write it, that's my expression. When I hand it to Mark, she interprets it, and that's the first interpretation of the song. When you hear it, it's the third, the fourth, the fifth, and then so on. All the people heard the songs, they bring their own lives to it. They bring their own griefs to their own losses. And so I don't ever think that Mike as a songwriter would sit down and say, oh, no, no, you've misinterpreted the song. This is what it means, because you're coming at it from your life, which a nothing to do with mine or his. So and I think that's where we, Mike find you know, the process so kind of mystical in a way that it just it's organic. It keeps changing, the songs keep changing, and he loves hearing how what people and how people interpret songs. Sometimes they come at it from a place he never even thought of, but it's still valid in his mind however you hear the song. So, going back to your question, this album that is so personal both our lost dad and our mom and went through the same journey together of taking care of them and sitting there and having these conversations with them. I think again, I came to the song from my own perspective, my own interpretation. Mike never sort of said no wrong. When we were recording this album, there was a lot of times where you know, we stopped recording and we talk about mom or dad or and what you're talking about, is you know how he interpreted Dad who he was most of the time. We're pretty on Mike and I pretty much see the world from the same you know, same lens, and have the same sort of moral compass, more so than you know a lot of my other siblings. So I don't think I was that far off from Mike's grieving process and his loss is But back to your question, Mike would never tell me whether I was right or wrong, and I would never even contemplate is this right? You know? I just do it. He accepts it, and he put it out into the world. So there is no answer to your question except that that I don't know. I never know if I interpreted the song in the right way or what he intended, because there is no right way.
You know. When I wrote that question, I was coming at it thinking this must have been extra difficult presumption on my part.
But as I, as I.
Hear you and as I listen to you, I go back to something we talked about a few minutes ago, of like, this is something that your family has practiced over and over and over in terms of how do we have hard conversations, how do we listen to each other. How do we put ourselves in each other's shoes? How do I receive the gift of his lyrics and make them my own at the same time, Like, this is all stuff that you have all been practicing for decades, and when loss intersects with that, these skill sets aren't new to you.
No, you're right. I think you've been really lucky, especially Mike and Pete and I because we share this, you know, this music that is our soul, and I don't think I'm afraid to show, you know, my deepest emotions. To Mike. We're very close and we work really closely together, but in our everyday lives it's he's you know, I don't talk to him every day. We're Pete. You know, Pete's my best friend. Pete and I talk every single day. You know, he's that brother and we have that relationship. So for both of them, they're they're very intimately involved with me. And you know, I have gone into the studio and Mike really, you know, burst into tears and sobbed in front of both these guys. Pete because he's my best friend, and Mike because we are singing these intimate songs that sometimes bring out the deepest of deepest emotions and there's no fear. I mean, I couldn't be more secure with these people. I'm very blessed that way in that, you know, I have this great husband I've been with for a million years. I'm comfortable with him. I'm comfortable with two of my brothers that way. That's a lot of people that I didn't just lose it with, so I know how lucky I am. I remember once we were working on the song one, and I mean, it's such an iconic song and it's stuck in it everybody's bringing of you know, YouTube's version of it, and it's big and anthemic, and I didn't know how am I going to do this song, you know, like how can I take it on? And then one morning, when I was going to do my vocals, my husband and I had a terrible fight, a terrible fight, like one of those evil, awful fights where just want to kill them. And this is that We're a through throw. Everything is over, it's all over. And I went to the studio to do the song and I walked in and I just burst into tears, you know, and I'm just sobbing and told Mike it's over. It's over, big drama, and he said, Mark, and he said, go there, use it. So I started to do the song and instead of singing about we're one being a global we're one, and it was meaning Raham nothing to do with anybody else. We're one, but we're not the same. It's the old thing. Whole song took on a whole new meaning on a you know, a macro level of just the intimacy of him and I as opposed to YouTube's world. And I think that's that's what we do with our songs. It's just take them to our own hearts. I can't sing about the world. I don't. I don't have enough wisdom or smarts to even begin to talk politically to people. I have my ideas, but I don't feel they're worth sharing on a social media platform. But I can talk about my own heart, that's for sure.
And that like the.
I think it's longer, the title is longer than us, but I have it in my notes as hell right, the song on this album, Hell is real thinking about the wider world and politics and like the backdrop of your dad's illness and death was COVID and what was going on in the US and in places all over the world. And I remember reading that the day that you went in to record, that was quote from the interview, a quote bad mental health day.
Yeah, I mean, I think that the ferocious beauty definitely the backdrop to a lot of the songs is the experience we all went through with COVID, which again is an individual experience, and thankfully I didn't lose anybody. I live on a farm far away from people, and I have one hundred plus acres, so I spent my time walking around the circles with my dogs. I wasn't that great a struggle as it was for so many people who lived in cities, and you know, I had small children and all those things. I don't know how they survived. But what you know, for me, the hardest thing was not playing, you know, not touring, not being on stage. And you know, as we were talking about earlier, when I'm on stage and I'm singing these sad songs, it's therapeutic. And when I realized during COVID, is yeah, that's my therapy, you know, that's my shrink, is just my singing, and that's where I deal with my emotional stress and my emotional need. So mentally, COVID was a difficult time in that I had nowhere to put this stuff, and on top of coping with Dad's mental illness, and it was sort of a perfect storm in many ways. I think if we've been touring during dad's illness, the album would have been different. I don't know what it would have been, but it would have been different for sure.
There's something really interesting in there about so many things, so many layers in there, like everybody's hell is the correct hell for them?
Right.
Some people might have been like, if I could be here way often, like this would have made this survivable for me. And then you take somebody else who's like, no, my main tool to observe and digest and sort of stabilize myself in chaos, I don't have that tool available anymore, right, And that.
Everybody's hell is valid.
So there's that one piece to it that I really like.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean again, to me, that was the message of your book was whether it's hell, or whether it's grief, or whether it's joy, or whatever the emotion might be or the situation might be, it should not be defined by anybody else. It's yours and yours is okay. You know, there's no written way on how to do this or how you should respond. And I think we live in a world, at least this world in North America. I can't speak for the larger world where you know, we have this saying that I just I cannutstand, which is, you know, do the right thing well, and you don't know what to do. Do the right thing well, Do the right thing according to who you know. I mean, the right thing for you might be something completely different fer me. So I know what's the right thing, and I think that we have to be and I think that's what compassion is all about. And I think compassion is something very lacking in our world, which is basically accepting that how you're feeling and how you're coping and how you're doing it, and what your hell is and how you're coping with your hell as I'm coping with mind and one isn't bigger or better or worser are all those sorts of things. It's not a comparison and it's not a it's not a competition. So I live a really good life and I always have. I've, like I said, my upbringing, these two parents that loved each other and gave a security. I was surrounded by brothers and sisters that were always there. They're still here my job. At the end of the day of my job, people are standing up on their feet yelling they love me. You know. That's the end of my day. Oh that's a hard day. You know. I live a really nice life. Work hard. I you know, I'm not saying touring isn't hard. I have my hardness, but I've been really lucky and I sometimes feel that because I've had this really nice life, then I'm not allowed to have the feelings I have, you know, I'm not allowed to be depressed or I'm not allowed to be, you know, struggle, because well, Mark, you've got the farm, and you've got Graham, and you've got this, and you got this, and you've got the band. You know, so, oh, you're right, I'm not. And I find that that goes on with a lot of us, not just with me, but we sort of do this thing where your your feelings are valid because it happened to be a lucky one or something. And I think that's a terrible Uh again, it's not listening. It's not validating people's feelings and we were talking about hell. Yes, my hell during COVID might not have been as horrible as yours, but it was mine and it's as real as anybody else's.
Yeah, as you're saying that, I'm thinking about one of the themes we explored earlier, of like when Mike writes lyrics, that is his version of something, and then he gives it to you, and it is your version of something, and then you as a band gift it to us, and we each make our own individual versions, like we make our own meaning inside things, and none of those meanings are wrong.
Absolutely.
Yeah, there's a real curiosity to me at the root of all of that, curiosity to yourself, curiosity about others' experience. If we don't have to compete for care and belonging and being heard and feeling valued, if we don't have to compete for that, we get to be curious about it.
That's interesting. I've never used that word curious about it. I have to think about that one. It's really interesting. Yeah, because again I think we have to also take away this feeling of guilt. You know, I have a girlfriend who's super wealthy, like super wealthy, you know, owns a plane and a helicopter and all kinds of vincy things, and you know, she's a mom of two and struggling like every other mom on the planet and has her mom guilts and all that sort of stuff. And she's off sutten, you know, feeling that she's not allowed to be frustrated or sad or angry or concerned or whatever because she's got her helicopters and her airplanes and she can fly off to the Bahamas when she gets cold. You know, I was saying, like, no, like that stuff's just toys and icing on the cake, and aren't you lucky? And she is, and she's very she's very giving and gives, you know, she realizes her you know, what she has. She doesn't take it for granted. But I said that, you know, we're always talking and say has nothing to do with your feelings. You know, you're a person. Just because you're super wealthy doesn't mean you don't have them. What I'm saying is that I think it's sad that we have to feel guilty if you're lucky and you have an emotion. You know, your book talks a lot about it. It's sort of where, for example, with me your morning. My father's loss death and well, you know he lived to be ninety four, you know he was old. And yes, okay, my dad didn't. It wasn't a tragedy, you know that he didn't die at thirty five or something. But it's still my loss, you know, it's still sad. There's some sort of like like as if we have to put death on a scale, and so if you die old, then it's less of a you should grieve less, and if you die young, all lots of grieving, you know.
Well, I think we have that ranking when there's a scarcity of validation and support, right Like, if something is a scarce resource, we have to measure it.
Out by something.
If we don't treat it like a scarce resource, if we treat love and compassion as the abundant, unbounded force that it is, then we don't have to compete for it because there's no scraps to fight over. But that's like, this is what we do right there. Well, and in functional reality, not in absolute reality. In functional reality you mentioned this, right, like, there's not a lot of compassion to go around. We don't feel supported, we don't support each other. I hear this from a lot of people who are like, you know, when a celebrity dies, everybody is out there saying how sad they are. They're banding together, they're supporting each other, they're listening to sad songs. But my sister died and nobody will talk to me.
Right.
So it's this experience of support and compassion and validation as a scarce resource that makes us behave the way that we do right with ranking other people's losses. It's like, how dare you be sad when you don't have to worry about paying your rent? How dare you have feelings and sing songs about your father who died at ninety four? When my dad died when I was two?
How dare right? Like all statements are emotional information?
Right?
Like that? How dare whether spoken or implied, is really I'm not getting my needs met? And if I see you getting yours met, there's even less for me. It's that competition. I'll point to it and show notes everybody but that. One of my favorite podcast episodes of this entire thing is The Love Filled World, And it's all about that, like that competition for the scarce resource of love and care and support. It's also reminding me of I had Chase Jarvis on the show earlier this season. It's like wealthy white male, and every time he started to have a sentence about like he was going through a hard time and he's like, but listen to me, like I have everybody's dream, Like I have no right to this, And I was like, ooh, dude, are you aware that you're saying this to me right now? Because we're going there, Like, I just feel like if you are fortunate enough to have layers of comfort around you, various layers of comfort, whatever that means. It's not you shouldn't feel this way, but you have the opportunity to feel this way without being interrupted by rent or hunger or homelessness or any of these things. Like it's not how dare you feel this way? It's you get to feel what this is like and really listen to yourself, So stop trying to erase it and start using your privilege to be able to really hear yourself because there's no interference.
Yeah.
I just think that that's a really.
Kind and interesting way to look at the ways that we silence ourselves for feeling the way that we feel. Whether you have layers of wealth or you don't. It's like, it's not who am I to feel this way? But it's like, who are you to silence yourself?
How dare I mean, well.
Maybe the censor should be, you know, not how dare you? But how dare you not feel exactly?
I think that's a really interesting thing to think about. There's no there's no like right or wrong here, or you should you air quotes here, you should do things this way, or you shouldn't do things this way. I just think it's a really neat thing to be curious about. What are the ways that we silence ourselves and the reasons the justifications that we give for talking ourselves out of what's true for us.
I think it's if anything, if you feel it, go towards it, you know, grab it and hold it and look at it and express it and talk about it. And yes it'll hurt, it hurts, but that's the way to understand it. You know, my son best friend just killed himself. So my son is grieving and he's a young man, and I'm trying to explain to him because I know he's trying to work through it, you know, to go to a place where he was before. You know too, I said, And you'll never be in that place. You'll never be in that place again. I don't know if you're going to a better place or a worser place. It's just going to be a different place, you know. But you have to look at it, and you have to talk about it, and you have to cry about it, and it's going to take a long time. I'm a very visual person in my trying to understand the world, and the way I see it is, you know, our hearts are malleable, and every time something happens, it gets twisted around and reshaped, not to a worser shape or a better shape, but a different shape. And it's still your heart, to your soul or however you want to look at it. But it's that embracing that new heart. My mom, she used to always say when I was younger, that when you have a feeling, to look at the feeling and ask yourself, why are you having this feeling, And if you have a reason, then that's the feeling you're supposed to have. So you know, if you're feeling sad and depressed and Alterierri and your dog died, well that's the right right, this is right. These two go together. If you are waking up every day and there's nothing going on, and you're weepy every day and depressed, okay, maybe you need help. But to look at you know when I'm talking now, I'm thinking back on that those are childhood memories of my mom was very simple. But you wake up and you're happy, and it's a beautiful day and you're feeling joy. Well, yay, that's what you're supposed to be feeling. So very simple. But I do think our world needs less medication and more embracing I guess the pain that these harder emotions bring. In your book, you talk a lot about pain and suffering and the difference between the two. I can't remember all the smart things you said, but I think that definition I've always had it in my head. And when I have friends or whatever and there in pain and recognizing that pain and then recognizing the suffering, and I've always sort of quoted you or tried to be you in those situations. I should go back and repeat them. But I do think that that separating the two it is really important, and we don't do enough of it.
Yeah, I mean, that's what you've just been describing. Right, is that difference between pain and suffering that when you're in pain, you're in pain? Right, it makes sense? And this is something that we do to ourselves, to each other, all of this, like that if something has happened that makes you feel sad or makes you feel angry, there's probably a reason for that, and trying to circumvent that turn that off, Like it's such a diss It is so disrespectful to yourself and to others. So like, when something painful happens, being in pain makes perfect sense, right, And everything that we do is about trying to get somebody out of their pain. It's like if I just shattered my leg bone, telling me that it's not that bad and I should think about the happy times when I had my legs operational, Like, you are so completely missing the point. So like, pain is that purity of it's an if then statement like this thing happened, this is what it feels like. And suffering is everything we load on top of that core of pain. Right, I shouldn't be feeling this way. I should be running a marathon. It doesn't matter that this shattering just happened. At least you had two legs for.
A long time.
I'm going to leave that metaphor now because who needs that. But that differentiation between pain and suffering, I think is it is really powerful, right, because suffering is where we have agency. Suffering is where we can look at, what do I need in my pain?
How do I want.
To move with this, live with this, express this, How do I need to be cared for in this? What are the things that I can do that make this pain gentler for me knowing that I can't resolve the pain itself.
Yeah, gentler for you. That's what we onlyed to do, is be a little bit more gentler with ourselves and with those around us.
Yeah.
And I feel like that's really what you and the rest of your bandmates have done throughout the decades with your music is open up that portal to this is real life. These aren't depressing songs. It's not bleak, it's real.
Yeah.
And what I've heard you say through your music, when I've heard you say in all of the things that I've read of you over the last couple of weeks getting ready for our time, and what I've heard you say over and over again in our time here together today is like this is reality. And the more that we can speak to our own reality and hear each other in our own reality and it express what is true for us, the more we get what we all long for, which is relatedness and connection.
Absolutely.
Yeah, there's a couple of quotes of yours that I really like as we sort of move towards wrapping up here, that really sort of encapitalize what we've been talking about. You've said in my everyday life maybe because I look at the dark side. I'm not afraid of the good side either. There are both sides, and I think that life is pretty amazing and people are amazing as screwed up as we are, I also think we're pretty great, yeah, which I love. And then the other thing you've said is that there's nothing more humbling to me than the ferocious beauty we live amongst, including life and death.
Yeah. Yeah, I grew up in the city. It's definitely a city girl. I spent most of my time traveling around cities. But living on the farm has open that side of my career. I mean, in my travels, I've seen beautiful things and beautiful places, but on the farm and just you know, when I look at my window. I don't see cars going by, ours, people or anything. I just see nature. And people come up here and say of say, God, don't you get bored of just staring out at nothing? And now there's a lot going on out there, and when you live in it, you see more of it and more of it, and that ferocious beauty is just our world. And I, you know, I'll tell you a story. When my son was really little, probably about seven eight, we take the dogs for a walk every day, and we went down this path and there was a family of hedgehogs and we would see them sort of running around as we approached, and you know, my son would be really excited about the hedgehogs. And this one day, the dogs took off ahead of us, and I could hear the sounds of a skirmish. And my dogs are killers of anything that moves if they can get them. And I knew that there was a disaster ad.
Death than they am. And I remember again being in that position as mom. Do we go forward and do I show him this carnage or do I turn around and make up some excuse that we're not going to go there and I go clean up the mess anyway, I decided now we'll go forward, mainly because I've always believed as a mom, I always wanted to be the first one to sort of discuss stuff with Ed. You know, if we're going to talk about death, I want to put my stamp.
On there first. The world will put their stamp on later. So anyway, we went forward, and when we were doing the album and you came up with ferocious Beauty as this title, I went immediately to that moment of my son's face, you know, looking at I was so cute yesterday, not so cute today, but yes. So that's what I'm saying, is the nature around us shows us both the beauty and then not sell beauty. Yeah.
I so want to go into a whole sidebar around the difference between beautiful and pretty, but we're not going to do that right now, even though I really want to. But there's they're like that ferocious beauty is just such a powerful thing to me, and it sounds like there's there's a hope in that for you and for the world in that kind of ferocious beauty.
Does that feel accurate?
Absolutely in our music. I find hope in all that we do. I think that's the one thing we again as humans have and share is you know, there's always another day. There's always a chance to fix it or you know, embrace it or create something. I think COVID, if anything, taught us how amazing we are. You know, prior to COVID, we're all in our little factions all over the world working on our discoveries and cure cancer, curates, cure this. And no, I'm not sharing any secrets with you because I want to win the prize and I got to be first, and I'm going to be the one. And then you know, COVID hit and the scientific world just okay, we've got to work together, and we've got to work fast, and we have to figure out what to do. And they lay down all their competition and they joined and they did what they had to do to end this huge suffering that was happening around the world. And I'm not just talking about people who had the disease. I'm talking about all of us who were stuck in our individual cells. To me, hope is what we have. And I and again in nature, that ferocious beauty. Yeah, it comes and a hurricane comes and rips aparture your fields. But then the next year, you know, you have a whole new crop that's fantastic and maybe even healthier than it would have been. And it's this continuing cycle of balances and creations. And so sometimes I guess we can't see what the good is going to come out of something, or the hope or whatever. But I do believe it's it's always there and we just we can't lose that. And again, I think in order to see the hope, you have to see the pain. You have to That's what our music's about. I've always laughed because again they talk about our music is a depression, and I said, yeah, but at the end of every song is hope, you know. I mean, maybe it doesn't wrap up in the song and then there's hope, but there's always hope. It's just implied.
Yeah, if you're listening for it, right, if you get that.
This is actually a really good theme to be closing on, is that when you are brave enough, when you are willing, when you have it modeled for you, sometimes to really look at that ferocious beauty, right, that beauty contains death and suffering and outcomes you did not want. When you are brave enough to make it a habit to make it a practice of speaking into that and speaking together into that, then hope becomes available. Yes, right, it's when you refuse to see the truth in front of you that hope feels out of reach.
Yeah. Yeah. And hope doesn't mean that it's going to be fixed, right, Well, you know, it's all going to be like it was before whatever happened. That's not hope. I don't know what hope is, but it's I guess what hope is to me is that there's something positive, not necessarily coming out of your tragedy, but just life itself is hope. You know, there's another day, you're going to breathe, you're going to you're going to get up, you will love, you'll have more pain. But I don't I don't have to think about it.
Well, No, it's slippery, isn't it. Yeah, it's really slippery.
It's a very slippery concept, which is one of the reasons that I have really liked exploring it. But I think like being willing to talk about those slippery things, right, not in these like reductive like hope is puppy ducks and rainbows and things working out for the best.
But like all of life.
Is complex, yes, right, and again, like our theme pulling through here is that.
That is just reality.
Yeah, and all of it is beautiful even when all of it is not comfortable.
Yeah, that's good. I like that.
Yeah, you can use that, you can totally use that.
All right.
This has been so beautiful and so powerful and so magical. I'm so glad you are here with me and in the world, and your family is in the world. We are going to link to Cowboy Junkie's website in the show notes. Is there anywhere else that you want people to go they want to hear more from you? Just the website, all right?
So I love that.
When I went looking, I'm like, ooh, they're not on social media. I love this for us anyway. All right, we will link to Cowboy Junkies. Don't go looking for them on social because they are not there, but to the new album Ferocious Beauty, and spend some time in the back catalog everybody, because it's awesome. All right. We will be right back with your questions to carry with you right after this break.
Each week I leave.
You with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. Now you know what really got me in this conversation. Other than still sort of being shocked that it is even happened at all that I got to experience it, what really got me was the grace with which Margot and her siblings.
Approached their father's care. I learned so.
Much about the impact of dementia in this conversation and what it really takes to put your person first. For example, as Margo said, pretending to be the stranger your father thinks you are instead of insisting that they remember.
Who you actually are.
I mean that one little example, that one little story. I've been carrying that with me since we recorded this episode. There are so many places that sort of perspective switch or perspective I guess there are so many places that it applies, not just in dementia care, but in other places and other relationships too fascinating. How about you what stuck with you from this conversation. Everybody's going to take something different from the show, but I do hope you've found something to hold on to. If you want to tell me how today's show felt for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered, let me know. Tag at Refuge in Grief on all the social platforms so I can hear how this conversation affected you. Follow the show at It's Okay Pod on TikTok and Refuge in Grief everywhere else to see video clips from the show, and use the hashtag It's Okay pod on all the platforms, so not only I can find you, but others can too. None of us are entirely okay, and it's time we start talking about that together. Yeah, it's okay that you're not okay. You're in good company. That is it for this week. Remember to subscribe to the show and leave a review. Your reviews help make the show easier to find for other people, which of course furthers my personal mission of getting more people to have interesting conversations about difficult things. Plus, your reviews are just really special to me and I love to read them. Follow the show on your favorite platforms so you don't miss an episode, and leave me a review. It's okay that You're not okay. The podcast is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio. Logistical and social media support from Micah, Post production and editing by Houston Tilley. Music provided by Wave crush and today's background noise provided by the very quiet you can hear it if you really listen for it, sound of occasional helicopters.
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