Episode 191 (Transcript) What About Grief: A Conversation with Pam Heggie
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to our guest, Pam Heggie, for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app, or can be listened to here on Substack.
SH: Hi, I'm Susan Hinckley.
CW: And I am Cynthia Winward.
SH: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things. And the title of today's episode is, What About Grief? A Conversation with Pam Heggie. Hi Pam.
Pam: Hi.
Cynthia: Hi Pam. Welcome.
SH: Pam, you're one of those women who came onto our radar through Substack Chat, you know, Cynthia and I look at the Substack Chat and sometimes we say things like, okay, who is this Pam lady who says such amazing things? Why haven't we had her on yet? And so you're that Pam lady and we're delighted that you've agreed to have this conversation with us today. But we didn't know when we asked you to come on the podcast – we thought we would just do a regular Embracing Your Journey conversation with you, but when we started to see some of your answers to those questions, we realized that there was a larger conversation that we really wanted to have and that I feel like we're overdue having on the podcast. And so that's a conversation about grief.
So today that's what we're going to talk about. And why don't you go ahead and take a few minutes, introduce yourself to our listeners, anything that would give context to this conversation and anything you'd like them to know about you going in.
PH: Sure. Okay. So yeah, I'm 41 and I've worked as a stenographer for 20 years.
Which means I provide closed captions for the hard of hearing for a few different ways, like television, students attending university, and then some corporate and government work. My husband and I also own and manage some rental properties and a commercial space, which has me running a wedding venue, artisan markets, and I teach fitness classes. So hi, I'm Pam and I'm a workaholic.
CW: Pam on high octane.
PH: Yeah. Yeah. So I'm slowly trying to get to the recovery stage, but you'll hear a lot more why I have so many jobs later as well. So I'm also a mom. I had six boys first. And then I ended with one girl and they were all C-sections.
I've been married to my husband, Derick, for 20 years, who I met at 16. And I'm very thankful. We have a very, a partnership marriage, like in all the ways with him. And that's just such a huge blessing for me. Yeah. I have a deep, intense love for efficiency. I was born and raised and I also currently reside in the same small town Southern Alberta, Canada, which is colonially named Cardston, and was settled on the ancestral lands of the Kainai Blood First Nation by Mormons.
And. So that's the home. That's the town. And I have an intense love for renovating, home design, thrifting. I love historical spaces. I'm a wanderer and I love the sun, naps, cheese, and chocolate.
SH: I kind of just want to hang out with you now.
CW: I'm really disappointed that Pam is Canadian. I want her to be my neighbor. That’s amazing, keep going.
PH: I'm going to get down there one day. Well that's me! But a quick Mormonism snapshot for me which I feel like it is maybe my favorite part hearing this about people like which Mormon are you? I don't know. Right.
SH: Right, I love that too.
PH: Yeah, growing up in the church was actually pretty easy because I love checklists. I'm an excellent list maker and keeper. I was made ward organist when I was a Beehive. I'm a slight overachiever getting a calling.
CW: That tells us a lot.
PH: Yeah, right? You're that person. I am. I was the laurels president, in college I went to an institute class every night of the week just for fun and graduated in two years.
I left passalong cards on buses. I invited strangers and neighbors and classmates to church. I accompanied all the choirs and sang in them. I was married to only an RM, of course in the temple. And I did weekly sessions there my first year of marriage.
CW: Wow.
PH: But then the funny thing about it is that's atypical is, I was also yeah, I just was a little atypical. I wore a lot of sleeveless clothing, including my grad dress, which was a really big deal at the time in my conservative town. I even led a petition to our extremely conservative parent council in high school as to why the school dress code should change.
I did [00:05:000] things like sneak out of girls camp to meet boys past midnight at the lake. I would skip school, but I maintained really good grades, but I was often in the principal's office for mostly just the crime of being too opinionated, I think it felt like. I hitchhiked once home from college for fun. I also accepted a job with a 3-year contract 20 years – 20 hours from my home in Pittsburgh at age 20 when I was still single.
I didn't even check with my parents, didn't even let them know I'd gotten this phone call.
SH: Really?
PH: I didn't tell my then very serious boyfriend. I didn't pray about it. I didn't care. I was going single if I had to. So very typical, but also not.
CW: Also not. I love that.
SH: I want to read your books, Pam. When is that coming out? Your memoir.
PH: I kept dumping things from my preparation for this podcast into another document. Excellent. And I titled it, The Book I'll Never Write.
CW: Perfect title.
SH: Okay. I want to read the notes. Let's see. We'll see. Maybe you'll get addicted to telling these stories after we've had this conversation.
I hope so because I can tell there's a lot more I want to know. Today Cynthia is going to take us through the discussion, so I'm going to just turn it over to her and let's get to it.
CW: Well, I feel like we've already had such a fun little chat that I almost hate to launch into an intro where I know about grief.
SH: Right? I know.
CW: But this is life. Grief is actually mixed in, I think, with all the good and the fun and everything anyway. So maybe that's a good thing, but like you said, Susan, this conversation is super duper long overdue maybe because it is such a hard topic. I'll speak for myself. I felt inadequate to cover this topic, not because I haven't experienced loss in my life, but I haven't experienced death.
I've experienced the loss of trust in people I've loved. I've experienced the loss of certainty in my own life. I've experienced the loss of how I thought my life would go. How I thought my children's lives would go. I mean, I went through infertility, so there was deep loss there in my early twenties. I've lost relationships.
I'm sure everyone listening has experienced all of those things as well, but maybe some of our listeners like me haven't experienced deep loss with loved ones through death yet. And so I think that's why I have felt really inadequate to talk about this, but in that list, that I just rattled off about the losses that I have had.
Way back on episode 23, we had, it was called, I think it was called Grieving and Growing, which was based on an essay I I had written and we turned into an episode. And so I'm just going to read a couple paragraphs before we turn it over to you, Pam, about some of my own thoughts about grief and I wrote this.
By far the most growth has come from healing from grief. Hands down, my grief is what has fueled other life lessons. As I have looked around my surroundings more and noticed all the suffering that only used to be in my blindspots, I realize there's a price to pay for such wisdom.
I once said to my therapist, through tears, I paid a terrible price to learn these lessons. In Ecclesiastes 1:18, it reads, For in much wisdom is much grief, and she that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
Working through my own grief opened up the grief of others to me as well. Grieving meant I carried an extra weight, an extra burden, extra sorrow, as that scripture in Ecclesiastes said.
Jesus carried the weight of the world, so if we are to be like him, how can we not be expected to carry just a smidgen of that sorrow and grief? And in a weird kind of paradox, when we learn to really love and suffer with others, we definitely Get something in return. As Victor Hugo says in Les Miserables, to love another person is to see the face of God.
In Mormon speak, we might call that sanctification. I've definitely felt like that list of grief I rattled off has sanctified me. And I think it's also hard to talk about this because I never want to put a Pollyanna spin on any of those things. I mean, I'm shallow enough that I would give them all back to just, lead a happy, pappy little –
PH: 100 percent.
CW: – rainbows and unicorns life, but that's not how anybody's life I don't think ever gets to go. I'm gonna rattle off. I think this is our third time Susan quoting Rabbi Steve Leder, who says, if you have to go through hell, don't come out empty handed. And that has played, I think, a big part in a lot of the grief and loss that I've gone through. So anyway let's jump in to hearing Pam's wisdom and her life lessons that she's learned through grief.
So Pam in all these amazing email exchanges between you, me and Susan there were [00:10:00] kind of some themes that emerged. And so I hope it's okay. We copied some of the things that we are like, ooh, say more about that. And so one of the things you had said to us is:
My faith life really begins with death, meaning the real genuine experiences of my life that molded me, shaped me, and taught me what love and empathy really is, began with deaths.
Four so far to be exact.
PH: Yes. And as I was preparing, it was so, well, first of all, I just, I do have to say I hadn't even listened to that little episode before and it was. It was just amazing. I think it's incredible how death and loss are really the same experience. Yet, it's so different.
And it strips you, sanctifies you. It strips you of everything that I guess in a sense doesn't matter. And it does get you to force, force yourself to really focus on the only things that matter. Because that's what you have to do. You don't really have any other choice. And I just really appreciated that you said you'd give it all back, because so would I. And it's so incredible sometimes cause it's changed my life in such an amazing way.
But still, if, especially if I could have my loved ones back, who wouldn't, I would just love to be naively happy, just not touch all that this knowledge is. It is a heavy burden to have because you can't unknow it.
And just like those blindspots, you just, you can't unsee them. And it's a lot of work to see them. Okay. And it's funny as I was preparing these notes, I realized I actually have been grieving my own death in a way. And I went back and I added – so it began with deaths, four so far to be exact, I couldn't help but think, well, five, if you count my own.
And that thought really struck me and I realized, yeah, I really did at the end of all of that, finally just give up the ghost is what it felt like. And I just grieved– me. And yeah I'll give a brief, as brief as I can, an explanation to things that are obviously very sacred to me in my life.
But at the same time we, yeah, just to provide some context, we need to be able to get through these tough things. So at age 24, six-months pregnant with our first baby, my second oldest brother of my five siblings passed away suddenly from heart failure at age 30. Losing Boyd opened a wound in our family that never did heal.
On my 30th birthday, so six years later, I found myself planning the funeral of my incredible, identical twin boys. Shepard and Deacon, who passed away earlier that week, each in our arms, but on separate days, at ages 3 and 6 days-old, after being born far too early. I had prayed deeply that His will be done regarding their lives, as the unthinkable recommendation was given to us to disconnect their life support, and not extend their struggle before an inevitable passing.
I prayed and prayed for comfort and pleaded and begged and bargained for it. And I was angry and outraged when it didn't come. I wasn't angry that it had happened to me. I knew I wasn't special enough that hard things shouldn't happen to me, but I was angry the comfort didn't come. I actually yelled out a time or two, why hast thou forsaken me?
Still nothing came. I resigned to stop asking for it and I promised never to ask for it again. I felt insane. I broke that promise over and over in the darkest of the loneliest nights. I found myself begging for any kind of comfort again. I longed for sleep every night. In the darkness, drenched in the tears of my pain.
I fought off feelings of inadequateness. Was I unworthy of being comforted after trusting His will with my own babies? Was this a punishment? Had I not followed the commandments with enough exactness? But a year after the twins passed, my rainbow baby came, and he was magic in every way. I resolved to not feel upset anymore, and I couldn't be with this rainbow light now in my life.
And then weeks after I turned 35, my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and it felt like he died twice, first at diagnosis, and then 11 months later when his spirit left this earth. Losing my dad toward this still-open wound that Boyd's loss had left in our family into a gaping hole.
2018 was the longest year of my life. Terminal diagnoses slows down time, but not in the way you'd hope for. Knowing death is coming, wasn't living. We just existed that year. I didn't even know that he was one of my best friends until he was gone. And I recognized this aching absence that no one would ever fill. Five years later, I can hardly look at a picture of him still.
So I thought I knew grief's sadness, but I only knew Boyd's. And I thought I knew grief's love, but I only knew Shepard and Deacon's. I didn't know dad's yet. I didn't want to know it. Each person leaves you in a torturous, bittersweet wake of their own unique life and love, accompanied by its own distinct piercing anguish.
There's just no way to [00:15:00] become good at grief.
And then I met depression. So almost a year after my dad passed, days before Christmas and that dreaded first anniversary that was bringing some really harsh PTSD as well. I received a text that just obliterated my entire self worth. I didn't know it yet, but in an instant, it was gone.
This seeming rejection just took what little amount of value years of desperate mourning had barely left me with. So I had never known this pain. You'd think grief and depression would be similar, but barely in my experience. They were cousins for sure. But the only common DNA for me was this loss and the painful quiet of people who were no longer there.
The difference being with grief is no one chose to leave me. This new kind of hurt, this rejection pain, it choked out my ability to feel any kind of personal value as a human. I was drowning in negative and self destructing beliefs. At nights, those thoughts would turn to screams and they would just burn.
Yeah, I was now grieving me and I spent the coming year just on the shower floor crying or curled into fetal position in bed. I used to dream of just a nice and tight, straight jacket in a room with a view – that sounded safe to me, just somewhere being held basically 24/7. But instead I would go to work at the various jobs I had started collecting.
So cue all the jobs. I eventually was diagnosed with high functioning depression. With some complex PTSD. Of course, even my depression would be high functioning. And yeah, I coped with working. That was something I could control. And it was a healthy-ish distraction. So that's where all the extra work came from.
And then, yeah. Okay. So cue the love lessons. After all of those experiences I was learning to live with pain and sadness and light and love all at once because I had to, there really wasn't much other choice. And for me, grief was indescribable, unimaginable, breath-stealing amounts of love and experiencing it throughout my life had led me to a new deeper understanding of every other emotion that comes with it. And that's given me the ability to love and understand others deeper than I definitely ever could have. Especially marginalized groups. I feel like these humans quickly became my people.
So yeah, now personally knowing rejection, addiction, coping, self destruction, shame, unworthiness, sadness, ache without end, inadequateness, loneliness, isolation, hate, anger, all these emotions, knowing them intimately was, led me to new ways to feel pain.
And then that led me to the new ways to feel love.
SH: It connects you to everyone in the world.
PH: Completely.
SH: That list you just read.
PH: It really does. It doesn't leave really anyone out.
SH: Yeah.
PH: It's the kind of love that I would imagine Christ would love with, but you would really ever know if you wouldn't know it if you'd never lost if life just stayed in the – that happy place, I think it would be pretty tough to love to that depth. So yeah, ironically searching for this love now. In life, like looking for it in the places my life takes me is and putting my faith where that search takes me is, it's what's led me to expand my faith to beautiful places.
And it's how I know so surely that it's been Divinely led because being forced to find that light. Has started to make it really simple now to see and feel where the light is not.
SH: Oh, that's so interesting. I was thinking when you were talking well, that's so interesting. That's not really the right response to what you just read Pam, but I'm just going to preface the next thing I'm going to say, there was something that, that really grabbed me there at the end of what you were saying when you were talking about when Jesus came into the picture of what you were saying.
And I was, and I wanted to know if this changed, did this change your relationship with Jesus? Maybe the way that you think about atonement and all those kinds of things, just because for me, I didn't really think about it until you just said it, but I think it is suffering that totally morphed. Like I knew it morphed my faith life, but I think it's what has driven me to Jesus and to totally change my understanding of how He functioned in my faith life.
PH: Yes, it completely introduced me to what Christlike love feels like. And that for me, the only I mean, generally speaking, I'm going to attempt to live in the place where I'm trying to be, which is a place with grace, but for the most part, I'm usually just like really cynical and when it comes, when it came to things like the atonement I was like, Oh my gosh, He only suffered for three days, okay guys, like we're suffering forever and ever. It doesn't count. Like He can't know my pain. It's not enough.
But the part that I always did relate to is, yeah, like definitely the suffering, the feeling, every emotion [00:20:00] and just the burden of that and how heavy that was. And I feel like, yeah the ability to be able to love in the way that I feel like had been described to me my whole life, but now I feel like I'm finally living it. And that's just so interesting to me. Yeah.
CW: When you're talking about Christ, It's always meant a lot to me that He chose to keep the physical reminder of wounds in His hands and in His feet. And I think so often, I think when we see people who have suffered the kind of loss that you've suffered, Pam, that years later, because we don't see physical manifestations necessarily of your grief, and I can speak for myself as well. I was just thinking today as I went on my morning walk that I'm like, I bet my husband doesn't even always see me and completely know my true heart, because we don't walk around wearing everything on our sleeves and we don't walk around with physical wounds, most of us, in our hands and in our feet.
And so I think it's often so hard to just remember that we all walk around with grief because we don't always see it because life does have to go on.
PH: Yeah it's funny. I used to think I was a pioneer because a lot of them lost their babies. It was more against the grain to have your baby live than die at those times.
And I felt well, we'd fit right in and everybody would just know how I feel and I wouldn't have to preface anything. But I also became pretty good at just I'm pretty honest about my life and pretty honest online. I used to beat myself up as to why, but I, and there are some things I have to watch out for to make sure I'm not, on there just trying to be understood and seen because that's not the place to do it.
But for the most part, I felt like if I would tell everybody online how I was feeling, I would Instagram about my grief quite a bit. And then I felt like I could then go out into the world because I'd prefaced it with that. So it's kind of like, I didn't have to explain myself because if you followed me, especially in a small town, it's you know, I'm not - what you're seeing isn't what you're getting.
CW: Oh I love that strategy.
SH: One of the things that my mom has always said about mental illness is I wish I could just wear a cast. If I could just have a cast on my arm, everyone would know something about me that they don't know now and it would make moving through the world easier.
And I remember what a revelation it was to me. I think Richard Rohr is the person who opened my eyes to that idea that Cynthia brought up that when Jesus was resurrected, when He came back to the people who loved Him, he bore all of those wounds.
PH: Yeah.
SH: And I had never really thought about why that might be or what that might mean, but. It is a revelation to me to think that there's something inherently important about our wounds, that the wounds themselves are important.
It's not just that He overcame them, it's the wounds themselves. And I have thought a lot about that and tried to help, I've tried to leverage it to sort of change my relationship with my own wounds, in a way. I respect them more. I give more space for them. I don't resent them in quite the ways that I did before, or try not to, right?
I mean, I just think about it differently because I think that they're part of the sacred process of being human, and they're an important part.
PH: Right. Yeah, it's funny if you think about the focus sometimes on how everything will be made right in heaven and we'll have, we'll be perfect, right? Yes.
But why? And what's the point? The wounds, like you do, you earn them. I can't even, yeah, I can't even imagine not carrying that knowledge with me. Exactly. If that's what those wounds represent. Like you better not take that away at the very least unless you're going to give me a do-over. Yes.
SH: Yes, yeah. Totally agree.
PH: I always love, I, it's funny, most people wouldn't like the question, Oh, how many kids do you have? And at first it definitely was hard because that's like the question. It's the Mormon question. And I, right from the start would just say, well, so at the time they were my fourth and fifth boys.
So I would say five, but I would always just have the three right here. And I would just, I would say I have two up and three down. And then as I had more. I had another baby because I have seven now. So I say I've got two up and five down, two upstairs. Like I say, I lost twins in the middle. And so we've got two in heaven and five earthlings.
I would also refer to them.
CW: Earthlings.
PH: And so I would always answer that way. And people would. Always be so taken aback and immediate. They just always immediately apologize. And I'm like, I wish it wasn't, I wish it could be more accepted like [00:25:00] in our church of all churches it feels like why aren't we telling people about our kids that are in heaven?
Like we focus, that's all we focus about is our families in heaven and how they're there forever for us.
CW: Yes, you're right
PH: Yeah, we leave that out. And I remember meeting someone that in the LDS church, she'd lost twins at the beginning and didn't even tell her kids until they were quite older that that had happened.
And here I am. So I'm, I celebrate their birthdays. We just, it's, they're such a their pictures are of us holding them as they passed away are up in our house, and they are heartbreaking to look at because like we were devastated in that moment. My sister thankfully was there taking pictures of it and it's, the devastation is the love though.
SH: Right, right.
PH: Like it's, that's how, the only way I could show the love was through tears when they passed away. That's how we showed the love. So yeah, it was so simple and easy for me to do that, but yeah, why would you ever want to leave those parts out, basically.
SH: . Right. We're not so good in our church though at sitting with those wounds because we're a lot more interested in how everything gets made perfect, in the next life.
So we just want to get to the good part. And actually I think in doing so, then we miss most of the good and transformational parts, right? Yeah, it would feel like a very hollow victory to suddenly be made perfect.
PH: Yeah.
SH: To me. That wouldn't, that's nothing that's ever interested me. That's one of my complaints about Mormon heaven, actually.
CW: I'm just sitting here having this moment as both of you are talking, Pam, where you're saying, like the irony of a church where we focus so much on eternity and yet we can't talk about our family that is beyond the veil. It makes people uncomfortable. And to talk about suffering when our whole theology is based around a person who suffered so much on our behalf we're really bad at living and bodying out, I think, our own theologies.
SH: We don't believe our own stuff, Cynthia.
CW: Ah! There you go. She said it!
PH: Yeah. We miss a lot and you miss opportunities to connect. If you're not talking about the pain, you're not connecting.
SH: You're right.
PH: You can't really connect over a little happy moment. That's not a connection. That's just a, you're, you have to do that.
You're checking in and, but when you're talking about pain, you're forming bonds and connections that can be formed no other way. Other than sharing pain.
CW: Dang. Yeah. Well, this is a perfect segue then into talking, well, the next question that we have for you, which is, can you tell us about how your personal grief journey has intersected with your faith journey as a Latter day Saint.
PH: Yeah, for sure. So right after losing the twins I eventually had to accept the idea that that comfort wasn't coming in the way I'd hoped. And so when my dad was terminally diagnosed, I thought, well, just in case I had done something wrong, not perfect enough before, here's a chance to do it again.
Of course, like I remember being very upset, but basically feeling like if I'm going to get a do over, I'm going to be really prepared this time for that moment. Because of course my dad's going to heaven and here's a chance to be close to heaven and hopefully feel my sons and my brothers. So I immediately doubled down on every last thing with so much exactness, as much as I could imagine as I could manage. And so I made sure to be with my dad when he passed, so I did that for the entire year. Like he lived 11 months and I was busy reading, studying, attending the temple, doing all the things, and then living my life according to his every symptom.
And mercifully I was there when he passed, but sadly peaceful wasn't the way to describe those moments. So for the coming year, I was again, praying for the same comfort, continuing to go to the temple, trying to just find the littlest bit of freedom from this pain, and nothing of notice really ever was felt, again.
And then I was knocked straight off my feet by depression, as I mentioned. So I had no other choice, but to try something new. I was desperate. I didn't even really notice that I had stopped attending the temple, especially because COVID actually hit around the same time, thankfully. I was praying less, studying less, but I never, and I really never even thought about praying for help specifically anymore.
And it wasn't that I made this decision, I just was too busy reading and listening and clinging to like wonderful therapy books and places that were actually helping. And I was finally finding answers to how I felt, this inner turmoil that I had been experiencing. And very slowly I began to feel like a valued human again, but in a totally different way than before.
And it just happened without all the typical LDS answers. So, it really wasn't planned. It just organically happened. And I was aware that my story now didn't really fit the typical testimony meeting, so that was hard.
SH: Right.
PH: I was [00:30:00] asked to speak in church and I was determined to share my true experience, which sums me up in general.
I worked very hard on a talk about how prayer and comfort didn't work as I had hoped and felt like I'd maybe even been taught growing up in the church to expect it would. And I shared how I wasn't going to let that convince me that God didn't still love me very much. And I finished with a testimony that if your story didn't look or sound like a typical one, that it was okay, we both still belonged. And I finished and it was really awkward seeing the sacrament, like the people in the meeting after. And I thought it might be a little awkward because I was, I knew I was basically saying, hey, prayer didn't quite work for me, but I also said, but that's okay.
I'm still here. I still shared my testimony. I still had one. And I bore it on finding gratitude instead and basically, moving on. And yeah, it was really awkward. And there was one congregation member who I actually didn't know. He always smelled like cigarettes, and he came up to me and he thanked me with tears in his eyes. So outing myself as not like the others did feel worth it at the time.
SH: Right.
PH: But yeah, getting used to this new LDS version of myself for sure meant that I was grieving the older, the old one. And the ironic thing is. I feel I did still access the strength of a higher power that led me to healing, but only because I like believing that I was divinely created and it was those spiritual gifts that were always inside of me that, like therapy gave me the permission to figure out how to tear open and finally use.
They were always there. I just, I'd been distracted for a good long time.
CW: So was it more of a, you started to recognize like the kingdom of God within you –
PH: Exactly.
CW: – as opposed to needing to do the outward things like prayer, temple worship?
PH: Yes. Completely, yeah getting to know my pain because I had to, to try to get rid of it.
I had to figure out the sources of all these emotions and go back and find the root causes. And it's where I learned about codependency and how I had subconsciously handed over my worth as a human to like absolutely the wrong place.
SH: Right.
PH: And, yeah, I discovered that my head always knew exactly how valuable I was, like I knew it. We are definitely told I knew I was a child of God but I'd been leading a life trying to only show parts of me that I knew others would like, and that I knew would, others would be comfortable with and, unknowingly, that had told my heart for decades that I really couldn't show my whole self, that my whole self wasn't worth showing, that there was no value in showing anyone my whole self. That part of me didn't have value.
So when the time inevitably came, and honestly, understandably came, that someone couldn't accept me because we are not for everyone, it destroyed me. Yeah it took me years of pain to work and figure out, but I realized I needed to get these messages sent to that right place and how important it was to finally stop sending all the wrong ones.
SH: It can be hard though. It can take some time to find your footing in my experience when you're starting to feel what a truer maybe connection with God through experiences, but it has sort of disconnected you because your story no longer fits in exactly the same way. Then there's this sort of disconnection from your Latter Day Saint family and the ways that you've gone about accessing God previously, and it can make it hard to sort of find your footing within the church, or at least it was for me.
It's like I suddenly, like all the things I knew inside, all my inner knowing suddenly made sense for me once I started to understand some of these things about myself, some of the truths of myself and my own divine worth and all of those kinds of things.
But I'd come to them through such atypical channels that it was really hard for me to realize, wait a minute, I used to think I was defective because I didn't know or understand these things. And now I find out I actually had very deep knowing about these things, that I was a woman of great faith. But it was pretty hard to know what to do with that in the context of delivering a sacrament meeting talk and having the blank stare, right?
Where people just don't know quite what to do with you and you don't know quite what to do with them or if you want to.
PH: Yes.
SH: You know, that's a hard place to navigate.
PH: Yeah. It honestly – like life's upside down and you have to figure out how to what the new life completely, and you're suddenly looking at every choice. Like I feel like every marriage in this process [00:35:00] has to do that gut check. Wait, would we have picked each other?
SH: Yes, yes.
PH: Would we have lived here, would I have done this job like you're going through everything you're looking at, your employment literally, I don't think we would live where we live, actually. And that's really hard for us right now too, because we're, my oldest is 17 and my youngest is 7.
We're in it now and It's pretty tough to just pick up and move, but, yeah, you have to find new ways.
For us, we found new ways to identify with all these systems that were outside ourselves. So extended families, community, work, social systems like friends, and then especially church. So we had to mean, we had to take our personal worth and look at it in a way that was no longer tied to the quality or the level of the mutuality felt in these external relationships. So it didn't matter what anyone else, it couldn't matter what anybody else thought. We had to value ourselves in relation to those things in our control, which was only us. It had only ever been me. I could only ever control me and how I feel and how I react to other people's inability to understand me and places.
That can't hold me or see me or, yeah, like it, it just always was only ever me. So it's constant, just like inner working that sometimes I think it took us, like it took me 40 years to get here. So it's going to take a few years to get anywhere else.
SH: Right. Yeah. That's really funny because you know what I was just thinking, Pam?
I was just thinking, you're a really wise woman. Would you call me in 20 years? I want to hear Pam at 60 when you have 20 more years of lessons like this. I can't even imagine. You're amazing.
CW: So good.
PH: Well, what's funny is what I actually jotted down next was that was how I didn't actually start listening to ALSSI until the end of 2022 because that's basically when my church systems structure totally broke.
And so I have been listening to older episodes especially this like last couple of months and every one is just so bang on, and it's been so healing for me and I can feel this hope growing that I may be getting a peek into what my wiser life years from now could possibly sound like because I'm only a year in so I can get pretty angry feeling, but when I listen to you two, I feel like it speeds up my process of getting to mostly the more helpful place a little quicker. So that's pretty invaluable to me. So I just, I hope I sound like you guys in 20 years. That's my goal.
CW: You'll sound better.
SH: Thank you. Cynthia, our work has not been in vain. No, it has not been in vain,
CW: But Pam will sound better.
SH: Oh, for sure.
Cause look where she already is in one year. Took me 60, but anyway.
CW: But I think it's really valuable, Pam, what you said, that like it took me 40 years to get here. And I wish when, I mean, for me, everybody's heard me say this a thousand times, like my world came crashing down when I turned 40, and I just turned 50.
And so I can look back now on these last 10 years and I think. Of course, it's taken me 10 long years to get to where I am now. And yet now life is throwing more curveballs at me and I'm like, dang it!
PH: No, I don't want to know that.
CW: Yeah, I thought I had learned all these life lessons.
PH: I want it to be easier.
CW: Well, I mean, and some things are easier. I feel like when the curveballs get thrown at me, I have the tools in my tool belt. I just don't want to pull those tools out because like I started out saying confessing on this conversation. I'm shallow enough of a person that I just want to eat Cheetos and watch Netflix. Like I don't want to pull the tools out and use them.
And yet, and sometimes I do that. I go into my little turtle shell with, and then eventually I'm like, it's like Anne Lamont says about. As a recovering alcoholic, right? The 12 step program, step zero is this (bleep) has got to stop. I feel like with all the different curve balls that I feel like have been getting thrown at me this year.
Yeah. I go into my turtle shell, but eventually I'm like, okay, this (bleep) has got to stop. And then I pull the tools out reluctantly and start.
PH: Yeah.
CW: Trying to become a human. Yeah.
PH: The conditioning, it runs so deep and it's insane that you can gain these skills and it, they can be undone in a trigger, like in a heartbeat and.
I wish people could just understand the amount of work it takes just to even sit through, like a church meeting or to just go out and try to like, in a sense, go back to places that maybe aren't emotionally safe really anymore. And you have to keep yourself safe. And so you're basically working at insulating your heart and your brain to okay, these things are happening, but they're not true for me. And it is just a repeat performance over and over that I do hope gets easier. So yeah, I'm sure life is going to continue to be kind of the worst in ways, but I just hope, yeah, the rug's never going to be completely pulled out from under [00:40:00] and us anymore is what I hope.
I am hoping that rug got pulled out and we're now figuring out how to get everything a little bit better anchored.
CW: So what do you think, Pam, as Latter Day Saints, what do we get right about grief, and what do you wish that we did better?
PH: My first word is yikes.
CW: That’s a good word.
PH: It's so, this is tough for me because personally, It was all wrong for me. There was really nothing that worked and was right for me, and I know that's not everyone's experience, and sometimes I hate that we always have to precursor that with, this is just my experience, but I do, and I would never want it to come off, because I really do really love my ward, and I have great connections there and I have a wonderful family and friends and support system and people in my life who just mean the world to me. But I think that's what's so tricky is everybody is out there doing their best, and they have the best intentions in the world, but the way in which I feel that the system of the church has set things up, it almost sets everybody up for failure. And that's what is too bad. Because everybody just wants to help.
So for me it really did actually make it harder. It just doesn't seem like the church doesn’t know what to do with anybody doing it differently. Like you mentioned, they just, they're just, there isn't precedent for that.
CW: Right.
PH: And it presumes that since we have this knowledge apparently of exactly what happens after death, that that loss is just more bearable. And that's just not even remotely true. And not only because we don't. We really actually know nothing for sure, so just try and guarantee me go back to Pam a few years ago, grieving her twins, and try and guarantee me anything. I, nothing was guaranteed for me, no knowledge was that sure at that point, nothing was sure. And it really wasn't going to affect my – I had three boys on earth and two in heaven.
Even if I were to see them again, they're not growing up here together. My sons here weren't growing up with their brothers and that, that wasn't ever they're not going to rewind once my sons here grow. I can't ever do that. So there were some things that just, no, it wasn't helpful and it almost made it worse when people would try and hint that it was.
So I couldn't leave my bed for four months. I didn't even get the mail. Like it was bad. Shockingly, I don't know why, to my surprise, it was immediately assumed that I was inactive and that we weren't going back to church because my husband would stay home with me. And this was met with a lot of unkind remarks with just zero understanding, like really hurtful things like that I wouldn't be able to get to see my babies again if I didn't go back to church.
CW: Ooh.
PH: Yeah, we went there. Yeah. And. And I was very unfavorably compared to someone else in the community who was outwardly grieving a pretty serious loss by going to the temple and going and fulfilling their calling and just to the next level and not skipping a beat. Whereas I asked to be released from teaching Relief Society because I didn't want to be on display. I didn't want to be in the front of a room of anybody at the time talking. And so I had someone kinda’ say, oh, I really thought you'd be more like this person.
So I was called selfish for not wanting to attend a baby blessing within months of the loss. And like I said, all by people who love me very much. So it was crazy. Apparently there was a right way to grieve and a less-faithful, wrong way to grieve. Yeah.
CW: Yep. So. This is no surprise to me sadly.
SH: No surprise. Oh, but cringe. Yeah. Oh, so.
PH: And even anyone I've had people since then say I can't believe I thought that. I can't believe I said that.
SH: Interesting. Okay.
PH: I suddenly knew what it felt like to be discussed in ward council. That was new. I didn't realize I would immediately become an agenda item by not attending church. It was very weird and it feels like it's somehow, it's tricky to say. It feels like they're giving themselves the spiritual okay to just gossip and talk about how someone's doing. I know they mean well and I know they care, but what is discussing us in a ward council going to do? How does that actually help me other than alert everyone in the room that we're struggling and we're not going to church right now. And that's somehow, you're like giving people permission that's their business and it's not their business.
It's no one's business.
CW: Good point.
PH: It's zero people's business if I go to church or not, and I am positive that anyone who does decide to attend church less for any reason whatsoever, doesn't want it discussed in ward council. Like we can just stop that, those agenda items. It blows my mind.
Many couldn't accept my experience of not feeling comfort. They would just be like oh, I'm sure it's there. You just don't see it yet. One day [00:45:00] you'll see it. Like they just, it was like, I wasn't, they just didn't accept it. They couldn't. It was, yeah.
So not too long before my dad passed, he was actually asked to speak in Stake Conference. So he knew he had maybe had a month left to live. And that's just a big ask in my mind. And I've noticed it since then in a few other instances to be a little bit of a trend. And I don't know if this is just locally or, it's probably a church-wide thing is my guess, but I think the expectation is that they'll have peace because we know all the things.
And so you'll be able to share a beautiful talk about how peaceful you feel. And, but my dad was not ready to die and he never even really admitted that he was. He just kept living his life as long as he possibly could, like nothing really was happening. So I know because he declined speaking, and I know he felt badly like he somehow wasn't faithful enough to be able to speak, and that was hard for me.
CW: Did he explain to them why?Do you know, Pam? Did he explain to them why he said no?
PH: No, I don't think so. I doubt it. I think that's the thing. It's like, like I said, we don't ever really talk about the hard stuff and connect on that. And he was very much he was just, let's get it done. I'm at every scout camp. I'm building all the things. I'm doing all the things. They were always doing the food like just an incredible servant of the Lord in that way. So he didn't even talk to us so much about it in depth. Especially, like I remember forcing myself to tell him a bit of a goodbye and it was we were both just bawling and you could tell it was the first time I think anyone had ever been like, well, let's talk about the fact that you're gonna pass away. Like he just, he couldn't even acknowledge that it was happening.
I think it's so much easier to just do the good news like strangely enough I had hardly any dinners brought over and this was just like something I was, I've noticed because I, yeah, I don't know. I've had all the babies and now I've had all the losses. So I have data where I can compare.
CW: You have data, yeah.
PH: And it's too funny because whenever people would bring food, whenever we had babies, I would say to my husband, like we planned this baby.
Let's hope I have a plan. To continue caring for my family throughout this experience.
CW: That’s a great point.
PH: I always felt like take the dinner to someone else, take it to someone in need. Like we are a privileged family with healthcare. I have maternity leave. My husband's a teacher, like we're okay.
We don't need the dinner. And so then It was interesting throughout the loss because then I was stuck in bed, couldn't move. My oldest, he was five, he was almost six at the time, he would bring me pieces of bread with Nutella on it. It was the sweetest thing. Yeah, we didn't get hardly any meals, and I'm guessing it's because people were afraid of our house. It's just harder, I think. What do you say to that person opening the door? So.
CW: Right.
PH: Yeah, and then my last thing is right after I'd just gotten home from the hospital, so it'd been like a day or two since we'd lost the boys. I was laying in bed. So, C-section, I wasn't very mobile, just completely wrecked.
My life really felt like it was over. Our families were there and we'd only been home for maybe half an hour. And apparently, so was the really genuine, kind bishop and his wife. They were, they had come to see us and my parents really wanted me to go out and talk with them. And I, we'd only been in the ward for maybe two to three months.
Like we weren't very close with them and I just didn't feel comfortable and I said no. And then out of nowhere, this led to kind of a heated discussion because my parents didn't want to have to go tell them no, that she doesn't feel comfortable coming out. Like they just didn't, that generation, right?
It felt like I was being rude.
SH: Right.
PH: And that sort of set the precedent because I found out later that, general authority had been visiting and they were looking for people to visit in the ward and somebody told me, yeah, we thought about coming to see you, but we heard you didn't want to see the Bishop.
So we figured you didn't want to see the Stake. And this was like a month or so after. And I was like, yeah, no, I didn't want to see anyone. I'd been home for maybe half an hour. I really just needed to cry. I just needed people to leave my house so I could cry.
So I just kind of feel like the boat got missed. Because I was like, Oh, I would have, I think, really liked a visit from a general authority. Like at the time I actually, I wished you would have checked and asked because I think I could have really used that. So it's so fascinating how little people know what to do. They don't even know how to say genuinely what can I do.
It's so, it's just like a whole another language that Mormons can't speak, sadly.
SH: Oh. I wish I thought it were just Mormons.
PH: Yes. I was going to say, yeah.
SH: I think it, this is just a –
PH: It's humans.
SH: –a human problem, but there's something in Mormonism that I think dials it [00:50:00] up to 11. Yeah. Because we're just so darn uncomfortable with our own grief, really.
We don't know what to do with it. I mean, I'm sure that part, as I'm thinking here, listening to you talk about your dad's lack of interest in standing up in Stake Conference, your dad was grieving his life and being asked to do that publicly in front of a Stake Conference audience would be like the worst nightmare I can even what does one even say in that context that is real or –
PH: But there's people who do it and I think there's always someone out there who's actually fitting the mold and it's working for them and it went beautiful.
CW: And like you had said a few minutes ago. Someone had actually said to you. Oh, we thought you would handle your loss like so and so. Because you're right, Pam, we do have, there will always be the outliers, and I'm going to say they're the outliers and not the standard, but I think there will always be the outliers who would give the Stake Conference talk when they have a month left to live, but I'm going to guess that is truly an outlier, but because that is such a great Church magazine moment. We want the shiny, happy magazine cover.
PH: We want the story we've learned our whole lives to be true. We want to see everybody else as proof
SH: That’s it.
CW: That’s it.
PH: Because it's every mother's worst nightmare that you'll lose a child and so it's almost like you desperately need to see someone else being okay. Especially if they're going to use your religion to do it because then you know you're somehow prepared for your worst nightmare. So it's pretty tough. Yeah.
CW: Boom.
SH: Wow. Yes. What I was just thinking when you were saying the church magazine moment, Cynthia, I was thinking, I mean, I've been having really cynical thoughts all the way through this section of our conversation.
Because I'm thinking, yes, there are plenty of people who are willing to grieve that way and publicly within a ward community. But you know what? Like you have your reward, right?
PH: Yeah.
SH: Have your reward for doing that. Is that an honest appraisal? I can't begin to judge what, how that relates to what the person is actually experiencing or feeling.
But to me, I feel like it's a way of not experiencing the thing. It's another way. Another way we mask it. That Latter Day Saints struggle to, to really acknowledge or sit with the hard thing, even in ourselves. Right. That's it. That can be really hard. And of course, I could totally be wrong. It could be completely genuine.
It could be feeding their soul. It could be lifting them up in all the ways that they need, in that time. But from where I'm sitting it would do nothing for me in an honest and really helpful way. So.
PH: I think what's hard about that, because I think about those things a lot because it's kind of my plight in life now.
Like, how do I Mormon with the other Mormons? Like, how do I, if that's even going to be a thing in my future, right? With something that we always come back to. And it's tough because we obviously have to accept. everything about everybody else's experience. And so in my experience, it feels like the systems are set up to kind of support avoidance.
So like that whole, like everything that we're taught to use church wise, you're seeking a different kind of peace. It might bring, like the temple is a peaceful place. You can't really help but feel something in this pristine, beautiful kind of mansion really, right?
CW: It's clean and fancy.
PH: Everyone's walking around in white. Like it's going to give you a feeling. It's got a vibe.
CW: Good point.
PH: But are you going to be reaching like the inner parts of your feelings? Are you feeling? Are you feeling those deep down things? And I think for someone who's gone through the motions, never quite getting to the feeling of the dark, deep down feelings, I think it's probably a little bit impossible to even know you're not feeling them sometimes because you're just so conditioned and comfortable feeling the beautiful whiteness of the glow of the temple and, yeah. I mean, yeah, in some areas, actual whiteness. There’s not a lot of diversity in there.
SH: Woe unto that person on the day that something comes along and introduces them to the
non white parts. And that's why it's so world ending, life changing, and I wish it didn't have to be such a wake-up call. It's tough.
CW: Well, as we're starting to wrap up. Our conversation. I feel like you've, I've learned so much Pam already. So I feel like you've already given us really good advice, but can you officially go on the record and maybe share any advice that you might have that would help other women? Going through a grief journey, a faith journey, anything here that you would want to offer, we would love to hear it.
PH: Yeah. So, one of my favorite words that one of my therapists uses is unhook. So, [00:55:00] immediately get to work unhooking your personal worth from anything that's outside of your self.
Unless you're fully aware of how you've been taught to feel value and form your self worth, then you probably don't even really know what you've attached it to.
SH: Right, right.
PH: So, you're likely deconstructing a lot more than just a church system or patriarchy or faith without even knowing it. So, my biggest hack eventually for figuring out what your worth has become codependent on was to look at the places or people or systems, the sources in your life that you felt the most pain, the place, the things you laid awake at night thinking about.
Those are likely keeping you up at night because your personal value is suffering. You're not feeling like you have any self worth. And for some reason those things keeping up at night, that, that's triggered something that's basically threatened that value. So then you can start to think about, okay, why and where did this come from?
And let's try to neutralize those. Because that pain of rejection, that rejection of self is so unlike any pain that I had ever experienced. And like I said, I feel like I have some data there. So that was shocking to me that I had, it was shocking that I had grieved like children and a sibling and a dad and yet here I had this new kind of pain that felt like it just ate me alive all night long.
So yeah. And what's tough is you often need to remove yourself from an environment And to get the voices to stop yelling sometimes, you're going to need some quiet. And it's not, doesn't have to be forever. It's likely what you need to do to return to the place eventually that you do care about. They’re places we care about usually I mean, that's why they hurt. Right. We care. So, but yeah, you just can't let it be attached to anything, not your family, not even your marriage, your kids, a body image, a job, a church, like all those things.
CW: For sure.
PH: So I always knew it, but it wasn't until I started to actually live life differently and do things different. And I, that took courage and bravery because. Yeah, you pretty much have a path to keep if you're LDS. So stepping outside that path and doing it differently was beautiful. And it really felt like more of a redirecting of faith.
I just realized when I was writing this too, like, like you said, putting that faith back in myself and realizing I actually had, I had the direction all along. I just needed to be able to hear myself. And LIsten and have the bravery to listen so those thoughts were the louder ones I could let lead me.
I love the talk and I love the substack. I can't believe that hasn't come up yet. It's just my favorite. It's just such a strength for me and support, oh my goodness. It's a good place. It is. And it just keeps going, every week I'm just giving my husband the highlights and he loves it, but the word celestial, I love that somebody said it's just so hard to think of that word now.
Like you just hear it so much, this whole new ‘think celestial.’ And I thought the celestial self is what came to me when I was writing. I felt like I took my faith from men, from placing it in men. And I placed it back in my celestial self where it really was placed at birth. I was born. That person and I feel like I finally started to meet her again. So that's the key.
SH: Reclaiming the word celestial. Beautiful. I love
CW: that. It's a good thing to reclaim. Well thank you Pam for sharing so much of what has gone on in your life, in your heart. I'm going to remember that word now, unhook.
SH: Me too.
CW: I think that's a good word that your therapist, a good tool your therapist gave you that I'm sure you've now given that tool because I, even now, I feel like there are more things I need to unhook myself from and time to do some more work there.
So that's really helpful advice. Thank you so much. Can we end our conversation with our fun little lightning round? Susan, do you want to? Ask Pam more fun stuff.
SH: I absolutely do. There are six other conversations I'd also like to have with you, Pam.
CW: Same.
SH: But let's do this. How about a favorite book?
PH: Okay. It's actually probably the first book I read in the beginning of my journey. It's called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van der Kolk. It just made so much sense. It just felt like my body was so, it was just taking a big, huge breath out finally she's listening and I can she's gonna start seeing all the scorekeeping I've been doing and someone else can start helping me keep the score now and it doesn't all have to be held in my body anymore.
I don't have to scream at her through depression and illness-ways anymore because she's going to start listening herself, and the heart's gonna help out and the head, so. It's so good. It's a beautiful book. Yeah.
SH: How about a woman you look up to?
PH: Okay, so there might have been a spoiler alert because I've actually voluntarily [01:00:00] answered this in the substack before and I'm sure you guys don't remember, but it's Cynthia and Susan.
SH: Oh no.
CW: Oh.
PH: I knew that would be your reaction. But truly I don't think you guys are the first like LDS feminists. that I actually came across along with Julie Hanks and it was lifegiving for me as a person who like, I'm a woman in the LDS church who likes to say things out loud and I honestly thought I was the only one for the longest time in, and because I purposely did stay away from everything online, I never looked for any, like really any church accounts, like period, I just was, I was healing. I was in the therapy world. And so it really did change my life.
And, like the substack relief society, it so tangibly lifts burdens for me. Like it literally helps me. And I feel like we're all doing the heavy lifting there together and that I don't, I think it's impossible for you guys to understand and quantify what that brings to people.
So yeah, if I think about whose existence in the world actually makes it easier for me to be me? It's you guys for sure.
SH: Wow. Wow.
CW: Thank you.
SH: You can't know how much that means, but also it works in reverse because I think the power of not being alone is the most powerful medicine that there is for me personally.
And so having had this community forum around the conversations that we're having has changed everything about my life. Yeah. So you give back to us exactly what you feel like you get, and I hope that all of the women who have stepped into this space really understand that. This is healing for everyone, from everyone, freely shared.
PH: It's the relief society that we all needed and crave. Yeah. It brings relief. And I never thought so much about that word.
SH: Actual relief.
PH: Yeah. Until I thought, oh my gosh, this is absolutely amazing. This is what actual relief feels like. That makes sense now. I hadn't felt that before. It's a beautiful thing.
SH: All right. Let's ask the big question, Pam. I, and you know what, I'm gonna answer right now and saying you are, you know a lot, but what is one thing that you know? What is one thing that you know today?
PH: Oh man. I know exactly what I can't know. And I know how beautiful it is to not have to know anything for sure anymore.
CW: Yes.
SH: So good.
PH: Yeah I know I'm relieved my kids will grow up knowing that they have the freedom to not know impossible things from other realms. And I know my membership in my church is just as important as anyone else's. I know prophets are human. And it makes no sense for us all to argue about how human each one was or is, because we can't know that either.
I know patriarchy's harms are real and tangible and measurable, and I know we have a collective responsibility to heal our communities from it. I know members of our LGBTQ+ community deserve everything women do too, because I know humans are inherently equal.
And I hope more than anything that heaven is real, and I choose to believe it is. And I know that choosing to believe is true agency.
SH: Well, those are all the conversations I want to have with you, so.
CW: Yes. Great. Thank you for all of those. But for today, this is just one conversation.
SH: It is. Thank you so much.
PH: Yes. Thank you guys. It's been a treat.
VOICEMAIL - DANA: Hi, this is Dana. I just listened to episode 186, What Happened to Community? I've written roadshow scripts, cut out bandanas for every kid in the stake to wear during the Days of 47 children's parade, and planned movie nights for the whole ward, among a thousand other church assignments, and felt guilty about not spreading the gospel to my neighbors because church was keeping me so busy that I didn't even have time to meet them.
I've raised four kids, all in the church, and they've all grown and all left the faith. So, I finally started pulling my issues off the shelf, doing some studying outside the LDS-approved reading list, and taking ownership of my spiritual life. While serving as Relief Society President, ironically. To build on the cake analogy, I'm afraid that minus the icing and sprinkles, I've found that the cake itself is stale and lacking in flavor.
At the same time, I have no desire for more roadshows or parade floats. I'm hungry for meaning and richness spiritually and socially, and I'm not able to find it currently at church. Just stale conference talks where speakers quote each other, and the messages to repeat the same tired routines ad nauseam.
Go to the temple, sit through conference talks thinly-disguised as Sunday lessons and stay on the covenant path. Because if you put a toe out, [01:05:00] Satan will sift you as chaff. I'm definitely mourning the losses of both community and orthodoxy, but also feeling liberated about shaking off a lot of the guilt and fear that has always motivated me and wearing comfortable underwear.
VOICEMAIL 2: Hey, excellent conversation about covenants of a community. A couple thoughts I had. One is you briefly mentioned, well, the world has changed, that's why partially why we can't have so many activities. And I think it's important to say the words that part of how the world has changed is that the women can no longer afford or are unwilling to give unpaid labor, at least as much as they used to, because it used to be the women driving a lot of these activities.
I mean, literally driving to, driving the kids to the activities. Making the costumes for the roadshows, making the script for the roadshows, making the foods for the dinner. So that is, I think, important to actually say. Secondly, I think it's important to recognize that not everyone loved all these activities. The whole just constant activities and parties and things is really hell for introverts.
And if you don't go, then you get labeled as like, spiritually adrift or inactive or whatever. So there's a ton of pressure to go. And I just wish we could make activities feel less mandatory because it's okay if that's not your interest, or if you don't have the energy to do it and then not worry about people seeing you as less-than. Because as you were talking about the loser men category, you can have the good job and the good family. But if you're an introvert, you're still not getting the high-profile callings because they don't look at you as enough.
PH: What you just said, I was going to comment and now it's lost. What had you said? And it sparked something in me.
SH: It'll come back to you in the middle of the night.
PH: Yeah, definitely just skip this part.
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