The Peter Attia Drive - #208 - Tragedy, grief, healing, and finding happiness ｜ Kelsey Chittick

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

00:00:15.480 my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity

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00:00:37.320 the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now,

00:00:41.720 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay, here's

00:00:48.080 today's episode. I guess this week is Kelsey Chittick. Kelsey is a writer, comedian, and 0.91

00:00:54.640 inspirational speaker. She's the author of Second Half, Surviving Loss and Finding Magic

00:00:58.940 in the Missing, a book about the death of her husband, former NFL player, Nate Hobgood-Chittick,

00:01:04.140 who passed away suddenly at the age of 42 in front of their young children. She's also the co-creator

00:01:08.820 of Keep On, a podcast that explores how the greatest obstacles can turn out to be the greatest gifts.

00:01:14.160 I wanted to talk with Kelsey after my wife read her book. Full disclosure, my wife and Kelsey are

00:01:18.980 friends. And I saw Jill reading and crying through this book, which got me very interested in it,

00:01:25.440 which ultimately led to me wanting to sit down with Kelsey, which I was able to do in person.

00:01:29.160 This episode, we talk about Kelsey's background and that of her late husband, Nate, and of course,

00:01:33.180 how they met growing up, going to college together, being athletes. Talk about Nate's experience with

00:01:38.120 football and how hard football is on the players' bodies and Nate's experiences post-football.

00:01:43.100 Speak about Nate's passing and in the aftermath, including finding out that Nate suffered from CTE.

00:01:47.660 Speak about how Kelsey handled his death with her children and the trauma and grief they faced in

00:01:52.460 the immediate aftermath. And even today, talk about how Kelsey was able to grieve while still

00:01:57.540 finding ways to be happy and able to live her life post-Nate, which is really a nod to the title

00:02:01.700 of this book, second half. And we end the discussion around Kelsey's experiences with psychedelics,

00:02:06.560 which played a really important role in her recovery and how it fit into this idea of radical

00:02:12.400 acceptance, which anybody who's done DBT or done this type of work will be familiar with that

00:02:16.600 terminology. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Kelsey Chittick.

00:02:26.720 Hey Kelsey, thanks so much for making the time to come all the way to Austin. I really appreciate

00:02:30.360 it. Although I'm not going to take credit for the fact that you came here for this. I think this was

00:02:33.280 an opportunistic time to sit down.

00:02:35.820 For sure. I mean, I definitely did come here for this and there are some other great people here that

00:02:39.840 I get to visit. It's perfect. So thank you for having me.

00:02:42.600 Yeah. I know my wife is really upset that you don't live here. 0.97

00:02:46.320 It's funny because I went out with them last night and there's this draw to this place because

00:02:50.780 there's a lot of good people here. And I think during COVID, I understood why everybody was

00:02:55.500 leaving and I really couldn't stand LA. And there was just a thousand reasons. The past couple of

00:02:59.420 years have been hard, but all of a sudden, suddenly I really love LA again. So I'm going to hold,

00:03:04.360 just visit you guys every month. That's the plan.

00:03:07.340 So where'd you grow up?

00:03:09.160 I grew up in Winter Park, Florida.

00:03:10.640 And when did you start swimming?

00:03:12.860 I was probably four and I probably raced in my first race at six.

00:03:17.700 Wow. So when did you realize you were a good enough swimmer to be a collegiate swimmer?

00:03:22.680 You know, it's funny. We talk about this with sports and kids these days. It just wasn't on

00:03:26.160 our radar the way it is for kids now. I lived in Florida. You wanted to be outside. You wanted to

00:03:32.220 be with your friends. So we swam. Little by little, I went a few races, 25 butterfly,

00:03:36.860 something on backstroke. And it was just something fun to do with your friends. So I don't even

00:03:41.440 remember thinking about college until maybe ninth grade when I won. I think we got second at state.

00:03:48.000 And then my sophomore year, I won state.

00:03:50.220 In what event?

00:03:51.040 100 back and 100 fly.

00:03:52.500 Did you swim IM as well?

00:03:53.640 I didn't. I was terrible at breaststroke. Horrible. There's a bunch of jokes about that

00:03:57.820 we could go into, but I won't right now. I remember thinking like, oh, well, that's great.

00:04:01.700 I just won Florida state championships, but I also remember just loving my team and that

00:04:07.120 like Winter Park High School won. And at that point, you really didn't talk to coaches.

00:04:12.720 You didn't know recruiting, especially female athletes. It wasn't huge back then to get a 1.00

00:04:17.020 scholarship.

00:04:17.980 This was pre-Title IX.

00:04:19.380 I've got to look that up because I mess that fact up all the time. I feel like there weren't a lot of

00:04:23.260 people I'd ever met that had a scholarship that were girls. And so it wasn't until maybe my junior

00:04:28.480 year that my coach said, you know, a couple of coaches have called and said that you could get

00:04:32.940 a scholarship. And my family wasn't into sports. They came to my swim meets, but not really.

00:04:38.960 Everybody did their own thing in our family. It was not how parents are now that are driving

00:04:42.220 their kids and doing special coaches and meets and stuff like that. So all I remember it was just,

00:04:48.120 I had a lot of energy to burn off and swimming was the one thing that after I was done, I felt like

00:04:52.360 I burned that jet fuel off. That's all I remember really. And then it just got better. And then

00:04:57.240 coaches started to talk to me. The rest is kind of history.

00:05:00.580 So what do you remember about getting to Z UNC you went to, right?

00:05:04.380 So I remember I went to a basketball game with one of my girlfriends whose dad had gone there.

00:05:08.880 Maybe this was my junior year and long story short, but her brother dated the swim coach's

00:05:14.140 daughter. And so at the basketball game, which is huge in Chapel Hill, it might've been a Duke

00:05:18.420 Carolina game. I don't know, but I remember it was a big deal. And someone said, oh, Carolina's

00:05:22.980 impossible to get in out of state. And I thought, well, then I'm definitely going to try to get in

00:05:27.400 out of state. I met the swim coach and he said, you know, call me when you're the end of your

00:05:32.280 junior year, when you're a senior. I tried to get in. I don't think I got into Carolina at first

00:05:37.280 and they had already given a scholarship to a girl from Ohio. She was going to swim 200 backstroke,

00:05:42.860 100 backstroke. So I got an offer for Miami, FSU, and I think Florida. I wanted to get out of

00:05:50.040 Florida so badly because everybody I knew was going there. And I was like, I want to have a

00:05:53.520 new experience. And so I just held. And then that spring, the girl decided to go somewhere else.

00:05:59.560 Did you turn down those other scholarships?

00:06:01.220 I did.

00:06:01.880 Wow.

00:06:02.320 I did. They were in state schools. I just didn't want to go there. And if I was, I didn't want to

00:06:07.140 swim because we were swimming against all the same people I grew up with. I just knew I needed a new

00:06:11.160 experience. And I was kind of set on Chapel Hill and somewhere deep in my soul, I knew it would work

00:06:16.000 out, which I have no idea why or how. And I remember coming home and we had answer machines

00:06:21.160 then. And I hit my answer machine and it was Coach Frank Comfort. And he was like, girl,

00:06:25.900 we got a spot for you. We'll give you a partial scholarship. And if you make NC2As, we'll give

00:06:30.820 you a full. And so I spent the first two years with just tuition. And then my parents paid room and

00:06:36.400 board. And then once you made NC2As, you got a full scholarship. So my junior and senior year.

00:06:40.680 So you swam fly and back, both distances?

00:06:45.640 100 back, 200 back, 100 fly. Those were my three.

00:06:50.260 Yeah. Didn't want to do the 200 fly?

00:06:51.720 God, my arms would kill myself. I wanted to every, that third 50, I'd just be like,

00:06:55.160 why am I doing this?

00:06:56.400 It is a brutal race.

00:06:57.920 What'd you swim?

00:06:58.640 I just swim long distance swimming, like ultra distance swimming. When I swam in the pool,

00:07:02.980 the only thing I could swim was breaststroke. I was decent breaststroker. Couldn't swim

00:07:06.620 backstroke if my life depended on it. And okay at butterfly. So short axis strokes were

00:07:10.580 fine. Pretty bad freestyler, despite the fact that I could swim for a long period of time,

00:07:13.920 but not fast. You bet you would have been a decent IM or even if your breaststroke wasn't.

00:07:17.440 No, I would burn it out, butterfly, backstroke, and then they would just pass me. I had something

00:07:22.540 left for free, but I wasn't good.

00:07:24.060 I think with IM, I think having a strong breaststroke is valuable because it's late in the race and

00:07:30.140 everybody's tired and it takes up the most time of the race. I remember swimming like at a

00:07:34.140 master's meet. If I could take six seconds out of somebody in breaststroke, nobody's going to take

00:07:39.200 anything out of you on the fly because it's the beginning of the race. Everybody's sort of 0.56

00:07:41.760 conserving energy. That's a fair point. But so what year did you matriculate?

00:07:46.120 I graduated from high school in 95 and Chapel Hill in 99.

00:07:50.400 Okay. So what year did you meet Nate?

00:07:53.160 So I met Nate in 1998. So the summer, I was going into my junior year. I met him the summer

00:08:02.300 of 1998 and I had just finished my sophomore year swimming and I was just kind of a hot mess.

00:08:10.020 I'd gained a ton of weight. I ate like cream cheese and croissant sandwiches because we had

00:08:14.220 training table. I just really let it fly with penny draft and just nights out, just my face and my body

00:08:21.120 was just not primed for winning anything. I started dating a guy who had a weed problem

00:08:27.800 and dabbled in that very little. I was running with a crowd that wasn't conducive to being excellent.

00:08:34.420 So you didn't hang with most of the swimmers?

00:08:36.720 I did. He was on the swim team.

00:08:37.600 Oh, he was on the swim team. Okay. I was going to say, I would assume the swimmers would date a lot

00:08:40.240 each other because you have the same schedules and you're training.

00:08:42.220 And at Caroline at the time, you couldn't rush a sorority or fraternity if you were on a swim

00:08:46.260 athletic team. That was your group. So I was really kind of insular with the swim team. I didn't love it

00:08:51.760 so much as I did in high school. I didn't love that. I felt like my scholarship was depending on it,

00:08:56.700 that all of my friends did the same thing because in high school, we all had 12 girlfriends, but

00:09:00.660 everybody was different. I was a swimmer. One was the nerd. One was the smart one. One was the party

00:09:04.420 one. And once I got to Chapel Hill, we were all fighting for NT2As or for the spot on the relay.

00:09:09.860 So it was just a different experience. So I dated this guy for a while. And then my summer before

00:09:16.080 my junior year, I met Nate at a bar. Was Nate a senior at that point?

00:09:21.060 He was going into his fifth year, senior year.

00:09:22.980 Yeah. Cause he redshirted his for a year. Yeah. Okay.

00:09:24.820 He was going into his fifth year and I met him at a bar and I just remember him walking in and just

00:09:30.860 an absolute enormous man with more confidence than you've ever seen in your life. More swagger for

00:09:37.100 a huge fat guy that you can, I mean, unbelievable. And I met him that night and he gave me this napkin

00:09:43.640 that said, if you want the best, say goodbye to the rest, go home with me and I'll make you happy.

00:09:48.720 I mean, I was like, what? But the funny part is years later, I met a girl at a wedding and she's like,

00:09:53.920 you won't believe it. I know you're married to Nate. Have good shit. But he left me a napkin

00:09:57.320 one time in college. And I was like, mother. But yeah, I met him that night. And then we didn't

00:10:02.540 really see each other for a while, but it turned out one of my roommates was dating a guy on the

00:10:07.180 offensive line named Ryan. And so a couple months later, we had a house party where we watched X-Files,

00:10:13.960 which is a great thing. And just everybody partied and got drunk and danced and Nate was there.

00:10:18.560 And at some point that night, a guy called that I was dating and Nate just walked over

00:10:23.480 and took the phone and was like, she's with me now. And that was it.

00:10:27.340 Wow. So what is it that you liked about him in that moment? Because on the one hand,

00:10:30.840 it sounds like you were kind of amused, but I mean, what did you see at that moment?

00:10:35.380 I mean, from the minute I met him, if I'm honest, like I knew there was something and he was nothing.

00:10:40.700 I grew up in a, my father's a lawyer. My mom was very politically active, country club,

00:10:45.620 rigid. My town was very Southern and Christian. And when I met Nate, he was so different. He was 0.87

00:10:51.320 like a poor kid from Allentown, a guy that hustled. And I just felt he was different. He

00:10:57.720 was connected. Like when he'd sit and listen to you, you felt like you were the most important

00:11:01.000 person in the world. And he did it with everybody. I could see how he interacted. There was a way when

00:11:05.540 he walked into a room that you could tell everybody loved him and he loved them. So I knew that first

00:11:11.380 night, something was different about him. And then the night that we kind of started dating,

00:11:14.700 there was just a joy to Nate that was different and an extreme way of living, which was concerning

00:11:20.980 then and concerned me my entire life with him. But he was here for the moment. He was here to have

00:11:27.000 a good time and feel it all, experience it all. Most loving human being you'll ever meet, truthfully.

00:11:33.860 So I couldn't understand how I was attracted to him because it just didn't match anything that I

00:11:39.460 had imagined. But when we started talking, the things he was talking about were the same thing as me.

00:11:44.320 What do you want to do with your life? Who do you want to be? What books have you read?

00:11:47.800 What type of spiritual practices do you have? And we were 19 and 22. And I remember he was on this

00:11:53.580 deep search for meaning and purpose and how do we serve? How do we get the most out of this life?

00:11:59.880 And so we both started on a spiritual journey at a very young age. And that's what I loved about him

00:12:05.520 always. Married a really fat 300 pound amazing defensive tackle. 0.94

00:12:10.280 What year did you guys get married?

00:12:12.040 We got married in 2002. We got engaged at the World Trade Center in 2001 in July.

00:12:18.120 Yeah. A couple months before 9-11 at the top of the tower.

00:12:21.500 Yep. And I remember Nate being like, do you think that's a good sign or a bad sign?

00:12:25.560 And for a long time, I was like, I think it's a good sign. And then after everything happened,

00:12:28.220 I was like, maybe it was a bad sign. But yeah, we loved living in New York. He played for the

00:12:31.900 Giants. And so we lived there for a while. And then we got married in 2002 in Florida.

00:12:36.740 Yeah. Nate was not the guy who was going to get drafted in the first round. So what was your

00:12:41.420 thinking as you were saying, okay, I'm really serious about this guy. And he wanted to play

00:12:46.400 in the NFL. Like who doesn't play college football and wants to play in the NFL. So what were you

00:12:50.660 thinking about his chances? And obviously he had an amazing work ethic. Did you actually think that

00:12:55.160 could get him out of college football? I actually can hear him laughing. I was like,

00:12:58.920 you'll never make it, which was always what I'd say to him. Like the worst. I would be like,

00:13:02.420 you don't have a shot in hell. Like you haven't started. And he was like, I'll just work my way. 0.96

00:13:06.740 If I can just get a shot. He was always like, if I can just get a shot. Truthfully, when the draft

00:13:11.500 came, I'd seen him play in college, but he wasn't a starter. He almost lost his scholarship. Yeah.

00:13:16.520 Mack Brown was the coach. And he was like, listen, buddy, this isn't going to work for you.

00:13:19.600 He was like fourth on the depth chart. Yeah. He was behind like Vonnie Holliday and some of the,

00:13:23.060 I can't remember, Dre Bly. It was just a big year at Chapel Hill. We'd beat FSU. And I remember

00:13:28.160 just thinking like, it's not going to happen, but we were young and I still had a year and a half of

00:13:32.620 school. And so I remember he went to the combine. He had a really fast 40. He had a good combine

00:13:38.480 and Caroline had had a great year. So he was back up to some guys that were going first and second

00:13:42.620 round. But truthfully, the day of the draft, I didn't even understand it. And our families,

00:13:47.080 his family too, not into football. My family, not into football. I actually thought it was an

00:13:51.080 archaic sport, both sides, academics on both sides. And Nate was like, if I could just get a chance

00:13:57.280 on a practice squad, then I could make it. And then we could save a little bit of money.

00:14:00.880 And then we could maybe buy a house someday. I mean, that was pretty much the way we thought of

00:14:04.700 it. So when he got called by the Giants to be on the practice squad, everybody was shocked,

00:14:10.640 but also knew that there was nobody that made the good guys try harder than a guy like Nate,

00:14:14.840 because he would just literally go until he couldn't. So I think I was surprised and it was

00:14:20.000 more just, we were young. I was like, good luck. Hope you make the team. I wasn't ever that invested

00:14:25.720 in his career. I just wanted him to do it and get out safe and then make some money so that we

00:14:30.640 could start our real life. So did you know Jeff Saturday when they were roommates?

00:14:35.020 Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, Jeff's still one of my best friends and his wife.

00:14:38.960 So we all lived together. Jeff and Nate lived together from freshman year. And I mean,

00:14:43.740 the story about Jeff is- It's an amazing story, especially

00:14:45.960 in light of what Jeff Saturday went on to become, right? I mean, one of the greatest centers of the

00:14:49.860 game and to think that he got overlooked. Tell people how that happened.

00:14:53.520 So Jeff and Nate were roommates freshman year. And Jeff tells this great story about when he first

00:14:59.440 met Nate, he went to introduce himself, but Nate was sobbing, hugging his parents. And he was like,

00:15:04.040 wait, I'm going to be rooming with this crybaby? What's happening? Jeff's a guy from Georgia, 0.80

00:15:08.960 grew up kind of a rough life, very tough. And they ended up being best friends. They played together

00:15:14.600 along with Chris Keldorf, who was up for the Heisman. There was a group of them.

00:15:18.080 When we all were waiting for the draft, Chris had been the quarterback and Jeff was

00:15:21.340 the center. And we were certain they were going to go fourth round, fifth round. And we all just

00:15:25.720 sat there and you kind of just sit around back then and just wait for the phone to ring. And

00:15:28.820 there's no cell phones or anything. And nobody called, nobody called, nobody called. And then

00:15:32.740 the only person that got called was Nate. So Nate went on to the Giants and got on the practice squad

00:15:37.600 and barely made it through that first cut, but he made it. And then he got released by the Giants

00:15:44.880 and the Colts picked him up right away. So Nate moved to Indianapolis. And at that time, Jeff,

00:15:49.920 I think he got a shot at Baltimore on a practice squad, but didn't make it. So he came back to

00:15:54.600 North Carolina and started working at like a pep boys. They didn't think he had a shot. It was kind

00:15:58.680 of over. He was too short. I mean, Nate used to always tell him and Jeff, if you're listening,

00:16:02.760 he has short arms, he'll never make it as a center. And they wrote all these awful things about him.

00:16:06.820 And Nate just always went up against him in practice for four years. And he was like,

00:16:10.060 he's the best fucking guy I've ever played against. So at some point, Nate was still barely making the 0.98

00:16:15.020 Colts, trying to just, you want to get paid week by week if you make the team and if you play.

00:16:19.160 So it's not how people think. And so at one point, Nate said he had a really tough practice

00:16:23.900 and the guys that he played against, he's like, I just walked away being like, those guys aren't

00:16:28.380 even close to what Jeff did. So he walked into Pullian's office in like dirty sweats. Pullian

00:16:33.280 doesn't even know who he is. He has no clue. He's like, who is this guy? Because he's just like a guy

00:16:36.820 trying to make the team. And he said, there's a guy in Raleigh, North Carolina that's working in an

00:16:41.580 auto parts store right now. His name's Jeff Saturday. And he could kick all those guys' asses that I just

00:16:45.940 played. And coach said, well, if you want him to come live with you, I'll give him a shot. 0.99

00:16:50.720 And then that was it.

00:16:52.200 And the rest is history. Six Pro Bowls or whatever it is.

00:16:54.460 Yeah. He'll be a Hall of Famer. And I still get mad because Nate and I are like,

00:16:57.480 and he got us a comforter for our wedding. We kind of started your whole career and all we got was like-

00:17:02.220 Oh, we got this lousy comforter.

00:17:03.220 We're looking for more. We're looking for more. Yeah. Jess, one of the greatest guys,

00:17:06.940 biggest heart and has gone on to have an exceptional career for sure.

00:17:10.100 Yeah. Let's start at 99. So you were at the Rams. You're in St. Louis. I remember this year very

00:17:15.580 well because, I mean, Kurt Warner, of course, you know, the whole story. So at the beginning of

00:17:20.280 that playoff run, did you think this is really going to happen? Were you-

00:17:23.480 Yeah. It was really fun. For the first time, I was like, oh, this is fun. And we were winning.

00:17:27.640 I was still in college. So I would fly-

00:17:30.660 Oh, that's right. This would have been your senior year? Yeah.

00:17:34.000 I was still in college and it was just fun. We were winning and we were winning. And Kurt was an

00:17:39.280 exceptional leader, spiritually, emotionally, everything. And the team just had a bunch of

00:17:44.320 really good guys on it. And it was fun to be a part of that team. And I think I've always felt

00:17:48.960 like the energy matters the most. And there was something that was telling us the energy on this

00:17:52.520 team is good. So every time they won, now it gets more. You're like, please win. Please win.

00:17:58.200 Because you know that this may never come again. And most of the time it doesn't.

00:18:01.800 And we had Dick Vermeule as a coach who's still probably one of the greatest humans to me and still

00:18:07.240 continues to come to my house twice a year to see the kids and just have dinner with us.

00:18:11.600 Just an exceptional advocate for his players as human beings, way past their football. Nate loved

00:18:18.420 him. And he was the one that gave Nate a shot multiple times just because of his character.

00:18:23.080 Dick's like, he's not that good, but he really makes the other good guys better.

00:18:26.320 So that year was just exceptional and it was fun. And St. Louis was on fire and that city needed it.

00:18:32.060 And I remember when we made it to the last, I'm the worst about football, the last playoff game,

00:18:38.160 whatever happened last night that we all just watched. I was like, oh my God, we could win

00:18:41.260 the Superbowl. But I was young. So I got there and I was wearing some like nerd outfit and all

00:18:45.960 the other NFL wives were like smoking hot and looking so cool. And I think I had like my backpack. 1.00

00:18:51.260 I just didn't know. We weren't into it like that. And I remember the last play came and it was that big

00:18:56.380 play where Mike Jones was tackled. I forget who. Anyways, it was that last second. And I remember

00:19:03.740 thinking, and I told Nate this and he was very offended. I was like, whatever you do, don't put

00:19:06.740 Nate in. Like, please don't put him in because I didn't want him to be the guy that like, if they

00:19:12.460 lost it, I was like, I can't live with it. But they tackled the guy before he got in the end zone

00:19:17.140 and the Rams won. And it was just exceptional. It was an exceptional experience. And there's, I don't know

00:19:22.600 if you know this, but they have two parties for both the teams. Just one's a lot more

00:19:25.920 fun. They're identical. So each team has a hotel and each team has the same exact party

00:19:30.540 ready, but one's just the party that's the better one.

00:19:34.500 That's right. Because they all both have the t-shirts ready as if they're going to use

00:19:36.960 it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're NFC champion or not.

00:19:40.360 Exactly. So I just remember it was fun. We danced. We had a great time. We never took any

00:19:46.560 of it for granted. We loved all of it. And Nate was in a ton of pain always.

00:19:52.600 You wrote about that a lot in the book. And it's sort of interesting when you think about

00:19:56.800 how early in his career he was. I mean, he was in pain before he made it to the NFL,

00:20:00.800 which is something that we would assume, well, you know, God, if a guy's been in the NFL for 15

00:20:06.780 years, I can sort of see why he wouldn't have toes anymore and why he wouldn't be able to feel

00:20:11.140 his hands. But you don't think of a guy who's 22 trying to get into the NFL already under that type

00:20:18.640 of discomfort.

00:20:20.000 Yeah, he was banged up because when you play on the line, that's a whole nother ball game. And

00:20:24.700 when you are not a starter that kind of gets to take breaks. So Nate was the workhorse. And so he

00:20:30.280 took so many hits. And when he got to college, I don't want to mess up the weight, but he was not

00:20:35.260 skinny, but he was a basketball player in high school. And in order to play the position that he

00:20:39.220 was welcome to play at North Carolina, he had to gain a ton of weight. I think when we got married,

00:20:43.580 he was 300 pounds. And maybe he was like 220 when he got to Carolina. To move that amount of weight

00:20:50.080 around that fast and that often took a toll pretty early. His neck was a 21. Could that be right?

00:20:57.140 Yeah.

00:20:57.680 It was enormous. And I remember the first night I slept with him, not literally, but I remember

00:21:03.980 being like, this snoring won't work. This is a game changer. Like we're going to have to make a move.

00:21:08.860 And when he got to the Giants within a couple of weeks, they gave him a sleep apnea mask at 22.

00:21:13.240 So for our entire time together for 21 years, I never had slept with a man that didn't have a

00:21:18.020 sleep apnea mask, which is awful to look at, but it has this wonderful white noise sound.

00:21:22.600 Your husband doesn't snore and it helps him sleep. And I remember he used to say like,

00:21:26.180 I could die without this. I'm like, no, you couldn't. So early on, I think he was just too

00:21:30.760 big to do what he was doing without paying a price quite often, but he wasn't a complainer. He's

00:21:36.400 like, I choose this, but you could just tell he spent a lot of time just managing where to put

00:21:42.220 the pain, which was out of his mind and just accepting it's what it is to get us where we

00:21:46.160 want to get to, which again was always save some money, then go start the life that I wanted to

00:21:51.360 do to serve people or do whatever.

00:21:53.360 What did you think at the time, not knowing necessarily what you know today, because I think

00:21:58.080 today you have much more perspective on that. But when he was 23, 24 years old, what did you

00:22:04.260 imagine he was going to be like at 50 as a result of the injuries he already had? Did

00:22:09.340 you have a vision in your mind of when we're 60, we're going to be hiking in Peru, backpacking

00:22:16.220 with our grandkids? Like, did you think that this was all going to be okay and these injuries

00:22:20.060 are going to go away?

00:22:21.200 Well, he was always into health. He was always into learning about his body. He took great

00:22:25.620 care. He had great people, Mike Clark, great people that were doing good things. There's double

00:22:30.100 side to Nate. He was always very aware of what he put in his body and taking care of

00:22:34.580 him through PT and ice baths and all that stuff. But he also loved wings and beer and partying.

00:22:42.240 So I don't know which is which, but I definitely thought that when he was done, he would lose

00:22:47.060 the weight and he would become hot and skinny and we would live a happy life. I never thought

00:22:52.080 he would stay so big. And that's kind of a side note. I think when those guys get really

00:22:56.260 big, it's part of what they love about themselves. There's a respect that they get when they

00:22:59.560 walk into a room. They don't actually want to get that much smaller. One of our best

00:23:03.440 friends, Tony is, but he was always fit. Jeff did too. They both got really skinny. I

00:23:07.740 think Nate secretly loved being big because he would lose weight, but he never really loved

00:23:12.640 himself at 235. He loved himself around 260. And I think that was still too much weight.

00:23:18.800 So as the years went by, that would be a fight that we had quite often. Like, when are you

00:23:23.140 going to start? Like, when are you going to start doing what you promised you would do, which

00:23:26.540 was lose all the weight and stop dipping and don't drink as many beers and don't eat chicken

00:23:32.100 wings and nachos. He would have spurts of it, but the Allentown in him just couldn't be

00:23:36.940 stopped.

00:23:37.560 So you guys married in 02?

00:23:39.100 Married in 02.

00:23:39.900 And then he retired in 02 or 03?

00:23:42.680 He retired right before my son was born. So I think 04.

00:23:47.200 Was that a happy day for you?

00:23:48.820 It was mixed. Well, he didn't have a job. He didn't have a lot of life skills. Emails had just 0.79

00:23:53.880 started. Technology was not Nate's jam. He lived in a world way up in the sky. He lived

00:23:59.900 in big dreams and big hopes. And I was like, we have a baby on the way. And what are you

00:24:05.060 going to do for a living? I was a pharmaceutical sales rep, which was not my ideal job, but it

00:24:10.240 was a great job to have coming out of college. I didn't know what he was going to do. And

00:24:13.980 I think a lot of guys, when they transition out of football, most of them only play three

00:24:18.300 to four or five years. Just get dropped into the world again. And all your friends that you

00:24:22.640 went to college with, they've been working for five or six years. And you now are starting

00:24:26.680 at an entry-level job, like maybe 40,000 a year. You're used to making that a week.

00:24:31.560 You're used to everyone worshiping you. It's a huge transition for these guys.

00:24:36.680 It's very easy, if you're not mindful of it, to lose sight of what the median experience is like

00:24:44.800 in the NFL. Not the mean, because the mean gets dragged up by the Tom Brady's, Aaron Rodgers,

00:24:53.020 the guys that have remarkable longevity, remarkable skill, make a remarkable amount of money.

00:24:56.540 But if you talk median, what's the guy right in the middle, the 50th percentile guy?

00:25:01.120 Yeah, he might be in the league for three years. He might have made a million or two over three years

00:25:08.820 before taxes, before paying agents, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the other thing is,

00:25:14.140 what did that do to his life expectancy statistically? Just how many years did he pay

00:25:19.860 for that? And when you look at it that way, football is one of the worst. Boxing would be

00:25:24.880 another example, right? It's very easy to see the guys at the top of that. But the pyramid that those

00:25:29.920 guys stand on is a base this wide that's getting crushed.

00:25:33.760 The last four games that we've watched the past two weeks have given me this dual experience that

00:25:39.920 I continue to have around football, that it is this great unifier and this great community builder and

00:25:45.320 this wonderful thing that brings people together and brings a bunch of people joy and brings the

00:25:50.060 players a lot of opportunities and a lot of gifts and gives their families a ton of things. And then

00:25:55.880 there's this whole other side that we don't see a ton of, which is the guys that played three years

00:26:00.620 and are still beat up or they don't have any money or they couldn't transition. Especially after the

00:26:06.000 past two weekends, watching these playoff games, they were so fun. It made you love football and it

00:26:11.420 made you see this is a great thing. And I would never let my kid play. I would never have a kid in a

00:26:18.220 helmet. I used to think I had all the answers about certain things and that I had a really strong

00:26:23.220 opinion one way or the other. And I'm probably more conflicted about a lot of things in life than I ever

00:26:28.640 was. And maybe that's a good thing, but I feel conflicted about football and I can't speak for

00:26:33.060 Nate because he's not here, but I would love to hear what he has to say, what his perspective was.

00:26:39.080 I know what his buddy's perspective is. And I do think that a lot of them, it's a great honor to

00:26:43.660 play that sport. You're like the king of what everybody wants to do. You get this opportunity

00:26:48.120 that kids dream of, but there is a price and we don't really show that side of it. We don't tell

00:26:52.520 kids like, what's that guy doing 10 years later? Like we don't do ESPN spotlights on that.

00:26:58.760 Remember when MTV used to always do that?

00:27:01.220 Where are they now? Oh my God.

00:27:03.340 My roommate in med school. This is the only thing we would watch on TV every single week. We would

00:27:07.860 never miss it. What we loved about it was it was always the same story. You could just

00:27:12.940 plug in a new name of a band like this week. It's Motley Crue. This week's it's Guns N' Roses.

00:27:17.580 But guess what? It's the same story.

00:27:20.080 That's actually an interesting idea. Where are these people that were so amazing three years ago or five

00:27:26.780 years ago? What do they do now? Where do they live? What does their crib look like today?

00:27:30.520 How are they financially? How's their relationship with their children, with their kids? I have

00:27:34.740 obviously been surrounded by guys like Tony Gonzalez and Jeff Saturday who are exceptional

00:27:38.400 men, husbands, friends, but I know that is not always the case. So I don't know. These discussions

00:27:46.060 have been had at length. The book has brought out very strong opinions on both sides.

00:27:50.460 I'd like to come back to that. I too feel conflicted about a lot of this stuff.

00:27:55.000 What city were you guys living in when Ned retired?

00:27:57.740 So basically when he got released by Kansas City, we went out to visit a friend that lived

00:28:01.960 in Manhattan Beach, California. And he said, you got to come to this little town. It's so great.

00:28:05.420 And so we went out there and then while we were there, he got picked back up by, I don't remember

00:28:10.540 what team, maybe the Rams again. Vermeule always grabbed him again when he could, which is a good man.

00:28:15.160 I said, I'm just going to stay. I'm not going to keep bouncing around. I'm going to get a job

00:28:18.000 because someone's got to get a job. Someone's got to take care of this family. I said, he was

00:28:21.460 like, please. So I stayed and he played about another year and a half. His last team was the

00:28:26.600 Cardinals. They gave him a shot, but he was done. I mean, he was emotionally done. You have to really

00:28:30.820 want it. And he was so tired of sitting in the meat. There's a lot of sitting in football. There's

00:28:34.580 a lot of film and watching. And Nate was like, after a while, this cannot be my life. You can't just be

00:28:40.280 watching like run X and O's. Like he had big dreams to change the world. And so once he got cut,

00:28:46.900 we moved back and we moved into El Segundo. Pretty quickly after that, we got pregnant and he went

00:28:53.200 back. Both of you? Both of us got pregnant. Nate looked pregnant. I looked really pregnant.

00:28:58.820 So we lived in El Segundo. He went back and got his master's in social work.

00:29:02.860 Did that surprise you that in a way, I'm sure it didn't because of how much he loved the world and

00:29:06.860 wanted to help people. But did it surprise you that that was the chosen path?

00:29:10.700 So he comes to his dad was a minister at Harvard and his mom was a professor at Holy Cross.

00:29:14.680 So he comes from an academic service-oriented family. Some kids are told to be bankers. He was

00:29:20.700 told to serve. So that was pretty much in his soul. So I don't know. And he didn't have a ton of skill

00:29:26.600 sets. What did he study in college? He studied football. No, he studied communications like we

00:29:30.920 all did, along with the help of many people. That was back in the day. He hadn't had an email.

00:29:36.240 That runs into a funny story. I'm going to try not to name names here because it's not fair.

00:29:40.960 Just make up a pseudonym. Yeah. But so about, I won't even tell what year because then you could

00:29:45.460 figure out who it was. But a few years ago, I was helping out a buddy who wanted me to come

00:29:49.860 and do some work with the kids who were going to be probably the top 10 picks out of college. So

00:29:58.340 had the potential to be. So I mean, they all went in the first two rounds,

00:30:01.980 including Heisman Trophy winner. So there's 10 of us there, the guy who brings me in to help me.

00:30:06.520 And then there's these 10 kids, some of whom are playing right now and are the best in the NFL.

00:30:12.340 So the guy who had me come in, talk to them. He's like, hey, look, we did some blood work on them.

00:30:16.920 We want to talk about nutrition. We want to talk about what can they do to optimize their

00:30:20.440 performance. So he brings me into this conference room. It's beautiful. And it's in Petco Park in San

00:30:24.740 Diego, which is where everyone was meeting. And I'm starting to try to explain like some of the

00:30:28.360 biochemistry, but I'm not going all in on this. Right. I'm just doing like, you know, glucose,

00:30:33.020 you know, glucose, right? And Oh God, what did the guy say? So one of the guys goes,

00:30:40.660 he's so bad. The guy who won the Heisman was like, I don't understand any of this. And one of the other

00:30:47.040 guys who I think, honestly, I could probably say is the single most successful one that came out of

00:30:51.400 that class. He's like, dude, did you not take biology? And he goes, well, I took it.

00:31:00.120 What do you call taking? What's your definition of taking? Yeah. I mean, I just don't know. And

00:31:07.580 this was 25 years ago, right? It was just different. It was different back then. And

00:31:12.480 he didn't have it. I don't know what a lot of these guys do. I remember thinking,

00:31:17.740 because I managed a lot of his life because he was up, you know, in a marriage, they say someone's

00:31:21.600 the balloon and someone's the rock. He was like the biggest Goodyear blimp on the planet earth. And I

00:31:26.700 was the most uptight, neurotic, best rock you could. I mean, there was no fun, no joy,

00:31:31.080 no nothing. And he would just float around. I mean, I think I probably said, you need to go

00:31:35.080 back to school because we needed a transition. We needed something where like he learned how to type

00:31:39.200 because remember we have tutors and stuff in college and then we have lots of practices and

00:31:43.040 we need a lot of help. I would just remember thinking, I don't think he can go get a job.

00:31:47.160 Like that would just be a disaster. And also your ego has to adjust to being nothing

00:31:52.540 from being like signing autographs as a Super Bowl champion to being an assistant to, I don't know,

00:31:57.920 whatever you get when you're 24, 25. School seemed like the best way to slowly modulate back to a

00:32:04.380 normal life, like have things responsible and you have due dates and deadlines. So he had a dream to

00:32:10.240 help people, but he had no idea what it meant to be a social worker, how much you made. And he

00:32:14.880 couldn't comprehend. And I remember when he finished, graduated valedictorian, which was exceptional

00:32:18.920 because he barely got out of Chapel Hill. And he went to an interview and he's like,

00:32:23.240 they said it's $50,000 for the year. He said, I don't even know. That is slavery. I was like,

00:32:28.560 wrong word. And you know, every time I fucking want to take a vacation, I have to ask somebody 0.95

00:32:35.040 with a sheet and put the dates down. I mean, the TPM forms or whatever they're called. 0.95

00:32:39.100 Yeah. He was just like, what are you talking about? And he's like, I get 10 days. And I was like,

00:32:43.040 welcome to the world. He couldn't believe it. He was floored. He was like, this is outrageous

00:32:47.260 because football, you have like a good four months off to do whatever. And you've got money in the

00:32:52.220 bank and your people high-fiving you and life is good. And then you go back to, and they're like,

00:32:56.720 I remember listening to him talk to HR and he's like, what if I want more vacation days? And they're

00:33:01.240 like, nope. He was just blown away by it. He was pretty depressed during that period of our life.

00:33:07.120 And I remember early on being like, I need to know, can you do this? Are we going to make this?

00:33:12.780 Because you already had Jack, right?

00:33:14.480 I had Jack and I said, I didn't need him to be happy. This transition, we knew going into it,

00:33:20.100 that this was a problem. Most guys, I think 70% end up broke and divorced after they're done.

00:33:25.000 That's a really big number.

00:33:27.000 That's staggering.

00:33:27.880 Of people that just fall apart. And the average years you play is three. So I mean,

00:33:31.760 that's a lot of people that are literally falling off a cliff after they do professional football.

00:33:36.540 In their mid twenties.

00:33:38.320 And they're probably the heroes. They go home and they like work at a bar in their high school

00:33:41.440 town because they want to feel good again. So we were just determined to find a new way,

00:33:46.700 but it was bumpy. It was bumpy. He was sad. He was sad. And Nate was always very aware. I don't

00:33:53.520 know if he had anxiety, but I know he had depression and I know that he didn't want to feel bad and he

00:33:58.440 hated that he didn't. He didn't know why. And he worked really hard. I mean, he was well-read

00:34:02.860 and he would try everything. And so after a while, once he kind of started to find some purpose

00:34:07.560 in the social work, it got better. And then at a certain point, he's like, I can't live on the

00:34:12.140 salary. And like every good athlete does, he decided to go into financial advising because

00:34:16.580 there's nobody you want to manage your money more than a football player. No, but he was great.

00:34:21.060 He felt that he'd seen so many guys lose a bunch of money to the wrong people. So he loved finance.

00:34:27.340 He loved investments. He loved gambling. So that's kind of what the stock market is in its own way.

00:34:31.300 He moved into that at Morgan Stanley and loved it and ended up starting helping guys that were

00:34:37.020 in unions, like just line workers and Verizon guys, just blue collar guys that just needed help

00:34:41.960 with the money that they'd saved, making sure it was invested well. So he kind of felt like he got

00:34:45.640 the Allentown and the finance stuff and was able to serve. And so that ended up being his career that

00:34:51.380 he took on for the rest of his life. And when did you guys start to have those discussions about,

00:34:56.500 Hey, where's the 230 pound version of you? Who's getting back into what you had sort of

00:35:03.020 imagined life post NFL would look like? I mean, day one. I mean, I rode that man

00:35:07.860 so hard for his whole life. He could take more beatings from me verbally and from coaches and

00:35:13.980 teams. I just, I was tough. This is not going to work. You don't look good. He wanted to be better.

00:35:19.480 And so he would have times when he would get really in shape. And he was probably the guy in our

00:35:23.000 neighborhood that everybody listened to health wise, because he had all the information.

00:35:26.940 He would always do like sober January, February. And then when the sun would come out again,

00:35:32.740 get a little dicey March, April, by the summer, he was full bored, just having a ball. And then

00:35:37.340 forget about it. Once the Yankees started, wheels were off and we would cycle through that.

00:35:42.640 Did he ever go visit a doctor during this period of time?

00:35:45.180 So the NFL has a program where you go once a year. I don't know the details on this. Don't hold me on

00:35:50.180 this, but you either, you sign something where you either say, you'll never sue them again

00:35:53.020 and we'll give you care. You go every year to an NFL, some type of physical, or you can do your

00:36:00.920 own thing, but we're not going to take care. I don't know the details, but we chose the one where

00:36:05.300 we took some money. You take a lump sum of something and then you can't ever sue them about

00:36:10.280 certain things. And then they put you in a program where they check in with you every year, mentally,

00:36:13.840 physically. So he would do that. But now looking back, I actually found his records

00:36:19.180 from his last year. And he had told me like, everything was fine. Everything was fine,

00:36:24.120 except for this one page that was so not fine, which was his heart and his cholesterol and his

00:36:29.540 weight. And we didn't really talk about that. I mean, one thing I think if I could go back and do

00:36:34.820 different things in my marriage, I would have had a different tactic. Cause I think I was so scared

00:36:39.440 that I was mean and then it didn't feel safe for him to tell me the truth. So he just put it aside

00:36:44.460 and was like, I'll deal with that. I'll take care of it, but I'm not going to get into it with her.

00:36:47.880 But I always wanted him to be skinnier. And his mom, I mean, it was the biggest thing that his mom

00:36:52.720 used to say to him was like, please lose the weight, please lose the weight. But it was really

00:36:57.000 hard for him. Was he still exercising, lifting weights and things like that? He always worked

00:37:01.060 out very physical, very athletic. I mean, he was, he was still really good. We played football every

00:37:06.340 Thanksgiving in El Segundo and he was great, fast, talented, strong. Yeah. People don't appreciate

00:37:12.560 that. You'd think, well, what's a defensive lineman or defensive tackle? Like they're so big,

00:37:16.160 but they can't be that fast. They are so fast. The most athletic man I've ever seen. He was

00:37:20.880 the strongest man I've ever seen. And he had a work ethic. He could go forever. He could

00:37:26.220 also rest forever too. He was extreme in every way, good and bad. So your daughter was born

00:37:32.200 in what year? 2008. Got it. Okay. Fast forward to November of 2017. You had some premonitions that

00:37:42.340 something wasn't right. I mean, how much of that do you think you now look back at and think,

00:37:49.500 I can only appreciate this now through the retrospective scope versus at the time, did you

00:37:54.920 think there's something wrong with me? I'm really losing it. Well, there's two parts that my friends

00:38:01.760 will tell you, you were very vocal. Something was wrong. So I have witnesses that remember for about

00:38:07.740 two or three years, like something's wrong with her. She can't settle. She's anxious. And I would

00:38:12.280 say, I don't know what's wrong. Something's not right. And I was so scared. I was nervous.

00:38:18.360 What were you doing at the time? Were you still working?

00:38:20.180 So I was working in Chapel Hill. I was working in recruiting and medical recruiting. And so the team

00:38:25.260 that I had in Chapel Hill was a group of guys that I'd gone to college with that played football.

00:38:29.660 And so I would go back every month because my team was there. And for years, I started in 2012,

00:38:34.280 it was fine. But then around 2014, 15, I started just dreading leaving the family. But it made no

00:38:42.020 sense. The kids were in a great age. Nate was doing great. But my anxiety was through the roof. I'd wake

00:38:47.480 up sweating. I'd wake up. How long each month would you have to be gone?

00:38:51.340 Maybe three or four days. Do you think you were anxious that Nate couldn't handle getting them to

00:38:56.740 school on time? I mean, I don't know how spiritual I can get here, but I felt like something was

00:39:02.100 coming. It's the best way I can describe it. Something's coming. And the message to me was

00:39:06.660 prepare. Something's coming that's big. You don't know what it is. I can't explain it. But

00:39:11.960 and there was something about Nate that was floating away. And I was trying to get to him. And I was also

00:39:18.360 trying to manage this unexplained anxiety.

00:39:21.420 Had you ever experienced anxiety growing up? Were you an anxious person by nature?

00:39:27.220 I wonder what my friends would say. I wasn't anxious, but I needed to swim six hours a day.

00:39:31.160 So I don't know. I don't know what that means. A lot of energy. But I don't remember being nervous

00:39:35.040 or fearful. I wasn't a lot of fun. Like I wasn't the party girl. I didn't do drugs. I wasn't like,

00:39:39.600 let's stay out all night. I was always like, we need to get home and very responsible. But I wasn't

00:39:44.260 anxious. I was never like, let's just see where the wind takes us. But I didn't have panic

00:39:49.480 attacks. And those, you know, the nights, the nights that are just, you can't stop your brain

00:39:54.900 going. Those became more and more and more the two years before he died.

00:39:59.900 Did you ever talk with him about it?

00:40:01.580 All the time.

00:40:02.500 What would you say?

00:40:03.560 Please don't die.

00:40:04.760 What would he say?

00:40:05.620 I promise I'm not going to. I won't leave you. Don't worry. I'm here. Something I would say,

00:40:10.640 I can't live without you. You're my best friend. The only person I know. You're the best dad in the

00:40:15.540 world. I'll cry thinking about it. And he would be like, I'm right here. I'm never going to

00:40:19.400 leave you. And fast forward, I don't think he has in many ways, but I don't know what's

00:40:24.060 wrong with me. And he's like, you just need to calm down. And his big thing was just stop being

00:40:27.600 afraid. What are you so afraid of? You say like, you walk around so afraid of everything. Like,

00:40:32.120 what if you just knew everything was okay? He's like, everything's okay, babe. You're okay. We're

00:40:36.660 okay. The kids are okay. That was always his message. And there was nights that I would go to bed

00:40:43.020 and he would be watching a show and he was always watching something really masculine,

00:40:47.340 like Oprah's final show. And he'd just be sobbing, you know, and, or Mr. Holland's opus

00:40:52.460 or some like show that just, and he would just cry. I'd come out and say like, what's wrong?

00:40:57.540 He's like, I just hope I have enough time. I hope that I can make a difference in this world.

00:41:01.500 There came a point where I would wake up and I couldn't find him. And I felt like he was gone

00:41:05.320 and I'd scream for him. And he would be like, I'm right here. I'm in the other room.

00:41:08.760 You'd literally scream.

00:41:09.560 I literally would. And the only reason I know this is all true is because I would tell my friends,

00:41:12.900 you guys, I wake up and I scream and I feel like Nate's gone. And he always comes in and he says,

00:41:16.920 I'm right here. Don't worry about it. But so those things started to happen. And in conjunction

00:41:21.000 with that, I said, well, I need help. So that's when I started to really dig into

00:41:24.860 self-help and spiritual books. There's got to be an answer here. And it turns out there wasn't an

00:41:29.900 answer, but there was a huge toolkit I was about to be given for what I think I knew was coming.

00:41:35.220 Tell me more about that.

00:41:36.880 So when I started reading, obviously, Vishen's book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind,

00:41:41.180 and that's kind of a book, it was pivotal for Nate and I. We read it together and then we gave it to Tony.

00:41:45.980 And when we gave it to Tony, he loved it so much. And he's a big seeker of information.

00:41:51.580 And he then contacted Vishen, who wrote the book. And through a bunch of beautiful

00:41:57.440 synchronicities, I got an opportunity to go to this event in Jamaica.

00:42:03.800 I grew up in a spiritual family. Everybody, Wayne Dyer, Esther Perel, we did A Course in Miracles,

00:42:10.060 very open-minded religiously. Everybody could believe what they wanted.

00:42:12.720 The idea was about love and God and being fearless. I come from a very fear-based family,

00:42:17.380 but we really believed in being fearless. Just no one had mastered it quite yet.

00:42:21.340 And so Nate kept saying, like, you've got to fix this. I don't know what's going on with you,

00:42:25.540 but you can't keep living like this. Meanwhile, Nate was just crushing life at this point. He was

00:42:29.540 starting a nonprofit in Watts and he was doing great in his career. And he was just really happy.

00:42:35.960 But something about him that I felt like he was, I mean, this is so cheesy, but floating away.

00:42:41.600 I couldn't get to him the way I couldn't. His eyes didn't seem. He seemed far away. He would forget

00:42:46.340 things. We were barbecuing and he put all the lighter fluid on the fence, lit the match and

00:42:51.380 the whole fence lit up.

00:42:52.800 That's not where are my keys. So what did you think about that? Did you think he was being funny

00:42:58.400 deliberately?

00:42:59.000 He felt terrible after. He hated himself after. He'd berate himself. Like, I don't know what's

00:43:03.100 wrong with me. I can't remember. And he would forget his keys always. He would make little

00:43:07.200 mistakes. He knew something was wrong with him too. And I can tell because he started doing like

00:43:11.960 mind exercises and he was trying to get going there. He would just say like, I don't know why

00:43:16.500 I feel so down. He felt really sad the last year. And it wasn't depression as much as it was just,

00:43:23.080 it wasn't him.

00:43:24.580 Besides Tony and Jeff, who else was he still in touch with regularly, closely?

00:43:29.000 From the NFL.

00:43:30.280 All the guys.

00:43:31.400 They were retired by then as well. How many of these guys could understand what he was

00:43:36.660 talking about?

00:43:37.720 I don't know that he talked about it with a lot of people. His best friend, Chris, in the

00:43:41.860 neighborhood was like, he just won't share anything anymore. He doesn't seem himself.

00:43:45.760 Tony will say that Nate was always Nate. And I do think when Nate would get around his buddies

00:43:50.060 and they're all drinking, he would be much more normal. It was more when we were at home.

00:43:54.100 And the hard part is Nate was always different, but he wasn't always so sad. There was a

00:43:58.620 sadness to Nate.

00:43:59.900 Did the kids appreciate this?

00:44:01.660 They don't remember this at all. It was subtle. It was subtle in a way that I don't know what

00:44:06.680 it was. It was just everything in me said something's wrong. And I know everything in

00:44:10.400 him. I found his journals after he passed. And a lot of them were like, you've got to

00:44:14.280 be more connected. You're going to find joy again. There's nothing wrong with you. Keep

00:44:18.840 going. Just try harder. Like very much self-talk, trying to get out of whatever he was in.

00:44:24.820 How long after he died, did you find the journal?

00:44:27.940 Very soon.

00:44:28.980 Did you read it right away? Did you hesitate for a moment? Were you worried about what you

00:44:33.740 would find?

00:44:34.400 No. The one thing about Nate and I, I was like, I didn't feel like he hid anything from me.

00:44:38.060 No, not that he was hiding anything from you, but were you afraid that you might see that he

00:44:44.120 was in a pain that you didn't appreciate?

00:44:46.240 I wasn't worried about that then because I didn't know what I know now. I honestly didn't know how sick

00:44:52.620 he was. Once I found out, I was devastated because I was so mean. I was mean. I didn't

00:44:58.020 know what was wrong with him. I wish I could go back and be kinder, but I had no clue. And he was

00:45:02.320 somebody who just was like, he wouldn't put it on me. He would just deal with it on his own.

00:45:06.480 If I had known he was so sick, I would have been much kinder, much kinder. I don't really know what

00:45:11.940 I felt at the time. I would be making it up if I said it just felt like I was losing my husband

00:45:16.520 and he seemed different from all the other husbands. He seemed older and tireder quickly. I remember

00:45:21.980 Tony and it was Halloween right before he died. And I remember thinking like, why does Tony look

00:45:26.500 so young and vibrant? And Nate looks so tired and exhausted. And there's a thousand reasons why

00:45:32.020 that now we know, but I'm going to keep going with the Jamaica story.

00:45:35.580 Yeah. So it's early November of 2017 and you don't want to go on this trip.

00:45:41.460 Right. So we go to New York about a month before for a birthday and I have probably the biggest and

00:45:46.120 the last, one of the last panic attacks that I've had of my life. And I just said, Nate,

00:45:50.120 I can't go to Jamaica. And he takes his sleep apnea mask off and we're in midtown, you know,

00:45:54.920 and he's like, listen, you lunatic, you're going on this trip. You need to learn to live fearlessly. 0.98

00:45:59.800 You have all these gifts and you are trapped in our house and in all this fear. And it's time for

00:46:05.080 you to go. And I want you to go on that trip and I want you to come back changed. And he never told

00:46:10.360 me what to do. He was very supportive, but he was like, this is a non-negotiable if we're going to make

00:46:15.220 it. I cannot live with this anymore. You are fine. We are good. I promise you everything's

00:46:20.460 okay. He was serious. He was very rarely serious, but he was like, you're going, we're not doing

00:46:25.540 this. And so the weekend of November 8th, he took me to the airport and he never took me to the

00:46:31.900 airport because the guy loved to sleep. And so it was an early flight, but he's like, I want to drive

00:46:35.700 you, which was very out of character. He had no problem putting his wife in an Uber, zero, zero. 0.92

00:46:40.880 So he'd be like, good luck. You're good. So we were driving to the airport and I remember I was

00:46:45.820 texting with Toby. Long story short, we got invited to go to this event in Jamaica. It was like a

00:46:50.320 spiritual retreat. Wim Hof, Stephen Cutler, Marissa Peers, Jim Quick, great speakers, people doing

00:46:56.120 great things. Toby, through their relationship, Tony and Toby's with Vision, we got to go to this event

00:47:00.900 called A-Fest. And it's a three or four day event twice a year where you go and you just talk to people

00:47:06.780 that are doing great things and look into your stuff and hear great speakers.

00:47:10.840 I'm texting Toby and Nate grabs my hand and he never did this. And he was like, can you put your

00:47:14.760 phone down? Can you just put your phone down? This will break me. He said, I just want to be with you.

00:47:20.020 I just want to be with you for this next five minutes until we get out and then you can text her.

00:47:24.060 And so we just held hands and he drove me to the terminal and he just said, you're the most amazing

00:47:29.060 woman I've ever met in my life. He's like, I've never met anybody like you. Wow, I'm really crying.

00:47:33.100 He said, but I just wanted you to know I love you more than anything and I hope you go have fun

00:47:37.240 and that you come back a better person and ready to do what I know you're meant to do.

00:47:42.200 And I don't want you to worry about anything because we are going to be fine. I love you so

00:47:46.120 much. So go have fun. We kissed and I went on. And of course, because I'm always been very cheap,

00:47:52.300 I decided not to get the talk plan in Jamaica. So we just texted for four days, the most beautiful

00:47:58.480 text you could ever imagine. Just about what I was learning and how supportive he was. And he was

00:48:03.400 like, you're doing so great. This is awesome. I was like, I'm going to be different. I'm going to

00:48:06.720 move more during sex. It's going to be great. Like, you're going to love this. Then it was the 0.93

00:48:10.900 last day. And I remember Wim Hof had just spoken and his wife had died when she was young and he was

00:48:17.120 left with four kids. And I remember thinking like, that would suck. That would suck so bad if your spouse 0.82

00:48:21.640 left, especially a good one. So I went and I got in the water and I was swimming because we had one more

00:48:26.460 event. It was like a boat excursion. I remember I was swimming in the water and I felt the divine all around me.

00:48:31.620 And I remember thinking like, everything's changed. Everything's changed. Like, I get it now.

00:48:35.840 Like, I don't need to be afraid. I thought to myself, I can't wait to tell Nate he's going to

00:48:39.720 be so happy. And if you knew the time I was swimming in the water and you knew what was happening in Los

00:48:44.760 Angeles, it would blow your mind. So I got out of the water and I was still in my suit, put on some

00:48:50.100 jean shorts and I was getting ready to go smoke some Jamaican weed and get on a boat and just be the

00:48:55.220 new Kelsey just in the moment. And my phone rang a couple of times and it was a number I didn't know.

00:49:00.900 And I was like, not today. You know, I'm in Jamaica. I'm doing the thing. And then my best

00:49:06.380 friend called and she said, listen, I don't want you to do the Kelsey. I don't want you to freak

00:49:11.420 out. And she said, but Nate was at Sky Zone Trampoline Park and he fell. And we don't really

00:49:18.180 know what happened. We're going to go, your brother-in-law's going to go get the kids and

00:49:22.260 your mom's heading over to UCLA, but everything's fine. Go onto the boat. And I remember I just took a

00:49:28.480 breath and I was like, he's dead. And she's like, he's not dead. Everything Peter in my body knew

00:49:34.140 that man was gone. Everything. And so I felt like I was just waiting for the rest of the world to

00:49:40.020 catch up to what I already knew, which was, this was the thing. Because I also, when I got to Jamaica,

00:49:44.900 all my anxiety went away. It was almost like sliding doors. Once I made the decision to go on

00:49:49.880 that trip, this was what was going to happen. And I assume that if Nate was smart, he knows if I had

00:49:54.440 been there, I would have been like, you don't die on me. Like I would have been crazy. So on some

00:49:59.800 level, I think he waited till the last day because I had gotten all the information and I'd met all

00:50:04.640 the people. And so many of the people from Jamaica have been super influential in my recovery and my

00:50:10.460 grief work and some of the psychedelic things. And so I told Toby, I was like, we're going to the

00:50:16.680 airport. She's like, this is ridiculous. I wasn't even talking. I was just packing. And there was one 0.87

00:50:21.120 flight and I was like, get us to the airport. And so we were driving down this Jamaican road with 0.99

00:50:26.280 potholes and I was in a taxi and the phone rang and I knew it was my mom. And she said, the doctor

00:50:32.100 would like to speak with you. I took the phone and he said, I'm so sorry, Mrs. Chittick. We tried

00:50:36.800 everything. We worked on him for 50 minutes because he looks so young. He didn't make it. And I remember

00:50:42.340 I said, is he dead? And he said, your husband had a heart attack. And I said, is my husband dead? And he

00:50:48.480 said, yes, Nate is dead. And then I just said to them with no emotion, he's dead. And Toby was like,

00:50:53.940 who's dead? And I was like, Nate's dead. And she screamed and, and then began what would be the most

00:51:00.400 transformative, painful, and probably beautiful last four and a half years of my life.

00:51:06.740 So how long did it take you to get back to LA?

00:51:08.860 So there was one plane going back to the US that day. So it was late Saturday night. And I knew I had

00:51:14.240 to get home to my kids because they didn't know. And I really didn't even know what they'd seen.

00:51:17.800 And that's another discussion we'll get into. Cause I didn't really know, but there's a million

00:51:21.940 things around that, but they thought that he had fallen. I know more about what they thought,

00:51:27.140 but there was one seat left. And when I got to the airport, they were like, there's not enough time.

00:51:33.400 It was 20 minutes. The door was shut through a thousand miracles. And I will say, and I tell this

00:51:37.800 to people all the time in your biggest challenges and crises, there are angels literally all around you.

00:51:43.240 I envision them just God gives you or whatever you believe people show up for you. And it is

00:51:49.380 miraculous. So this one baggage claim guy was like, just hold on. And somehow he talked to them

00:51:56.200 and it's in Jamaica, two people a little more laid back and they opened the door, which I really

00:52:00.560 didn't think was ever humanly possible. I think it's the one thing I've never seen happen in life.

00:52:04.580 You know, like they're like, Nope. So I got on the plane and I had the last seat. I was in an aisle

00:52:11.440 and I went into shock and then, you know, much more about the brain than I do. But I remember

00:52:16.000 thinking, Oh shit, this is like what you see on TV when the woman's kid dies and she like just falls 1.00

00:52:20.420 apart. And I felt like I was having a break with reality. So I started throwing up in a little white 1.00

00:52:25.140 bag and I was hyperventilating. I couldn't integrate it. I'd never had had an experience where you

00:52:29.760 thought you were going crazy. And so nobody talked to me at all, which I wouldn't have

00:52:34.500 talked to me. Now I always talk to people when I see them like that, but I think they were like

00:52:39.220 enjoying their honeymoon or their girl's trip. And they're like lunatic in aisle seven, get away from 0.90

00:52:43.820 her. I panicked for about 20 minutes and then the seatbelt sign went off. And all of a sudden there's 0.61

00:52:50.360 this beautiful Jamaican woman in this gorgeous dress and she's standing next to me in the aisle and

00:52:54.920 she puts her hand on my shoulder and she puts a hand on my forehead and she says, baby girl,

00:52:59.760 girl, I don't know what you're going through or what awaits you on the other side of this plane.

00:53:04.740 But I want you to know that there are so many people praying for you. God loves you and I love

00:53:10.380 you and you are stronger than you think. She said, slow your breathing down, baby girl, and decide who

00:53:16.020 you want to be when you land, when this plane lands. And I don't know what it was. It recalibrated

00:53:23.140 my breathing and patted my shoulder. She left and then I actually spent the next four hours on that

00:53:29.940 flight, the layover in Texas, and then the flight home deciding hopefully who I would be a week from

00:53:35.240 now, a month from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. Because on that plane ride, I got

00:53:42.380 really clear that they had just lost their dad, but they weren't going to lose me. And that became

00:53:46.860 my North Star from then on. I got home. I went to my mother-in-law and my mom picked me up,

00:53:54.640 probably the worst drive you could ever imagine, from LAX at about midnight. And I went to my friend's

00:53:59.560 house and this is the part that you just can't make it better. But I got to my friend's house

00:54:05.160 where my kids were. They were nine and 12 at the time. And they had been waiting all day and I had

00:54:09.340 lied to them. And they said, is dad okay? And I had said, he's not doing well. Let's just keep

00:54:13.720 praying for him. I couldn't bear to tell them over the phone. I had to be there.

00:54:17.720 And so now it's funny because we joke about that. Like you lied about really big things. I'm like,

00:54:21.100 I know I did. I've admitted to it. So I got there and I gave them both a hug and I asked everybody to

00:54:27.740 leave. And I just said three things. I said, your father would have never left us if we weren't going

00:54:33.080 to be okay. It just wasn't his style. Do you understand me? And they nodded. I'm like, yes, mom.

00:54:38.740 And then I said, I need you to know that I'm enough. I have no idea how I'm going to do this.

00:54:45.480 I don't know how to live life without your father. I don't know how to raise you guys without your

00:54:48.980 father, but I'm certain I'm going to figure it out and we're going to have a great life.

00:54:52.540 And you guys need to stay being nine and 12 and don't need to worry about anything because I've

00:54:57.600 got this. Do you understand? And I said, yes, mom. And then I said, the most important thing I need

00:55:02.520 to know is that you are not victims, that you had the best father for nine and 12 years. And he focused

00:55:08.160 all of his energy on you. He loved you with everything he had. And he was the kindest,

00:55:12.720 most patient, amazing human being I've ever met. And some kids don't get that for a day.

00:55:17.900 So just always remember that you're the lucky ones. Do you understand? And they were like,

00:55:22.620 yes, mom. And then I asked them both and they were tiny. And I said, what do you guys need from me?

00:55:27.320 And they said, if you're okay, we're okay. And so, I mean, I tell every mother, like you would become

00:55:32.520 okay too. And that's what we've done. We, from that point on fought for joy while acknowledging

00:55:39.720 excruciating pain and doing it at the same time. Now, the days got pretty dark still.

00:55:46.180 Oh yeah. The first two years were just brutal. Tell me about the lowest lows.

00:55:51.440 I think the first night, if you've ever lost someone suddenly, you feel like you've been set

00:55:55.980 on fire. I can't explain the physical pain of grief. I always thought it was mental,

00:56:00.720 but grief and trauma is very physical. You want to get out of your body. I never understood

00:56:05.980 suicide. I never understood people driving into trees. When the pain is so big, you have no way

00:56:13.020 to describe it. And I had tons of resources and love and support. And I still thought like,

00:56:16.680 this isn't going to work. The beginning was surreal. And it's hard to imagine how you're going to live

00:56:22.240 in a world that so quickly becomes a planet you've never been on. He was everything to us. He was the

00:56:28.800 guy. I didn't even know an adult life without him in it. He was a much better parent than me in a

00:56:34.520 thousand ways. So I knew early on, we had a huge deficit when it came to honesty, spirituality,

00:56:40.220 kindness, service. He was just exceptional. I was great at scheduling carpools. And I was like,

00:56:45.280 well, shit, that's not going to lead to a good kid. We've got problems here. And I think when 1.00

00:56:50.960 the numbness wore off, the memorials over and there was a thousand hard times, I think the morgue was

00:56:57.880 exceptionally awful to go see him dead. Which you didn't want to do at all. You fought like hell

00:57:04.500 not to. Yeah. I mean, I remember thinking like, what, are you kidding me? I'm not going to go say

00:57:07.880 goodbye to my husband dead. I thought it was insane that someone would offer that by the grace of God.

00:57:13.300 And I don't have much advice about anything, but if people have been through it, trust them. They know

00:57:17.640 this. And I had another angel that was like, you have to go say goodbye to your husband.

00:57:22.340 And I had probably one of the most beautiful experiences because I got some closure that I

00:57:27.920 never thought I would get. And I have a great story of when I went to the morgue and an awful

00:57:32.580 experience and there was police and there's nurses and they pulled him out of a freezer and he's still

00:57:38.940 intubated, but somehow all that fades away. And I just started to talk to him and my best friend was

00:57:43.920 there. And I talked to him for about 10 or 15 minutes, just told him how much I loved him and how

00:57:47.620 grateful I was and how, you know, I would do the best for him and the kids. And then when I got up,

00:57:52.940 I asked my best friend, like, how'd it go? And she's like, reminded me a lot of real life. You

00:57:56.920 just talked at him for a long time and he just stared at you kindly. And I was like, that's so

00:58:00.960 true. So the morgue was tough. The corners was awful. Death is such a business.

00:58:06.880 Do they ask you if you would like an autopsy given the no foul play?

00:58:10.920 No. When you die in a public place in LA, you have to do a autopsy. So that was on the books from

00:58:17.320 the beginning. At about six months, I thought this won't work. I've never had suicidal thoughts.

00:58:24.140 I've been depressed. I've been down. I've been anxious, but I never thought, how do we get out

00:58:27.580 of here? Did you ever find yourself thinking like these kids now are the greatest thing I have and

00:58:33.980 they're my anchor to him, but they're also the anchor that's holding me to this earth. It's a

00:58:38.140 very different calculation to think about ending your life with kids versus without.

00:58:42.460 Well, my mom used to always tell you the one thing you lose once you have kids is the right to kill

00:58:46.460 yourself. She used to say that all the time. She's like, you know what else? You can't even

00:58:49.700 kill yourself once you have them because it wouldn't be fair to them. And I remember thinking

00:58:52.980 that, but I also remember thinking, I want to take them with me. I remember thinking like,

00:58:57.740 we got to get to him. A couple nights where I thought, so this isn't going to work. I've tried

00:59:03.100 everything. This doesn't work. I feel lost. I'm so broken. I'm so scared emotionally, spiritually,

00:59:11.340 physically, financially. I didn't know how we were going to do it. And people talk about this in the

00:59:16.320 chapter, but I ended up just saying like, I'm going to talk to my son because I knew he was 12

00:59:20.580 and I knew he was in a bad spot. Tell me about like what you saw in both of them over that six

00:59:26.920 month period of time, especially I'm guessing like after Christmas, right? So my guess is it's a blur

00:59:31.740 through Thanksgiving and Christmas and then January. Just so dark, dark in every way.

00:59:38.040 January is dark to begin with, but when you've lost the person that you worshipped,

00:59:41.580 the person that kind of was the light in our family, like he was just great. He was a great dad.

00:59:47.920 They were so sad and confused and just a different level of sad. Like they just got screwed for their

00:59:55.560 whole lives and they'll never be normal again. And kids just want to be normal and they want to go to

00:59:59.360 school and they don't want to be the person that's dealing with the great tragedy. They were embarrassed.

01:00:04.680 They would say, it's just like the worst to not have a dad. It's so embarrassing not to have a dad.

01:00:09.320 And it's just awful. And like, nobody will talk to me. Jack says, no one makes fun of me anymore.

01:00:14.320 No one jokes with me. Parents look down when I walk past them. He said, everyone avoids me

01:00:19.260 because you don't know what to say. And then there's always the kids who the parent was like,

01:00:22.140 you go say something to them. And they were like, sorry, your dad died, you know, or something like

01:00:25.640 that. We'd done a bunch of counseling. Counseling wasn't working at the time. We couldn't find the

01:00:30.040 right fit for everybody. And I've learned a lot about trauma since then, but I think it was a little

01:00:34.560 early for the kids to be forced to talk about it. And I don't know if you've read what happened to you,

01:00:38.640 Oprah Winfrey. But she talks about kids. It takes a while for them to be able to process what they

01:00:44.020 saw and felt. Whereas adults, we have enough life experience to be able to talk about it.

01:00:48.060 But watching their dad die, it wasn't something they could talk about. But I kept trying to force

01:00:52.060 them to do counseling and be like, tell us about the day your dad died. And they would just

01:00:55.680 close their ears literally physically and rock. And I'd be like, we are going to talk about this.

01:01:00.140 They would literally react that way.

01:01:01.800 Like a baby.

01:01:02.940 What did the therapist think of that? Did they recognize that as a sign that they just

01:01:06.760 weren't ready to talk about this yet?

01:01:08.100 Yeah. I mean, eventually, eventually, but they would do things like, and I don't want

01:01:11.640 to say stupid things, but like my daughter didn't want to draw about it. She didn't want to like

01:01:15.260 take a crayon and show her dad dying at Sky Zone. She really needed to forget about it for a bit

01:01:22.120 to integrate what she saw. My son's a little more mature and he really needed someone to talk to

01:01:28.060 other than me. He needed someone who didn't have a dog in the fight to talk about what it felt like

01:01:32.180 to lose his dad. So he actually, over time, had a great relationship with a therapist for a year.

01:01:36.740 And then as the 40-year-old that he is inside, at the end, he was like, I think I'm done for now.

01:01:41.080 Thank you so much for your help. And I'll call you if I need you again. But Jack really had a clear

01:01:45.780 intention at that age of what he needed through this. And he said, it's just nice to go talk to

01:01:51.060 a woman that will listen to me. And that was a dig at me because he's like, all you do is talk to me.

01:01:56.200 There was just a night that I thought like, we got to go, Jack. We got to get to dad. And so I said,

01:02:00.080 Jack, I'm thinking about killing all of us in tongue in cheek, which we use a lot of laughter. 0.98

01:02:05.460 And Jack was like, tell me how we're going to die, mom. And I was like, well, there's so many 0.96

01:02:08.140 different ways, but I think the best one is that I'm going to drown you guys in the tub. And he's

01:02:12.300 like, great. He's how old at this point? He's 13. He's 13. And he's like four inches taller than me.

01:02:17.180 He's like, but you only let us, there's a drought in LA. So you only let us fill it up like two inches.

01:02:21.300 And he's like, I'm so much stronger than you. I'm like, I know, but I'm going to do the best I can.

01:02:24.400 He's like, okay, good luck. And the more we talked about this stuff and the more we laughed,

01:02:29.160 the better it got. And then a couple of weeks later, Jack said, you know, mom, I, if I had a

01:02:33.060 gun, I would kill myself. And I said, I totally get it. I didn't say like, that's awful. Don't do

01:02:37.980 it. I understood. And I just remember thinking was, we just won't have guns in our house. I

01:02:43.040 remember thinking, I know how to avoid this. And I said, just hang on for today. And then tomorrow

01:02:48.640 and little by little, he's like, I don't think I want to kill myself anymore. So we navigated through

01:02:53.060 that. The first year was just the crying at night. The nights are really dark when you have grief.

01:02:59.160 And when you have little kids, because they need so much at night is when everybody, whether you're

01:03:03.780 an adult, I don't know. I mean, I wake up in the middle of the night or I used to quite a bit with

01:03:07.740 just terrible anxiety and their fear was so big. And I just didn't think I had enough energy to be

01:03:12.660 there for them on my own. I mean, I don't remember, I don't remember sleeping the first year very much.

01:03:18.260 Somebody always needed something the first year at nights.

01:03:21.540 Such as meeting the kids themselves couldn't sleep.

01:03:24.060 Somebody would be losing it. Someone would be not well.

01:03:27.920 And you slept in three different rooms?

01:03:29.480 Many times we slept together. My daughter slept with me for a long time

01:03:33.220 after he died and she wanted to crawl back in my uterus. I thought to myself, I'll never be able 0.51

01:03:39.340 to leave the house again. My life's over. I'll never be able to have fun again. I'll never be happy

01:03:43.760 again. But amongst all of that, I also thought we're going to be okay. There was a knowing somewhere

01:03:50.940 that this was just part of it, but it wasn't always going to be this way, but it felt like

01:03:55.040 it was always going to be this way. So I toggled through hopefulness and just devastation, but I

01:04:00.760 knew we needed to hold on to the fact that this was appropriate and it wouldn't last forever.

01:04:07.240 We were built to last. Humans are built to last. We aren't the first people who lost their father.

01:04:12.000 I think our generation hasn't lost as many people as generations before. So it's just much

01:04:16.600 more rare for us and it's more shocking, but this has been happening.

01:04:20.700 It's interesting you say that, like you sort of imagine, let's just go back in time 10,000 years,

01:04:24.520 not that far, but just 10,000 years. Perfect.

01:04:26.600 And it's basically the same thing. It's you and Nate and the kids, you're hunter gatherers. So it's

01:04:30.920 a little different. You don't have electricity and all that stuff, but there's certainly a scenario in

01:04:34.560 which Nate gets an infection and dies. There's a scenario in which an animal attacks him. I mean,

01:04:39.880 as you said, it's not that uncommon that this would happen. Knowing what you know now,

01:04:44.800 I've never thought about it this way, but do you get the sense that the Kelsey of 10,000 years ago

01:04:49.460 would have had an easier time with this? And if so, would it have been because of expectations or

01:04:54.340 would it been because of the community that you would have been stuck with? You wouldn't have had

01:04:58.520 your own house, for example. Both. I think the expectation that now everybody lives till they're

01:05:02.980 90 happily ever after married with two kids and a mom and a dad, that expectation has set us up to

01:05:08.880 be much less resilient because there's this like one way it's all about joy and fun. Whereas I

01:05:14.680 think 10,000 years ago, you saw people recover all the time from awful things. Babies died and

01:05:20.720 people went to war and there was famine. We have so much now that our anxiety is higher than ever

01:05:27.780 before. And I felt that way before I died because when everything, as opposed to being really joyful,

01:05:32.120 when you have everything- It's so counterintuitive, isn't it?

01:05:33.940 Yeah. Because now you have everything. You don't want it to fall apart. Whereas back then they were

01:05:38.360 like, well, shit, this isn't that good. So whatever, I can handle things. We just don't handle things. 0.99

01:05:43.000 We're not used to feeling extremely uncomfortable anymore. Life is so comfortable. Things are so

01:05:48.100 easy. Not for everybody, obviously, for people with resources.

01:05:51.780 Well, I mean, I think for everybody compared to 10,000 years ago, it is.

01:05:54.360 100%. Yeah. And this idea that pain is bad and death is bad, and that's a whole discussion.

01:05:59.260 Now I have a completely different relationship with death. I have a completely different relationship

01:06:03.120 with what it means for the physical body to leave and that Nate isn't gone and we didn't get

01:06:08.040 screwed and there wasn't a right time for him to leave or not. So there's so many nuances that

01:06:13.520 through the last four and a half years have changed the way I feel. I'm still toggling between all the

01:06:18.800 different ideas around grief. There's a whole, like my mother-in-law believes, like I will grieve

01:06:22.700 forever. I will grieve forever. And that's just how it is. And our country wants everyone to be happy

01:06:27.620 and I'm not happy. And I'm like, that's fine. And that's a choice. I personally now believe,

01:06:33.480 again, I'm back to this football analogy, holding two beliefs at the same time. I can be grieving

01:06:38.400 very deeply and very grateful at the same time. You don't go through one stage at the other.

01:06:44.160 I miss Nate terribly and I am so happy. I don't know what to tell you. I'm happier than I've ever

01:06:50.600 been in my life. And I've been through the worst thing ever. And then I had some medical stuff just,

01:06:56.000 I think, that came up from grief. And all the things that I was most afraid of, I've made it through

01:07:01.020 and I am so excited about life. So I don't know.

01:07:06.120 How long after Nate died, did you get the autopsy results back?

01:07:09.560 So he died of cardiomyopathy of the left ventricle. And the doctor called and just said,

01:07:15.160 we could tell right away he was a football player. His heart was so stretched out. It was so big.

01:07:20.260 And he said, listen, Mrs. Chittick, you want all big muscles, just not a big heart. 0.95

01:07:24.640 Nobody needs to have a big heart physically. You can have it spiritually, but you don't want a huge

01:07:29.240 heart. And he said, when big men move that much weight around at that speed, it overuses it and

01:07:35.720 the muscle just gives out. He said, big men and big animals die early. And he said, he was 98%

01:07:42.280 blocked in all of his arteries. Basically his left ventricle just had no more give. He explained it

01:07:48.760 to me as a water balloon that had just been stretched out and there was just no pump anymore. And he said,

01:07:53.420 big fat people can live a long time if they sit all day and watch TV. But if you're out playing

01:07:59.200 football at Thanksgiving and on the treadmill, he would run the beach and jump on the trampoline.

01:08:04.220 He's like your heart. I mean, I love on his autopsy, it said he died of a enlarged heart,

01:08:08.540 which I just think is beautiful because he had a really big heart.

01:08:11.780 Put that on the tombstone.

01:08:12.640 Exactly. Yeah, that's true. That's true. So that was about three months after he died.

01:08:17.820 And did they also look at his brain? Presumably they didn't.

01:08:21.960 They did, but they didn't have the right tool. So they're like, I don't, we didn't see anything.

01:08:25.780 I'm like, well, what did you do? I mean, it's LA County morgue or corners. I don't think they

01:08:29.340 have the equipment. When did it first occur to you to maybe get the people at Boston University

01:08:33.960 involved? We had just started to talk about this a couple of years before and I'd gotten like the

01:08:38.540 pamphlet from the NFL that said, whatever the players. NFLPA, yeah. And there'd been a lot of talk.

01:08:45.900 I hadn't watched Concussion yet with Will Smith. I have since then. But if I'm being completely honest,

01:08:51.460 I thought, oh, well, maybe there'll be some compensation financially if he did have CT,

01:08:55.040 but I don't know if he did or I don't know, but I want to make sure because it would depend on

01:08:59.820 whether I'd let Jack play. He was going to Loyola and he was going to play football most likely.

01:09:06.780 So I said, I need to know if football had anything to do with it. The heart thing pretty much

01:09:10.220 sealed the deal, but I was like, I wonder what was going on with Nate's brain.

01:09:14.040 So Boston University was exceptional. Dr. McKee was exceptional. Lisa, the whole

01:09:17.900 group there is phenomenal. LA Corners sent his brain tissue and they coordinated it with Boston

01:09:24.460 and they went and they said it'll be about a year because we're going to do a, I'm using the wrong

01:09:29.020 words, we're like pathological and do interviews. The clinical side. Clinical, yep. And so we're going

01:09:34.360 to interview everybody and talk about it. And his parents had an even more feeling of him floating

01:09:39.900 away and being different as did his brother. And I think I lived day to day with him. So it was harder

01:09:44.540 to tell the changes because they were so gradual. Where did his brother live? He lives in LA.

01:09:49.020 So we saw him a lot. And the irony is his brother is just an exceptional been sober 14 years, but for

01:09:55.120 so long we were trying to keep Luke alive. And it was just the way that it switched and Nate was gone

01:10:00.320 and Luke is still here in a huge part of our life. But Luke said he felt the same way. Like there was a

01:10:05.240 floating away and his mom especially was like, he is not the son I knew. How long did she feel that?

01:10:10.620 Five years. Five years. Five years. And his dad? His dad's just a kind man. He said he doesn't

01:10:16.700 really know how he felt or he doesn't remember, but he knew that something was different about his

01:10:21.660 son, but he can't put his finger on it. So about a year later, no, maybe like nine months, we got a

01:10:27.880 call. I didn't know what they were going to say, but I didn't think they were going to say what they

01:10:31.560 said. And Dr. McKee got on the phone and just said, I'm sorry to tell you, but Nate had stage two,

01:10:36.420 almost stage three CTE. He has lesions all over his brain. And I just want you to know that that

01:10:42.380 would have been a really hard life. So part of my ability to be in gratitude where a lot of other

01:10:48.440 families that are football players aren't is that I don't have to live with a man that's slowly

01:10:52.520 deteriorating before my eyes. There are tons of people who have husbands that are healthy heart-wise,

01:10:59.060 but not brain-wise. So that's where it gets tricky. And that's where I continue to talk about it.

01:11:04.540 For people to sort of understand what stage two and stage three is, I mean,

01:11:07.700 Junior Seau was stage two when he killed himself. Aaron Hernandez was stage three when he killed

01:11:12.940 himself. If you looked at them from the outside, notwithstanding sort of the criminal side of

01:11:16.840 what was going on with Aaron, they could tie their shoes and walk around. They don't look like someone

01:11:21.300 who's in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease. But if you understand their behavior, their moods,

01:11:26.240 and what people who are around them would say, and of course, in the case of Hernandez,

01:11:28.940 his behaviors leading up to everything, they were clearly not behaving the way they would have

01:11:35.260 behaved if everything was totally normal. I had seen Junior Seau at a party because we still live

01:11:39.760 in San Diego. There's a good friend of ours who's a very close friend of his, and it was his 70th

01:11:43.820 birthday. And this was about a month before he killed himself. And I remember perfectly normal,

01:11:47.800 like everything was perfectly, totally fine. And I couldn't believe it a month later.

01:11:51.640 Yeah. That's the thing about this disease. And I think it's why it causes so much

01:11:54.640 discussion and disagreements. I mean, I debate this with football guys all the time.

01:11:59.600 And then I debate it with the other side, which is my mother and mother-in-law that are like,

01:12:03.280 football is the devil. And then all the people that we love that are like, listen,

01:12:06.280 it's the name of the game, you know, signing up for it.

01:12:09.360 Although, you know, you could push back on that and say, maybe that's true today.

01:12:13.180 Was it true when they signed up for it?

01:12:15.560 Yeah. I don't think anybody talked about it. I don't think everybody was lying about it for a

01:12:19.120 really long time. Just to fast forward, there is no compensation anymore for CTE.

01:12:22.960 Maybe I'm making this up, so don't see me. But I would think it's because anybody that dice that's

01:12:27.320 played in the NFL probably has some level after the number of hits you take. I don't know what to

01:12:33.580 do. I cannot imagine living with Nate, greatest man I ever knew with a severe brain disease that

01:12:39.280 would either put us at risk or him at risk at 42. I mean, that's young. That's very young.

01:12:45.500 Did the folks at BU, I don't know much about CTE. Did the folks there say,

01:12:49.900 hey, based on what we saw pathologically, this was what the next 10 years would have looked like?

01:12:55.640 I mean, could they tell you this is the rate at which this progresses and this is what you were

01:13:00.840 in store for the next five years? We never got into that, but they said they would give you the

01:13:05.620 list of symptoms of what it would look like. And a lot of it was already there. With Nate, depression,

01:13:09.900 increased drinking, wanting to be alone, fatigue, big outbursts, anger. I mean, Nate never yelled at

01:13:17.320 me in 21 years. We got after it in arguments, but he never was mean. And I remember I messed up like

01:13:23.640 the internet or some spectrum thing. And he was like, what the hell's wrong with you? Like I told

01:13:27.740 you to fix internet. And I remember we both looked at each other and he was like, sorry. And I was like,

01:13:31.860 whoa. I just had never heard him snap. That stuff. I think what Dr. McKee was saying is-

01:13:38.180 It was going to increase in frequency.

01:13:39.740 Because if you look at their brain scans, there's just dead spots. The lesions look like they're just

01:13:43.580 sitting on that brain and nothing's firing there or it's firing incorrectly. It's not like CTE makes

01:13:48.960 you nicer. You know, like some people have to mention they're kinder. It's not that way.

01:13:53.480 How did you tell the kids about that? Was there solace in that? I mean, was that-

01:13:57.420 They do not find any solace in it, which is interesting. I do a ton. They do not. They go,

01:14:02.720 they'll be like, mom, please. Like, okay, we know he had CTE, but he's still dead. We'd rather him be

01:14:06.300 here. My son always says like, mom, please stop telling people we're lucky. He hates it.

01:14:11.060 Is it possible that he didn't witness what you witnessed? In other words, he never saw that his

01:14:17.580 dad was deteriorating? 100%. And I think he was little and he worshiped his dad. He was just 12,

01:14:23.500 you know, he was in sixth grade. He was their hero. He never did anything wrong in their eyes.

01:14:28.260 He was the best. They are like, I don't know what story you're making up about this CTE thing,

01:14:32.660 but we can't even comprehend dad not being dad. So I try to honor that now, but I will say what

01:14:38.140 Jack did honor was I'll never play football. And there was something in my son's eyes that was

01:14:42.480 grateful he didn't have to. He won't admit that, but I promise you when he's 40, he'll tell you,

01:14:47.640 I didn't want to go do that sport. I've never seen a kid so happy last night as when the Rams won.

01:14:52.500 And he loves being a part of football. He loves football. He loves watching it. We have great

01:14:56.740 discussions around this in our home. They just don't like when I say we're lucky because we

01:15:01.900 didn't have to see him sick. Cause in their world, they're like, we would rather.

01:15:06.240 So how long after Nate died, did you have a good night's sleep without medication?

01:15:11.120 That's interesting. We'll talk about psychedelics. The first couple of weeks,

01:15:14.460 people are like, you need Xanax, you need Ambien. I'd never taken anything.

01:15:16.900 And I remember I took them for about a week. I woke up and I was like, God,

01:15:21.200 I feel so far away from everything. And that was the first experience I had of traditional

01:15:26.160 medicine, taking you away from your pain and other things bringing you to it. So you can work through

01:15:30.460 it. The exact opposite, right? Yeah. The exact opposite, which is mind blowing. I remember maybe

01:15:36.740 seven or eight months and sleep became a really safe place for me. How long after Nate died,

01:15:42.520 would you wake up and not have that nanosecond of forgetting what had happened? Do you know that

01:15:49.240 experience where the next day you wake up and there's probably like two seconds when you don't

01:15:53.740 know that that just happened and then it kind of comes crushing down. And then at some point that

01:15:57.500 goes away and there's never a moment when you don't know it didn't happen. I'm there maybe the

01:16:02.540 last six months, maybe the last. I wouldn't have imagined it could last that long. It was jarring.

01:16:07.780 To be honest, it still gets me sometimes. And sometimes I'll lay in my bed and be like,

01:16:12.420 Nate, just to practice saying his name. It's a surreal experience. It's alter worlds.

01:16:18.240 Sudden death. You know, everyone has said, oh, would you rather him be sick or would you rather

01:16:21.420 him die suddenly? I love the games we play with people grieving.

01:16:24.800 Do you think 10,000 years ago, they sat around the fire ever playing cancer or die in front of you?

01:16:29.620 Would you rather get killed by a saber tooth tiger immediately or fall out of the tree,

01:16:34.380 break your femur and exsanguinate over the next two days, then get an infection and then die a 0.96

01:16:39.880 month later?

01:16:40.300 That's exactly what people ask me all the time. I can believe it completely and I still can't

01:16:44.020 believe it. I don't wake up shocked anymore. I don't have the pit in my stomach. The deep

01:16:48.820 shock and grief is gone. It's probably been gone since around four years. So I'm a couple months,

01:16:55.640 maybe even three and a half, there started to be some space that some type of new neuropathways that we

01:17:01.700 lived in now were becoming not as worn, but as comfortable as the old ones of the reality he

01:17:09.180 lived in. So for a while, it felt like every neuropathway ended with Nate. Every time the door

01:17:15.000 would open, I would think of Nate. Every time we would eat dinner, I would think of Nate. Every

01:17:17.980 time I put the kids to bed, every time I'd get in the car, he was everywhere. He was like a shadow.

01:17:22.860 And over time, the more things we did, the more traveling I did, the more new people I met,

01:17:29.300 things started firing differently. People that didn't know Nate, places that I hadn't gone with

01:17:33.400 Nate. As that happened, it's almost like my brain started to adjust to a new world that didn't have

01:17:38.940 a minute. And then I could feel the stress go down. Today, we live in a world where you probably have

01:17:44.040 a billion videos on your phone of you and Nate and the kids. Did you ever have to make a decision

01:17:50.240 about the frequency with which you would indulge in watching those versus putting a limit on it or

01:17:55.360 saying, I'm going to put this in a box. I'm going to allow myself to do this for an hour a day.

01:17:58.420 For the other 23 hours, I'm going to do something else.

01:18:00.600 We talk about that all the time. In grief groups, it's cutting. You get your iPhone out and you just

01:18:04.980 let it fly. A lot of what I've started to do recently, and I started early on in some of the

01:18:09.440 practices from the Buddhist store, is setting a time to feel. My emotions were so big for so long,

01:18:14.780 and I still work on that. Being aware that my emotion is not me, but it's just coming through me.

01:18:19.860 But I actually get to close the door if I want, and I can open it when I want. That has been a

01:18:25.500 practice that's changed my life the past two years, which is, okay, Kelsey, do you want to

01:18:29.420 right now feel really sad and really get your eyes swelled up and put on some Chicago and just

01:18:35.240 really go through some videos? Okay, I'm going to give you seven minutes to do that. Well, because

01:18:40.480 for a while, my girlfriend would call at night, and I would just be like, it's been hours. It's been

01:18:45.940 hours. I'd forward them to people, and I just would want feedback like, you remember this? You remember

01:18:51.600 this? I would imagine your friends might not even know what to do, because they'd be like,

01:18:56.920 wow, I don't want to deny that this happened. I don't want to deny that this is special,

01:19:00.420 but I also don't want to keep her head down and let her drown.

01:19:04.700 And they even get tired. People that are supporting grieving people get tired of being

01:19:08.320 there and being like, I know you miss them. I know your good friends will be like, enough.

01:19:12.580 We've been down that road for about an hour now. And even now, I feel like I know sort of how to

01:19:18.020 help people that are grieving, because I've felt it. It's still a very tricky thing. I don't know

01:19:23.180 how I feel about the videos. I'm so grateful I have them. My kids don't look at pictures. They

01:19:26.980 don't like it. Yeah, so I just want to ask you, how did the kids participate in that?

01:19:31.040 Kids are a great thing to have, and they're exhausting to have during grief. When you have

01:19:35.860 kids and you're going through grief, they keep you going in a regular life. And at the same time,

01:19:40.600 you can't really grieve until they're gone, and they do not like to see you sad.

01:19:44.740 I talked to a ton of people who had lost parents when they were younger. And I remember all of

01:19:50.280 them were like, just please don't. If only my mom had been okay, it would have been great. But we

01:19:54.400 lost my dad, and then we lost my mom too, because she never got happy again. So I remembered that.

01:20:00.180 And in the beginning, I also felt like, well, my kids need to see that I'm really sad and show them

01:20:04.280 how to grieve, because there's that movement too. But what I realized, it's a very fine line. Kids do

01:20:09.700 not like to see their parents sobbing. It scares them. If I'm over in the corner shaking and

01:20:14.640 crying and be like, I miss your father, it doesn't feel safe for a nine and 12 year old.

01:20:18.600 Do you think that kids are innately wired to move on from this quicker?

01:20:22.960 One hundred percent. My kids are exceptional.

01:20:26.060 In talking to other parents who have lost a spouse, do you think that's true, not just for

01:20:32.000 your kids, but in general? Do you think that's true for kids that they are, in that sense,

01:20:36.200 more wired to move on?

01:20:38.060 They live in the present moment. They haven't played out a whole future. They don't know that

01:20:41.560 they missed the wedding. They don't know that he missed their graduation because they've never

01:20:44.400 had graduation. That's all in our heads. I think that this is just what's worked for me.

01:20:49.900 If you create a home that is joyful and the trauma is allowed to be spoken about when they want,

01:20:55.580 that it's not something bad that happened. It's something that we experienced and we get to decide

01:21:00.860 how we want to tell the story. I think kids can survive amazing things much better than adults

01:21:06.160 because they don't have pre-conceived ideas. I think kids live in the moment too. And if you're lucky

01:21:10.420 enough, I hit it right at the right age because kids become so self-consumed around 12 that their

01:21:15.040 whole world becomes their friends. And so once my kids kicked into that, parents are kind of in the

01:21:20.720 background. Like you're there, but you're in the background of their lives. And Nate's alive in

01:21:24.780 our house very much so. So it's not something to have. I mean, we talk about them all the time.

01:21:29.260 Do you still have pictures?

01:21:30.740 We have some. I took down a lot because I realized too, this goes back to the videos.

01:21:36.580 You want to be careful with grief and pictures and videos that you let it in when it's

01:21:40.000 appropriate time. Because if not, it can become all-consuming. So we definitely have a poster

01:21:46.040 board of pictures, but all the pictures in our house now mostly are of the kids and I.

01:21:50.820 And there's some of Nate. And we have an area where we have a Super Bowl and we have a picture

01:21:55.220 of the family. His ring is in the bank deposit box. Yeah.

01:22:00.400 You don't want to wear it around a necklace or something like that.

01:22:02.360 I don't want a nose ring or something. No. Yeah. I think talking about it too. My kids,

01:22:06.060 we talk about them all the time. I'm like, your dad would say, and they get really pissed if I'm

01:22:09.900 like, your dad would be let down. And they're like, you don't know that, so don't say it.

01:22:12.740 You don't get to pull that card. I was like, I was just trying to get you.

01:22:15.320 We laugh a lot about the way Nate died.

01:22:18.020 Say more about that.

01:22:19.340 I mean, who dies during toddler time wearing orange sticky socks? I mean, that's just ridiculous. 0.84

01:22:25.220 I mean, who does that? He's the first person in history to jump, jump, die during toddler time 0.97

01:22:30.380 playing basketball with his kids. It's just so bad. It's good, at least for a comic. And for me,

01:22:35.800 and then I think in the story, I talk a lot, he died on 11, 11 at 11, which again, I just was like,

01:22:40.340 thanks, buddy. There's just a thousand nods to me. It feels like that we're okay. And that this

01:22:46.240 thing's bigger than we think. And that don't get your panties in a bunch. This is just death.

01:22:51.360 It happens all the time. I think that's the other thing. The kids now, we've been to enough grief

01:22:55.960 things and enough grief camps. We're like, people are dying all the time. Nobody else knows it,

01:23:00.240 but it is unbelievable how many people are dying every day. So there's a acceptance of death in

01:23:05.860 our house that is probably very different than in other houses.

01:23:10.460 So how long after Nate died, did you have your first psychedelic experience?

01:23:15.980 So about nine months after.

01:23:19.480 And what was the lead up to that? Like, how did you think about going through that? And

01:23:23.660 what were you afraid of? What were you hoping to get out of it?

01:23:26.420 So I had gone to this event in Estonia the summer after Nate died. And a bunch of people were talking

01:23:33.080 about psychedelics for grief work and a lot of trauma work. And I got to a point where I was

01:23:38.740 doing better, but I needed to access Nate. Like I had this deep desire to have a relationship with

01:23:43.700 him and raise the kids with him, even if he wasn't in this realm. And I remember I was having a

01:23:48.200 conversation. I was like, I just need to get to him. I believe that like the body went away.

01:23:52.260 I don't know where he is. And I can talk to God. I feel great with my relationship with God.

01:23:56.640 I just don't know how to get to him, but I need to get to him because I was kind of starting to go

01:23:59.780 crazy. And this one guy was like, have you ever done mushrooms? And I was like, no, but my brother

01:24:04.560 did a lot in high school and I would never, and I don't like druggies. And I think you guys are a

01:24:08.880 bunch. I'm very uptight and I have two glasses of wine and I'm not fun and don't even ask.

01:24:14.740 And I'm going to keep judging you now.

01:24:16.320 And I'm going to judge you because that's what I do best. And I'm going to keep doing that

01:24:19.440 because look where it got me. And then they were like, have you ever tried MDMA? And I was like,

01:24:25.380 this is all ridiculousness because you guys are all exactly the kids I did not want to hang out

01:24:29.260 with in high school. Because my experience was my brother-in-law's an addict, Oxycontin and alcohol.

01:24:34.660 He's 14 years sober. My brother was just a partier. He followed fish and the dead. And I just remember

01:24:39.840 him being like gonzo a lot of high school. And so at some point I was talking to this guy who'd done so

01:24:45.380 many psychedelics. I mean, literally the guy was crazy. He was like telling me about having sex in a

01:24:48.460 thorn bush. And I was like, why am I even talking to this weirdo? I'm never going to try that stuff. 0.99

01:24:52.280 He said, why? I said, well, I'm afraid. I don't want to die. I'm not going to jump off of a bridge

01:24:56.420 after doing too many mushrooms. And he's like, but you're already dead because you're so afraid of

01:25:00.240 everything. And I was like, oof. So I talked to a couple of our friends and I said, listen, I'll be

01:25:09.120 ready when I'm ready. This is saying in that community that says the plants will welcome you or you'll

01:25:13.580 know. Like it's not something you can force somebody to do. You'll know when it's time. And I got a call

01:25:19.400 October and after he had died, so almost a year. And they said, we're going to do this group with

01:25:25.240 these shamans. Are you interested? And I remember it was very clear. I could just hear it. I was like,

01:25:29.360 I'm in. I had probably a level 10 anxiety going into it because I had never done anything. I mean,

01:25:34.340 I wasn't even a drinker really. Just always been an old fashioned, uptight, fear-based,

01:25:38.580 neurotic person, classic. And we get to this house and beforehand the shamans called and just kind of

01:25:46.020 asked me what I wanted to work through. And I said, you know, I have these couple of events that

01:25:50.000 were very traumatic, the morgue, the coroner's telling my children. I couldn't remember anything

01:25:54.820 from the time I'd gotten the call until I'd landed until after the plant journey. So I had pretty much

01:26:01.260 That whole story about getting on the airplane and the woman helping you.

01:26:04.600 I didn't know where I, I don't, I still can't remember where the layover was, but I couldn't

01:26:08.740 remember a lot of that flight. And so I knew there was some trauma there that had been blocked out.

01:26:14.680 And I thought, well, I better be able to access that. So she listened to it all. And then we got

01:26:19.140 together. It was this beautiful group. We talked about intention. We talked about, you know, what we

01:26:22.960 hoped to get out of it. Everything opposite of what I thought it would be, which was just like

01:26:26.420 everyone popping pills and dancing to rave music. Just a good group of people. I could just loving

01:26:31.940 people supportive. I mean, it's kind of a funny story. So the first thing they gave me,

01:26:35.540 they gave me something and I took it and I had a full blown panic attack and I raised my hand and

01:26:40.280 I was like, so I told you it's not working. Like I want it out. And she came over and was like,

01:26:44.660 we gave you a placebo because we knew that you first hump was going to be a big one for you.

01:26:49.720 And she did kind of similar to what the woman on the plane did. She put her hand on my head and I 0.96

01:26:53.640 laid down and she actually breathed me through my panic attack. And she said, that wasn't anything.

01:26:58.400 Now this is it. And she said, just let it do its work.

01:27:02.460 Did you start with psilocybin or MDMA?

01:27:04.540 They wouldn't tell me exactly what. And oh, I remember we were all laying in a circle and

01:27:08.760 everybody by then was kind of laying down. Someone said, have you dropped in? And I was like,

01:27:13.220 what does it drop in? Like, I don't know. What does it mean to drop in? And someone was like,

01:27:16.600 our friend, which you know, but I will name nameless, but he was like, Jesus Christ. Like,

01:27:20.900 can we get this girl? Can you give her more? But I was like, when are we going to drop in?

01:27:24.920 Everybody. Is anybody else dropped in? And somebody was like, you'll know when you drop in.

01:27:31.480 And I remember like three minutes later, I was like, I'm in. It was just so ridiculous. 0.92

01:27:37.540 It was just so embarrassing. He was like, oh God, here we go. Babysit her all night. 0.98

01:27:42.660 But within like three minutes, I was back on the plane right then. And I started to cry. I was loud.

01:27:48.760 I mean, my friend will tell me I was loud. Our friends were like, you were loud the whole time.

01:27:51.920 But all of a sudden, everybody in the journey space came and sat next to me and we kind of did

01:27:56.380 the flight together. And so I felt supported. And so I cried and cried. And I said, this is so scary.

01:28:02.800 He's dead. You know, I went through the whole thing and they were like, we're right here with

01:28:05.260 you. You're not alone. We're right here. You're safe. Look how strong you are. You're going to your

01:28:10.220 babies. It felt like six hours from what I know now that we've talked about it. It was probably like

01:28:16.440 five or six minutes. I did the whole flight again, but with support. And it was like that

01:28:21.680 first thing was over. And I had peace about it. I remembered the whole thing. I remembered

01:28:25.620 what seat I was in. I remembered transferring planes, all that stuff. And then I got up,

01:28:31.960 I got some water and I was like, I thought I was going to be like drunk and crazy. I was

01:28:35.620 just regular again. I woke up, I got up, I talked to some people, I talked to the shamans. And I

01:28:40.720 remember they were like, would you like, are you going to go in again? And I said, yes.

01:28:43.220 And all I did was lay down again. This whole process was insane to me that it was, I could

01:28:47.900 modulate my experience safely by my intention and whether I close my eyes or not. I mean,

01:28:53.920 I was like, this is not what I thought. So then I revisited the morgue and I was really

01:28:58.400 angry. I had a ton of anger that he'd left me that I had never accessed. I mean, rage,

01:29:02.780 like you fucking left me at 40. You promised you wouldn't. You're a liar. You left me with a 0.99

01:29:08.000 nine and 12 year old. You bastard. I told you to lose weight. And I was furious. I mean, 1.00

01:29:12.500 I remember just a rage I had never felt. And you had never really gone through that stage

01:29:18.400 of grief. Never. Never. In the previous year. I just felt sad for him, scared for him. Where is

01:29:23.240 he? Hope he's okay. Terribly worried about my dead husband. And everyone's like, he's good.

01:29:27.520 Focus on the people that are alive. And at that moment, I had all the anger I'd ever had for him

01:29:32.960 for 20 years, but mostly for leaving me because he had promised he wouldn't. Furious to the point where

01:29:39.040 my friend was like, when you're done with it, I think we're good. We got it. And you're also

01:29:43.680 disrupting the whole group. So he took me up and then one of the facilitators came with me and I

01:29:49.800 said, would you mind? Because my friend had said, why don't you go find Nate? You've done the work.

01:29:54.480 You've gone through a bunch of things. We're hours in at this point. Go find Nate. See what he has to

01:29:58.740 tell you because you wanted to find him. And Peter, no shit. I went up there. I laid down. And one of the 1.00

01:30:06.100 facilitators came in. I said, can you just remember whatever I say? Because I think it's

01:30:08.920 going to be good. And I need you to write it all down. And fast forward at the next day of

01:30:13.460 the integration, he's like, it was too beautiful. I couldn't remember anything. I just sat there and

01:30:16.440 listened. I'm like, oh my God. But I remembered most. So I laid down on the couch by myself and I

01:30:22.180 called for Nate and I promise you, he was just in front of my face. And I know everybody's listening

01:30:27.020 to this. If you know me, you think this is insane, but this is exactly my experience. Nate was right

01:30:31.820 there. He's like, I've never left. And I said, where did you go? He's like, I'm still

01:30:36.080 here. My body wasn't serving me anymore. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, look at

01:30:40.640 this. And he just took his whole body and just threw it on the ground like it was closed. And

01:30:46.020 he's like, I'm right here. And the first thing he did was he showed me my kids and he said,

01:30:50.080 we all chose this. They were born for this. And the kids were kind of on a mountain like Game of

01:30:55.660 Thrones. And he's like, they called for this. We all agreed to this. They're stronger than you

01:30:59.720 think. And then he gave me some tips like he would have if he was here about how to kind of

01:31:04.560 raise them and what they needed from me. And he's like, you need to slow down with Addison

01:31:09.400 or you need to just spend time one-on-one with Jack. Like only things he would know. Then

01:31:14.500 he said, the biggest thing is you've got to live fearlessly. And he said, I'm going to

01:31:17.900 show you what it feels like. And then we flew around the universe. And it was probably the

01:31:24.300 first time in my life I felt free. And he's like, it's all okay. We're all okay. You have

01:31:31.900 a choice right now to just have the best life and I want you to go live it. And I'm right

01:31:36.320 here. You can access me at any time. Just call for me. From that point on, we have a great

01:31:41.540 relationship. I feel him. He sends me songs and birds and hummingbirds. And if I pay

01:31:47.940 attention, he's everywhere. I don't know where you go or what happens, but I am very clear

01:31:53.140 that if we're made of energy and if I can talk to God, why wouldn't I be able to talk to

01:31:56.940 Nate? And so now it's this, like I said, it's even better than our marriage because I talk

01:32:01.260 all the time. He just listens even more. And then he just tells me things in very quick

01:32:05.480 two or three words. You're fine. Yes. Slow down. Stop talking. That's a lot of stop talking.

01:32:12.820 Did you ask him anything in particular that you had never asked him before?

01:32:15.900 I asked him, why did you play football? And he said, because it was the easiest way for

01:32:20.600 people to respect me and listen to me so I could share with them about love. He said,

01:32:24.860 I never really loved playing football, but I love that it gave me access to people so I could

01:32:29.540 talk to them about this stuff I really wanted to talk about, which was never about football.

01:32:33.580 He didn't talk much about football when he was done.

01:32:35.820 He hated it. He hated to talk about it.

01:32:37.920 Did he still watch it?

01:32:39.180 Yeah. Because he loved to put some money on the game and be with his buddies and just scream

01:32:43.500 at a TV and have fun. He was like, Kelsey, this is what you've been waiting for. You knew this was

01:32:48.500 coming. You knew this was coming. You're fine. My time's over. I did my part. Don't worry about me.

01:32:55.100 He's like, it's exceptional where I am. It was beautiful. And maybe it's one of the top three

01:33:01.280 experiences of my life. Probably.

01:33:04.020 Certainly something that most people who've experienced it would say.

01:33:07.460 We talked about this, but Xanax and Ambien and the things that give you for grief work

01:33:12.680 just put you, black you out and you have no idea what happened. I used to wake up and be like,

01:33:17.800 why is everyone sad? What the mushrooms and the whole plant experience gave me was an ability

01:33:23.340 to go towards it and understand it and walk through it and come out of it being like, okay,

01:33:28.920 we're all okay. And I probably was most afraid of death. Most of us are, but that was the biggest

01:33:34.720 fear of my life is I didn't want anybody I love to die and I didn't want to die. And now of course,

01:33:40.740 I'm not looking forward to it, but I have great peace that this is so much bigger and I've seen it

01:33:46.240 and I felt it. And so, I don't know, people get tired because I'm so fired up about plant medicine

01:33:51.640 now from someone who's like, you know, I've probably done five or six since then. Nothing

01:33:55.960 quite as mind-blowing as that first one.

01:33:58.980 What have the subsequent trips been like? Do you go into them with a much more focused intention?

01:34:05.540 I've done both. I've gone in with a focused intention. Like I'm looking for some answers

01:34:09.560 and I've also gone in being like, just tell me what is. For me, it feels like a download of

01:34:13.860 information. It feels like a connection that is so much bigger than anything I could have

01:34:19.220 just in my day-to-day. The biggest thing about plants is this is important. I really need a lot

01:34:24.520 of approval and I've spent my life trying to be great at everything and have people give me

01:34:28.220 attagirls. And when I did that first experience and it's been subsequent in all my experiences is

01:34:33.060 my ego completely goes away. I'm the biggest judgment. I'm a comic. I try to make fun of everybody,

01:34:37.220 use everything against people. And when I'm in those experiences, I have no judgments on anybody.

01:34:43.860 And I have no desire to be liked. And no judgments on yourself.

01:34:47.260 Yeah. I don't, I don't, I, there's this like, it's this 10 or 11 hours where I'm not worried

01:34:52.720 about what people think of me or what I think of them. It's such a relief. So for me, that's the

01:34:58.180 biggest thing I get out of those experiences is this, what would it look like if my ego just got

01:35:02.080 out of the way and I just was present with what is and with what, who is, and you just see good.

01:35:07.340 And I didn't ever feel like messed up. I mean, I literally tell my friends who are still so

01:35:12.500 against it. None of it was scary. Obviously I haven't done any ayahuasca. I'm not called to

01:35:17.740 that at all right now, currently in my life, but man, it's a lot better than getting drunk

01:35:21.640 and crying. You know, I stopped drinking pretty soon after he died because I drink tequila and

01:35:25.740 just sob. And so I'm real clear now that alcohol is a depressant.

01:35:29.300 To this day?

01:35:29.960 Yeah. I drink red wine. Any type of alcohol cues anxiety because the sugar makes my heart

01:35:35.800 race. And then if I can't sleep, my brain starts going. It can be not a safe place. So alcohol

01:35:41.220 just doesn't really work for me anymore.

01:35:43.160 Did you talk with your kids after the psilocybin experience?

01:35:47.060 And tell them about it? No, I haven't yet.

01:35:49.740 As of yet?

01:35:50.300 As of yet. Yeah.

01:35:51.040 They might watch this.

01:35:52.060 Yeah. They might. I left some notes at home and I was like, Jack, can you take a picture

01:35:54.820 of these notes? And I was like, oh shit. Well, there you go. You're going to, if he read 0.99

01:35:58.920 it, he's 16 now. So he would understand it, but they hate drunk people. So there's been

01:36:05.240 a connotation around drugs in our family that it's really not good. So this will have to

01:36:09.500 be a longer discussion. And I don't really know. I mean, I don't, what do you think?

01:36:12.480 When do you talk to your kids about it? Have you talked to your 13 year old?

01:36:15.700 No, not about psychedelics.

01:36:17.620 Yeah, me neither.

01:36:19.060 Actually, that's not true. I've talked about it once with her through the lens of drugs,

01:36:22.760 trying to explain that the legality of a drug is a second order consideration. I mean,

01:36:29.260 it's an important consideration, obviously, if you're trying to abide by the law,

01:36:32.800 you want to think about this first through the lens of the molecule. And I've shared with her

01:36:36.540 this framework that I've borrowed from somebody else that I think is very valuable, right? Which

01:36:40.140 is, because I talk about this all the time with patients, right? So one of the questions you ask

01:36:43.920 a patient during an intake with them is, you know, tell me how many drinks you have in an average

01:36:48.460 week. Tell me which recreational drugs you use. And this is not a judgmental discussion,

01:36:53.060 but it's, you really want to understand this. And look, a lot of times people say, yep,

01:36:56.820 I use Coke once a month. I do this, I do that, I do this, one of that. And so the thing I discussed

01:37:00.600 with them, and this is sort of what I explained to Olivia once was, there are certain drugs,

01:37:05.660 alcohol being a drug as well, where they change your state.

01:37:09.360 I love, I've heard this podcast you did. I love this.

01:37:12.160 But they don't change traits. And then there are others that change your state. And if you use them

01:37:18.080 correctly, they can change your traits. And so I said, and by the way, there are legal and

01:37:23.200 illegal molecules in both of those camps. And that's worth noting and respecting, but really

01:37:30.820 the things in this camp, you have to really ask yourself, how often am I doing this and why am I

01:37:35.700 doing this? And so, you know, I put cocaine very clearly in this camp, right? It clearly changes your

01:37:40.820 state and I've never done cocaine, but the people I talk to who love it, tell me how great they feel

01:37:46.040 when they do it, but they can't make a compelling case for me that it makes them better when they're

01:37:51.220 not on cocaine. And the same is true for alcohol in reality. You have to be careful about the use

01:37:56.920 of those things. And obviously the things we're talking about, psilocybin and MDMA, at least have

01:38:01.700 the potential if done correctly to make you a better version of you long after that medicine is gone.

01:38:07.640 That's exactly it. I am a different person because of those experiences and I'm better. I'm less

01:38:13.380 afraid. I'm more patient. I think I have less answers. I'm more open. I mean, all the things

01:38:19.020 that you hope to get in therapy, but it's very hard to get your brain to change. And I feel like,

01:38:26.000 tell me from a physician standpoint, it opens up a pathway that was blocked. Like it had a blockade.

01:38:31.960 It was always there. You just hadn't gone down it. And so when I took psilocybin, it like moved that

01:38:36.860 blockade. There was a road I never knew that was just ease and love and fearlessness. And after I was

01:38:42.340 done, I started to walk down that road more often in my day-to-day life because for so long,

01:38:46.860 it wasn't even accessible to me. And now it's a road that I choose quite often. And same thing with MDMA.

01:38:53.920 For me, I've done that very rarely, but it's shown me fun. How to just be connected and not, again,

01:39:00.620 not judging and just mom and you're listening. I know you guys had no idea. I was so edgy. But so now,

01:39:07.320 even if I don't do it, I remember the feeling I can access that neural pathway and I can go,

01:39:12.780 oh, Kelsey, you know what it feels like to be at a party and be calm and not worrying about getting

01:39:17.480 home and worried about the Uber and just like be here. And I can almost get myself to that new road

01:39:23.000 that I always had, but it just always had a huge blockade in front of it.

01:39:27.500 I think those are two good examples of how those molecules work. And I mean, I think MDMA really has

01:39:32.500 this ability to create this empathy that is very difficult for most people to access

01:39:39.000 on command or frankly, not under the influence of that medication. To me, if you can craft the

01:39:45.860 intention around that, it's an amazing thing for a relationship as well with yourself, but also with

01:39:51.620 somebody else, especially if there has been something that's gone really wrong.

01:39:55.900 There's been a ton of gifts of grief and I talk about them all the time, but I think

01:39:58.920 that those experiences have been, and everyone hates me for it. Cause once I get excited about

01:40:03.660 something, I get really excited. So I came out of the, I can just blazing hot on plant journeys.

01:40:09.060 And now I kind of understand that you have to be ready and have to want it and have to be ready to

01:40:13.280 be open to it. But I am.

01:40:15.660 I do think that at least in my limited experience, I think that the best of both worlds is when you

01:40:21.720 combine that work with the traditional work of therapy. And I do think that if there's one thing

01:40:27.620 about the new appreciation people have of psychedelics that I think is dangerous, it's that

01:40:33.480 people believe that the plant or the molecule by itself can do all the work. Like all I have to do

01:40:38.260 is do psilocybin once a month or once a quarter and it's all good. And it's like, no, those are

01:40:43.400 incredible lubricants to allow you to do very difficult things when you're long off the influence

01:40:51.500 of those medications. So I, I also think like it's impossible to say what fraction of your recovery

01:40:57.560 has been predicated on that experience versus all that came before it and after it and around it.

01:41:03.340 So that's the one thing that I tend to remind people.

01:41:06.780 That's smart. Cause I've done a ton of work. I've done, I've read a bunch. I think the other big

01:41:11.280 thing that I do that has supported all of that is just, I'm militant about meditation, militant.

01:41:18.200 And were you before?

01:41:19.220 I had started on the path, but maybe 20 minutes a day here and there, maybe insight timer. Once Nate

01:41:25.600 died, it became a must. And to this day, I saw you guys just got the sauna bag, but I will sit

01:41:31.760 in with dispense. I think dispense probably dispenses work has probably changed my life

01:41:38.020 the most in terms of a daily practice. So changing a thought or watching a thought or knowing that my

01:41:44.580 feelings are transient and that I can change a feeling through a changing a thought, or I can

01:41:49.040 say change, or I can say stop. It doesn't mean they're not going to come, but I do have some

01:41:52.980 agency in how I feel and what I feel, which I never believed before. Like you said, if you do the

01:41:59.580 psychedelics in conjunction with a very deep meditation and committed spiritual practice

01:42:05.480 that gives you peace, whatever that might be, you have a great shot at coming out of pretty much

01:42:10.900 everything. I've always found it sad. I'm only saying something that I'm sure billion other

01:42:16.900 people have thought or said, but it's remarkable that this isn't taught alongside English, science,

01:42:25.460 math to kids coming from school. Like you, you can play the thought experiment of what if from the

01:42:30.620 moment kids entered kindergarten, we had an emotional health class as well. That was part of the core

01:42:36.460 curriculum where you learned to distance yourself from your thoughts. Spend 30 minutes a day on this

01:42:43.820 course throughout K to 12. How many different habits could we develop and how could we equip

01:42:50.360 ourselves? You mentioned something in your book that resonates deeply with me, which is radical

01:42:55.500 acceptance. When did you first encounter that term?

01:42:59.120 Tara branch, rock branch. My mom was into this stuff for a long time. So this was always in the

01:43:04.580 background noise of my life. My dad left when I was 15 and my mom really went on this journey. So

01:43:10.180 these books and these people were a part of it. But the idea of radical acceptance that something

01:43:15.560 wasn't good or bad probably happened, I mean, after Nate died. I mean, I don't think, I think I knew of it

01:43:21.060 in practice, but when everything's good, seems good, it's hard to, you're like, oh yeah, good luck to

01:43:25.560 those people that have a sick kid or whatever. I hope they just accept what is. And I always thought that

01:43:30.540 before I really experienced it that it is what it is was an annoying statement. It was kind of just

01:43:36.740 like a throwaway, like, oh, well, it is it. Life's shit. So just accept it. And now I'm like, no, it's 1.00

01:43:41.320 beautiful. It is what it is. How wonderful is that? It doesn't mean it won't feel hard. It doesn't

01:43:46.460 mean it's not miserable. It just means it is exactly what you are going through. And the resistance to

01:43:52.900 that and the wishing it was different is what kills you. So a lot of people say, how are you doing so

01:43:57.460 well? And I say, because I don't wish it was different. That's pretty much it. Do you think your kids

01:44:02.880 understand that? I don't know. They were so young. I'm really working on understanding that they have

01:44:08.320 their own path to this and their own journey. And we all have different relationships to Nate and

01:44:13.160 different stories that we tell in our head. I would say they are surprised at how great life is

01:44:19.140 compared to what they thought it would be when he first died. Sometimes they'll say, I mean, isn't it

01:44:23.660 great? We're so happy again. Isn't it great that we have fun again? Look at how good our

01:44:28.640 life is. So that's their way of saying like, we made it in some way. We accepted what is

01:44:34.440 and we continue to build a life that was beautiful. We talk a lot in our house about what would

01:44:39.280 Nate want us to do and Nate would want us to be joyful. So if you want to honor your dead

01:44:44.860 person, the best way to do it is live the life they would want you to live if they were

01:44:48.740 here. So in that sense, the kids, we can't even take it out anymore. He's gone. And so

01:44:54.500 our life is this and we miss him and we're happy and we accept it and we miss him. But

01:45:01.400 yeah, radical acceptance, I think it gets easier the more you do it. So I mean, little things,

01:45:06.260 you know, you practice at the stoplight, you're like, and the light isn't moving. And it's all

01:45:10.100 the things we've all read. But until you have to practice it, because you're in such a dark

01:45:13.400 spot, I don't know that you can. And people always say like, oh, can you transform without

01:45:17.600 going through something big? I don't know if you can. I read it all. And I intellectually knew it

01:45:23.060 all. But until I had to really dig into those practices, I would say prepare with them. But until

01:45:28.840 you get to that point, there is magic in that transformation when you do the work. But I don't

01:45:33.900 know. What are your thoughts? You think you have to go through hard things? I don't think I'm

01:45:37.780 equipped to answer the way you are. Yeah. I suspect so, but. I was hoping not. Or at least

01:45:43.840 the near miss, I have a good friend, Rick Elias, who was actually on the podcast. He was on

01:45:49.240 that US air flight that was going to crash and somehow made the miraculous landing in

01:45:53.840 the Hudson River in 2009. Nothing bad happened to him. But there was a two minute period where

01:46:00.160 he really thought, no, no, this is it. I am dead. He went through all of that. That was

01:46:05.620 13 years ago this month. And Rick is still living the life of the guy who was given a second

01:46:12.440 chance. I agree. So could Rick have come to this same set

01:46:18.260 of principles that guide his life today without that? I just don't know. My guess is there's

01:46:22.460 maybe somebody that could. I don't know that I could. There's just a real relief when you

01:46:25.820 stop wishing it was different. Whatever it is. When you stop wishing whatever you're going

01:46:30.160 through wasn't and you just go like, let's roll. What I've got to learn? What's on the other

01:46:35.100 side of this? What will it feel like when it's transformed into something different? What can I get

01:46:39.680 excited about? I think that the practices work. That's what I believe now. I believe that you can

01:46:46.120 get through things. And I've got a lot of easy, easy ways because my situation is fairly easy. If

01:46:52.260 you look at it the way we can spin some of it, it's better that he's not here. I was left with

01:46:56.620 resources. I always think too about grief. If a woman has resources, it's a very different 1.00

01:47:01.020 experience than if you don't. There's a thousand things that interact to make your experience what it

01:47:06.320 is. But internally, the Stoics and the Buddhists and believing in something bigger than you, 0.61

01:47:12.580 those are kind of key pillars, at least for me. What would you say to a man or woman or a child 0.96

01:47:18.140 listening to this right now who's three months out from that tragedy based on everything you've

01:47:23.520 learned? To start, just hang on. Just hang on for now. Humans are built to last. We're built to make

01:47:30.320 it through things and do the work. Whatever that work is, wherever you're trying to go do the work,

01:47:36.180 the work will eventually support you. I think of it if you're over here and you're trying to get

01:47:40.220 over here and you've got to build a bridge. Once you build the bridge, you'll get over there,

01:47:44.100 but you've got to go to work. The bridge isn't there yet. And that's where the meditation and the

01:47:48.940 reading and the gratitude and the changing your brain, those are each plank that you're building to

01:47:54.020 get over to the other side. And if you do the work, you're going to look back and be like,

01:47:57.780 damn, I never thought I could build that bridge. And you're going to be more confident and more

01:48:02.160 joyful because you just saw you did something you never thought you could do. So life just got

01:48:06.320 sweeter. How hard was it to write the book? It, you know, I didn't have any pressure around it. And

01:48:13.660 I know, I think you're writing a book. I didn't have any pressure on it because it was just-

01:48:17.580 Not why I asked, by the way. No, no, no. No, but I remember Jill talking about that you were

01:48:23.340 writing one. For me, I had to get the story out. It was very personal because I wanted my

01:48:27.640 kids to remember. And I wanted to remember because I knew I was going to love again. And I knew I was

01:48:31.280 going to date and I knew I was going to have other relationships. And time is a miracle when it comes

01:48:36.440 to life because as time goes on, the pain does gradually get better. And so I thought I better

01:48:41.640 make sure that the story of this great man is down so that my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren

01:48:45.800 will know where they came from and who he was and how this all happened. Somewhere in the middle,

01:48:50.280 you think this is such shit. It was embarrassing to like, I shouldn't even show it to my worst enemy 0.99

01:48:55.360 because this is just blabber of nothing. And I'm so bored with what I wrote. It's so dumb.

01:49:00.420 And it's so ridiculous. I mean, just stop now because this is torture for you and nobody's- 1.00

01:49:05.720 This is horrible. And then you get to a point where you've written enough and then it gets to

01:49:11.360 an editor and they make it a little better and they give you some feedback and you just start

01:49:15.780 cutting stuff out. Then it got fun because I was like, just cut out all the junk that you tried

01:49:21.280 to make and just tell it like it is. And don't worry about what people think. And I'm so glad I

01:49:27.780 did it. I can't imagine doing it again. And I know I want to, but I don't even know where you start.

01:49:31.520 It feels surreal now. You forget. You forget sitting there looking at your computer being like,

01:49:36.360 this is possibly the boring-est paragraph I've ever written. And we're like,

01:49:39.140 it's a unique experience writing a book because the internal dialogue and anxiety and just disgust

01:49:46.420 with what you're putting out is really epic. You're reading what you already hated that you

01:49:52.060 wrote. And it's just double flogging. I would tell people, write it down because man, it helps

01:49:57.740 somebody. Somebody is going to be helped by it or get inspired by it. And just go easy on yourself

01:50:03.720 with a book. What's the most surprising thing that you've received as a way of feedback?

01:50:09.120 There's been so many people that have written, thank you for being honest. I think what that

01:50:16.240 means is the good and the bad, not trying to play grief either way, that there is a duality to

01:50:22.840 everything in life. And people are like, thank you for letting us know that it was awful. And you felt

01:50:26.160 like you were on fire and you couldn't wait to have sex with other people. Thank you for knowing that 0.98

01:50:30.480 you know that you lost the man of your dreams and you also get to meet other people and have a new

01:50:35.780 experience that might be exactly what was meant to be. This sense that everything isn't good or bad

01:50:40.580 either way. So there's a whole life I'm going to have that I never even knew possible. And there was

01:50:45.480 one that I really love that got taken away. So people say, thank you for giving it a multifaceted

01:50:51.560 approach to this experience I'm having. Did your kids read it before you published it?

01:50:56.500 No. Have they read it?

01:50:57.860 No, they don't want to either. They are terribly embarrassed by it and secretly proud. They don't

01:51:04.440 want it out. And then Jack's like, mom, I'm taking your book to my school counselor because

01:51:09.180 well, she asked what your job was and I didn't know what to tell her. I said, she wrote a book

01:51:12.940 and I was like, they're proud of it, but they're also way more private than me. I'm the least private

01:51:18.080 person on the planet. So I'm learning to understand that they'll tell it in their time and they'll read

01:51:23.320 it in their time and their experience will be very different from what I wrote. I'm fairly certain

01:51:27.200 that they'll read chapters and go, that's not how it went. I didn't do that. I didn't say that,

01:51:31.000 but we'll see. I don't know how they'll be. Well, Kelsey, I can't thank you enough. This

01:51:36.380 is just such a beautiful story. And I think people are going to be infinitely enriched whether

01:51:41.480 they've experienced something like this or whether they will, because I think we all will. It might

01:51:46.240 not be as sudden. It might not be as tragic with a capital T, but the human experience is one of loss.

01:51:53.560 So thank you for everything you've done. Thank you so much for having me. It really means a lot to me.

01:51:57.600 Thank you for listening to this week's episode of The Drive. If you're interested in diving deeper

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The Peter Attia Drive - May 23, 2022

#208 - Tragedy, grief, healing, and finding happiness ｜ Kelsey Chittick

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