Grief, when it comes, is nothing where you expect it to be.
Joan Didion wrote that in her book 'The Year of Magical Thinking,' and boy, was she right. It's nothing what you expect it to be and it's different for everybody. So, wherever you are in your grief, I hope you find something in this podcast today that's helpful. In a few minutes, I'll sit down with President Joe Biden in the White House for a conversation about the losses in his life and how he lives with them. It is, I think, the first time any sitting U.S. president has agreed to do an entire interview solely focused on grief.
'A couple of days before the interview, I was going through a box of stuff in my basement that belonged to my brother, Carter. He died by suicide in 1988. I don't have a lot of photos of Carter visible in my house. I still find it too painful. In the box, there were a bunch of pictures of him, but two in particular stood out: a Polaroid I'd seen before and a framed black and white photo which was one of my mom's favorites. It was taken by a friend of his, Winky Lewis, shortly before he graduated Princeton. He's smiling and he looks so young and so handsome and so happy. Fifteen months later, he killed himself in front of our mom. He was twenty-three. Sitting on the basement floor studying his face in these pictures, I found myself weeping. I wasn't sure why at first, but later it hit me.
'I don't recognize the person in these photos. I don't recognize my own brother. He looks nothing like I remember him. And it's not just that I've forgotten what he looked like 35 years ago. I don't recognize him because I never really knew him. I never knew my own brother. I never allowed myself to. And I never allowed him to know me. After our dad died, we each - we retreated into ourselves. We had ten years to talk about it and we never did. I want to tell the boy in these photos that I see the sadness he's hiding, and I see his fear. And I want to tell him I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
Why is it so hard to talk about loss and the grief that follows? We keep it hidden away, cry in private, speak the names of our dead in hushed whispers only we can hear. That's what I've done my entire life. And I see now the price I paid. I think back to what Francis Weller said in last week's episode.
'When we're asked to carry it alone privately, we end up carrying it around a U-Hauls dragging this weight behind us. And in that privatization, in that sense of having to sequester my grief within my own being, I feel like I'm all alone in this. And that's one of the most intolerable places for the soul to be.
'I think he's absolutely right, and it does feel intolerable. There's one reason I wanted to talk with President Biden. He's been so public about the pain of loss he's experienced and he's managed to stay engaged in the world. He isn't the only president, of course, to have experienced terrible tragedy, but none have been willing to share so much about it publicly, particularly when they were in office. More than 15 US presidents have lost children. John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson all lost four of their kids. Jefferson was said to have carried a lock of hair belonging to one of his deceased daughters all his life. Abraham Lincoln watched two sons die. His 11-year-old Willie died in the White House, likely of typhoid. His funeral was held in the East Room. John F. Kennedy also lost a son while serving as president, a newborn named Patrick, who only lived about 39 hours. Both Roosevelts experienced the deaths of children, as did Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. His three year old daughter, Robin, died of leukemia in 1953. President Biden's first wife, Neilia, and their 13 month old daughter Naomi, were killed in a car crash in 1972. His young sons, Beau and Hunter, were badly injured. Beau died of cancer in 2015.
The White House had set up two chairs for the president and I to sit in facing each other at some distance in the library of his residence. It was a standard setup for a standard interview with the president, but it seemed too formal to me, so I asked if they'd bring a table we could sit around, something we could lean forward on, and if the president was so inclined, talk more intimately face to face. They brought a table in, we arranged the microphones and then the president appeared. We shook hands. He sat down and we began to speak.
I know you're reluctant to talk about your grief publicly because people have suffered worse, you've said, and you've got support that other people haven't gotten. And I know that given all that's happening in the world and all this suffering that we're seeing, it may seem trivial to talk about one person's suffering but I do think it helps people to hear from others who have survived grief and live with grief as you have and I know it's the only thing that's really helped me. So thank you for doing this.
President Joe Biden
00:05:40
Oh, I'm happy to do it. Look, one of the first things I learned after I got that phone call when I was down here.
President Joe Biden
00:05:51
1972, and I got a phone call from the fire department at home in Delaware, and they put a young woman on the phone, one of the first responders and said "you gotta come home. There's been an accident." And I said, "what's the accident?" She said "your wife and three kids who were hit by a tractor trailer and you should come home." And the poor kid, she was the woman said: "your wife's dead. Your daughter's dead. And your boys are really hurt."
Your daughter was 13 months old.
President Joe Biden
00:06:23
Yeah, 13 months old. My boys were not quite three. Not quite four. A year and a day apart. And I just remember, like a lot of people feel, I think I remember walking out through the Capitol and looking up at the heavens saying "why'd you do," you know, I was angry, like I was talking to God. I know it sounds strange, but it was I was really angry.
You were just 30. You just been elected to the Senate. You'd fallen love with this woman on a beach in the Bahamas. Neilia was her name. And Naomi was your daughter?
President Joe Biden
00:06:57
Yeah.
Did you know how to grieve at that time?
President Joe Biden
00:07:00
'Well, I won the gene pool. I was raised by a mom and a dad who were - my mom was a person of faith, my dad was a guy who'd been through some tough times and just got up. The saying in the family was "just get up, just get up." And when you get knocked down, just get up. And I had the great advantage because when it happened to me, I had a whole family. My deceased wife and I had purchased a home. It had a barn. My brother moved in and turned the barn into a little apartment. My sister and her husband left their place and moved in with me to help me raise the kids. And we have an expression in our family, "if you have to ask, it's too late." I mean, for real. And they were there and my mom lived and my dad lived -
You wrote about that time. You said you "felt trapped in a constant twilight of vertigo, like in the dream where you're suddenly falling, only I was constantly falling." And you went on to say, "I began to understand how despair led people to just cash it in. How suicide wasn't just an option, but a rational option." Did you actually feel that? Did you actually think about that?
President Joe Biden
00:08:14
I did. I thought about I can understand how people could do it. I didn't contemplate it, per se, because I had two boys that needed me.
You wrote that you looked at them when they were sleeping and you said, "who would explain to my sons my being gone?"
President Joe Biden
00:08:28
'That's true. Because look, you could see how people, when they've been to the top of the mountain, had everything, their life was like wonderful, and everything gets crushed, how they could say, "I'm never going to be there again, so I don't want to do this anymore." But you know, one thing I did do, I'm the only Irishman I've ever met that never had a drink. And actually the downstairs in the house we were still living and the boys and I and I would take out a bottle of liquor and put on a table and say "I'm going to drink and I'm going to get drunk." I never took a drop but I'd stare at it and, you know, just how - how do you escape?
There was a Senator McClellan was his name who had lost a number of his own kids. And he advised you to bury yourself in work? Yeah. He said to you, Work, work, work, work.
President Joe Biden
00:09:21
Yep.
'I buried myself in work much of my life for this reason. But you - did you do that or did you not?
President Joe Biden
00:09:30
I did that in the sense that I didn't want to stay in the Senate. I was going to leave. And I had my brother talking to the governor about a replacement for me.
You were criticized at the time for not spending more time in Washington, for going home every night to be with your boys.
President Joe Biden
00:09:45
But I did. Every single night I got on the train to go home because I wanted to kiss them goodnight. And every night, no matter what time I got home, sometimes it was late. They'd be in bed, I'd climb in bed with each of them individually.
'That was 51 years ago. And my dad died when I was ten years old and my brother when I was 21. And I still have a hard time talking about it. And I wondered, 51 years later on, is it something that still - you think about it every day, still?
President Joe Biden
00:10:18
'I got really lucky. No man deserves one great love, let alone two. My youngest brother set me up on a blind date five years after I lost Neilia. And Jill, I had to ask her five times to marry me, literally, but my boys were in good shape. They were coming along. Again, I had just an incredible family. I told you the expression in the family was just get up. Get knocked down? Get up. And I read one of you - I heard one of your podcasts about how you started unpacking boxes and how difficult it was.
Yeah, I've been going through my mom's boxes, still. They're all in my basement, still.
President Joe Biden
00:11:03
'Well, I get that one because I purchased this home that we loved and it was a neat house and we loved it. But every time - I couldn't take any more opening the closets, smelling the fragrance or walking through a room and having a memory or packing up the clothing. I mean, it was, that was a
President Joe Biden
00:11:22
Really, really hard. And so I decided that we're just going to sell the house. We're going to move. And we did. But it was a really difficult time because it was all still so raw. Fast forward about ten years later. I built a home and I built on a pond. And across the pond was a woods. I remember where we, if we had a fundraiser for my campaign, we'd do it at my home and my dad would come. And we're standing out in this back porch looking over this pond. And I didn't think I was being maudlin I said, "you know, I wish Neilia could have seen this because she lived up in the Finger Lakes and Lake Skaneateles, loves the lakes. And my dad went up to the local Hallmark store and came back with a framed version of Hagar the Horrible.
President Joe Biden
00:12:21
The old comic book and the Viking with his ship. And there's two frames in it. One where his ship gets struck by lightning and he's standing looking up a guy and saying, "Why me?" And the next frame is a voice from him who says, "Why not?" My dad handed it to me and said, "Don't forget it, honey. Don't forget it."
'My mom always used to - my mom, who had experienced a lot of tragedies in her life and witnessing the death of my brother in front of her never said, she would never ask "Why me?" She would always say, "Why not me?" Why should I be exempt from the suffering of others?
President Joe Biden
00:12:52
'Well, your mother was ahead of me. Because it was, I mean, and - that was my dad, though, you know, you can't feel sorry for yourself. So many other people go through so much more than you've gone through. He never said it that way, but it was like, you know, "Why, why would you be exempt?"
You and I both spoken to Stephen Colbert about grief. He was on the podcast, and one of the things he said to me, he said, people are afraid to talk about grief because they think it's a trap of depression. He says grief is a doorway to another you because you're going to be a different person on the other side of it. Do you feel like you're a better person because of the grief you've experienced?
President Joe Biden
00:13:28
'Well, that would be presumptuous of me to say better or worse but I'm slightly different. I find myself focusing on the things - probably the best thing that's ever happened to me was one of the worst things. When I was a kid, I stuttered badly t-t-t-talk-talk like-like that. And I was the runt of the litter, too. I was always a little guy. And I used to hate the fact I stuttered, it was - tighten me up so much. Having to read aloud at school or those kinds of things were really hard. But I realized it was a great lesson I learned because everybody has something they can't fully control, everybody. And so it turned out to be a great gift for me that I stuttered. I think the upside of going through what I went through is making me realize that there's so many people out there who've gone through so damn much and they have none of the kind of help I had. I mean, I was I really think, Anderson, I think there's a lot of heroes who get up every morning, put one foot in front in the other and don't know how the hell they do it. Don't know how they do it.
We're going to take a short break. We'll have more of my conversation with President Biden in a moment.
Welcome back to All There Is. Now, more of my conversation with President Joe Biden.
You talked about the stuttering as a gift. It's interesting because Stephen Colbert also, one of the things he once said to me, which really struck me, he talked about a realization that he had had that he was grateful for his grief. And he quoted a line that J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer, wrote saying, what punishments of God are not gifts. And when I asked Stephen if he really believed that, he said that, yes. And he explained that he had gratitude for the pain of grief.
It doesn't take the pain away. It doesn't make the grief less profound. In some ways, it makes it more profound because it allows you to look at it. It allows you to examine your grief in a way that it is not like holding a red hot ember in your hands, but rather seeing that pain as something that can warm you and light your knowledge of what other people might be going through.
Do you feel grateful for your grief?
President Joe Biden
00:16:00
'No, I don't feel grateful for it, but I feel that it's giving me an insight, look -
An insight into other people?
President Joe Biden
00:16:09
Yeah. And I was raised in a family where you were expected to reach out to people. It wasn't something you had to go through something horrible. I remember my you know, I joke that, you know, I learned my values in my grandpa Finnegan's kitchen table up in Scranton when he used to say, "Joe, remember, you're a man of your word. Without your word, you're not a man." And he'd talk about how he lost his son, Ambrose Finnegan, in the war, and he'd talked about all the good pieces of him why he was so special and how the family stuck together. And, you know, and my dad went through some tough times but my dad just got back up.
That was the ethos in the family.
President Joe Biden
00:16:51
Yeah, no, it really was. I mean, it was throughout the family.
'Just this past year, I've kind of had what I consider a kind of an awakening to this grief that I buried very long ago when I was very young, when I wasn't able to deal with it as a little boy. I still feel overwhelmed - almost on the verge of being overwhelmed by it. And I'm wondering, do you ever still feel overwhelmed by grief?
President Joe Biden
00:17:17
I do. As it relates to my son, Beau.
President Joe Biden
00:17:23
Yeah, he had been in Iraq, unfortunately, for a year and next to one of those burn pits. And he got glioblastoma, brain disease.
President Joe Biden
00:17:34
Yeah. When he came home, it was clear that it was a death sentence. It wasn't a question of if, but when he was going to die, how long it would take. But I think you have to find purpose, purpose beyond your pain.
You have to find some meaning to get you through. .
President Joe Biden
00:17:53
'Something to keep you completely engaged. And I had two things, for example, every single day, I talk to every one of my children or grandchildren who are alive. I mean, literally, I text him every single day, I talk to them. The thing that saved me and Jill with Beau was the fact that we have these kids who just keep reaching out. You keep touching them. I know you have two children now, but, I mean, they were my salvation. They were you know, they'd -
And even when we Neilia died, you've said that it was Beau and Hunter, little kids at the time, that saved you.
President Joe Biden
00:18:32
Oh, absolutely. I remember riding. We were in the car. Hunter was, I guess five years old. Six years old. And we're riding along and the top was down, in those days, you could put a kid in your lap.
I remember those days, it was crazy.
President Joe Biden
00:18:49
And we stopped at a stop sign and we were in the country and he looked up, he looked out. And all these cows arond grazing and he looked, he said, "Daddy, I love you more than the whole sky, the whole sky." And you know, I'd get home and and they could tell, too, when I was down and they'd just be there.
In your book, your last book, on the back page was a beautiful photo of Beau when he was 8 or 9.
President Joe Biden
00:19:19
Yeah
And he's turning and he's waving to the camera. And you said somewhere that that's the age you always see him in your mind's eye. And I'm wondering, is that still true?
President Joe Biden
00:19:33
'Yeah, it is. He had a smile on his face, just waving. He's walking into the garden. And look, Beau and Hunt, they finish each other's sentences, they are as close as they could possibly be. I think the loss of Beau was a profound, profound impact on Hunter. But when Jill and I got married, she was just totally embraced by them. Everything we've done, we've always done as a really close-knit family.
We were talking about being overwhelmed at times and you you brought up Beau. And I'm wondering, I read a book by Evan Osnos who wrote a book about you, and he talked to a couple of people who knew you. And some of them said that after Beau's death, that they saw a change in you. And one person said it was almost physical. You could see it in how he stood. He wasn't the old college football player anymore. He emerged as the sort of humbled, purposeful man. And I'm wondering, how do you think Beau's death altered your sense of yourself?
President Joe Biden
00:20:44
Well, I think it. It made me a little more fatalistic. It also caused me and Jill enormous pain because he should be the one sitting there talking to you, Beau. He was a better man than I am, and so is Hunter. Both boys were always looking out for me, taking care of me if they thought I was getting down they'd, "hey, Dad, come here. We're going to do boom, boom, boom."
You've talked about how Beau made you promise you weren't going to turn inward and you weren't going to step back from all the things that you devoted your life to. And I'm wondering, how do you do that when you feel like your heart is taken away from you? How do you not turn inward? Because I turned inward when I was a little kid and I'm not sure I've ever emerged from that.
President Joe Biden
00:21:37
'Well, I'll tell you exactly what happened. Jill and I went home on a Friday night to see Beau. He was, we didn't have much time left. He wasn't in the hospital bed, but he was it was clear what the diagnosis read. And anyway, he said to his wife, would you put the kids to bed? I want to talk to Dad. He said, Dad, look at me, Dad. And there's this tradition I don't know where the hell it came from in our family, we said, if you want someone - look at me, Dad, and he pointed, said look at me, Dad. I said, I'm looking at Johnny. He said, I want your word as a Biden, promise me. Promise me you'll be okay when I go. I said, Beau, I do want to talk about it. He said, Dad. Promise me. I know you, Dad. You're going to want to quit. You're going to want to go and you're not going to want to do it anymore. Dad. Promise me you will not quit. Give me your word, Dad. I said Beau. He said Dad, give me your word, Dad. And I made a promise. He knew me better than I know me. And he knew my instinct would be just turn inward.
Do you still feel him with you?
President Joe Biden
00:22:48
Oh, I do. All the time. I ask myself. I promise you. I promise you. I ask myself all the time, What would Beau do? A difficult decision...
Do you literally feel him?
President Joe Biden
00:23:01
Yes.
I mean, in good days, I feel people I've lost with me. But there's a loneliness to grief. I find.
President Joe Biden
00:23:10
There is. But look, I had an advantage. I still had Ashley and I still have Hunt. And I'll get calls from my daughter or my son saying, Dad, how are you doing today? Everyting okay? Good? Doing well? I mean, it's constant contact.
Do you feel alone in your grief still at all?
President Joe Biden
00:23:32
No, because I think that Beau's death was even more profound for Hunter and for Ashley. They were like one person. I mean.
You're wearing Beau's rosary right now.
President Joe Biden
00:23:46
I am. It's Our Lady of of Guadalupe.
It's interesting. I talked to a palliative care doctor named B.J. Miller, and he said to me that the loneliness so many people feel in grief is itself a bond and that maybe people can come to see it as a communal experience. There's there's a communal experience in that loneliness, ironically.
President Joe Biden
00:24:09
Well, there is, at least in my family and people who are really close to Beau, I mean, we'll be sitting there sometimes not having talked about anything. And all of a sudden, you know, my daughter will say, you know, remember when Beau did that? We were at the beach. Remember that time Beau did boom, boom, boom.
And you're able to tell those stories?
President Joe Biden
00:24:30
Yeah, I think because we forced ourselves to do it. And now it's it's kind of like a glue that holds us together.
President Joe Biden
00:24:41
Well, it really is. I mean, Beau's two children. I'm with them. We're with them all the time. I mean, Natalie's turned out to be such an incredible kid. She's happy. She's doing really well. His son's a handsome young boy. Every single Thanksgiving since before Beau passed away, we go to Nantucket because that's where Beau liked to go as a family and all of us together because it's just the memories.
President Joe Biden
00:25:10
Yeah.
I spoke to a woman named Rachel Goldberg a couple of weeks ago in Israel. Her son, Hersh, had part of his left arm blown off in a bomb shelter when he was hiding from Hamas gunmen.
President Joe Biden
00:25:21
I remember this woman.
And he's been taken hostage. And she was on a call with you, she told me about with about ten other Americans whose loved ones are probably being held hostage. She said that there was another mother on the Zoom call, two of her children were missing. She'd already been informed that one of her children was dead and during the call, she got up and she came back in and unmuted the Zoom. She said, I'm sorry to break in, but I've just been told my other child has been found dead. And she was screaming. And Rachel said that you cried and everybody cried. And then after some time, according to Rachel, you said, I know loss. I've lost two children. I lost my wife. And I'm telling you that you need to go through this. But you also need to remember that you will be strong again for your family. And Rachel said to me that it wasn't platitudes, that it was a real moment of a father who's lost two children, talking to a mother who's also lost two children. There's not a lot of people who are able to step into other people's pain the way you are willing to.
President Joe Biden
00:26:26
'Look, I mean. You know, I just. I can remember the worst of all feelings I've ever had in my life, where I didn't know whether my two boys were alive when I was going home once I heard that accident call and I'm told that my wife was dead on top of my one son. My daughter is dead on top of my other son. And it took several hours and the jaws of life, to get them out. And what I've never been able to do, some people can't, I never wanted to know the detail. I didn't want to know any of the details. I was on a committee on transportation in the United States Senate and there were issues about trucks and brakes. And I didn't want to, like, I couldn't hold hearings. I didn't want any part of that. I couldn't do it. And I remember when we - I told you we sold the house that we had bought. And the house we moved into, I had moved all those boxes you talk about. Well, I moved on the third floor, a bunch of boxes I had never opened and I opened one of them. I opened one of the boxes that had never been opened. I was to decide whether to throw them out or not. There were about 15 boxes in that third floor attic room. And there was a scrapbook. And someone thinking they were doing me a favor kept a scrapbook of the accident and everything. And I opened it up and there was a picture of the car. I closed it. I took it downstairs and I burned it. I could not. Could not. I don't want to know the detail. I don't want to know the details. I'd like to pray, God, that that car hit and they were gone. And the boys don't remember anything. But, you know, well, I just think it's really, really, really difficult for that woman to get that news. The hardest part was going home because I wasn't sure the message I got, I'm not sure the boys are going to make it.
President Joe Biden
00:28:31
I didn't know if they were dead or alive, going home.
Just finally, because I know we're out of time. There's a psychotherapist named Francis Weller who was on the podcast. And one of the things he writes, he said, Our refusal to welcome the sorrows that come to us, our inability to move through these experiences with true presence and conscious awareness condemns us to a life shadowed by grief. Welcoming everything that comes to us is the challenge. This is the secret to being fully alive. I very much want to get to that place. I'm not sure I can, but. Do you feel like you're in that place?
President Joe Biden
00:29:07
'It's one thing to welcome it. Another thing to deal with it. I don't know anybody who welcomes grief. I didn't welcome it but you gotta confront it, get a deal with it, look at it, understand it, and decide I'm moving on because I have another purpose in life. My two children are alive, my grandchildren, my wife, my whatever it is. It's not welcoming grief, it's facing it. And one of the things I tell people, the moment will come when the memory of the one you lost or you're dealing, fighting through, where you're going to open one of those boxes and you're going to smile before you cry, that's when you know you're going to make it. The time will come. But you gotta face it. But it's hard as hell. And like I said, the thing I mean is from the bottom of my heart, my word as a Biden, I think it's critical that people understand that they're always going to be with you. Your mother's in your heart every single day. Your brother, as horrible as that was for your mother and for you, your brother - but it in your heart, you're there every single day. And there'll come a time as you face up to this. And I'm no psychiatrist to state the obvious. But when you can sort of welcome that, that you have that, you had that, that it was there. I think the hardest thing must be to deal with your brother's circumstance.
Yeah. I get stuck in the way his life ended as opposed to how he lived his life.
President Joe Biden
00:30:46
Bingo. That's what I mean. Look, you know, it's. It's really hard as hell to figure out. I found myself spending a lot of time. What could I have done? Was it my fault this all happened? What could I have done differently?
Yeah, I think about that a lot.
President Joe Biden
00:31:08
What could I have done differently? Maybe I shouldn't have been, you know, commuting. Maybe I, for example, right after this happened, you know, it was a Ford station wagon. I thought, well, maybe I had the wrong car. If there'd been another car, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Maybe they, you know, or if...
You can endlessly go through those.
President Joe Biden
00:31:29
And eventually what you get to is like, I go, I'm going to reveal myself here. I shouldn't do this, probably.
The president is reaching into his pants pocket and pulls out a small silver object. It's another kind of rosary and he's holding it in his hand.
President Joe Biden
00:31:48
'I find solace in my faith and all the stories about how the Irish were persecuted - and this is called a prisoner's rosary. They weren't allowed to have rosaries like Our Lady of Guadalupe in Irish prisons during the famine. But they had these and I find myself, you know, going to bed and - just holding on. And it's almost rote, but it's just, I feel connected to Beau, to Naomi, to Neilia, But again.
It's beautiful to have that faith.
President Joe Biden
00:32:32
Well, again, it's almost more of a feeling than it is articulable, able to articulate the detail of it. But I just think that the time is going to come when, God willing, I'm going to see him again. And I know that sounds probably,
No, I think about that all the time, too.
President Joe Biden
00:32:57
Because, look, she's in your heart. He's in your heart. I mean, you can't look in the mirror and not see her. You can't. It's presumptuous of me to say that.
Oh no, the amazing thing is that my kids look like my mom and look like my brother. It's amazing.
President Joe Biden
00:33:14
Oh, by the way, Beau's son looks like him. Hunter's son looks like Beau.
President Joe Biden
00:33:23
Beau named his son. Hunter and Hunter named his son Beau. I mean, it's like. I know it sounds stupid to people who haven't been through this before but...
President Joe Biden
00:33:33
There's this thing. And I even find that. That I'll find my one of my grandchildren doing what Beau would have done. I mean. I mean literally what Beau would have done.
You see that the cycles repeat in families. You see the. Yes, the I mean you see in the eyes of your grandchildren, the eyes of your son.
President Joe Biden
00:33:55
I do.
Mr. President, thank you for your time.
President Joe Biden
00:33:58
'Well, thank you. And I appreciate you sharing - I think your sharing your situation with so many people gives them hope because a lot of people think I must be the only one that this has happened to me.
President Joe Biden
00:34:08
When they know other people are there and they...
It's the strangest thing about grief is, I mean, there's universal human experience, and yet it feels so lonely and one feels so alone in it.
President Joe Biden
00:34:18
And it is. And people are, and a lot of people aren't inclined to talk about it. Either they don't know how to or want to but anyway, I've never known anybody who hasn't benefited from ultimately talking about it.
President Joe Biden
00:34:37
As my mother'd say, God love you, dear.
That was President Joe Biden at the White House on November 7th. I hope hearing the president, one of the most powerful people on the planet, talk about his grief will help you talk about yours. As hard as it is, it helps to talk. Next week on All There Is Katie Talman, a podcast listener who left me a voicemail about the death of her daughter, Everly. It's a conversation about the pain of losing a child and the crushing isolation she felt in her grief.
I was at a grocery store and I remember feeling like nobody could see me, and I was just screaming inside. And really, I just wanted to talk about her. I wanted to have permission to speak about her because I felt like I wasn't allowed to. I was supposed to sweep that under the rug like it never happened. And it was all of me.
That's next week on All There Is. Thanks for listening. All There Is is a production of CNN Audio. The show is produced by Grace Walker and Dan Bloom. Our senior producers are Haley Thomas and Felicia Patinkin. Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. Support from Charlie Moore, Kerry Rubin, Shimrit Sheetrit, Ronnie Bettis, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Katie Hinman.
