I lost my father in 2022. It was the most beautiful and the hardest experience of my life. Just about a year later, a good friend of mine passed from breast cancer at my age, 50. I learned more in that one year than I have in most of my life.

When my father died I discovered how rich and deep grief can be, how sorrow and loss is also extraordinarily beautiful. When Mel died I learned how much I need to live in my life; every. single. day.

My fathers’ death was demolishing. Nothing in my life had hurt like this. Losing the man who was a pillar for me but also someone who I had had a complicated relationship with, brought me to my knees, again and again. In that deep and gut-wrenching pain I found this vivid sense of love; a love that was raw, unearthed, uncomplicated and untarnished, his love for me, my love for him and my love for myself.

Recently I wrote about his death and told his story on stage @themoth - stage fright aside, the writing, telling and reconnecting to the week of his death brought me back to the beautiful depths of my sorrow, that golden love and loss - and I got to live again with both for a while and I was grateful.

If you’re anything like I was before my father passed, sadness feels like a really bad idea :)

I spent my entire life running from my harder emotions; it is, in part, why I am so successful in the arts. I didn’t allow time or space for grief, for any anger that wasn’t frustration or for the parts of me that had been neglected and mishandled. I buried my past and got busy. I became myopic in my focus on success, bad relationships, chaos and distraction.

By the time my father passed I had begun taking baby steps into my emotions. I would timidly peek in, looking at the complications of my childhood and the hardness I had recreated for myself in adulthood. I was trying to figure out why I always felt so outside of everything and everyone and why I couldn’t cultivate healthy relationships.

I began allowing myself to understand that growing up, my life had been incredibly confusing and hard and that I had perpetuated that confusion and hardship well into adulthood. (More to come on that subject).

When my father died, ready or not, I intentionally faced my sorrow. By then, I was exhausted by my loneliness and low self esteem and I was so ready to figure that shit out and move forward.

I invited grief in and let it swallow me whole.

I didn’t try to fight back.

I didn’t make plans to out run it.

I didn’t get busy and distracted.

I just let it be.

Permitting myself the space to grieve, all the things, not just the loss of his life or my childhood, was the most healing thing I have ever done.

The slow unfolding of that sorrow became the slow unfolding of re-growth, a re-emergence of me. I started seeing myself for who I have always been and me who I am still destined to become.

Being wholly present in my pain and sadness allowed me to move through it, to understand it, to understand me and to learn to accept myself as the whole imperfect person that I am. Today, I am so inspired to keep growing.

It took me 49 years to see there is a real beauty to the darkness and I am so grateful to have let myself live in it for as long as I needed to.

The time we have in these bodies, on these feet, in these moments, is limited. I hope we all have the good fortune to live as much life as we can conjure, to allow hard things the space to exist because they serve to enrich the depths of joy we get to experience as well.

Mels passing the following year reiterated that grief is the ultimate expression of love and, that loss in our lives is imminent. Mel was her own pillar, her own icon, highly revered in the arts and in her own life and strengths. She was an amazing mother and incredible friend. Before she died she would remind all of us to

“live our best lives but to do it quickly”.

And so I continue on, in love, loss, self discovery, total joy and absolute reverence.

On Death

Behind the scenes