When Surviving Is Enough, From “A Slight Change of Plans”

If you’ve listened to our show, at all, ever, you know that grief has been a big part of Nora’s life since 2014 when she lost her husband Aaron. Since then, she’s built this show, her writing, and much of her life around helping others navigate their own grief.

Despite all this, Nora never felt like she was doing enough, until the events of 2021 forced her to slow down and re-examine her grief once again.

Nora recently appeared on the podcast "A Slight Change of Plans" with Dr. Maya Shankar, where she shared for the first time the story of why 2021 was, in Nora’s words, her worst year since 2014. It’s a raw and honest conversation about long-term grief, and we knew we had to share it here.

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You can find "A Slight Change of Plans" on their website or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

I’m Nora McInerny, and if you know anything about me…you know that 2014 was the worst year of my life. Let’s knock on wood. From October to November of that year, I lost a pregnancy, my dad died, and then my husband died. 

And obviously, obviously, from all of that … grew this.

Grew this show. Grew the several books that I have written. The TED talk that I gave. And this group that I had started called The Hot Young Widows Club.

What I did in the wake of all that loss was to wrap myself and my story and my identity and my work into this nice, tight braid.

And in 2021, parts of that braid unraveled. 

And I retired from The Hot Young Widows Club. 

And aside from a few social media posts, and some emails, I haven’t really talked about it in one place, the whole story, until today, with Dr. Maya Shankar, on her podcast, “A Slight Change of Plans.”

It’s a conversation about identity and loss and grief and the very most shameful moment of my entire life. 

I cried recording it, listening to it. And I think it’s just such a well-made, well-produced story, podcast episode, that I wanted to share it with you, here.

This episode is for quitters, or people who want to quit. This episode is for people who find themselves feeling trapped by their story. Trapped by the tasks they have tasked themselves with. And by their own inability to step away, to step back, to say no.

Here’s my conversation with Dr. Maya Shankar, on “A Slight Change of Plans.”

Nora: I almost immediately fell into this trap that I've seen a lot of other people fall into, which is very natural, right? We want to make meaning out of our experiences, but we want to do it really quickly, and we want to alchemize our suffering into some form of self-improvement or a product, a literal things that we can point at and say, "Look, look, I made this thing. This is what it means."

Maya: That's Nora McInerny, author and host of the podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking. She is best known for writing and talking about how to navigate the intensely painful feeling of grief. Nora lost her husband to brain cancer in 2014 and in the months and years following his death, she found comfort and meaning in helping others navigate their grief.

People started to see her as a grief doula of sorts. Over time, these responsibilities began to mount, and Nora felt overwhelmed, but she didn't think she had a way out.

Nora: Are you allowed to quit anything? Winners never quit, quitters never win. Although, what was I going to win? The Best Widow award? I don't know. I felt, I think, in a lot of ways, like I'd inadvertently built this identity that had become a cage for me.

Maya: On today's show, Nora McInerny breaks from her identity and changes how she grieves. I'm Maya Shankar, and this is “A Slight Change of Plans,” a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change.

When Nora was in her early thirties, she lost her husband, Aaron, and her father to cancer, and she suffered a miscarriage all within the span of just six weeks. I wanted to have Nora on the show to talk about what it was like to navigate these losses in real time, but also what came after, not just in the months after, but in the years after, the dance of grief, how it shapes and reshapes your values, and the particular challenges that come along with the label "widow." We started our conversation with Nora recalling the day when everything changed for her and her then-boyfriend, Aaron.

Nora: The year is 2011, and it is such a simpler time, Maya. We're not iMessaging on our computers yet. We're still on Gchat, and we're on Gchat all day. And I've been dating this guy for a year, and all we do, we go to our respective jobs at ad agencies, we log on, and we chat all day. We're sending each other links. I have just secretly moved into his house that should not be described as a house. It was a structure.

Um, I've secretly moved in with him because I'm not a practicing Catholic, but old habits die hard. There's no reason for my parents to know where exactly I live. We are planning our first Halloween together as an official couple. We're going to pass out candy together. We're playing house, okay? I'm chatting him. I'm like, "Do you want to got o..." and this is not suitable for work, "Home Depot later? You want to go to Home Depot later?"

He never replies. I'm livid. Why is this man not replying to me? Usually his response time is like 30 seconds. Bring your laptop to the meeting, keep the conversation going. He doesn't reply. He doesn't reply. And my phone rings, and it's him. I'm in an open office. How dare you call me and expose to my boss how little work I am doing?

But it's not him. It is his coworker. And his coworker is calling from Aaron's phone, and he wants to know if Aaron has ever had a seizure before. Oh, my God. And so I went to the hospital immediately where the ambulance was taking Aaron, and we find out that Aaron cannot go home to pass out candy on Halloween because Aaron is going to need a brain surgery because he has a brain tumor.

And he has three questions that I remember. And one is, how will we pay for this because, yay, America. Two, he's like,"Um, I really don't want to die." And I was like, "Oh, you're not going to die, dude. No way. No, no way. No, no, no. Other people die, but we are not other people. That is for sure not you."

And then he said, "You can't marry me. We can't get married because I'm going to be sick." And I was like, "I am going to marry you." Like, "Oh, I'm marrying you. I'm marrying you the minute you get out of this hospital. Like it... I don't even know if it was a proposal so much as I just announced it. "We are getting married. We are going to get married."

Maya: Yeah. What was it like when you found out together that it was actually terminal brain cancer?

Nora: That's just where everything changed. The brain tumor was brain cancer, and it was glioblastoma, which anytime I say that word out in public, there's like an audible, "Oh."

Maya: Right, right.

Nora: Because if you don't know the word, you don't know the word, but if you know the word, you know that it's an incurable, horrifying…

Maya: Aggressive.

Nora: Aggressive and violent form of brain cancer. We said to the doctors right away... because we had discussed this a little bit beforehand. Walking in, we were like, "No matter what, like, what do you want out of this?" And he was like, "I don't ever want to hear how much time I have left." So, before the doctor even talked, I was just in it. And I was like, "Listen here, bud. At no point are you going to tell this man how much time he has left to live. Like, at all. Even if you think he's like literally dying that moment, nope. No, he is not."

Aaron did not want to become a cancer person. He didn't want that to be his identity. He wanted it to take up the amount of time it required and absolutely no more. And I was like, "Fine, you're the boss. And I will make sure I'm executing your vision."

Maya: Mm-hmm. Nora, you really walk the walk on that one because, even after finding out about the terminal cancer diagnosis, you and Aaron have a child together. You get married, and you also have a child.

Nora: So, in that appointment, we asked, "Okay, so what about kids?" And I remember the nurse practitioner looking at me like, "What about 'em, babe?"

Maya: Yeah.

Nora: Like, "What about them?" So we decided to try, and a year later, we had Ralph, and a year later Aaron's brain tumor was back. And that is when I knew, knew, "Oh, wow, this man gave me something." I think he knew more than I did. Like, he signed up to be a parent knowing that he wouldn't be there for Ralph's whole life. And when I look at our son, I think like, "Oh, I don't know if I would be strong enough to do that, to know that I wouldn't be there."

And um, he was such a wonderful fun dad for the 22 months that he was there. You know, he woke up with the baby. He did, uh, he did everything. He was just so fun and present and wonderful. And I am so glad he got that even though it wasn't and would never be enough for Aaron or for Ralph.

So Aaron was able to be Ralph's dad for 22 months. He ended up dying on November 25th, 2014. And, you know, you can intellectualize what it'll be like to lose someone. And then when you actually have the emotional experience unfolds in real time, you can sometimes surprise yourself with the reactions you're having or the reflections you're having. And I'm just wondering what shifted for you.

Um, you know, my dad had just died too, and I had this sense of closeness with my siblings and my mom and Ralph. And, like, my world seemed very, very sharply in focus. And it's like, these are the people who matter. I remember driving to my dad's funeral with my siblings. We were all together and I was like, "We have to stay all together all the time for the rest of our lives. We should all live together. We should be traveling everywhere in a single bus so that if there's an accident, we all go together." Like, it was just so... I was like, "This is it. This is it. It's all of us right here."

Maya: Oh, gosh. I can so resonate with that.

Nora: Yeah.

Maya: Um, roughly a month after Aaron dies, you and your friend who lost her husband informally start a group called the Hot Young Widows Club. Um, props to an extremely charming name. And I'm wondering if you can tell me more about the group and what you were hoping to achieve with it.

Nora: So here's the thing. I wouldn't say almost immediately, but very quickly after Aaron died, I had, I was buried in... it was like wearing a weighted vest at the dentist all day, this sense of guilt that Aaron was dead, and I was alive, and he was objectively better than me in every way. Everyone loved Aaron. He made everyone feel like they belonged at the party.

The party could not have started, "Oh, Maya's here." Now open up the physical circle, physically invite you into theconversation. Hold your hands, make you dance. "Can I get you a drink?" Like, just he had that presence to him for everybody. At his funeral, a guy came up to me, and he said, "High school was so hard. It was hell. And every day Aaron made sure I had somewhere to sit at lunch," like that kind of person.

Maya: Wow.

Nora: And I almost immediately fell into this trap that I've seen a lot of other people fall into, which is very natural, right? We want to make meaning out of our experiences, but we want to do it really quickly. And we want to alchemize our suffering into some form of self-improvement or a product, a literal things that we can point at and say, "Look, look, I made this thing. This is what it means."

And there was a woman named Moe in Northeast Minneapolis where I lived, and her husband had also died. He died by suicide. I'd never met her. I did not want to meet her. I did not want a widow friend. Aaron didn't want to be a cancer person. I didn't want to be a widow. Yeah. I didn't want to be a dead husband person. But we went to the same coffee shop, and the coffee shop ladies were not going to let it rest.

So I had to meet Mo. And I did, and I will remember forever… Again, this is a month after my husband has died. It's like three months after her husband has died. Like, lock eyes on a winter sidewalk in Minneapolis, and we like run towards each other.

Maya: Wow

Nora: We run to each other, and we're like holding each other, and we're crying, and we're immediately just like, "Tell me about your kid. Tell me about your kid. Tell me about your husband. Tell me about your husband." We're saying to each other these horrible things that no one else wants to hear. Like, "Do you have flashbacks? Do you see his dead body? Like, do you sleep at night? I don't sleep. Have you been able to cancel his cell phone? No. Me neither. Like, what are you doing with his student loans?" Not just admin stuff, but just these like, "Are you lonely? What are we going to do with these boys?"

Just the act of having someone who understands where you are, even if they didn't get there the same way, was immediately obvious that I could not believe it took me that long to meet her. And we called ourselves the Hot Young Widows Club, and we would just meet up with our boys because you don't have a husband to watch him anymore. And, uh, we'd meet up, we'd have dinner, we'd have breakfast.

And then, you know, someone else's husband died, and they got, uh, looped in with us. Someone sends me a text message, "My friend's husband just died. Can she talk to you?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, "My friend's cousin's mailman'shusband just died. Uh, can they meet up with you?" Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's not just me and Moe. It's a bunch of widows in Minneapolis, and sometimes we have brunch, and sometimes we meet up for drinks, and sometimes we're just texting on a group chat.

And then there are more people, and then there are more people. And then we can't all fit in a living room. And you know, "Can it be a Facebook group? And can my friend join even though, you know, they live in Montana or Wisconsin or Florida?" Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure, sure. And it just keeps growing. And then it's thousands of people.

So wonderful, Maya, in so many ways. We had more than one Christmas where the widows who had kids who couldn't afford Christmas presents, everybody pooled their money and sent them a bunch of gift cards so they could buy their kids Christmas presents.

Maya: That's beautiful.

Nora: You know, people met up for vacations and made best friends. There was always someone online. So when you woke up in the middle of the night and needed someone,there would be someone there when you posted. And you could say it's something like, "I am having wild sex dreams right now. Like, I think I just need to hook up with someone. Is that okay?" And of chorus of other voices would be like,"Yes, you are still alive. It's okay. That is like a biological need. That's okay. It does not mean you don't love your husband or your wife or your boyfriend.” And there was just always somebody there who could relate to whatever crazy thing you were feeling, which was so, so validating.

Maya: You know, you're thinking, I survived Aaron, and Aaron's supposed to be here, and I need to live this incredibly meaningful life, and I find myself in this situation bringing comfort to this other person. Did it maybe relieve some of the burden that you felt?

Nora: I think I was seeking a way to kind of like balance the scales and also to prove to myself that I deserved to, like, be alive and, like, be okay. And so anything somebody asked me to do, I would do. You know, and the idea of like, there's so many... 5,000, 3,000, 2,000, 1,000 people, they're not all going to get along.

Maya: Yeah.

Nora: You know what I mean?

Maya: Yeah.

Nora: Like, they're not going to, and they're all... we're all deeply hurt. Many of us incredibly traumatized. It took me a longtime to go to therapy after Aaron died, so I'm also dealing with my own undiagnosed PTSD and depression and untreated anxiety and trying to manage interpersonal conflict. Or this person said this about, you know, this kind of disease, and I found it offensive, and when do we kick someone out and when do we... you know, I'm like, I don't know. How am I in charge?

Maya: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It seems like you were, you were thrust into a group that you never thought you would be leading, right? I mean…

Nora: Yeah.

Maya: In, in many ways you were... This is so interesting, Nora. It's like you were, you were acting as a grief doula for so many people, even though you're not trained as a grief doula.

Nora: Yeah. Hell no, I'm not. No.

Maya: But then what I'm also hearing from you is you were actually serving as like a grief group doula.

Nora: Yeah.

Maya: Because now you're managing the interpersonal dynamics of everybody who's navigating the worst moments of their lives, and now you're trying to figure out how they can interact with each other more peacefully.

Nora: Yeah.

Maya: That is an incredible responsibility.

Nora: You know, you mentioned it's like I was sort of thrust into this position, and even when I thought like, "This shouldn't be me," I didn't say anything. I did not know that it was okay for me to say like, "I shouldn't be the one doing this. Like, I should not be in charge."

Someone asked me to do it, or they're asking me to do it, so Iguess I just have to say yes. I guess I just have to keep doing it. And by the way, the Hot Young Widows Club grew alongside all these sort of other parts of my life.

So I ended up falling in love again about a year after Aaron died and getting married sometime after that and getting pregnant and having a baby, and blending this family of four kids, Matthew's two kids, Ralph, and there's a newborn baby. And I start this podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking. I put together a TED Talk about grief. I start this nonprofit that does what happened for me and Aaron, like gives people money when their lives are falling apart. And the Hot Young Widows Club is this big, big part of my life. This is, in a lot of ways, kind of the center of it.

Maya: Mm. Walk me through a sample day in the life of grief doula Nora.

Nora: Yeah, Moe and I are trying to find ways for people to connect when it's online or when it's in person. And we're, you know, coordinating meetups in Minneapolis that are regularly scheduled, and I constantly, constantly, constantly have Facebook open on my phone.

So if somebody tags me, and they need something, they need anything that I can see it and I can respond to them. We're coordinating, like, the gift card drives for people around the holidays or all year round for people who just need necessities, need money for groceries, need money for, for gas. We're doing FaceTime meetups so that, you know, anybody who's alone at the holidays isn't really alone.

I was constantly drinking from this fire hose of other people's very real suffering that I am built to care about, to my own detriment. You know, like if somebody texted me and they needed me, I would step away from my dinner table and answer them. I would take a FaceTime call. I would do my best to respond to things, as immediately as possible because I remembered how absolutely lonely, especially those early days were.

And I felt like, well, you know, I've got this new husband, I've got these kids. Like, look at all that I have. Like I should be available, right? I should be available, um, for all these people, like to the people that need me.

And no, I was not trained, no, I was not qualified. No, I have no sort of, like, protective measures between me, like no protective boundaries between me and these people that I care so much about. None.

Maya: Yeah, and, you know, you mentioned, Nora, that other parts of your life were growing alongside the support group.

Nora: Yeah.

Maya: And one of those big things that was growing was your family, right? You're parenting four children, one of whom you share with your new husband. You are navigating a new marriage. And I just wonder, there are, of course, tradeoffs with your time, right? So you're leaving the dinner table. That means you're not having a moment with Ralph, right?

You do a FaceTime call with someone on Christmas Eve, that means you're not actually connecting with your husband. And I just wonder whether, in the throes of all of that, did you ever take a step back and question whether you were doing too much?

Nora: Yes and no because I would think, "Yeah, but I can't stop doing it." you know, like, I mean, what's the point of knowing it's too much?

Maya: But why couldn't you stop doing it?

Nora: I don't know why I couldn't stop doing... I couldn't stop doing it because are you allowed to quit anything? Winners never quit, quitters never win. You know, like, you can't... Although, what was I going to... what was I going to win, the Best Widow award? I don't know. I felt like... I don't know. I felt, ina lot of ways, like I had inadvertently built this identity thathad become a cage for me. But I was so afraid. I was so afraid of not doing the Hot Young Widows Club anymore. But every time I thought about not doing it anymore, I felt so relieved.

Maya: Interesting.

Nora: I felt so relieved.

Maya: Yeah.

Nora: I felt so relieved. And I just did not know how to do that. I didn't know how to do that. I didn't know how to not do things anymore.

Maya: We'll be back in a moment with A Slight Change of Plans.

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Maya: Nora, you mentioned, you know, you didn't know how to quit this group.

Nora: Yeah.

Maya: Right? You said every time you fantasized about it, you felt profound relief, but it was just unclear how you could ever go from point A to point B.

Nora: Yeah.

Maya: And then there's this one day that forces you to go there where you realize that something has to change.

Nora: Yeah, it's winter in Arizona, which is the most beautiful season because it looks like summer anywhere else. And we had friends visiting us from Minnesota, and these friends have five kids. And so we're all going to go on this big hike, you know, the dads, the moms, like seven kids, and three cars. And it's so sweet, and it's so cute and all our little kids are like collecting rocks and identifying plant life.

And we're all coming back to our house, and the dads are going to grill, and the kids are going to play, and the moms are going to talk, and it's so wonderful. And we pull up to our house, and everyone tumbles out of these cars. And everyone switched seats. You know, I've got some of her kids, she's got some of my kids. And we all go inside, and the dads do grill, and the moms do talk, and the kids do play.

And I'm talking to my friend, and I tell her, because I am in my late thirties, I'm like, "You got to see this tree. Okay, you got to see this tree. If you drew a tree as a kid, this is that tree. One trunk, two big branches, big canopy, the most gorgeous tree." We walk outside to see this, and she's … honestly, she's as impressed as I wanted her to be.

She's like, "That's a hell of a tree." And we hear... and I look over, and there's this little hand beating against the tinted window of my car. And I'm immediately so mad because my then four-year-old was in the backseat of the car, and he knows better. You don't play in a car, you don't play in a car. And I take three quick steps across the driveway, and I open that door, and he's harnessed into his car seat.

And he looks at me with his giant blue saucer eyeballs with so much relief and so much love, and he says, "Can I get out of the car yet?" And I look at my friend, and we both go completely pale. And I know that she knows that I left my kid in the car.

And I pick him up, and he is soaking wet, and part of it is tears, and part of it is sweat. And he's clinging to me like a little baby monkey, and he's immediately telling me what happened. "Everybody got out of the car, everybody went inside, and I called for you, and you didn't hear me. Did you forget-ted me?"

And it had been an hour, and no one noticed. But more importantly, I hadn't noticed. And I carried him inside, and my husband Matthew is outside.

Maya: And this is the baby you share with Matthew?

Nora: Yeah. This is like our little miracle baby, unexpected, didn't think this baby would happen. Here he is. And um, like I have to tell him, I have to tell him.

And Matthew is so kind. He's the kindest person I know. He's so sweet. And like he looked at me like I was his enemy. Um, and, like the little kids don't know, right? They have no idea what's happened, but like every parent is looking around, like, "Oh, god." Like, we all know what just almost happened. You know, it's like probably 70 degrees, which means it's like, could be 90, 95 in the car.

Like, kids die that way. Like, they do. We all know that. We all know you're not supposed to leave a kid in the car. And Matthew wants to know how it happened, and, like, what can I tell him other than I don't know where my brain is? My brain is always somewhere else. It's never here. I don't know what I was doing.

I don't know. And um, Matthew could forgive all the times I was on my phone when he was talking. He could forgive all the times I got up from the dinner table, or, you know, took yet another call or scheduled a Zoom call for bedtime, so he did all the bedtimes, or any of that. But, like, this was, like, the unforgivable thing, and I understand why.

It was because of six years, at the time, of just piling stuff on, trying desperately to prove to myself and to some imaginary arbiter that, like, I was worth it, I was okay. Like, I had earned a place on this earth, I still deserve to be here. And all of it was so much that I never knew what day it was, what I was doing, what was going on. Like, it was just all a constant swirl of chaos.

Maya: What thoughts were going on in your mind after you recovered from that initial shock?

Nora: Yeah, the cycling was like, "You're a horrible person. You're a bad mother. You don't deserve this baby. Like, uh, you almost killed him with your negligence because like you're constantly doing stuff, and what are you even doing? Like, why are you doing all this stuff?" Just a firestorm, just a gauntlet of thoughts. You know, there's not enough cognitive behavioral therapy in the world to swat that many away. It's like Fruit Ninja but for feelings. It was too much. This crescendo of things had been building, right? There was so many things that I was doing, none of them particularly well, but I was somehow central to every single thing, and I realized I have to do a lot less.

And I was afraid if I was not in the Hot Young Widows Club, if widow was not a front and center part of my identity, then to step away from that would also be stepping away from Aaron. It felt like quitting the club would be quitting Aaron, and not even just to me, but I was afraid that it would somehow telegraph to other people that, that part of myself,that part of my life, that part of my identity didn't matter anymore, and that I was somehow just shearing it off and leaving it behind.

And I say all the time, like, I will always be his widow. I will always be his wife, but I'm also someone else's wife. And a friend of mine had said after her husband died that, "We have a sacred responsibility to live fully in the face of our losses. It's a bitch, though." Her words. And I think that is so true.

And I was not living fully. I was so distracted, so consumed constantly by the ways that I had fractured out my attention to any and everything that might need me, right? Like, there's this organization, there's this organization, there's this podcast, there's writing, there's my family. Bottom of the list, my family. Actually, bottom of the list, me.

Maya: Yeah.

Nora: And I had just fractured myself into so many pieces. It always felt like I was juggling on top of like a pogo stick on top of a ball. And I can't do any of those things. So why was I doing them all at once? And I was like, Okay, let's stop doing it.

And I talked to Moe, and she was like, "Yeah. Yeah, I've been feeling that way, too." She's like, "Yeah, I want to retire. I want to retire from this thing." And we thought, Okay, so what do we do? And we talked to a couple of the widudes. That's male widows. We talked to a couple of them, and we're like, "Would you want to take it over? Just take over, change the name. You can figure out how you want to run things."

And they did. They were like, "Yeah, absolutely. We'd be honored to do that." And it was that easy.

Maya: Wow.

Nora: It was that easy. I got maybe one message from a person that was unkind.

Maya: Yeah.

Nora: And everyone else was like, "I get it. I get it. Thank you."

Maya: Yeah. Wow. So there wasn't that judgment that you were anticipating?

Nora: No, no. Yeah, it was literally, like so many things, all in my head, all in my head. The biggest shift in my mind and in my life and in my heart and my being is this shift from doing and accomplishing and, and achieving and, and ticking boxes to existing, to actually being.

I'm not meant to just be a favor dispenser. I'm not like a vending machine for other people's needs. And by the way, nobody treated me like that. I treated myself like that. No one was like... no one was setting out to be like, "I want to really wreck this lady's day." No one, no one. But it's like, I did not allow myself any boundaries. I didn't know how to do that kind of stuff.

And I sort of turned myself into the Giving Tree, which is really of all of Shel Silverstein's work, not his best, you know, not his best. Not a great message.

Maya: You've painted this really beautiful, cozy picture at the beginning of our conversation about how, when Aaron died,you were like, "Let's just all live on a bus together and be together all the time. And then if something bad happens to one of us, everyone else is there. And it's all about my family and, and the people that I love most in my life."

And it feels like, in quitting the Hot Young Widows Club and other things that you decided to also stop doing, you're like slowly building that bus.

Nora: Yeah, we are. We are. It's like, uh, the other day, my husband actually left town, which he rarely does because he's a stay-at-home parent. And he went on a little trip with one of his best friends since they were, you know, 18 years old, and they went to two shows at Red Rocks. And he texted me and he was like, "I just can't wait to get home because I love being around our family."

I was like, "Dude, me, too. That's how I feel. Like, I just love being around our family. I love Friday movie night. I love that you make waffles on Sunday." And these were, by the way, all things that we were doing the whole time that I just wasn't very present for. Like, we've always done that. That's always been a thing, but it's like I'm really working on being really present for the lives of the people that I know and love.

Do you feel that... I don't know how to phrase this. It's kind of like, how do you grieve Aaron today? Because for a period there you were grieving, in part, at least through these expressions of love for others, right? Through the, the support group, through all of the activities and fundraisers and events that you were putting on. And so I, I just wonder how you think about that.

Yeah, I don't know. I think about him every single day. I don't know if there will ever be a day where I don't think about him. I don't know if there will ever be a day where I don't say his name. Um, I mean, we have a child together. It's so hard to explain, like, kind of what it means to grieve because it's not every day I'm like, "Oh, stab me in the heart." But, like, every day there's something worth remembering, and there always will be.

Maya: You know, the label widow is such a loaded, hard identity to navigate.

Nora: Yeah.

Maya: And, in part, it's because it tethers you to a part of your past, but, more importantly, to a specific person who you loved in your past.

Nora: Yeah.

Maya:  And so, as we've talked about, rejecting that label in any form can feel like a betrayal. The emotional cost of disentangling yourself from that identity just feels so high, Iwonder if you have, for those listening who have lost a loved one... and maybe they don't carry the word widow. Maybe they've lost someone else they love. Maybe they've lost a child, maybe they've lost a grandmother, maybe they've lost a friend.

But I just wonder how you think about these labels and what they do to us and how they can, I don't know, hold us back and imprison us at times when we actually just need to be free.

Nora: I think that, uh, it's very important to me that... and it was since the minute Aaron got sick, right, that we, that everyone is the owner of their own story and that Aaron was not just cancer story. Our love story was not just a cancer story, that,you know, his life is not just like, "Oh, he died of cancer." And the headline of your story changes as life goes on. So there absolutely was a period of time in life where the most important thing that I could relay to somebody was that my husband died.

They needed to know that, and that needed to be the first thing that they knew because that was the most important thing about me, to me in that moment. It's a bullet point now ,and that's okay. It is not a value judgment. It does not mean it means less. It is not the most important part of my identity anymore.

Widow is a label, and it's one I'm really glad that I embraced. Like, I still have that label. It's just not going to be the first thing on my name tag.

Maya: Yeah, yeah. Reflecting back, Nora, um, I'm wondering what this experience has taught you about grief.

Nora: Grief is so chaotic, and it is so dark and lonely and disorienting that I can recognize in another person this reflexive need to build something out of the rubble of your life or your loss. I felt that so immediately, like, I want to build Aaron a pyramid. What can I build for him? What can I build that shows, like, the world, how big this was to me, what this means to me, something that can be seen from the stars?

People reach out to me all the time, and they say, "You know, my, my brother just died, and I want to do this thing. I want to write this book. I want to start this nonprofit. I want to run a thousand miles. My husband died. My grandma died. I lost someone. I lost something. I lost something so big, and I need to make something out of it."

And I say to them, "Stop," because what if the only thing that you have to do, the only thing that you absolutely have to do is just survive? What if that's it? What if that's it? What if that's the only thing that you need to do in the wake of loss? What if that is big enough and meaningful enough? Because It is.

Maya: Hey, thanks so much for listening. Next week, we hear from the US Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy on the science of loneliness. Our nation's doctor tells us how dangerous loneliness can be for our health and gives us strategies for building stronger, more meaningful social connections.

Dr. Murthy: The mortality impact of loneliness, in fact, is, is comparable to the mortality impact of smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It's even greater than the mortality impact that we see with substance use disorders. Now, just pause for a second and think about how much time, effort, and energy we spend in combating smoking and substance use disorders because of the extraordinary toll they take on society. But think about how little we actually tackle, you know, loneliness or how much we, how little we invest in thinking about our strategies for addressing it.

Maya: A Slight Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by me, Maya Shankar. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner, Tyler Greene; our story editor, Kate Parkinson-Morgan; our sound engineer, Andrew Vastola; and our associate producer, Sara McCrea. Luis Guerra wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.

A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, so big thanks to everyone there, and of course, a very special thanks to Jimmy Li. You can follow A Slight Change of Plans on Instagram @drmayashankar. See you next week.

Hey, Nors.

Nora: Hi. Oh, my god, that nickname.

Maya: How much do you hate being called Nors?

Nora: I love being called that. No one says that except my mom, my sister, and my dead husband. That is so magical that you did that.

Maya: I just felt... it felt…

Nora: It felt good.

Maya: We were too comfortable with each other for me to call you Nora. So I was just going to lean in with Nors. Sorry.

Nora: Oh, I love it.

2021 was, for many reasons you heard here and for many more that I’ll never be able to talk about publicly and never would, the worst year of my life since 2014. That is saying something, but, that year unraveIed so much, and it revealed a lot of the cracks that had been forming for awhile. 

Things fell apart, things fell away. And I don’t regret anything I’ve built, I don’t regret anything I’ve dismantled, and I don’t regret anything I’ve walked away from.

Because all of it was this effort to help ease the pain of unfixable things, and also a way for me to try to earn my own place in this world.

And I never needed to do that. I never needed to do that. You do not need to do that, but I do understand that urge. I understand why, in the face of huge loss, in the face of great pain, you would want to turn it into something.

And you MIGHT! You very well might, and if you do, good for you! And if you don’t, good for you. Good for you. The hard thing can just be the hard thing. The worst moments can stay your worst moments. You don’t need to shine them up. 

You only need to survive. Surviving is enough.

I will always be Aaron’s widow. I will always be his wife. And Matthew’s wife -- knock on wood. There’s no unpaid job that makes that any more or any less official, no world where that is not a part of my life, my story, no version where that is erased or unimportant.

And now, the work for me is to do what my friend Mary Bolckom told me was so important: to live fully in the face of loss. To live FULLY in the face of loss. To be here for what is, even while I hold the space for what was … and what will never be. And Mary was right, it’s a bitch.

It’s a bitch.

If there’s something you’re releasing, letting go of, an identity, a job, a THING, a thing you had to stop doing. A thing you want to stop doing and you don’t know how … do you wanna call me and tell me about it? Our number is 612.568.4441.

This has been '“A Slight Change of Plans” with Maya Shankar, but you heard it here at “Terrible, Thanks for Asking.” You can find Maya’s podcast wherever you found this one, and I hope you do, I hope you do go find it.