Loss, Acceptance, And The Power Of Being Authentic with Kris Carr

Welcome to Let It Be Easy with Susie Moore.

Susie Moore:

Have you ever experienced loss or experienced grief in your life? Well, when you've been on Planet Earth for a while, it is inevitable to all of us and no one can speak about this subject with more love and compassion than the incredible Kris Carr, who is our guest today. Kris is a multiple New York Times bestselling author, a wellness activist and a cancer thriver. She's been called a force of nature by O Magazine and was named a new role model by the New York Times. I absolutely adore Kris and her latest book, Not a Mourning Person, absolutely blew me away. Like Kris, I lost my dad, and how she shares her experience with humor, with compassion, with just being so real. I wish everyone could listen to this conversation. I think you'll laugh. I think you'll find some deep insights and probably really just feel seen and heard. That is our wish for you, my friends. I give you the one and only Kris Carr. Kris Carr, congratulations on your beautiful book. I'm Not a Mourning Person. Thank you so much for being on the Let It Be Easy podcast.

Kris Carr:

Thanks for having me, Susie. I absolutely adore you. I'm so grateful to be here.

Susie Moore:

Now, this book is not to be confused with morning routines or setting up or waking up at 5:00 AM absolutely unrelated to anything AM, I mean, Kris, this book, it moved me. I was tearful in places. The thing that came up the most as I read it was I think probably how much courage it must have taken you to speak about your dad, Ken, and losing him. I mean, how long did this book take you and was it as hard as I can imagine, it probably was, to put it together?

Kris Carr:

It did take a bit because it's a big story and it was definitely a labor of love and all of the fields that come with something that you're so deeply committed to. It took me about two and a half years to write and to tell you the honest truth, this was not the book that I thought I was going to write, and I'm sure a lot of people have said that to you on your podcast, but it had been a while since I had written a book, this is my seventh. But I had quite a break and I thought I needed to come back with something that was inspirational and aspirational, and you go, girl, and let's get out there and get 'em.

And nothing in me could force me to write that book. Not to say that I won't write a book like that in the future, but I was in such a difficult time in my own life. We were going through a global pandemic. I was approaching my 20 year anniversary of living with stage four cancer. My chosen father was dying and my business was not in the best place, and so I decided that I have to work from where I am and this is where I am, and I could no longer outrun the feelings that I had been trying to keep at bay. I didn't want to be a morning person, but I realized that we can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole. And so that's how this all started, I wrote the book that I needed and I was hoping that other people out there would need it too.

Susie Moore:

Kris, I think this is the book that we all need because no one wants to talk about death. No one wants to talk about transition. We don't know how to handle it. We don't know how to speak to people who are going through it, who are going through the loss of a loved one. I mean, I lost my dad 20 years ago and it's never an easy discussion. I mean, I will always probably feel envy when I see people my age or older with their dads. I think this is part of the human experience and it's oddly surprising, isn't it? How for this one commonality that's coming for all of us, we can't talk about it. It's how do we avoid, do we even reach out? Do we even say anything? Now the holidays are coming up. Should your friends reach out and say, are you okay? How do you feel about having this conversation now that Ken has transitioned and you've put this beautiful work together? How does death feel in your life as a topic of conversation?

Kris Carr:

I mean, because when you're promoting a book, you're promoting a book for years. You write it, and it's one thing in the writing process. And what I have been reminded of is when the book comes out, it becomes something very different. I'm learning more about the book and trying to communicate it than I knew about it when I was writing it. And now these conversations, this is maybe my 90th podcast interview now, these conversations are very easy, but I remember my first interview and I'm glad it wasn't you, Susie, because I don't think it was, I was very articulate. I was just like, I'm sad. I write book.

Susie Moore:

Oh, Yeah

Kris Carr:

I didn't know how to talk about it. And the thing about this topic is it's not just the loss of a loved one or a death. And though we do explore that in the book, as you said, this is the book that our books like this are what we need because we're all going to go through loss in our life, the loss of a job, the loss of a loved one, a miscarriage, when you find out that your partners cheating when the divorce happens, when your former sense of self changes. For me, on one day I thought it was one thing, and then February 14th came and I became a cancer patient. So my loss of my former sense of self, we are always going to experience that throughout life. And when it comes to talking about it, I have a chapter in the book called Awkward times, awkward People,

And it touches on exactly what you said, and there's no shame out there because I have been an example of all the different examples I give in that chapter. I have been that person, and it's because we are so afraid to get it wrong. And so we'll do funky things like we'll center ourselves, we'll make it all about us. We'll ghost somebody because we don't want to bring it up. All the things that we do, it's good intention gone south. So the more we get to familiarize ourselves with this landscape, I think the deeper our relationships can go. And also if you're the person experiencing the loss, the more you don't maybe take it so personally when people do awkward things, they love you, they just have no idea how to express it.

Susie Moore:

I love your book for a few reasons. Of course, just the truth and honesty that you share from the experiences that you've lived and the practical advice that you give. It's like a therapist here, a therapist in your hands. Plus it's so funny. I mean, you don't expect to laugh in a book like this. You expect it to be just this emotional rollercoaster. But I mean, Chris got to say it's really nice to have some relief too on this topic, and we have to laugh sometimes. Has that always been a bit of a savior for you? When you joke about the how do I live without you playing on speakers? Oh my God, universe is playing with us sometimes.

Kris Carr:

Somebody asked me recently, what do you think your superpower is? And I said, humor. It's definitely what I go to lighten the moment or to give myself a little breathing room or to come back to the present. I feel like it's the sugar that makes the medicine go down. And to your point, when you're writing something like this as the author, I could feel when we were on such a heavy ride together that it needed to have another rhythm, another beat. It needed levity, it needed oxygen. It needed a moment to actually let what we were just talking about. It feels like a relationship that I'm with every person reading it, let what we were just talking about sink in. And it's that rhythm that I was very conscious of. That humor allows me to go to those different places, which then allows me to go deeper with the person that I'm on the journey with, the reader.

Susie Moore:

Kris, one part of the book that I particularly loved and you explore this in a couple of different places is your dad's example of self-acceptance. I thought this was so cool. Like you share here, it's page 17 in the paperback. The emotional shifts he made during this time gave me a beautiful example of what self-acceptance looks like. And that was striking, especially considering the formidable changes brought on by his illness. Here he was riddled with cancer, unable to feed or bathe himself, sporting magic underwear, my name for his adult diapers, and yet becoming more okay and more loving toward himself with each fleeting day in my career as an author and speaker, I've had the privilege of sharing some of the biggest stages with the titans of transformation. But in those final years of his life, dad's presence and wisdom went far beyond anything I've ever experienced. Could you speak about that for a moment, the self-acceptance that came towards the end and how is that something that you expected? Was it a surprise? What can we take from this?

Kris Carr:

Yeah, well, first and foremost with my next book, I would like for you to do the audio recording. So I'm putting that out there right now.

Susie Moore:

Deal. Yeah,

Kris Carr:

That would be lovely. I've been on this journey of acceptance for 22 years now because in the beginning, I really wanted the cancer to go away, and when I found out there was no cure and there was no treatment and I would have to be monitored for the rest of my life, I got very defiant. And I tend to be the, oh yeah, you watch me. Don't tell me. Get out of my way. I'm going to show you. You can't figure it out. I'll figure it out. And I think that that's part of what my fight or flight response looked like. That's how I handled it. And where I went was starting everything that I've done, changing my diet, changing my lifestyle, feeling better, starting to teach people how to do the same. And I wouldn't be here if I didn't have that kind of fire in me.

But at a certain point, I realized that I was miserable because I was doing all these healthy things because I wanted cancer to go away. So I was doing it for cancer and not for me. And around my 10 year mark when I was originally given 10 years to live, if I was lucky around that mark, everybody was so happy that I was alive and I was so mad that it wasn't gone. And I realized that was a turning point moment, which is when I had to decide, you may have this for the rest of your life, and what are you going to do? You're going to waste all of your years putting everything off because you don't feel like you deserve to live fully unless life looks exactly the way you want it to look. And on paper they say you're cured. You're in remission, so you're going to press pause on everything because you can't have that really.

And I write about this in the book, which is that's when I realized the difference between healing and curing. Curing may happen. It may not happen. It doesn't mean we've failed, but healing is always possible. And so to go back to your question about acceptance, something I have wrestled with for two decades, and the way it looks to me now is that acceptance isn't about lowering your standards. It's not about giving up. It's really about saying, no matter what, not one thing could happen that would allow me to abandon myself. That's a bridge I will never cross. I got my own back. And so having my own lived experience with that, but then also seeing what that looked like for my dad as he was literally approaching the door of death and then passed through, it was a whole deeper experience of it. Watching somebody have to kind of wrap life up in a short period of time and do it with the kind of consciousness and intention and grace and love and dignity that he walked that journey with was truly the most remarkable thing I've ever seen. And I was like, okay, you are the greatest teacher for me, and you continue to be

Susie Moore:

What a gift gift to observe that and for him to be that way. I also love how in the book he says, get me the pore strips. He wanted to look spiffy. I'm like, who is this man? I love him. Ken. Ken's with us. I'm just, all of these lessons that you are receiving, we wasn't even conscious of what he was giving you.

Kris Carr:

Well, I love that you brought that up. Actually, nobody has brought that up. And let me just share a little backstory there, because it was such an aha moment for me. My dad passed probably about two weeks after this moment, and towards the end it was really, the intention was to have a little fun every day and to be in connection. And so I would come over after work and I bought a house close to my parents so I could be there and I'd come over after work or on my lunch break or sometime throughout the course of the day to visit, and we'd play a little gin rummy. And one day he says to me, you know what? I want to do love. And I'm like, what? Dad? I'll do anything. What do you want to do? I'll do it all. I'll move the earth to make you happy.

What? He's like, I want you to go to CVS and get those little Bore strips for blackheads and let's do facials. I'm like, what you want to do facials? He's like, yeah, just so that you put on your nose. And I'm like, okay, dad. Yeah, sure, I'll go out and get 'em now. But it was interesting because for me, I was saying to myself, within a certain amount of time, you're going to be gone. And that time is coming really quickly. And I knew what his wishes were and his wishes were to be cremated. And I was like, here you are with so little time. We're talking about moments left and you are still tending to this vessel. And it was so moving to me. He was like, no, I just want to look good. I want to feel good. And it made me think that the body is like a sand, and we have it for a certain period of time, and up until we can no longer care for it, it is ours to shepherd and to be the stewards of, and that's what he was showing me because maybe a part of me would've been like, screw this. I'm not doing a damn thing.

Susie Moore:

Oh yeah. And just anger. Yeah, I mean all of it.

Kris Carr:

Yeah, all of it. All of it. And I was like, wow.

Susie Moore:

It's remarkable, isn't it? As I was reading your experience, and I mean again, once again interspersed with such funny moments like the guys doing the pool next door and the noise and just the way that you just share the story of the reality of it, the spiritual element of it, the practical element of everything that you've lived, I'm, I've never read anything like this before, Kris, to really experience and tap into and almost feel the presence of an experience. And you shared too in the book that you are kind of forced to slow down. There was this forced slow down, and here it's page 25, 26, it's called In the Rupture. The chapter is called the rupture. You say change are constant. Just because we have one rupture in life doesn't mean that life will never get turned upside down again. A few years before my dad's diagnosis, I started to realize that as amazing as my accomplishments were and as strong as my physical health had become deep down, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. I'd gone from a frying pan of a cancer diagnosis to the fire of nonstop achievement. So slowing down is something that we hear about sometimes and some people do it, but how was the slowdown? How did you experience that? As well as being a woman who does a lot and accomplishes a lot and helps a lot of people, how did this all kind of play into your full life?

Kris Carr:

It was terrifying because busy is my way of hiding and my way of dealing with my anxiety. And so it's very easy for me to put myself into a project. I am the person you want on your team. I'm always ready to jump in the trench. If there's chaos, I'm like, we've got this, let's go. And I think that that comes from a lot of different experiences in my life, my diagnosis, experiences in my childhood, but busy and a need for control is how I try to stay safe in an unsafe world. When I am in a place where I'm trying to give myself space or needing to step back because of whatever circumstances, like a serious situation happening in my family, it creates dizziness in me basically because it's so foreign. And I know that I'm not the only one, but there's so many women out there and men out there listening who probably say right now, oh, I know girl.

That's the place that I go to. The thing about all of this is when we're going through difficult times, it's like emotional physics. What doesn't come out one way will come out another way. It's just the law of the universe. And so what we want to do is sort of understand these are my patterns, these are my habits, these are the normal experiences and emotions that I'm going to go through, and there's nothing wrong with me. I'm just going to first start with the awareness of, oh, I'm going into hyperdrive because underneath it, it's an enormous amount of anxiety. Okay, well, I've learned a little bit about anxiety, and so I have some tools about how to care for that experience. And so let me take out my tools from my toolbox and start to do that tending. And I feel like that's really how we get through these times is just to be curious about our emotions, understand that they're all there to teach us something. Our behaviors are all there trying to teach us something. And when we're curious about them, we learn about them so that we can do what tend to them so that we can do what feel better.

Susie Moore:

So the soothing, because I know you shared in the book when you had your own diagnosis, you got really busy, you were figuring out all the things that you could do, and then when your dad's sick, it's like, how do we get the right doctors? How do we test this, test that, I mean, how are you doing now? I mean, do you feel like even in between now, the space between now and then you feel a bit more steady or soothe or do you feel like this is something that you'll always feel To a point?

Kris Carr:

I think I've got so much experience now because something that I haven't spoken about, but I do have permission to speak about is, what was it? The beginning of this year, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and so we went on that journey again, and she's doing very well. It was early stage lung cancer, she's doing well. She had a massive surgery and then a big recovery. And it was really interesting for both of us to be at that place because we've gone through it with me. We went through it with my dad. It's been two years since he passed at the time. And here we were again. And it was almost like, okay, of course you're going to have all the emotions and all the feelings, but we had more experience. And I think we were both better able to handle the storm without completely losing ourselves. And in some ways, that can be the medicine of these difficult times is a giving you the experience so that you're navigating it with each time something goes on in your life, you're less likely to abandon what you need in order to survive it.

Susie Moore:

Kris, I'm really happy your mom's doing well. I'm very pleased to hear that it was early detection and she, she's doing well. One other lesson I got from your book, which immediately just came to my mind as you were speaking, is what you share about asking what? Not, Why? Because you could be like, gosh, life is really kicking me in the nuts. Are you kidding? Something's wrong. There is something. Could you speak to us about the what, not why? Because the why can take us lots of places. Could you just speak to that for a moment?

Kris Carr:

Absolutely. And I love that you said that light was really kicking me in the nuts. Yeah, sometimes it does over and over again. It's really, yeah, it's like,

Susie Moore:

You know, seen what I've already gone through. It's like, come on, I paid the piper. Let's get real. Yeah.

Kris Carr:

And then what can also happen is then we start to feel like, wait, why me am I cursed? Why does this bad things continue to happen to me? There's all these places that we can go. And so I know from my own journey, especially with my own diagnosis and even thinking like, oh my gosh, me, my dad, my mom, what the heck is wrong? When we get caught in that place of why, it's not to say we shouldn't ask, why, because sometimes we can learn really valuable information that can help us through the situation, but a lot of times we'll never know the answer. And if we are just pounding our head against the wall and being stuck and not moving forward in our lives, then that's a really good time to shift the question. So don't worry about the why. Focus on the what can I do right now to support my body? What can I do right now to support my mental health? What can I do right now to support my feeling, my spiritual life? What does my body need when I have these emotions? What do they feel like? How can I support them? So we move out of that place of stewing and ruminating and beating ourselves up or feeling like there's something wrong with us to that more proactive place of, okay, now I'm going to care for myself. What will that look like?

Susie Moore:

It's so easy, isn't it sometimes to be the enemy, to treat ourselves with this in addition to the challenges, the suffering, the judgment, the questioning, and not even being conscious that that's what we're doing. We feel like well, we're stuck in the injustice of something or questioning something that we'll never know. We never really know the why to so many things. Moving to this place of what and how do you support your emotions? One part of the book that I thought was really interesting was how you spoke about anger and how it's unbecoming. I mean, especially as women, right? It's like to be angry. And I love the story about how those dudes were, and you lost it. And I'm like, whoa, this is what happens when we're holding on. And the anger's there. Could you speak to us bit about anger? Because I think number one, we're afraid to express it even if we feel it. And I think we're really ashamed of feeling it too sometimes.

Kris Carr:

So beautiful. Absolutely. So I call it becoming unbecoming because I remember growing up, and I love my grandmother. My grandmother raised me partially before my dad came into my life and adopted me, but my grandmother used to say that certain motions were unbecoming for ladies. So one of those was anger. She'd also basically said that grief was unbecoming too. So never let somebody see you cry. And so you internalized that. That's the time that she grew up in. You internalize that. And what happens is we cut off further and further from ourselves and from everyone else, and I had a very hard time expressing those two emotions in healthy ways. And so what I didn't understand going into this process was that something that my therapist said was so wonderful. She said, when the grief train rolls into the station, it brings all the cars.

It's like old stuff that you think you're over, old stuff that you thought is behind you and just to keep that door closed. But all those cars come and they roll with a whole bunch of other messy emotions, which is the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart. One of them is anger, rage, the injustice of it. That's what anger signals. If all of our emotions are information and energy, and that means that we have two opportunities, one, to learn about the information and two, to express the energy so that doesn't turn in on ourselves. And so that's why bottling our emotions is so destructive, right? Energy needs to move. And for me, with the anger, I didn't realize that I was angry for every time in my life where I felt an injustice that I wasn't able to express. And the thing about anger is it's like your body saying ow, saying this is not okay. This is not fair. This is not right. And underneath that anger, they call anger, almost like a signaling emotion is like oftentimes people use a metaphor of an iceberg. You see the iceberg on top of the water, but the iceberg is so much bigger underneath that's the heart of the iceberg. And so that signaling emotions telling us there's something else going on. And you mentioned a scene in the book.

Susie Moore:

I liked reading about that.

Kris Carr:

Kris on fire, let It Rip Susie. That was actually the hardest chapter for me to write. I wrote that chapter so many times and I thought, I can't tell the truth of this story because people will judge me. Nobody's going to want to listen to anything I say. If they read this chapter, they're just going to think she's an angry, crazy person.

Susie Moore:

I think the opposite. I like it. I'm like, oh yes, some truth, yes.

Kris Carr:

But thankfully my editor, editor kept saying, you're not going far enough,

Far enough. You have to go farther with this. You have to write it the way it happened. You're still sugarcoating. You're still trying to clean it up and it's not working. And she would just tell me to go back in and back in and it's still not working. And so I went all the way in and I was very ashamed of what happened. And so a couple of things happened for me in this that I share, and one is in a very explosive argument that I had publicly. And what was interesting about that experience was how much shame I felt afterwards. So in the scene, I'm standing up for myself and there's these guys that circle me outside of a restaurant and they are drunk and put their hands on me and crawl into our car and tell me to go out with them. And when I actually make a boundary and say, get your hands off of me and all this kind of stuff, they start screaming at me.

And then all I had to do was hear that. And it was like the anger that had been deeply inside of me for so long, the anger that I felt for the injustice of losing my dad. By the way, my dad's watching all of this. It's happened to be on my birthday. There's probably not many more birthdays I'm going to experience with him. And this is the memory we have. And I just exploded the incredible Hulk. I mean, security comes if somebody had a camera and they'd be like, well, here's what the wellness activist Kris Carr is really like.

Susie Moore:

I thought, yeah,

Kris Carr:

You know what I mean? The whole thing. And I think the anger was, why is it not you? Why is it him? Why can't it be you? This is what's injust. But of course it was much deeper than that. And what happened after that was this shame spiral. And so we start to understand how these things are connected and how we can care for ourselves and say there was actually nothing wrong with what happened in that moment. If anybody should be ashamed, it's not you, it's them. But why is the shame here and how can I care for that? Now

Susie Moore:

As you're going through the process of writing this book and your editor's clearly pushing you, she knows that there's gems there. And I think we've all had an experience like this. They don't always look the same, but how our reactions are bigger than we would anticipate, and it can even be a bit frightening to us at the time. And then the following, shame the judgment as you're writing it and sharing this with others. And yeah, it's like, well, Kris, Carl, well, calms meditative. Did you have any kind of realizations about yourself revisiting these with just the time, space perspective? Looking back,

Kris Carr:

Other than the fact that in that moment I'm so glad that I am not an MMA fighter because I think I'd be in jail if I actually had skills to back up my firepower because I don't. I just have a big mouth. I think that for me, even though it was an emotion that is very challenging for me, which is anger, I actually have an easier time expressing it because anger feels powerful. And so I will always go to the place of power.

That's where I go for protection, whereas grief and vulnerability feel powerless. So I'll do everything in my power not to go there. And so anger has served as a protector for me. It has actually gotten me out of very dangerous situations as a woman that many women have experienced either sexual abuse, sexual trauma, assault, rape. I have been saved several times from really, really, really dangerous experiences because of my anger. And so I can thank it for all of the ways that it has helped me. If I didn't get angry at that first oncologist, I probably wouldn't be here. I didn't scream at him. The internal flame turned up and I was like, oh yeah, you watch me. So there have been times where I can say, gosh, thank you, anger. You are so, so important in my life. It's when you're out of balance and out of whack. And when you have lost your mind anger and I need to kind of step in and be like, Hey, I got this. Let's soothe a little bit. Those are the moments where we're out of alignment. It's not that we feel it, not feeling it would be that you're out of alignment.

Susie Moore:

When you say that feeling, sad, vulnerable, scared, it's much worse, right? Than feeling powerful for a second with a sense of fire when you speak, oh my gosh, the piece in the book at the dinner and how you had to excuse yourself. And you start the book too by saying, someone says to you cry in the shower. You hide these. We are taught hide, hide, hide. Just smile. Make it nice. I'd like to read what your dad said actually, if that's okay.

Kris Carr:

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Susie Moore:

It's very moving. I've got it written down here. Okay, page 67 and 68. So you go away on a little vacation. Very nice. So you, your mom, dad, your husband, and you know what the timing is, and you know that you're running out. And this may be one of your last lovely memories together. You are meant to make a toast, but it's kind of tricky. And then you share just then dad swooped into save us, allowing us to breathe again. Kris, I love this so much. He says, thank you for coming here to celebrate this special day with me. He said, gazing at the ocean. I was trying to become, if I could do it all again, I'd give myself more like this. Some has always been my busy season, and even though I could have, I rarely took a day off to experience something like this. So figure out what your more like this looks like and make it happen sooner. Don't save it for your golden years. Before I had a chancellor let his words sink in words that would become my compass. In this next stage of my life, he lobbed the final bomb that demolished my brittle defenses. I hope you'll all come back here on my birthday from time to time. This is a good spot to remember me. I love you all. Oh my gosh.

Kris Carr:

I know.

Susie Moore:

I'm like, how come these words, I mean this wisdom. Do you know I'm not joking, Kris? I booked a vacation. As soon as I read that, I said, Heath, we're going. I was like, this is it, Ken. You're living now in my vacation with me. Thank you for, it's like, yes. Think about it.

Kris Carr:

That's amazing.

Susie Moore:

What was it like hearing? Because it's like there is such perspective and clarity and truth. There is nothing left to loo, there is nothing to wait for. I mean, what was it like in that moment, hearing those words and holding onto them now in your life?

Kris Carr:

Well, actually it's very beautiful to hear somebody else read them. I've never heard somebody else read them. So as you were reading them, I was just feeling all this love at the time. It was really painful because I didn't want it to end. So for me, it was about I got to get out of here again. It was, I couldn't really take in what he was saying in that moment because I was in fight or flight mode. And for me, it was for some people's free, it's fight, it's flight, having disassociating or freeze like an animal. Get really small so that the predator won't see me. I'm a fighter, so I'm going to go into, let's throw down now what does that look like? For me, that meant I had to excuse myself because the feelings were so big that we're coming up for me. I had to go someplace where I could express them or do something to kind of control them because I felt so incapable of handling the enormity of the pain and the beauty. That was that moment. So the lady room, lady room became a disaster area, but

Susie Moore:

A savior. All the things, yes,

Kris Carr:

Somebody saves this room after I leave, but it was later. And it continues to be just having that ability to write the words and then read the words and relive the words and talk about the words years after his passing that that's when you go, okay, that moment, that truly was a turning point in my life. And that is now the compass by which I live, which is you got to make your golden years now, and I knew this in the early days of my diagnosis, and so what I've come to understand as a result of this is that we wake up, there's moments that happen, these life ruptures, or maybe they're not even a rupture, maybe they're like, it's the best thing that ever happened to you and you wake up, it's the deep love that you fell in and you wake up and you're like, wow, life is so beautiful.

It's so rich. I want to do more wonderful things like this. This really woke me up to how I want my days to feel. But it can also, and more often it comes from that pain and that wakes us up and you say, no more. I am changing because life is beautiful and life is awesome and life is worth living. So we have these wake up moments, but we're human. And so we go back to sleep and we wake up and we go back to sleep and wake up. And I think that that's the cycle of life. And I had been asleep again and my wake up call with living with stage four diagnosis, I got kind of comfortable in that life. And then at that moment was another wake up, and I feel like I'm hoping to stay to shrink the distance between the wake up.

Susie Moore:

Oh, yeah.

Kris Carr:

Does that make sense?

Susie Moore:

Oh yes. Oh yes. And so after hearing your dad say those words that are so beautiful, I wish everyone could read them from this man who knows what's happening around his loved ones and this perfect moment in time together that it's almost like your heart can't contain it so much. I mean, has it changed how you make decisions and how you just contemplate your future and what you're available for and what you're putting your hat in the ring, how has it had an impact on you since then?

Kris Carr:

A huge impact. And it doesn't change radically overnight, or at least it hasn't for me, because I feel like big changes, you kind of have to stop the force before you start to turn it around. But as I started to plan the year and think about what is a yes for me, the yes filter has changed. The yes filter is very much, how does this make me feel? What energy does this hold in my heart? It's not that you're not doing certain things that you don't like to do. I hate doing the dishes, but I'm still going to go, I'm going to do them. I don't like a dirty kitchen either. But are you prioritizing more of those golden moments? Are you doing less self-sacrificing when you say, okay, well once this is over, then I'll have a golden moment.

Do you really need to be doing the things that you're doing and you say, well, yes, maybe I've built this big life and now I have to keep all the plates up in the air. Well, maybe if it doesn't feel good, and then the energy starts to bleed out. When you think about all the wonderful plates that you've built, maybe it's time to drop some, maybe it's time to start pruning in very painful ways. It's not just a big spiritual awakening and all of a sudden you're just living your golden years. You actually got to make space for them because most of us are already way over committed and way undernourished.

Susie Moore:

How do your experiences and what you've come to learn, how do they impact your work? Do you feel as if, because I know there's so much that you've created, I mean multiple books, I mean you have so many people who pay attention to you, take your advice, rely on what Kris Carr has to say about health and so much has how you thought about work started. Has that changed much or would you say your work's always a consistent thing for you?

Kris Carr:

It's definitely changed how I feel about work and how much work I want to do. And I love certain things that I do and other things I don't love as much. And those are the things that we've been changing. I had say the biggest thing that it's done for me is it's really given me, I've given myself more permission to be myself

Susie Moore:

That that's the prize right there. Isn't it? Like you being yourself? Yeah. I once heard someone say that if all you did was meditate for 20 years, say with the monks in the Himalayas, you didn't eat, you didn't sleep, you just meditated nonstop. The answer you would arrive at is be yourself. It's like it just saved you 20 years. That's the answer that you would arrive at. So it's really, do you mean expressing yourself? Do you mean just saying what you mean? Do you mean just allowing any quirks that you have to completely shine how

Kris Carr:

It's all of that? I don't know if you've ever had this experience where anybody out there has had this experience where especially somebody who tends to control things, the kind of preparation that I would do for everything that I did was I was a firm believer in over preparing, because I think that there was a part of me that didn't trust myself, didn't trust that I would have the information at my fingertips, didn't trust that I was smart enough, didn't trust that I was charismatic enough, so I had to practice the joke and make sure I nailed the timing and didn't trust that inspiration would come through if I didn't choke it.

So that has shifted and it's become more fun. There was a time where I actually really didn't like being on stage, even though people would say, you're so good on stage. Would you come to my event? Would you come and do this? And I hit this place of such extreme anxiety with public speaking. Meanwhile, I'd been already doing it for decades, but I hit this place and it lasted for a few years where I was so sick before every talk I remember, I'll tell you this real story. Before my super soul session with Oprah at UCLA, I only had one hour of sleep. I was throwing up beforehand. I had diarrhea. I can't even, I'm just being honest. We see I've totally changed the truth. I was so scared and so anxious, and I'm just saying to myself, you know how to do this. You've been doing this for so long, what's happening?

And I think it was because at the time, I was putting so much pressure on myself to maybe even be something that I wasn't, you start and you're in the journey of entrepreneurship or creativity or sharing, just sharing with the world, and you're like this little fluffy bunny and you don't know what you don't know, and you're kind of beginner's mind, which is amazing. And so you're not shaded and you just want to shine love into the world, and then somebody puts a spotlight on you, or at least this was my experience. And then you get popular and then you have some prestige and some success. And for me, Susie, what happened was I started to polish myself away so that I could appeal to more people. And when I was doing that is when I started to terrify myself.

Susie Moore:

I would never guess by the way that you had anxiety. You've always seemed so natural and just in control and spontaneous. To me, those things can also be true. In some cases you would only know inside what's happening. But I think it's really refreshing to hear that to go, we all think I'm the only one who feels like, I don't know if this is enough. I don't know if I'm, and then like you said, there's the pressure that gets attached when there's attention and then there's money, these things. And then it's almost like you sometimes even see it with celebrities, what got them there? They're cool indie movies or whatever, then they're doing alien movies. Nothing wrong with that. But then you're like, is there any of that left that real, that artist? And it can feel like, yeah, it's like, well, what do you want from me? How can I please you? And so now do you just feel like you can exhale and you are just tuned into what feels right in your integrity?

Kris Carr:

Yeah. I think also that this is what I love to do and I want to keep doing it. And so if I'm going to do it and also have the mantra of make your golden years, now it has to feel good. I can't live in the paralysis of anxiety. And so what was the core of that? Me trying to be somebody I wasn't me comparing myself to other people, me trying to appeal to more people and then therefore polishing my personality out of my magic. And that's when it was no longer fun for me, but I was the only one doing this. There was no director in saying, less personality, more boring, please. That's what the people want.

Susie Moore:

Wear this and don't say that. Yeah, yeah. That wasn't happening. Yeah.

Kris Carr:

Yeah. No, that was the internal director that was taking me so down the wrong creative path. And so I think one of the things that's interesting right now is we look at, for example, ai. And it's something that I have fun with. It's so fun. I was putting a reader survey into AI the other day, and it was helping me understand what my audience is interested in and what more about who they are so I can speak to them more clearly. I'm a fan of how I use ai, and I'm certainly not an expert, but as I think about the conversation, you see it all over. Now, we'll only see more of it, I'm sure way more than me, but I think what's going to set us apart is our uniqueness. What's going to make every single brand have the longevity and the staying power is that when more creators are fiercely committed to being who they are and letting their unique personality shine, because that is not something that you can replicate

Susie Moore:

No matter what, no matter how hard you, no matter what the essence of a person, it's the essence.

Kris Carr:

And so us being willing to share more of that essence is how we will thrive. And honestly, I think it's how we heal too.

Susie Moore:

It's interesting, isn't it? Because especially if life, it can pay off to polish yourself and to almost abandon yourself in some ways it can work. And then you can think of this is the thing that this specific area of hustle or whatever, it served me well, I've got to hold on. And maybe we're just seeing a small crumb. I mean, there is nothing, I think more just delicious than someone being themselves. It allows us all to relax. And I think it's amazing too when you can allow someone to be themselves. You're that person who can allow someone to be themselves fully and observe the magic that happens when you just give that. It's like if you ever just chatting with a kid, they are themselves. And when you're just interested, it's like, this is really interesting, these thoughts. So you've always seemed to, one thing that I've always liked about you, Kris, and look in a world where there are lots of different styles of people, I've always thought your authenticity just really shines bright. I'm like, I just trust what you say. I feel like I trust it. And I think that that's how a lot of people feel around you. And if you are even relaxing into more of yourself, I mean, this is a blessing for everybody. It's like, what else is in there

Kris Carr:

So of you and so sweet of you. And I appreciate that. And I think that that's the truth for all of us. That's what I'm learning. And as you were speaking, I felt like I learned something else, which is, it's one thing to say, give yourself permission to be more yourself. And maybe anybody out there listening has heard that. But here's another reason why I think it's so powerful, which is when you allow yourself to be more yourself, you're basically sending a message to yourself that you're good enough.

When you get that message, what happens is, is that if you've ever been at odds with yourself, you've had a difficult relationship with yourself, the number one relationship in our life truly is with ourselves. And the more you're able to kind of say, you're worth this and you're good enough, it's like you're building this deep friendship with self. And when the shit hits the fan, I'm going to tell you what you want to have that friendship with self because that's how you have your own back. And the deeper that relationship gets, the more you start to trust yourself. And when you trust yourself, a whole world of creativity and inspiration opens up. And so that's what the intuitive path is. So you may say, okay, if I commit to walking this path to basically removing the armor and being willing to shine my true essence, the payback is, is that I'm going to be in such communion with myself that those ideas, those decisions, those insights, those innovations that I was banging my head against the wall to try to force myself to figure out, they come naturally. Why? Because I've got this flow with me. And that's the big payoff of saying, oh, Susie, I just decided to be more myself.

Susie Moore:

Right? Like that. We hear a lot just be yourself. Just be yourself. It's like, well, how do I do that? Wait, but these people want that. And that part, it's like it's something that happens a little bit at a time, right? It's like they're holding onto who you are, not just dropping it. I mean, I had Martha Beck on the podcast a while ago, and she said that whenever you are contorting yourself, the people who you're attracting, you're always going to be that version of you that isn't quite real. And then you can never actually quite have a real relationship with those people. And if they're doing it too, she calls it them. Fractals like that occur in nature how these shapes start to appear. And you have these fractals of fakery in your life. She's like, you don't belong anywhere then because you aren't you. And I just thought it was mirroring exactly what you're saying. I mean, what a gift that is.

Kris Carr:

Deep wisdom and so true. And I could tell you the younger me, I had been engaged a few times before I actually got married, and the younger me was like, why am I continuing to get engaged and these relationships falling apart? What's wrong with me? And it's like, if I'm to be honest, it was because I was trying to be something that I'm not to attract you. And that's not sustainable and therefore it fell apart.

Susie Moore:

Kris, a couple more things. I could keep you. We could just for three days, let's get the wine.

Kris Carr:

We're going to have our time together.

Susie Moore:

I know there are a couple things I love in your book and there's something that I'd love to finish on. Friends, everyone needs this book, okay? Because it's a matter of time. If you have an experienced loss, we know that it's coming, right? And Kris is especially practical too about how to frame conversations around it, like what to say, what not to say, and also the energy to be around to bring to a situation. You speak so much about being mindful of your energy and emulating energy that you admire, but it's all included of course here in the book because yeah, I mean it's reality and we want to be prepared. And I think to read something like this, I think it just brings you into the present moment and it just brings your life clarity. I love so much reading about Ken and what I've got in my notes here, Kris, is his smile. Wow, that's what I've got written down. I know that you know what that means, but I'd love you to just share a bit about this with us as we wrap, if that's it.

Kris Carr:

Yeah. So there's a chapter in the book called Rest in Love, and it's the chapter where my dad passes and it's the moment where he's approaching the door to the portal beyond what my knowing is. And my mother is in such power in that. She's like a goddess. She's like a queen. In that moment, I don't even know. I am like, who are you? What are you doing? This is amazing. She's coaching him. She's coaching him like, you are doing such a good job. I love you. I'm so proud of you. You've got this. And it was so moving to me and she, she's holding his hand and or she's holding his heart and I'm holding his hand. And there's the moment before he passes where he, I hear him take this deep breath and it's this sound, it's almost like childlike curiosity, but also excitement as if maybe, I dunno, if you've ever jumped off a rock into the water and it's like that moment is maybe the rock is high and you're like, and then you go, or the moment when I imagine you're little and you're going to school for the first time and you're wondering if your friends are going to be there, if you'll make new friends, when anybody will like you.

So there's this excitement, there's this fear, there's this nerve, and I'm projecting all this. It's just what I heard and me trying to make sense of it. These are with the emotions that landed. And then it was as if he jumped and whatever met him was the most beautiful and loving energy and experience. A coming home is all I can imagine because there was this smile and this radiance that spread across his face and he was gone. But that smile remained and it gave me such faith in a world beyond our knowing, which is something that I'm kind of hot and cold about. I say I have a feral fluid and very fickle faith. It just depends on the day. But that smile opened my heart to the pursuit of more wherein times. I might've been a little more skeptical. And it was very beautiful.

Susie Moore:

I loved reading that. I've heard of similar things in other transitions too, and I find it wildly lovely and reassuring and comforting and really perfect and that you were with him, your mom too. I mean, I believe that people are always with us. For me, it's a knowing and I feel as if I don't know, can this book what you've created? It's extremely generous, and I thank you, Kris, truly for creating this wonderful piece of work and for talking about it with me about difficult things today. So Kris Carr, thank you. I'm not a morning person and breathing, lost grief and the big, messy emotions that happen when life falls apart. Where can we go follow you? Do more with you. Kris, take us wherever we should go next.

Kris Carr:

You can find me at Krisscarr.com and the book is everywhere books are sold. And I want to thank you, Susie, the narrator of all of my future books and my friend for being willing to have this conversation because you are, the people like you are how these messages get out in the world. You're the brave souls who say yes to difficult conversations, and I'm just so grateful.

Susie Moore:

Kris Carr, my friends, and your new favorite book, I'm Not a Mourning person. Thank you, Kris. And until next time, my friends, so much love and ease.