WEBVTT
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[SPEAKER_00]: consequence podcast network.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, it's Dr. Mike.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We hope you've been enjoying our conversation with Zach from Pub.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We are taking a week off, but to keep the conversation going, we thought we'd share an episode from the vault with musician and mental health advocate, Sarah Barthol, a fan to Graham, who joins me to share her struggle with devastating and traumatic loss in her life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you next week with a brand new episode.
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[UNKNOWN]: you
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[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to going there, the Crossroads, where music and mental health meet.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Today we are talking with singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Barthol.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now, many of you know Sarah as part of the music duo Fantagram with Josh Carter, with songs such as Samuel Blues, you don't get me high anymore, and my personal favorite when I'm small.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Fantagram has been described as lush, sumptuous, sultry evocative, masters of tension, lyrics full of barbed abstract images.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And Fantagram just teamed up with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine on a song called Driving to Texas.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So check out that song and their recent album Saramoni at Fantagram.com.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now on the going there podcast, we have the tough conversations to address important issues so we can learn from each other, challenge the stigma of mental illness, and get the care we need.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that Sarah talks about is her experience of devastating and traumatic loss in her life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Sarah has been a fantastic mental health advocate over the years and has been very forthcoming and outspoken about how she lost her sister when her sister committed suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But prior to that tragic event, Sarah had also lost her father to cancer and her mother struggled with cancer for years as did some of her friends.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so what Sarah describes is years of these devastating losses as well as others, one on top of another.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This type of repetitive loss can be devastating and traumatic, where we're still reeling from one loss as we're trying to make sense of the next one.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It can be overwhelming and horrible, not only because of losing people close to us, but also because it undermines our fundamental belief that we live in a safe and predictable world.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And our sense that we are safe and that we have some level of control over our lives is critical to our own mental health and well-being.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that Sarah talks about doing in the face of this loss is being what she calls a superhero who needs to be the one who says everything is okay and tries to make everything okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That is what many of us instinctively do when we face loss or experience others around us struggling.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We try to be strong for others so we can be there for them when they are facing sickness, despair, or even possibly death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is that we often close off our own emotional processing, avoiding or suppressing the intense feelings that come from facing the suffering of others or our own suffering.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And this is when so many of us turn to music as a way of understanding, processing, and expressing our feelings in the face of devastating and traumatic situations like the losses that Sarah has endured.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact Sarah talked about how making music gave her the opportunity and freedom to experience and express her feelings.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Now as we progress through this season of going there, our goal is to bring you the audience further into the conversation.
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[SPEAKER_01]: On the consequence website and wherever you may find these episodes, you'll also find a short questionnaire.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to hear your feedback.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Questions you have that have been sparked by our conversations with these incredible artists and topics you'd love to see addressed.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We incorporate these responses into episodes as well as a monthly column called Ask Dr. Mike on the Consequence website.
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[SPEAKER_01]: If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
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[SPEAKER_01]: These help other folks find their way into the conversation so they can go there with us.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So let's go there and listen to what Sarah has to say.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, Sarah, welcome to going there.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, how's it going?
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's going okay.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for being on the show.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So you and I talked initially before the podcast about what what I'm hearing is just a tremendous amount of loss and stress that you faced.
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[SPEAKER_01]: regarding different things that have been happening with members of your family.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that you've been very unspoken about was your struggle with the fact that your sister unfortunately committed suicide.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry for that loss.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I thought that maybe we should start there and then talk about that as a beginning point of just kind of how you dealt with these stressors and losses throughout your life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've kind of, it's been about five years since my sister passed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been a pretty important five years for myself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a really, really hard amount of time to just kind of learn and grow about
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[SPEAKER_00]: Where I've come from, why I do the things I do, maybe why my sister thought the way she thought and, you know, self-medicated and whatever, you know, kind of struggles that she had that she'll never be able to tell the story.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've been kind of just
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[SPEAKER_00]: diving in and kind of opening up just different parts of my life that I never really had focused on before because I've had a pretty traumatized kind of traumatizing just like a life full of death life like I guess life full of just loss and
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just kind of it started when I was a kid.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I realized a lot while before coming on here is I kind of want to just tell my story and maybe tell my story of my sister's story of of our childhood and how things what happened I guess and kind of where my music came in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're, you know, I started to depend more and more and more on my music and just kind of where I am now.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And just I don't know, a lot of self-realization things that really do tie into my sister and just being honest about mental health, which is what I'm working on.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a life of death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that is such a powerful
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[SPEAKER_01]: phrase and you know maybe we can start there just in terms of just that concept that that one would identify their life so closely with death in and of itself is such a powerful statement.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a strange way of seeing it and looking at my past, but I've got a lot of stuff.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I want to start with talking about, I think, just my sister and me growing up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, where we came from, we came from middle, nowhere upstate New York in the small town called Greenwich, New York, not pronounced Greenwich.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's Greenwich.
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're very strict on that there, but really small town grew up on a farm.
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[SPEAKER_00]: On like ten acres had pigs and dogs and lots of chickens and a huge, huge garden that we would sell our produce on the side of our road.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like super just a really cool way to grow up.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a lot of time in the woods, you know, picking blueberries and things like that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: very quaint and lovely and so it was me and my sister and my father and my mom and my dad when I was fifteen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We got a call that he had a seizure while he was driving and was in the hospital.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And at the time, he wasn't living with us.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My mom was, I think, officially divorced to him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we hadn't seen him in a while, just because things are all rough at home.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We found out that he had a brain cancer and he had a brain tumor that was growing in his frontal lobe, which is like your personality, your functionality, your judgment, everything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the size of a grapefruit when they found it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was growing for ever so slowly for twelve years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it was so slowly and gradual that it totally can I swear.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I swear a lot, but I won't, sorry.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It completely just turned him into a complete fucking asshole.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And he lost all visibility to work.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like he was this, he was like, and the best way possible, because I wish I really fucking got to know him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: You reminded me a lot of myself.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I have just a loss for life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I love
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[SPEAKER_00]: I get enjoyment out of everything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was an extremely successful ski photographer at the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He published books, he made films.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was pretty epic dude, as my mom would always explain.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's grew.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So fucking slowly that no one knew what was that there was really anything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So ever so slowly he became abusive.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Emotionally abusive.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think he was more physical abusive to my sister.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My sister was
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like her personalities, they just kind of clashed and the state that my father was in.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I believe not that there's any excuse, but kind of is a pretty big excuse.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Like his state was last back and just, I don't know, just be be awful to everything and anyone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think I developed this kind of keeping everything, keeping any of my feelings inside just because I wanted to be the like, okay, you know, let's allow all of this, all this crap to happen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I, I need to be the one who isn't going to start problems.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Because my sister was,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not the easiest kid.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She was born with anxiety.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think she had her first panic attack.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My mom always tells me she had her first panic attack when she was like two.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She just like she wasn't wouldn't get her way or something and she would just start hyper ventilating a breed and then she would just turn blue and pass out kind of.
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[SPEAKER_00]: kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And she was born with a cleft lip as well, which was, I think pretty tough, as only my perspective, I don't know what that would feel like, but it really, it was a lot for her to have to go through in school and whatnot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, what society kind of makes
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[SPEAKER_00]: emails feel like they have to be and whatnot.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so these are the tangents I'm talking about, but it's okay.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we found out that my dad got the head of tumor.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And then he had about, I think he lived about two more years, so he passed away when I was seventeen.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a pretty crazy experience, not knowing, not even knowing that it was anything crazy because it was kind of part of my life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: an estranged way and kind of realizing in strange ways that I never really knew my dad.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really have a dad father figure, I guess.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really have
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that like security apparently these are all things I'm learning now but security and safety what a father should you know bring and give give to you and teach you all of these things.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like was pretty much lost in general because there was just a lot of chaos in the house and
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[SPEAKER_00]: Trying to be strong from my mom and wanted her to be okay wanted protect her from from my dad and from my sister because.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was an asshole to us, so right for a key.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I call her an asshole, actually.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hope she can hear me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But she was, and she was a real asshole to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of just kept everything bottled up inside and not even knowing that I had feelings.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I never even know, these are all, this is the stuff I've been learning through therapy for the past five years.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea how I could actually say something and somebody could, could help me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I went through a handful of just really shitty boyfriends, abusive relationships, kind of gravitating towards, I think,
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[SPEAKER_00]: people that I felt like maybe I could help because I wasn't able to help my dad.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think just thinking that it was normal for me to be treated like shit because of my sister too.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was just I think I developed this thing where I was like, it's okay, they don't mean it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: mentality.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So I had a lot of, I had a lot of shitty relationships.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then I, then I, that's where I think in a space where I met up with Josh, my bandmate, again, and we started the band.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I, I truly,
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[SPEAKER_00]: felt my passion and just I think what music was doing for me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was bringing this kind of, it was like this cathartic release, but me not even really understanding.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If I, when I look back at all the songs that you just even, if you look into the list of names of all of our songs, you know, like they're pretty dark and
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[SPEAKER_00]: They're pretty, I mean, and the songs are dark.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All of the lyrics are dark.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I remember back then kind of realizing, just in a way of, like, I don't know, we just, that's just kind of, in interviews.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, you just kind of gravitate towards that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like, it's more interesting, you know, to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But not really, even knowing, kind of where it started,
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[SPEAKER_00]: where it came from.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it was a true release for me that I was able to speak in a way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it took over my life and we dove into being in a band and we hit the ground running.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was like this kind of moment where we're just like, all right, let's do it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We believe in our music.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, we loved it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was, I think it was, it was our release to the world, to not even understanding the past, but it was a way, it was a way to tell my story without having to tell my story and connecting to people and connecting to our fans that
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[SPEAKER_00]: could hear here, I think here what I was trying to say.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So then that kind of started.
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[SPEAKER_00]: My mom gets cancer, gastrointestinal, stromal tumor to be precise, which is when she had it.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't, if she had it, maybe a couple, two years before she would have died.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So that was pretty terrifying for me, but also kind of,
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[SPEAKER_00]: got used to this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take care of everyone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to, you know, and my sister is at the moment.
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[SPEAKER_00]: fully struggling and not being able to cope because she had always self-medicated.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She never got the right help, not that we even knew what right or wrong help was at the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But as I struggle and have struggled in the past, it's really easy to pick up a drink and numb yourself instead of deal with the problem.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She got cancer and almost died.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Then she's been good for the past, I think, eight years or so, but it was pretty awful at the beginning.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Another one of my friends got cancer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, twenty-eight.
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[SPEAKER_00]: He got colon cancer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Josh and I were very good friend Kirk.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And my ex-boyfriend Benjamin Curtis, he was in the secret machines in school seven bells, got cancer, I think, maybe the following year.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And he was in his early thirties as well, thirty four.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So there was a lot of just realizing, I think, just kind of white knuckling it, just being like,
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[SPEAKER_00]: fully like not even realizing how how much around I looked around just being like wow this shit is.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if this is normal.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But I just kept kind of going, using the music to just release my feelings as well as I could.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And Kirk ends up dying, Benjamin ends up dying very soon after I think Benjamin
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was diagnosed in then he passed away like eight months or something after he was diagnosed.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We were working, we were writing voices at the time.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And we were in LA.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really, really fucking tough time because we were trying to, Josh and I were trying to process
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[SPEAKER_00]: one of our closest friends dying at age thirty one of cancer that we were we were a part of you know then the end there and during the whole process I think it was important for us to be kind of be there for him.
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[SPEAKER_00]: as much as we could obviously, but writing voices, shit.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to think of all the names of the songs, like my only friend, black out days, nothing but trouble.
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[SPEAKER_00]: All songs just about loneliness and just darkness and sadness, and you know the beauty of, oh, and fallen love.
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[SPEAKER_00]: With the name of fallen love is obviously lovely.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But the lyrics are, you know, just all about hurting somebody, hurting people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And all of the songs, there's not one song on there that's happy.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But that was my, my, the way I released and then we went, we go on tour.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We just, it's never stopped.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's nonstop at this point.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think Josh and I are, you know,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of losing it a little bit, but not knowing how to say stop, because kind of seeing, you know, your close friends passing away and you're just like, whatever, we got to do it for them.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Or whatever, you know, was going on in our heads.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So we never, we never took care of ourselves, we just,
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[SPEAKER_00]: allowed our space to I think just
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[SPEAKER_00]: Self-medicate, keep going.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta go do these shows.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta keep pushing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta be that ban that we've always wanted to be.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That we promised ourselves since day one.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we did.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And so that tour cycle ended.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where we started three.
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[SPEAKER_00]: After, I think, a year or two on the road, like non-stop, just, but having, you know, like that, that was kind of our breaking album of sorts.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really think you can say that, but.
23:49.569 --> 23:50.989
[SPEAKER_00]: And we started three.
23:51.530 --> 23:55.612
[SPEAKER_00]: And my sister moved out to LA.
23:55.712 --> 23:59.914
[SPEAKER_00]: I talked her in a moving out to LA, and she was pretty
24:01.294 --> 24:06.235
[SPEAKER_00]: pretty insecure and really just afraid of leaving the house.
24:07.355 --> 24:09.316
[SPEAKER_00]: She was still living with my mom at the time.
24:09.336 --> 24:15.917
[SPEAKER_00]: And just kind of struggled with everything.
24:16.317 --> 24:22.998
[SPEAKER_00]: And I somehow managed to tell her to get the help out and come out to LA.
24:23.078 --> 24:25.459
[SPEAKER_00]: Like just, I don't know, let's start a new
24:26.699 --> 24:26.979
[SPEAKER_00]: life.
24:28.060 --> 24:29.381
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to love the sunshine.
24:29.401 --> 24:30.803
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to help you.
24:31.523 --> 24:34.566
[SPEAKER_00]: My boyfriend at the time was like, hey, I found a job for you.
24:34.586 --> 24:37.308
[SPEAKER_00]: We found a roommate for you.
24:37.328 --> 24:39.970
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's awesome.
24:40.391 --> 24:44.354
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have Josh's out here.
24:44.374 --> 24:45.535
[SPEAKER_00]: We all grew up together.
24:45.675 --> 24:46.856
[SPEAKER_00]: Josh and my sister.
24:46.876 --> 24:51.039
[SPEAKER_00]: And just good people out here.
24:51.140 --> 24:51.840
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't be afraid.
24:51.900 --> 24:52.441
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on out.
24:54.780 --> 25:21.949
[SPEAKER_00]: Since she came out and she was she was loving life for a minute and After maybe she was out here for about a couple of a year and a half she was she was doing pretty well Orally she was hiding it pretty well because she was I think she also kind of learned in a way to kind of Keep her problems hidden because her problems
25:23.215 --> 25:28.157
[SPEAKER_00]: fucked up a lot of things when she was younger and when we're kids.
25:30.258 --> 25:39.342
[SPEAKER_00]: So she would always just like hide in a room kind of thing and drink and just be, sometimes wouldn't come out of a room for days.
25:40.702 --> 25:52.347
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember, I remember when it was, I could finally kind of tell from her being like just being herself
25:54.562 --> 25:58.203
[SPEAKER_00]: I could always just kind of tell what she was in a really bad place.
25:58.263 --> 26:12.910
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember asking my friend, her roommate, like, hey, I can tell that my sister's not doing really well.
26:12.930 --> 26:21.855
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want you to know that it's kind of a, it happens because that's kind of all I really knew.
26:23.646 --> 26:37.876
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, how to explain it and not that she would, uh, she would, you know, lash out or anything, but I just knew Becky would go into, you know, a dark place.
26:38.977 --> 26:41.959
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, I asked her roommate.
26:41.979 --> 26:43.220
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, hey, are you all right?
26:44.633 --> 26:47.258
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there, like, how's it going at home?
26:47.398 --> 26:50.904
[SPEAKER_00]: And she explained, you know, I don't know.
26:50.925 --> 26:51.926
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really know.
26:52.006 --> 26:53.670
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing that I can do to help.
26:56.263 --> 27:08.165
[SPEAKER_00]: and just kind of explaining to her like, well, it's usually a phase and like, it's, you know, she kind of goes through this, but I know she's just kind of, I know she's not happy with her work right now.
27:09.105 --> 27:16.487
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, don't, don't, just don't put too much stress on yourself and whatnot.
27:17.667 --> 27:20.028
[SPEAKER_00]: That was kind of the last conversation about it.
27:22.937 --> 27:31.200
[SPEAKER_00]: We were writing that we're maybe like a quarter into writing the album, just mostly ideas.
27:31.520 --> 27:37.882
[SPEAKER_00]: And we, I got a phone call that she killed herself.
27:40.723 --> 27:48.865
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, after certain, not even a certain amount of time.
27:48.925 --> 27:50.506
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that point, it's just like,
27:51.702 --> 27:54.243
[SPEAKER_00]: Holy shit, like what?
27:56.564 --> 27:57.044
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
27:58.685 --> 28:06.448
[SPEAKER_00]: I gotta go call my mom now and tell her that her daughter killed herself.
28:08.348 --> 28:16.651
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember having to do that and just feeling like I never wanted to have to do this.
28:19.089 --> 28:30.034
[SPEAKER_00]: I always thought that she would figure it out, you know, because she, again, struggled her whole life with anxiety and depression.
28:31.355 --> 28:41.459
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, kind of just start our childhoods in the way life happened to her and happened to us.
28:44.322 --> 28:55.475
[SPEAKER_00]: She just I don't know like I don't it's hard because I haven't been able to cut like I understand it's not my fault finally you know that took a really long time
28:57.695 --> 29:10.643
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but that still doesn't mean that she's, I'm never going to fucking see her again, you know, um, which is why I tell her how much I fucking hate her.
29:10.783 --> 29:13.405
[SPEAKER_00]: She's such an asshole, relieving.
29:13.865 --> 29:25.392
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but um, so that, so that all kind of happened, um, what a fucking moral end of it.
29:25.753 --> 29:25.813
[SPEAKER_00]: Um,
29:27.118 --> 29:29.243
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess just a couple of months in general.
29:32.230 --> 29:52.443
[SPEAKER_00]: going through it all funeral and everything and coming back to LA and knowing that we had this album, that every, obviously everyone was fine, like we can just fucking wait, like there's no, and there was a little bit of just like, well, what do you do?
29:52.563 --> 29:59.468
[SPEAKER_00]: Should you like go off and fucking live in Patagonia for two years and just find yourself?
30:00.728 --> 30:26.042
[SPEAKER_00]: which I thought maybe that's what I wanted to do, which is, you know, I think one of my normal patterns is run away from problems or stay and go into the studio and fucking be as raw and open and honest as you possibly can.
30:28.261 --> 30:37.847
[SPEAKER_00]: with just not holding back and knowing beforehand what you want to say.
30:37.867 --> 30:46.192
[SPEAKER_00]: Because normally, again, all of our songs are really dark, but I didn't know where that was coming from.
30:46.252 --> 30:48.533
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no fucking idea because I thought I was the
30:49.824 --> 30:59.172
[SPEAKER_00]: the superhero, the person who's going to say everything's okay and everything's fine and you're going to be great and I'm great because
31:00.310 --> 31:08.832
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm helping you feel great and we know whatever kind of mentality I had for my entire life.
31:10.052 --> 31:14.894
[SPEAKER_00]: It was this kind of just moment is either like, sink or swim.
31:16.354 --> 31:25.316
[SPEAKER_00]: And I decided that we should go back into the studio and write three, write this album that
31:29.892 --> 31:50.581
[SPEAKER_00]: It's surrounded my sister's death, but also I think was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back of finally being having so many things build up so much darkness and so much weight and so much pain.
31:51.962 --> 31:55.645
[SPEAKER_00]: And not putting on like a, hey, how are you?
31:55.725 --> 32:01.689
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm okay and keeping it inside and releasing it somewhere else.
32:02.429 --> 32:07.132
[SPEAKER_00]: Just fucking throwing it up, screen puking it off.
32:08.153 --> 32:10.174
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we did and it was.
32:12.952 --> 32:14.593
[SPEAKER_00]: It was incredible.
32:14.613 --> 32:17.894
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really painful to do.
32:19.835 --> 32:28.838
[SPEAKER_00]: But the most cathartic kind of experience, I think, that we have ever had, because Josh and I, again, we grew, he was, we grew, all grew up together.
32:30.203 --> 32:47.090
[SPEAKER_00]: I met Josh through my sister actually as kids and we were Josh and I were on this just I don't know this weird wavelength above everything else or blood anyone else that like we
32:49.038 --> 32:57.204
[SPEAKER_00]: We just released and wrote this incredible album that I'm so proud of.
32:58.885 --> 33:03.648
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think maybe so proud of because it had intention in a way.
33:03.888 --> 33:09.772
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it, there was this moment where I didn't, I didn't need to hide.
33:09.792 --> 33:11.113
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to hide.
33:12.790 --> 33:15.991
[SPEAKER_00]: And we finished it and it was awesome.
33:16.551 --> 33:23.832
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought that that kind of that time was like, oh fuck, all right, Jesus, we got, I got through it.
33:24.072 --> 33:32.074
[SPEAKER_00]: I got through whatever I needed to get through to fix this, you know, whatever.
33:32.094 --> 33:35.394
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we go on tour.
33:35.414 --> 33:37.915
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to sing these songs.
33:39.150 --> 33:45.654
[SPEAKER_00]: every single fucking night and relive.
33:49.696 --> 33:59.441
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess my truth and just the experience of everything all over again every single fucking night.
34:01.871 --> 34:04.934
[SPEAKER_00]: I was exhausted at the end of every show.
34:04.954 --> 34:17.144
[SPEAKER_00]: I could barely get off the stage and I had to lay down and I was always kind of hyperventilating.
34:17.225 --> 34:19.887
[SPEAKER_00]: I was very unwell.
34:19.927 --> 34:28.595
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't taking care of myself because I was self-medicating to get through the tour.
34:30.589 --> 34:34.331
[SPEAKER_00]: And getting just to get through the every single night.
34:35.211 --> 34:38.153
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was so painful to to relive it.
34:39.413 --> 34:42.235
[SPEAKER_00]: And it paid it just took its toll.
34:42.255 --> 34:48.658
[SPEAKER_00]: It took its toll until the end of the tour.
34:51.248 --> 34:59.791
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a, not, I, yeah, probably my darkest place with just numbing myself.
35:00.831 --> 35:08.493
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just didn't, I just, I didn't, I mean, I'm sure you can see it if you, if you look back on, on maybe performances.
35:10.826 --> 35:22.135
[SPEAKER_00]: of just, like, just crying during, like, screen crying in, um, just one song called The Stroyer, which is about my sister.
35:22.155 --> 35:26.559
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, I just, it was just, it was exhausting.
35:27.199 --> 35:36.467
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and then I finally admitted to myself that, uh, I needed to get help.
35:38.160 --> 35:41.642
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't because obviously this shit wasn't working.
35:42.283 --> 35:49.568
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was kind of kind of strange because I was seeing my patterns in my sister's patterns.
35:51.369 --> 35:55.372
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was angry at myself that I got to that space.
35:56.853 --> 36:01.496
[SPEAKER_00]: But it also made me understand how she could have felt.
36:03.899 --> 36:17.748
[SPEAKER_00]: And I took the initiative and I found a therapist and I have been going to her weekly ever since.
36:19.189 --> 36:32.898
[SPEAKER_00]: And she finally, I learned about myself finally to where I can actually use my words and have this conversation with you instead of
36:34.158 --> 36:37.579
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, putting on a face of like, hey, I'm good.
36:37.639 --> 36:38.219
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you?
36:38.279 --> 36:39.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my dad just died.
36:39.659 --> 36:40.980
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm fine.
36:43.440 --> 37:02.065
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I just, I know a lot, I realize how important it is to go back and discover things about your
37:03.355 --> 37:08.537
[SPEAKER_00]: patterns in your past and your childhood that it does make you the person that you are today.
37:10.358 --> 37:30.765
[SPEAKER_00]: And because I don't my biggest fear and I feel like one of the biggest reasons I was to put on this earth was to speak about the scary stuff and how shitty
37:32.049 --> 37:36.111
[SPEAKER_00]: It was for my sister to have to leave.
37:36.832 --> 37:39.593
[SPEAKER_00]: And that she couldn't stay.
37:39.673 --> 37:41.594
[SPEAKER_00]: She couldn't handle it for whatever reason.
37:43.375 --> 37:56.262
[SPEAKER_00]: And for families that have to go through it and have to feel this ever-longing, whatever lasting pain for the rest of their lives that
37:58.553 --> 38:03.220
[SPEAKER_00]: that they'll never ever ever get an answer for because that person is gone.
38:04.501 --> 38:09.889
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, I know what that pain is.
38:09.909 --> 38:11.792
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that
38:16.059 --> 38:20.303
[SPEAKER_00]: It's unfair and I just want to speak.
38:20.864 --> 38:31.354
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to tell my story if it can help anyone in any single way and to be able to actually use my words is very powerful.
38:31.734 --> 38:39.202
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I guess that's where I can stop talking.
38:41.278 --> 38:42.339
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jesus.
38:42.719 --> 38:46.102
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like eight hours of just pain and death.
38:47.463 --> 38:47.964
[UNKNOWN]: God.
38:49.985 --> 38:51.226
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a powerful story.
38:51.246 --> 38:54.409
[SPEAKER_01]: And I appreciate you telling it.
38:56.631 --> 38:59.593
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, obviously it's very painful.
39:01.575 --> 39:08.621
[SPEAKER_01]: Having to talk about these things, not only having to gone through it and cope with it on a day-to-day basis, but then having to talk about it publicly is very hard.
39:10.238 --> 39:11.638
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you.
39:11.698 --> 39:12.639
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
39:15.059 --> 39:24.322
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of just a crazy every time I tell the story, it's still, it makes me shake my head and feel like Jesus Christ.
39:24.442 --> 39:28.523
[SPEAKER_00]: What the fuck is with like what kind of cars have been dealt to me?
39:30.703 --> 39:31.043
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:33.404 --> 39:36.645
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still here and I'm doing what I can do.
39:38.714 --> 39:53.919
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think that, you know, there's so much that they said there, but a couple of things that really struck me was when we're talking about physical or mental health issues.
39:54.779 --> 39:59.741
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's something about it that's so destabilizing.
40:01.555 --> 40:13.137
[SPEAKER_01]: and living with the idea that that, you know, that your life can be just upended like that, and how out of control and unstable that feels.
40:13.177 --> 40:27.900
[SPEAKER_01]: But then, especially when it comes to mental health issues, coupling that with trying as best as we can, whether it's because we think that's what other people want or we're just struggling with it to just not feel.
40:29.088 --> 40:29.428
[SPEAKER_01]: anything.
40:30.509 --> 40:36.795
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you put those two things together, it's such a powerful recipe for us feeling lost.
40:38.556 --> 40:50.827
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you're describing with the music, when you think about, you know, there's so many reasons why music is powerful, but just having a place that you can count on to feel.
40:52.107 --> 41:02.053
[SPEAKER_01]: And not only to experience feelings, but to express feelings, and that you have control over, you can keep going back to it, whether it's as a fan or as an artist.
41:02.654 --> 41:11.760
[SPEAKER_01]: You start to get a sense of part of why the music is so powerful, because there's just not that many places where you can have that.
41:12.560 --> 41:16.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of, it's,
41:17.810 --> 41:21.711
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the strange fear to feel.
41:21.731 --> 41:44.458
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that people struggle with, that probably, I don't know, everybody in it, again, you know, you always think that no one can understand what I'm going through and that is not true at all because we all have that just
41:45.013 --> 41:48.175
[SPEAKER_00]: the same that same feeling that no one can understand.
41:48.235 --> 41:55.821
[SPEAKER_00]: But you just have to be able to feel it and not be afraid of feeling.
41:58.943 --> 42:02.185
[SPEAKER_00]: And take the next step of saying it out loud.
42:04.126 --> 42:10.871
[SPEAKER_00]: But what makes me so proud and so lucky that I had music.
42:13.526 --> 42:17.067
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, because shit, I don't even, I fuck.
42:17.227 --> 42:18.067
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know what.
42:18.207 --> 42:33.031
[SPEAKER_00]: I would, where I would be right now if I didn't, um, and to be able to give, give that to, um, our fans, um, to write songs that have, have feeling.
42:33.151 --> 42:41.013
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that, you know, the most important songs in this world are the ones that make you feel,
42:42.388 --> 42:51.111
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess feel something, but just have a feeling to say, holy shit, what is that?
42:51.511 --> 43:02.794
[SPEAKER_00]: What, oh my god, what is like it's a dickding, it's like, and it's just a, it's the most beautiful feeling in the world to me.
43:04.975 --> 43:11.497
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just so lucky that I can, that I can give that to people.
43:14.188 --> 43:22.114
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there's this idea, you know, sometimes when people will talk about, you know, what's favorite kind of music, what's the best kind of music?
43:22.194 --> 43:27.878
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, this idea of anything that makes you feel.
43:29.602 --> 43:30.383
[SPEAKER_01]: is worthwhile.
43:31.163 --> 43:33.664
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't even matter what it makes you feel.
43:34.225 --> 43:44.871
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like any kind of willingness to approach rather than avoid emotions, whether it's really really sad and painful emotions or even really really
43:45.571 --> 43:48.332
[SPEAKER_01]: kind of upbeat and positive emotions.
43:49.273 --> 44:00.038
[SPEAKER_01]: Just finding somewhere where you feel like you can connect in emotionally is such a powerful, in some cases, starting an endpoint for a lot of people.
44:00.678 --> 44:04.160
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to know that they can feel anything, you're talking about feeling numb.
44:05.020 --> 44:16.653
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes, you know, which makes sense, like the sense of, you know, even just listening to the story, it's almost like, God, you feel like you just, you almost feel like, I don't want to, you want to shut down because it's so powerful.
44:17.253 --> 44:21.138
[SPEAKER_01]: And just the notion that somebody can feel anything in the midst of that.
44:22.416 --> 44:37.620
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, unfortunately, some people will turn to drugs or alcohol, which has been theory unhealthy, but if you can find a healthy way of feeling something, that resonates with you.
44:37.640 --> 44:39.981
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just it's so important during those times.
44:40.581 --> 44:42.761
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:43.362 --> 44:47.443
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those things again where I wish
44:49.243 --> 45:07.813
[SPEAKER_00]: It's strange, it's hard because all of these realizations and understandings of who I am and how I feel and what I've been and just everything, I've had them after my sister died.
45:07.833 --> 45:17.337
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's hard because I probably wouldn't have realized any of them if she didn't die
45:19.244 --> 45:24.207
[SPEAKER_00]: really weird dark way of saying it, but it's true.
45:24.227 --> 45:32.453
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was my, it wasn't just this one thing that happened that totally flipped over my life.
45:32.633 --> 45:34.414
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just hitting the rock bottom.
45:34.454 --> 45:36.895
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the fucking the last straw.
45:36.975 --> 45:41.218
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the like the last thing that I, I could handle.
45:41.238 --> 45:45.681
[SPEAKER_00]: And the most important, you know, my fucking sister, she's, she's,
45:47.243 --> 45:48.684
[SPEAKER_00]: She's my everything.
45:48.764 --> 45:50.126
[SPEAKER_00]: She was part of my life.
45:50.346 --> 45:53.769
[SPEAKER_00]: She was my only sister.
45:54.990 --> 45:59.073
[SPEAKER_00]: And the person that I was always looked up to.
45:59.173 --> 46:00.755
[SPEAKER_00]: She was my hero.
46:03.917 --> 46:06.900
[SPEAKER_00]: And especially since my father was gone.
46:07.420 --> 46:12.805
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, for her to leave and for her to leave.
46:15.067 --> 46:23.675
[SPEAKER_00]: and not say it, not come to me and not feeling guilty about feeling the way she did.
46:24.276 --> 46:29.701
[SPEAKER_00]: And not coming out and saying, hey, I fucking need to just talk to you.
46:29.721 --> 46:30.522
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't do that.
46:30.542 --> 46:33.245
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, anything, any kind of thing.
46:33.265 --> 46:35.647
[SPEAKER_00]: I was so just,
46:37.288 --> 46:41.450
[SPEAKER_00]: It's completely not aware at all until it was too gone.
46:41.710 --> 47:03.019
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know she'd wanted to hide things from me because she knew how much shit I had gone through with, you know, my friend's Benjamin and Kirk Dying, the abusive kind of relationships that I was in, you know, having to deal with
47:05.023 --> 47:13.010
[SPEAKER_00]: alcoholism and just addiction with some of my friends and how much it just destroyed me.
47:14.051 --> 47:19.635
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know she didn't want to come to me because it was just one more thing that I had to deal with.
47:20.196 --> 47:24.880
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hated knowing that I knew that's what she felt.
47:26.948 --> 47:35.154
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's unfortunately such a powerful feeling that people have when they're struggling is they don't want to be a burden.
47:35.174 --> 47:41.419
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they already feel like a burden to the people around them, especially those who are closest to them.
47:42.139 --> 47:52.167
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, people might be sitting around them being like, oh, if you had just reached out to me, like kind of thinking, it's like, why, you know, why didn't you reach out to me?
47:52.207 --> 47:55.950
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so hard because when you're in that hole, when you're in that
47:56.918 --> 48:07.000
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the darkest of dark places, it sort of makes sense somehow that you don't want to hurt people by reaching out.
48:07.201 --> 48:13.742
[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, at that same time, it doesn't make sense that the loss of you would be something that would hurt even more.
48:13.762 --> 48:18.803
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's how low, that's how low, you know, we feel about ourselves.
48:18.843 --> 48:24.745
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in that moment, you know, that like a conversation, it's like, oh, I would never want to burden with them.
48:25.791 --> 48:33.816
[SPEAKER_01]: But the idea of not having us, it doesn't, well, that doesn't make sense as a burden because we just, we couldn't imagine that we have any worth.
48:34.316 --> 48:39.239
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, that's so tough, you know, to convince people otherwise when they're in that zone.
48:40.060 --> 48:52.147
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's, it is, it is, just the most, the most painful thing about it is just knowing
48:54.637 --> 48:55.917
[SPEAKER_00]: how sad she was.
48:56.338 --> 49:21.827
[SPEAKER_00]: She must have been, you know, for for for someone to really take that step to actually physically take the motions and do it to end your life and leave forever is I just I can't even imagine
49:23.250 --> 49:27.512
[SPEAKER_00]: how she must have felt, how sad she must have felt.
49:29.253 --> 49:38.677
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's hard for the survivors of suicide is knowing that your close person in your life is feeling that sad to actually go for it, go do it.
49:54.497 --> 50:02.829
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just something that I think I always knew about her.
50:03.049 --> 50:07.255
[SPEAKER_00]: I always saw this in her from all of the
50:08.765 --> 50:15.491
[SPEAKER_00]: but hundreds of panic attacks and just break downs that I would witness her having.
50:18.113 --> 50:30.923
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of the just stress that she would put on my mom, you know, not doing it on purpose, but she did it, because you needed to get it out.
50:30.983 --> 50:33.265
[SPEAKER_00]: But to hear someone cry, so,
50:37.750 --> 50:51.036
[SPEAKER_00]: So painfully, this is the feeling of just hearing a depressed, the lowest of a lowest cry, crying, was always something new.
50:54.227 --> 51:03.413
[SPEAKER_00]: I could feel, when I heard it, when I heard her having a breakdown, and I didn't know how to help her.
51:03.533 --> 51:14.320
[SPEAKER_00]: All I knew how to do is kind of stay quiet and be normal and not have any issues and not start any shit.
51:14.580 --> 51:20.223
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like the best teenager you could possibly ask for for my mom.
51:22.934 --> 51:48.962
[SPEAKER_00]: because I knew she, my mom was going through so much stress and pain, having to be a single mom and also then having to before that, having to be the mom to pick up all the pieces and understand that your husband had a twelve-year-old tumor, the size of a grapefruit, that was the reason why he was turned into a complete asshole.
51:52.043 --> 52:02.586
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom is a goddamn superhero in that way and so I didn't want it cause I didn't I just wanted to be quiet.
52:02.927 --> 52:11.710
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to be quiet and that's how I learned to that's how I developed it like be quiet help others
52:13.039 --> 52:21.025
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, gravitate towards people who need help because you can't, you don't not help yourself because you didn't even know that I needed how I did no idea.
52:21.045 --> 52:25.068
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, well, who else needs help?
52:25.228 --> 52:31.593
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just dive right into their lives and not even discuss and understand yourself.
52:32.894 --> 52:34.395
[SPEAKER_00]: It's crazy how much I've learned.
52:34.475 --> 52:37.057
[SPEAKER_00]: It's mind boggling to me.
52:38.005 --> 52:43.308
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I thank you so much for sharing the story.
52:43.328 --> 52:48.251
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very powerful stuff and you know, I've seen some of you work beforehand.
52:48.371 --> 52:53.094
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been a strong mental health advocate for a long time and it's very much appreciated.
52:53.934 --> 52:54.915
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your time.
52:54.935 --> 52:57.416
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate your podcast.
52:57.516 --> 53:02.619
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having this for everybody and it's incredible.
53:02.699 --> 53:03.139
[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks.
53:05.001 --> 53:05.461
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
53:06.277 --> 53:13.159
[SPEAKER_01]: So there it is, Sarah Barthol of Fantagram, talking about how she has dealt with devastating and traumatic loss in her life.
53:13.679 --> 53:16.460
[SPEAKER_01]: There is so much to take away from the conversation with Sarah.
53:16.900 --> 53:22.961
[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the most important concepts I want to highlight is that loss is an ongoing process in our lives.
53:23.442 --> 53:29.803
[SPEAKER_01]: The experience of loss with her dad, as she saw his personality change, was occurring even before he passed away.
53:30.303 --> 53:32.224
[SPEAKER_01]: And loss reverberates in our life.
53:32.844 --> 53:44.186
[SPEAKER_01]: As we have new experiences, achieve new goals and face new challenges, these experiences get reinterpreted and processed in the context of our relationship to the person we lost.
53:44.726 --> 53:53.668
[SPEAKER_01]: We think about how we might have shared those experiences, what they might have said or done, or maybe we just missed that person because something reminds us of them.
53:54.268 --> 53:58.489
[SPEAKER_01]: And we may often re-experience a sense of grief and loss in those moments.
53:59.149 --> 54:06.333
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's important that we understand that loss and grief are processes that we encounter throughout our life as we change and grow.
54:06.973 --> 54:16.779
[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't to make people hopeless about feeling trapped and grief, but rather to encourage people to recognize the enduring power that loss and grief have in our lives.
54:17.299 --> 54:23.463
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is important that we not take the approach that we should just get over it because it happened a long time ago.
54:24.063 --> 54:34.051
[SPEAKER_01]: In order to heal and grow after loss, we must recognize that this process is an ongoing and important part of our lives that is crucial to our mental health and well-being.
54:34.792 --> 54:44.280
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to thank Consequence Podcast Network and Sound Mind Live for including me in this wonderful project, and thanks to Pete Wilson and the rooks for letting us use their song I know.
54:44.820 --> 54:49.004
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are struggling with anxiety, depression or addiction, and are looking for help,
54:49.464 --> 54:58.450
[SPEAKER_01]: Please call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Helpline at one eight hundred six two two four three five seven.
54:59.030 --> 55:05.154
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're thinking about harming yourself and want to seek help, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
55:05.474 --> 55:08.679
[SPEAKER_01]: at one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
55:09.099 --> 55:13.706
[SPEAKER_01]: You may also go to Sound Mind Live or the consequence websites for more information.
55:14.167 --> 55:17.432
[SPEAKER_01]: So be healthy, be safe, and be kind to yourself and others.
55:18.073 --> 55:19.395
[SPEAKER_01]: See you next time at the Crossroads.
00:06.858 --> 00:08.399
[SPEAKER_00]: consequence podcast network.
00:09.259 --> 00:10.139
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, it's Dr. Mike.
00:10.720 --> 00:13.601
[SPEAKER_01]: We hope you've been enjoying our conversation with Zach from Pub.
00:14.181 --> 00:27.247
[SPEAKER_01]: We are taking a week off, but to keep the conversation going, we thought we'd share an episode from the vault with musician and mental health advocate, Sarah Barthol, a fan to Graham, who joins me to share her struggle with devastating and traumatic loss in her life.
00:27.747 --> 00:29.928
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you next week with a brand new episode.
00:34.944 --> 00:35.064
[UNKNOWN]: you
00:43.555 --> 00:47.256
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to going there, the Crossroads, where music and mental health meet.
00:47.676 --> 00:52.597
[SPEAKER_01]: Today we are talking with singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Barthol.
00:52.998 --> 01:03.100
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, many of you know Sarah as part of the music duo Fantagram with Josh Carter, with songs such as Samuel Blues, you don't get me high anymore, and my personal favorite when I'm small.
01:03.820 --> 01:12.703
[SPEAKER_01]: Fantagram has been described as lush, sumptuous, sultry evocative, masters of tension, lyrics full of barbed abstract images.
01:13.523 --> 01:19.588
[SPEAKER_01]: And Fantagram just teamed up with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine on a song called Driving to Texas.
01:20.048 --> 01:24.211
[SPEAKER_01]: So check out that song and their recent album Saramoni at Fantagram.com.
01:24.712 --> 01:34.199
[SPEAKER_01]: Now on the going there podcast, we have the tough conversations to address important issues so we can learn from each other, challenge the stigma of mental illness, and get the care we need.
01:34.699 --> 01:40.244
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that Sarah talks about is her experience of devastating and traumatic loss in her life.
01:40.824 --> 01:49.947
[SPEAKER_01]: Sarah has been a fantastic mental health advocate over the years and has been very forthcoming and outspoken about how she lost her sister when her sister committed suicide.
01:50.447 --> 01:58.710
[SPEAKER_01]: But prior to that tragic event, Sarah had also lost her father to cancer and her mother struggled with cancer for years as did some of her friends.
01:59.190 --> 02:05.572
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what Sarah describes is years of these devastating losses as well as others, one on top of another.
02:06.132 --> 02:13.735
[SPEAKER_01]: This type of repetitive loss can be devastating and traumatic, where we're still reeling from one loss as we're trying to make sense of the next one.
02:14.175 --> 02:24.240
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be overwhelming and horrible, not only because of losing people close to us, but also because it undermines our fundamental belief that we live in a safe and predictable world.
02:24.700 --> 02:32.063
[SPEAKER_01]: And our sense that we are safe and that we have some level of control over our lives is critical to our own mental health and well-being.
02:32.643 --> 02:43.387
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that Sarah talks about doing in the face of this loss is being what she calls a superhero who needs to be the one who says everything is okay and tries to make everything okay.
02:43.908 --> 02:49.270
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what many of us instinctively do when we face loss or experience others around us struggling.
02:49.650 --> 02:56.274
[SPEAKER_01]: We try to be strong for others so we can be there for them when they are facing sickness, despair, or even possibly death.
02:56.834 --> 03:06.799
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is that we often close off our own emotional processing, avoiding or suppressing the intense feelings that come from facing the suffering of others or our own suffering.
03:07.300 --> 03:18.506
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is when so many of us turn to music as a way of understanding, processing, and expressing our feelings in the face of devastating and traumatic situations like the losses that Sarah has endured.
03:19.046 --> 03:26.194
[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact Sarah talked about how making music gave her the opportunity and freedom to experience and express her feelings.
03:26.815 --> 03:33.102
[SPEAKER_01]: Now as we progress through this season of going there, our goal is to bring you the audience further into the conversation.
03:33.603 --> 03:38.949
[SPEAKER_01]: On the consequence website and wherever you may find these episodes, you'll also find a short questionnaire.
03:39.469 --> 03:41.010
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to hear your feedback.
03:41.410 --> 03:47.553
[SPEAKER_01]: Questions you have that have been sparked by our conversations with these incredible artists and topics you'd love to see addressed.
03:48.033 --> 03:54.737
[SPEAKER_01]: We incorporate these responses into episodes as well as a monthly column called Ask Dr. Mike on the Consequence website.
03:55.237 --> 03:58.899
[SPEAKER_01]: If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
03:59.339 --> 04:03.581
[SPEAKER_01]: These help other folks find their way into the conversation so they can go there with us.
04:04.082 --> 04:06.543
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's go there and listen to what Sarah has to say.
04:06.863 --> 04:08.344
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, Sarah, welcome to going there.
04:09.091 --> 04:09.972
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, how's it going?
04:10.992 --> 04:11.713
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going okay.
04:11.753 --> 04:13.014
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for being on the show.
04:13.795 --> 04:14.795
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having me.
04:15.696 --> 04:27.805
[SPEAKER_01]: So you and I talked initially before the podcast about what what I'm hearing is just a tremendous amount of loss and stress that you faced.
04:28.862 --> 04:32.964
[SPEAKER_01]: regarding different things that have been happening with members of your family.
04:33.444 --> 04:42.888
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that you've been very unspoken about was your struggle with the fact that your sister unfortunately committed suicide.
04:42.928 --> 04:44.268
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry for that loss.
04:45.029 --> 04:58.334
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I thought that maybe we should start there and then talk about that as a beginning point of just kind of how you dealt with these stressors and losses throughout your life.
04:59.096 --> 05:09.723
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've kind of, it's been about five years since my sister passed.
05:11.724 --> 05:18.789
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been a pretty important five years for myself.
05:18.989 --> 05:24.833
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a really, really hard amount of time to just kind of learn and grow about
05:26.363 --> 05:42.134
[SPEAKER_00]: Where I've come from, why I do the things I do, maybe why my sister thought the way she thought and, you know, self-medicated and whatever, you know, kind of struggles that she had that she'll never be able to tell the story.
05:42.154 --> 05:45.257
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been kind of just
05:46.903 --> 06:14.571
[SPEAKER_00]: diving in and kind of opening up just different parts of my life that I never really had focused on before because I've had a pretty traumatized kind of traumatizing just like a life full of death life like I guess life full of just loss and
06:16.612 --> 06:19.633
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just kind of it started when I was a kid.
06:20.913 --> 06:41.217
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think I realized a lot while before coming on here is I kind of want to just tell my story and maybe tell my story of my sister's story of of our childhood and how things what happened I guess and kind of where my music came in.
06:42.248 --> 06:51.133
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're, you know, I started to depend more and more and more on my music and just kind of where I am now.
06:51.273 --> 07:06.402
[SPEAKER_00]: And just I don't know, a lot of self-realization things that really do tie into my sister and just being honest about mental health, which is what I'm working on.
07:06.983 --> 07:08.183
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, a life of death.
07:08.203 --> 07:10.124
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that is such a powerful
07:11.378 --> 07:24.889
[SPEAKER_01]: phrase and you know maybe we can start there just in terms of just that concept that that one would identify their life so closely with death in and of itself is such a powerful statement.
07:25.520 --> 07:26.641
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
07:27.081 --> 07:39.171
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a strange way of seeing it and looking at my past, but I've got a lot of stuff.
07:39.611 --> 07:46.096
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to start with talking about, I think, just my sister and me growing up.
07:48.016 --> 07:57.540
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, where we came from, we came from middle, nowhere upstate New York in the small town called Greenwich, New York, not pronounced Greenwich.
07:58.560 --> 07:59.461
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Greenwich.
07:59.901 --> 08:06.564
[SPEAKER_00]: They're very strict on that there, but really small town grew up on a farm.
08:09.185 --> 08:21.992
[SPEAKER_00]: On like ten acres had pigs and dogs and lots of chickens and a huge, huge garden that we would sell our produce on the side of our road.
08:22.072 --> 08:25.354
[SPEAKER_00]: Like super just a really cool way to grow up.
08:25.895 --> 08:32.518
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been a lot of time in the woods, you know, picking blueberries and things like that.
08:34.373 --> 08:47.957
[SPEAKER_00]: very quaint and lovely and so it was me and my sister and my father and my mom and my dad when I was fifteen.
08:50.158 --> 08:56.561
[SPEAKER_00]: We got a call that he had a seizure while he was driving and was in the hospital.
08:57.461 --> 09:01.242
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the time, he wasn't living with us.
09:02.083 --> 09:06.284
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom was, I think, officially divorced to him.
09:06.304 --> 09:13.487
[SPEAKER_00]: And we hadn't seen him in a while, just because things are all rough at home.
09:15.468 --> 09:30.352
[SPEAKER_00]: We found out that he had a brain cancer and he had a brain tumor that was growing in his frontal lobe, which is like your personality, your functionality, your judgment, everything.
09:31.952 --> 09:35.533
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the size of a grapefruit when they found it.
09:37.173 --> 09:43.736
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was growing for ever so slowly for twelve years.
09:45.417 --> 09:54.662
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was so slowly and gradual that it totally can I swear.
09:56.045 --> 09:59.486
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I swear a lot, but I won't, sorry.
10:02.246 --> 10:06.407
[SPEAKER_00]: It completely just turned him into a complete fucking asshole.
10:06.888 --> 10:10.148
[SPEAKER_00]: And he lost all visibility to work.
10:10.168 --> 10:19.110
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he was this, he was like, and the best way possible, because I wish I really fucking got to know him.
10:19.130 --> 10:22.031
[SPEAKER_00]: You reminded me a lot of myself.
10:22.871 --> 10:24.592
[SPEAKER_00]: I have just a loss for life.
10:24.612 --> 10:25.512
[SPEAKER_00]: I love
10:27.092 --> 10:28.573
[SPEAKER_00]: I get enjoyment out of everything.
10:28.613 --> 10:33.714
[SPEAKER_00]: He was an extremely successful ski photographer at the time.
10:33.734 --> 10:39.075
[SPEAKER_00]: He published books, he made films.
10:39.155 --> 10:45.056
[SPEAKER_00]: He was pretty epic dude, as my mom would always explain.
10:48.060 --> 10:49.140
[SPEAKER_00]: It's grew.
10:49.320 --> 10:55.142
[SPEAKER_00]: So fucking slowly that no one knew what was that there was really anything.
10:55.222 --> 11:01.483
[SPEAKER_00]: So ever so slowly he became abusive.
11:03.964 --> 11:05.124
[SPEAKER_00]: Emotionally abusive.
11:05.464 --> 11:09.185
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I think he was more physical abusive to my sister.
11:09.766 --> 11:10.606
[SPEAKER_00]: My sister was
11:12.537 --> 11:18.120
[SPEAKER_00]: Like her personalities, they just kind of clashed and the state that my father was in.
11:18.140 --> 11:23.984
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe not that there's any excuse, but kind of is a pretty big excuse.
11:25.605 --> 11:36.833
[SPEAKER_00]: Like his state was last back and just, I don't know, just be be awful to everything and anyone.
11:39.189 --> 11:54.998
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I developed this kind of keeping everything, keeping any of my feelings inside just because I wanted to be the like, okay, you know, let's allow all of this, all this crap to happen.
11:55.038 --> 12:00.260
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, I need to be the one who isn't going to start problems.
12:00.901 --> 12:02.882
[SPEAKER_00]: Because my sister was,
12:05.303 --> 12:06.704
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not the easiest kid.
12:06.805 --> 12:08.907
[SPEAKER_00]: She was born with anxiety.
12:08.927 --> 12:11.049
[SPEAKER_00]: I think she had her first panic attack.
12:11.089 --> 12:15.213
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom always tells me she had her first panic attack when she was like two.
12:15.813 --> 12:24.602
[SPEAKER_00]: She just like she wasn't wouldn't get her way or something and she would just start hyper ventilating a breed and then she would just turn blue and pass out kind of.
12:25.002 --> 12:25.602
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of thing.
12:26.063 --> 12:49.414
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was born with a cleft lip as well, which was, I think pretty tough, as only my perspective, I don't know what that would feel like, but it really, it was a lot for her to have to go through in school and whatnot.
12:49.954 --> 12:52.316
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, what society kind of makes
12:53.462 --> 12:55.844
[SPEAKER_00]: emails feel like they have to be and whatnot.
12:57.846 --> 13:04.513
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so these are the tangents I'm talking about, but it's okay.
13:04.713 --> 13:08.697
[SPEAKER_00]: So we found out that my dad got the head of tumor.
13:10.575 --> 13:18.139
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he had about, I think he lived about two more years, so he passed away when I was seventeen.
13:19.580 --> 13:30.546
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a pretty crazy experience, not knowing, not even knowing that it was anything crazy because it was kind of part of my life.
13:31.660 --> 13:38.112
[SPEAKER_00]: an estranged way and kind of realizing in strange ways that I never really knew my dad.
13:38.172 --> 13:41.719
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really have a dad father figure, I guess.
13:41.799 --> 13:42.921
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't really have
13:43.945 --> 13:57.538
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that like security apparently these are all things I'm learning now but security and safety what a father should you know bring and give give to you and teach you all of these things.
13:59.740 --> 14:07.847
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like was pretty much lost in general because there was just a lot of chaos in the house and
14:10.102 --> 14:20.390
[SPEAKER_00]: Trying to be strong from my mom and wanted her to be okay wanted protect her from from my dad and from my sister because.
14:22.292 --> 14:25.433
[SPEAKER_00]: He was an asshole to us, so right for a key.
14:26.993 --> 14:28.653
[SPEAKER_00]: I call her an asshole, actually.
14:28.673 --> 14:29.794
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope she can hear me.
14:31.814 --> 14:35.375
[SPEAKER_00]: But she was, and she was a real asshole to me.
14:36.435 --> 14:46.857
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of just kept everything bottled up inside and not even knowing that I had feelings.
14:48.064 --> 14:52.948
[SPEAKER_00]: I never even know, these are all, this is the stuff I've been learning through therapy for the past five years.
14:53.628 --> 15:01.395
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea how I could actually say something and somebody could, could help me.
15:01.515 --> 15:14.425
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went through a handful of just really shitty boyfriends, abusive relationships, kind of gravitating towards, I think,
15:15.506 --> 15:22.770
[SPEAKER_00]: people that I felt like maybe I could help because I wasn't able to help my dad.
15:26.051 --> 15:36.237
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think just thinking that it was normal for me to be treated like shit because of my sister too.
15:36.417 --> 15:40.719
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just I think I developed this thing where I was like, it's okay, they don't mean it.
15:42.689 --> 15:43.429
[SPEAKER_00]: mentality.
15:43.529 --> 15:49.254
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had a lot of, I had a lot of shitty relationships.
15:49.874 --> 16:02.405
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I, then I, that's where I think in a space where I met up with Josh, my bandmate, again, and we started the band.
16:02.865 --> 16:04.506
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, I truly,
16:05.587 --> 16:11.089
[SPEAKER_00]: felt my passion and just I think what music was doing for me.
16:11.710 --> 16:20.694
[SPEAKER_00]: It was bringing this kind of, it was like this cathartic release, but me not even really understanding.
16:20.714 --> 16:32.098
[SPEAKER_00]: If I, when I look back at all the songs that you just even, if you look into the list of names of all of our songs, you know, like they're pretty dark and
16:33.859 --> 16:36.440
[SPEAKER_00]: They're pretty, I mean, and the songs are dark.
16:36.580 --> 16:38.300
[SPEAKER_00]: All of the lyrics are dark.
16:39.740 --> 16:47.122
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember back then kind of realizing, just in a way of, like, I don't know, we just, that's just kind of, in interviews.
16:47.642 --> 16:50.242
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, you just kind of gravitate towards that.
16:50.282 --> 16:54.363
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like, it's more interesting, you know, to me.
16:55.103 --> 16:59.584
[SPEAKER_00]: But not really, even knowing, kind of where it started,
17:00.654 --> 17:01.494
[SPEAKER_00]: where it came from.
17:02.355 --> 17:10.758
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was a true release for me that I was able to speak in a way.
17:12.318 --> 17:20.381
[SPEAKER_00]: And it took over my life and we dove into being in a band and we hit the ground running.
17:21.082 --> 17:25.383
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like this kind of moment where we're just like, all right, let's do it.
17:25.503 --> 17:26.144
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
17:27.284 --> 17:28.424
[SPEAKER_00]: We believe in our music.
17:31.671 --> 17:33.793
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, we loved it.
17:33.953 --> 17:55.532
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, I think it was, it was our release to the world, to not even understanding the past, but it was a way, it was a way to tell my story without having to tell my story and connecting to people and connecting to our fans that
17:56.966 --> 18:01.093
[SPEAKER_00]: could hear here, I think here what I was trying to say.
18:01.113 --> 18:05.419
[SPEAKER_00]: So then that kind of started.
18:09.653 --> 18:21.238
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom gets cancer, gastrointestinal, stromal tumor to be precise, which is when she had it.
18:23.119 --> 18:26.660
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't, if she had it, maybe a couple, two years before she would have died.
18:29.101 --> 18:32.823
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was pretty terrifying for me, but also kind of,
18:34.617 --> 18:35.438
[SPEAKER_00]: got used to this.
18:36.479 --> 18:39.402
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take care of everyone.
18:39.422 --> 18:42.104
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to, you know, and my sister is at the moment.
18:44.418 --> 18:49.522
[SPEAKER_00]: fully struggling and not being able to cope because she had always self-medicated.
18:50.743 --> 18:58.169
[SPEAKER_00]: She never got the right help, not that we even knew what right or wrong help was at the time.
18:58.369 --> 19:09.118
[SPEAKER_00]: But as I struggle and have struggled in the past, it's really easy to pick up a drink and numb yourself instead of deal with the problem.
19:12.407 --> 19:15.088
[SPEAKER_00]: She got cancer and almost died.
19:15.108 --> 19:26.454
[SPEAKER_00]: Then she's been good for the past, I think, eight years or so, but it was pretty awful at the beginning.
19:26.474 --> 19:30.636
[SPEAKER_00]: Another one of my friends got cancer.
19:30.657 --> 19:32.297
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like, twenty-eight.
19:32.317 --> 19:33.578
[SPEAKER_00]: He got colon cancer.
19:34.739 --> 19:36.660
[SPEAKER_00]: Josh and I were very good friend Kirk.
19:38.921 --> 19:50.886
[SPEAKER_00]: And my ex-boyfriend Benjamin Curtis, he was in the secret machines in school seven bells, got cancer, I think, maybe the following year.
19:51.166 --> 19:54.368
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was in his early thirties as well, thirty four.
19:54.528 --> 20:06.533
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was a lot of just realizing, I think, just kind of white knuckling it, just being like,
20:06.985 --> 20:16.277
[SPEAKER_00]: fully like not even realizing how how much around I looked around just being like wow this shit is.
20:18.699 --> 20:21.141
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if this is normal.
20:21.321 --> 20:33.731
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just kept kind of going, using the music to just release my feelings as well as I could.
20:33.751 --> 20:45.281
[SPEAKER_00]: And Kirk ends up dying, Benjamin ends up dying very soon after I think Benjamin
20:47.215 --> 20:52.797
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was diagnosed in then he passed away like eight months or something after he was diagnosed.
20:54.237 --> 20:57.778
[SPEAKER_00]: We were working, we were writing voices at the time.
20:57.798 --> 21:01.940
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were in LA.
21:01.960 --> 21:11.903
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was really, really fucking tough time because we were trying to, Josh and I were trying to process
21:14.102 --> 21:32.253
[SPEAKER_00]: one of our closest friends dying at age thirty one of cancer that we were we were a part of you know then the end there and during the whole process I think it was important for us to be kind of be there for him.
21:33.273 --> 21:37.675
[SPEAKER_00]: as much as we could obviously, but writing voices, shit.
21:38.555 --> 21:48.800
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to think of all the names of the songs, like my only friend, black out days, nothing but trouble.
21:51.826 --> 22:00.348
[SPEAKER_00]: All songs just about loneliness and just darkness and sadness, and you know the beauty of, oh, and fallen love.
22:02.509 --> 22:06.350
[SPEAKER_00]: With the name of fallen love is obviously lovely.
22:07.990 --> 22:14.532
[SPEAKER_00]: But the lyrics are, you know, just all about hurting somebody, hurting people.
22:15.812 --> 22:20.195
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of the songs, there's not one song on there that's happy.
22:20.275 --> 22:26.398
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was my, my, the way I released and then we went, we go on tour.
22:26.418 --> 22:29.480
[SPEAKER_00]: We just, it's never stopped.
22:29.520 --> 22:30.881
[SPEAKER_00]: It's nonstop at this point.
22:30.941 --> 22:32.742
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Josh and I are, you know,
22:35.230 --> 22:50.593
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of losing it a little bit, but not knowing how to say stop, because kind of seeing, you know, your close friends passing away and you're just like, whatever, we got to do it for them.
22:52.453 --> 22:54.714
[SPEAKER_00]: Or whatever, you know, was going on in our heads.
22:56.734 --> 22:58.995
[SPEAKER_00]: So we never, we never took care of ourselves, we just,
23:02.207 --> 23:05.431
[SPEAKER_00]: allowed our space to I think just
23:11.897 --> 23:13.937
[SPEAKER_00]: Self-medicate, keep going.
23:15.098 --> 23:16.718
[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta go do these shows.
23:16.798 --> 23:18.798
[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta keep pushing.
23:18.858 --> 23:21.999
[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta be that ban that we've always wanted to be.
23:22.459 --> 23:24.440
[SPEAKER_00]: That we promised ourselves since day one.
23:27.720 --> 23:29.161
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we did.
23:29.501 --> 23:32.161
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that tour cycle ended.
23:32.181 --> 23:35.162
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where we started three.
23:37.463 --> 23:46.047
[SPEAKER_00]: After, I think, a year or two on the road, like non-stop, just, but having, you know, like that, that was kind of our breaking album of sorts.
23:46.607 --> 23:48.228
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really think you can say that, but.
23:49.569 --> 23:50.989
[SPEAKER_00]: And we started three.
23:51.530 --> 23:55.612
[SPEAKER_00]: And my sister moved out to LA.
23:55.712 --> 23:59.914
[SPEAKER_00]: I talked her in a moving out to LA, and she was pretty
24:01.294 --> 24:06.235
[SPEAKER_00]: pretty insecure and really just afraid of leaving the house.
24:07.355 --> 24:09.316
[SPEAKER_00]: She was still living with my mom at the time.
24:09.336 --> 24:15.917
[SPEAKER_00]: And just kind of struggled with everything.
24:16.317 --> 24:22.998
[SPEAKER_00]: And I somehow managed to tell her to get the help out and come out to LA.
24:23.078 --> 24:25.459
[SPEAKER_00]: Like just, I don't know, let's start a new
24:26.699 --> 24:26.979
[SPEAKER_00]: life.
24:28.060 --> 24:29.381
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to love the sunshine.
24:29.401 --> 24:30.803
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to help you.
24:31.523 --> 24:34.566
[SPEAKER_00]: My boyfriend at the time was like, hey, I found a job for you.
24:34.586 --> 24:37.308
[SPEAKER_00]: We found a roommate for you.
24:37.328 --> 24:39.970
[SPEAKER_00]: And she's awesome.
24:40.391 --> 24:44.354
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have Josh's out here.
24:44.374 --> 24:45.535
[SPEAKER_00]: We all grew up together.
24:45.675 --> 24:46.856
[SPEAKER_00]: Josh and my sister.
24:46.876 --> 24:51.039
[SPEAKER_00]: And just good people out here.
24:51.140 --> 24:51.840
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't be afraid.
24:51.900 --> 24:52.441
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on out.
24:54.780 --> 25:21.949
[SPEAKER_00]: Since she came out and she was she was loving life for a minute and After maybe she was out here for about a couple of a year and a half she was she was doing pretty well Orally she was hiding it pretty well because she was I think she also kind of learned in a way to kind of Keep her problems hidden because her problems
25:23.215 --> 25:28.157
[SPEAKER_00]: fucked up a lot of things when she was younger and when we're kids.
25:30.258 --> 25:39.342
[SPEAKER_00]: So she would always just like hide in a room kind of thing and drink and just be, sometimes wouldn't come out of a room for days.
25:40.702 --> 25:52.347
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember, I remember when it was, I could finally kind of tell from her being like just being herself
25:54.562 --> 25:58.203
[SPEAKER_00]: I could always just kind of tell what she was in a really bad place.
25:58.263 --> 26:12.910
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember asking my friend, her roommate, like, hey, I can tell that my sister's not doing really well.
26:12.930 --> 26:21.855
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want you to know that it's kind of a, it happens because that's kind of all I really knew.
26:23.646 --> 26:37.876
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, how to explain it and not that she would, uh, she would, you know, lash out or anything, but I just knew Becky would go into, you know, a dark place.
26:38.977 --> 26:41.959
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, I asked her roommate.
26:41.979 --> 26:43.220
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, hey, are you all right?
26:44.633 --> 26:47.258
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there, like, how's it going at home?
26:47.398 --> 26:50.904
[SPEAKER_00]: And she explained, you know, I don't know.
26:50.925 --> 26:51.926
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really know.
26:52.006 --> 26:53.670
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing that I can do to help.
26:56.263 --> 27:08.165
[SPEAKER_00]: and just kind of explaining to her like, well, it's usually a phase and like, it's, you know, she kind of goes through this, but I know she's just kind of, I know she's not happy with her work right now.
27:09.105 --> 27:16.487
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, don't, don't, just don't put too much stress on yourself and whatnot.
27:17.667 --> 27:20.028
[SPEAKER_00]: That was kind of the last conversation about it.
27:22.937 --> 27:31.200
[SPEAKER_00]: We were writing that we're maybe like a quarter into writing the album, just mostly ideas.
27:31.520 --> 27:37.882
[SPEAKER_00]: And we, I got a phone call that she killed herself.
27:40.723 --> 27:48.865
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, after certain, not even a certain amount of time.
27:48.925 --> 27:50.506
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that point, it's just like,
27:51.702 --> 27:54.243
[SPEAKER_00]: Holy shit, like what?
27:56.564 --> 27:57.044
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
27:58.685 --> 28:06.448
[SPEAKER_00]: I gotta go call my mom now and tell her that her daughter killed herself.
28:08.348 --> 28:16.651
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember having to do that and just feeling like I never wanted to have to do this.
28:19.089 --> 28:30.034
[SPEAKER_00]: I always thought that she would figure it out, you know, because she, again, struggled her whole life with anxiety and depression.
28:31.355 --> 28:41.459
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, kind of just start our childhoods in the way life happened to her and happened to us.
28:44.322 --> 28:55.475
[SPEAKER_00]: She just I don't know like I don't it's hard because I haven't been able to cut like I understand it's not my fault finally you know that took a really long time
28:57.695 --> 29:10.643
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but that still doesn't mean that she's, I'm never going to fucking see her again, you know, um, which is why I tell her how much I fucking hate her.
29:10.783 --> 29:13.405
[SPEAKER_00]: She's such an asshole, relieving.
29:13.865 --> 29:25.392
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but um, so that, so that all kind of happened, um, what a fucking moral end of it.
29:25.753 --> 29:25.813
[SPEAKER_00]: Um,
29:27.118 --> 29:29.243
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess just a couple of months in general.
29:32.230 --> 29:52.443
[SPEAKER_00]: going through it all funeral and everything and coming back to LA and knowing that we had this album, that every, obviously everyone was fine, like we can just fucking wait, like there's no, and there was a little bit of just like, well, what do you do?
29:52.563 --> 29:59.468
[SPEAKER_00]: Should you like go off and fucking live in Patagonia for two years and just find yourself?
30:00.728 --> 30:26.042
[SPEAKER_00]: which I thought maybe that's what I wanted to do, which is, you know, I think one of my normal patterns is run away from problems or stay and go into the studio and fucking be as raw and open and honest as you possibly can.
30:28.261 --> 30:37.847
[SPEAKER_00]: with just not holding back and knowing beforehand what you want to say.
30:37.867 --> 30:46.192
[SPEAKER_00]: Because normally, again, all of our songs are really dark, but I didn't know where that was coming from.
30:46.252 --> 30:48.533
[SPEAKER_00]: I had no fucking idea because I thought I was the
30:49.824 --> 30:59.172
[SPEAKER_00]: the superhero, the person who's going to say everything's okay and everything's fine and you're going to be great and I'm great because
31:00.310 --> 31:08.832
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm helping you feel great and we know whatever kind of mentality I had for my entire life.
31:10.052 --> 31:14.894
[SPEAKER_00]: It was this kind of just moment is either like, sink or swim.
31:16.354 --> 31:25.316
[SPEAKER_00]: And I decided that we should go back into the studio and write three, write this album that
31:29.892 --> 31:50.581
[SPEAKER_00]: It's surrounded my sister's death, but also I think was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back of finally being having so many things build up so much darkness and so much weight and so much pain.
31:51.962 --> 31:55.645
[SPEAKER_00]: And not putting on like a, hey, how are you?
31:55.725 --> 32:01.689
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm okay and keeping it inside and releasing it somewhere else.
32:02.429 --> 32:07.132
[SPEAKER_00]: Just fucking throwing it up, screen puking it off.
32:08.153 --> 32:10.174
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what we did and it was.
32:12.952 --> 32:14.593
[SPEAKER_00]: It was incredible.
32:14.613 --> 32:17.894
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really painful to do.
32:19.835 --> 32:28.838
[SPEAKER_00]: But the most cathartic kind of experience, I think, that we have ever had, because Josh and I, again, we grew, he was, we grew, all grew up together.
32:30.203 --> 32:47.090
[SPEAKER_00]: I met Josh through my sister actually as kids and we were Josh and I were on this just I don't know this weird wavelength above everything else or blood anyone else that like we
32:49.038 --> 32:57.204
[SPEAKER_00]: We just released and wrote this incredible album that I'm so proud of.
32:58.885 --> 33:03.648
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think maybe so proud of because it had intention in a way.
33:03.888 --> 33:09.772
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it, there was this moment where I didn't, I didn't need to hide.
33:09.792 --> 33:11.113
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to hide.
33:12.790 --> 33:15.991
[SPEAKER_00]: And we finished it and it was awesome.
33:16.551 --> 33:23.832
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought that that kind of that time was like, oh fuck, all right, Jesus, we got, I got through it.
33:24.072 --> 33:32.074
[SPEAKER_00]: I got through whatever I needed to get through to fix this, you know, whatever.
33:32.094 --> 33:35.394
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we go on tour.
33:35.414 --> 33:37.915
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to sing these songs.
33:39.150 --> 33:45.654
[SPEAKER_00]: every single fucking night and relive.
33:49.696 --> 33:59.441
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess my truth and just the experience of everything all over again every single fucking night.
34:01.871 --> 34:04.934
[SPEAKER_00]: I was exhausted at the end of every show.
34:04.954 --> 34:17.144
[SPEAKER_00]: I could barely get off the stage and I had to lay down and I was always kind of hyperventilating.
34:17.225 --> 34:19.887
[SPEAKER_00]: I was very unwell.
34:19.927 --> 34:28.595
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't taking care of myself because I was self-medicating to get through the tour.
34:30.589 --> 34:34.331
[SPEAKER_00]: And getting just to get through the every single night.
34:35.211 --> 34:38.153
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it was so painful to to relive it.
34:39.413 --> 34:42.235
[SPEAKER_00]: And it paid it just took its toll.
34:42.255 --> 34:48.658
[SPEAKER_00]: It took its toll until the end of the tour.
34:51.248 --> 34:59.791
[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a, not, I, yeah, probably my darkest place with just numbing myself.
35:00.831 --> 35:08.493
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just didn't, I just, I didn't, I mean, I'm sure you can see it if you, if you look back on, on maybe performances.
35:10.826 --> 35:22.135
[SPEAKER_00]: of just, like, just crying during, like, screen crying in, um, just one song called The Stroyer, which is about my sister.
35:22.155 --> 35:26.559
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um, I just, it was just, it was exhausting.
35:27.199 --> 35:36.467
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and then I finally admitted to myself that, uh, I needed to get help.
35:38.160 --> 35:41.642
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't because obviously this shit wasn't working.
35:42.283 --> 35:49.568
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was kind of kind of strange because I was seeing my patterns in my sister's patterns.
35:51.369 --> 35:55.372
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was angry at myself that I got to that space.
35:56.853 --> 36:01.496
[SPEAKER_00]: But it also made me understand how she could have felt.
36:03.899 --> 36:17.748
[SPEAKER_00]: And I took the initiative and I found a therapist and I have been going to her weekly ever since.
36:19.189 --> 36:32.898
[SPEAKER_00]: And she finally, I learned about myself finally to where I can actually use my words and have this conversation with you instead of
36:34.158 --> 36:37.579
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, putting on a face of like, hey, I'm good.
36:37.639 --> 36:38.219
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you?
36:38.279 --> 36:39.599
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my dad just died.
36:39.659 --> 36:40.980
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm fine.
36:43.440 --> 37:02.065
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I just, I know a lot, I realize how important it is to go back and discover things about your
37:03.355 --> 37:08.537
[SPEAKER_00]: patterns in your past and your childhood that it does make you the person that you are today.
37:10.358 --> 37:30.765
[SPEAKER_00]: And because I don't my biggest fear and I feel like one of the biggest reasons I was to put on this earth was to speak about the scary stuff and how shitty
37:32.049 --> 37:36.111
[SPEAKER_00]: It was for my sister to have to leave.
37:36.832 --> 37:39.593
[SPEAKER_00]: And that she couldn't stay.
37:39.673 --> 37:41.594
[SPEAKER_00]: She couldn't handle it for whatever reason.
37:43.375 --> 37:56.262
[SPEAKER_00]: And for families that have to go through it and have to feel this ever-longing, whatever lasting pain for the rest of their lives that
37:58.553 --> 38:03.220
[SPEAKER_00]: that they'll never ever ever get an answer for because that person is gone.
38:04.501 --> 38:09.889
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just, I know what that pain is.
38:09.909 --> 38:11.792
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that
38:16.059 --> 38:20.303
[SPEAKER_00]: It's unfair and I just want to speak.
38:20.864 --> 38:31.354
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want to tell my story if it can help anyone in any single way and to be able to actually use my words is very powerful.
38:31.734 --> 38:39.202
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I guess that's where I can stop talking.
38:41.278 --> 38:42.339
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jesus.
38:42.719 --> 38:46.102
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like eight hours of just pain and death.
38:47.463 --> 38:47.964
[UNKNOWN]: God.
38:49.985 --> 38:51.226
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a powerful story.
38:51.246 --> 38:54.409
[SPEAKER_01]: And I appreciate you telling it.
38:56.631 --> 38:59.593
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, you know, obviously it's very painful.
39:01.575 --> 39:08.621
[SPEAKER_01]: Having to talk about these things, not only having to gone through it and cope with it on a day-to-day basis, but then having to talk about it publicly is very hard.
39:10.238 --> 39:11.638
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you.
39:11.698 --> 39:12.639
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is.
39:15.059 --> 39:24.322
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of just a crazy every time I tell the story, it's still, it makes me shake my head and feel like Jesus Christ.
39:24.442 --> 39:28.523
[SPEAKER_00]: What the fuck is with like what kind of cars have been dealt to me?
39:30.703 --> 39:31.043
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:33.404 --> 39:36.645
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm still here and I'm doing what I can do.
39:38.714 --> 39:53.919
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think that, you know, there's so much that they said there, but a couple of things that really struck me was when we're talking about physical or mental health issues.
39:54.779 --> 39:59.741
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there's something about it that's so destabilizing.
40:01.555 --> 40:13.137
[SPEAKER_01]: and living with the idea that that, you know, that your life can be just upended like that, and how out of control and unstable that feels.
40:13.177 --> 40:27.900
[SPEAKER_01]: But then, especially when it comes to mental health issues, coupling that with trying as best as we can, whether it's because we think that's what other people want or we're just struggling with it to just not feel.
40:29.088 --> 40:29.428
[SPEAKER_01]: anything.
40:30.509 --> 40:36.795
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you put those two things together, it's such a powerful recipe for us feeling lost.
40:38.556 --> 40:50.827
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you're describing with the music, when you think about, you know, there's so many reasons why music is powerful, but just having a place that you can count on to feel.
40:52.107 --> 41:02.053
[SPEAKER_01]: And not only to experience feelings, but to express feelings, and that you have control over, you can keep going back to it, whether it's as a fan or as an artist.
41:02.654 --> 41:11.760
[SPEAKER_01]: You start to get a sense of part of why the music is so powerful, because there's just not that many places where you can have that.
41:12.560 --> 41:16.223
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of, it's,
41:17.810 --> 41:21.711
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the strange fear to feel.
41:21.731 --> 41:44.458
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that people struggle with, that probably, I don't know, everybody in it, again, you know, you always think that no one can understand what I'm going through and that is not true at all because we all have that just
41:45.013 --> 41:48.175
[SPEAKER_00]: the same that same feeling that no one can understand.
41:48.235 --> 41:55.821
[SPEAKER_00]: But you just have to be able to feel it and not be afraid of feeling.
41:58.943 --> 42:02.185
[SPEAKER_00]: And take the next step of saying it out loud.
42:04.126 --> 42:10.871
[SPEAKER_00]: But what makes me so proud and so lucky that I had music.
42:13.526 --> 42:17.067
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, because shit, I don't even, I fuck.
42:17.227 --> 42:18.067
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know what.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I would, where I would be right now if I didn't, um, and to be able to give, give that to, um, our fans, um, to write songs that have, have feeling.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I think that, you know, the most important songs in this world are the ones that make you feel,
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[SPEAKER_00]: I guess feel something, but just have a feeling to say, holy shit, what is that?
42:51.511 --> 43:02.794
[SPEAKER_00]: What, oh my god, what is like it's a dickding, it's like, and it's just a, it's the most beautiful feeling in the world to me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just so lucky that I can, that I can give that to people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, there's this idea, you know, sometimes when people will talk about, you know, what's favorite kind of music, what's the best kind of music?
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[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, this idea of anything that makes you feel.
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[SPEAKER_01]: is worthwhile.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't even matter what it makes you feel.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like any kind of willingness to approach rather than avoid emotions, whether it's really really sad and painful emotions or even really really
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[SPEAKER_01]: kind of upbeat and positive emotions.
43:49.273 --> 44:00.038
[SPEAKER_01]: Just finding somewhere where you feel like you can connect in emotionally is such a powerful, in some cases, starting an endpoint for a lot of people.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Just to know that they can feel anything, you're talking about feeling numb.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes, you know, which makes sense, like the sense of, you know, even just listening to the story, it's almost like, God, you feel like you just, you almost feel like, I don't want to, you want to shut down because it's so powerful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And just the notion that somebody can feel anything in the midst of that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, unfortunately, some people will turn to drugs or alcohol, which has been theory unhealthy, but if you can find a healthy way of feeling something, that resonates with you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's just it's so important during those times.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those things again where I wish
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's strange, it's hard because all of these realizations and understandings of who I am and how I feel and what I've been and just everything, I've had them after my sister died.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it's hard because I probably wouldn't have realized any of them if she didn't die
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[SPEAKER_00]: really weird dark way of saying it, but it's true.
45:24.227 --> 45:32.453
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was my, it wasn't just this one thing that happened that totally flipped over my life.
45:32.633 --> 45:34.414
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just hitting the rock bottom.
45:34.454 --> 45:36.895
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the fucking the last straw.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It was the like the last thing that I, I could handle.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the most important, you know, my fucking sister, she's, she's,
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[SPEAKER_00]: She's my everything.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She was part of my life.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She was my only sister.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And the person that I was always looked up to.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She was my hero.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And especially since my father was gone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, for her to leave and for her to leave.
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[SPEAKER_00]: and not say it, not come to me and not feeling guilty about feeling the way she did.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And not coming out and saying, hey, I fucking need to just talk to you.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't do that.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, anything, any kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I was so just,
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[SPEAKER_00]: It's completely not aware at all until it was too gone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I know she'd wanted to hide things from me because she knew how much shit I had gone through with, you know, my friend's Benjamin and Kirk Dying, the abusive kind of relationships that I was in, you know, having to deal with
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[SPEAKER_00]: alcoholism and just addiction with some of my friends and how much it just destroyed me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I know she didn't want to come to me because it was just one more thing that I had to deal with.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I hated knowing that I knew that's what she felt.
47:26.948 --> 47:35.154
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that's unfortunately such a powerful feeling that people have when they're struggling is they don't want to be a burden.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they already feel like a burden to the people around them, especially those who are closest to them.
47:42.139 --> 47:52.167
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, people might be sitting around them being like, oh, if you had just reached out to me, like kind of thinking, it's like, why, you know, why didn't you reach out to me?
47:52.207 --> 47:55.950
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so hard because when you're in that hole, when you're in that
47:56.918 --> 48:07.000
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the darkest of dark places, it sort of makes sense somehow that you don't want to hurt people by reaching out.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And yet, at that same time, it doesn't make sense that the loss of you would be something that would hurt even more.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You know, that's how low, that's how low, you know, we feel about ourselves.
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[SPEAKER_01]: We're in that moment, you know, that like a conversation, it's like, oh, I would never want to burden with them.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But the idea of not having us, it doesn't, well, that doesn't make sense as a burden because we just, we couldn't imagine that we have any worth.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, that's so tough, you know, to convince people otherwise when they're in that zone.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, it's, it is, it is, just the most, the most painful thing about it is just knowing
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[SPEAKER_00]: how sad she was.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She must have been, you know, for for for someone to really take that step to actually physically take the motions and do it to end your life and leave forever is I just I can't even imagine
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[SPEAKER_00]: how she must have felt, how sad she must have felt.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's hard for the survivors of suicide is knowing that your close person in your life is feeling that sad to actually go for it, go do it.
49:54.497 --> 50:02.829
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just something that I think I always knew about her.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I always saw this in her from all of the
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[SPEAKER_00]: but hundreds of panic attacks and just break downs that I would witness her having.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And all of the just stress that she would put on my mom, you know, not doing it on purpose, but she did it, because you needed to get it out.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But to hear someone cry, so,
50:37.750 --> 50:51.036
[SPEAKER_00]: So painfully, this is the feeling of just hearing a depressed, the lowest of a lowest cry, crying, was always something new.
50:54.227 --> 51:03.413
[SPEAKER_00]: I could feel, when I heard it, when I heard her having a breakdown, and I didn't know how to help her.
51:03.533 --> 51:14.320
[SPEAKER_00]: All I knew how to do is kind of stay quiet and be normal and not have any issues and not start any shit.
51:14.580 --> 51:20.223
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like the best teenager you could possibly ask for for my mom.
51:22.934 --> 51:48.962
[SPEAKER_00]: because I knew she, my mom was going through so much stress and pain, having to be a single mom and also then having to before that, having to be the mom to pick up all the pieces and understand that your husband had a twelve-year-old tumor, the size of a grapefruit, that was the reason why he was turned into a complete asshole.
51:52.043 --> 52:02.586
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom is a goddamn superhero in that way and so I didn't want it cause I didn't I just wanted to be quiet.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to be quiet and that's how I learned to that's how I developed it like be quiet help others
52:13.039 --> 52:21.025
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, gravitate towards people who need help because you can't, you don't not help yourself because you didn't even know that I needed how I did no idea.
52:21.045 --> 52:25.068
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, well, who else needs help?
52:25.228 --> 52:31.593
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just dive right into their lives and not even discuss and understand yourself.
52:32.894 --> 52:34.395
[SPEAKER_00]: It's crazy how much I've learned.
52:34.475 --> 52:37.057
[SPEAKER_00]: It's mind boggling to me.
52:38.005 --> 52:43.308
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I thank you so much for sharing the story.
52:43.328 --> 52:48.251
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very powerful stuff and you know, I've seen some of you work beforehand.
52:48.371 --> 52:53.094
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been a strong mental health advocate for a long time and it's very much appreciated.
52:53.934 --> 52:54.915
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your time.
52:54.935 --> 52:57.416
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate your podcast.
52:57.516 --> 53:02.619
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for having this for everybody and it's incredible.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So there it is, Sarah Barthol of Fantagram, talking about how she has dealt with devastating and traumatic loss in her life.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There is so much to take away from the conversation with Sarah.
53:16.900 --> 53:22.961
[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the most important concepts I want to highlight is that loss is an ongoing process in our lives.
53:23.442 --> 53:29.803
[SPEAKER_01]: The experience of loss with her dad, as she saw his personality change, was occurring even before he passed away.
53:30.303 --> 53:32.224
[SPEAKER_01]: And loss reverberates in our life.
53:32.844 --> 53:44.186
[SPEAKER_01]: As we have new experiences, achieve new goals and face new challenges, these experiences get reinterpreted and processed in the context of our relationship to the person we lost.
53:44.726 --> 53:53.668
[SPEAKER_01]: We think about how we might have shared those experiences, what they might have said or done, or maybe we just missed that person because something reminds us of them.
53:54.268 --> 53:58.489
[SPEAKER_01]: And we may often re-experience a sense of grief and loss in those moments.
53:59.149 --> 54:06.333
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's important that we understand that loss and grief are processes that we encounter throughout our life as we change and grow.
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[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't to make people hopeless about feeling trapped and grief, but rather to encourage people to recognize the enduring power that loss and grief have in our lives.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And it is important that we not take the approach that we should just get over it because it happened a long time ago.
54:24.063 --> 54:34.051
[SPEAKER_01]: In order to heal and grow after loss, we must recognize that this process is an ongoing and important part of our lives that is crucial to our mental health and well-being.
54:34.792 --> 54:44.280
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to thank Consequence Podcast Network and Sound Mind Live for including me in this wonderful project, and thanks to Pete Wilson and the rooks for letting us use their song I know.
54:44.820 --> 54:49.004
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are struggling with anxiety, depression or addiction, and are looking for help,
54:49.464 --> 54:58.450
[SPEAKER_01]: Please call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Helpline at one eight hundred six two two four three five seven.
54:59.030 --> 55:05.154
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're thinking about harming yourself and want to seek help, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
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[SPEAKER_01]: at one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
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[SPEAKER_01]: You may also go to Sound Mind Live or the consequence websites for more information.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So be healthy, be safe, and be kind to yourself and others.
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[SPEAKER_01]: See you next time at the Crossroads.
